Free Life Will Have Its Way by Angie Myers Lewtschuk

she?” he asked.
    “How would I know?” I replied in a tone I hadn’t used since I was a teenager, “I didn’t say I knew her.”
    “Then why were you sitting alone with a girl you didn’t even know?”
    I was starting to see what Anja meant. You couldn’t give them anything to work with it just made it easier for them to keep going. I wished I could watch things unfold in a parallel universe where I would take back my words, replace them with a denial, and see where the conversation would have headed instead.
    “I just happened to see the girl in the garden,” I said in a slow, monotonous tone, “and thought she might be a little young to be sitting there alone.”
    He still hadn’t looked at me directly since he mentioned the dance, he was keeping his focus just slightly above my eyes, at my forehead. It was quite unnerving.
    “Can you just tell me if there is a little girl that’s actually missing?” I asked.
    Friedrich didn’t respond.
    “You said there were other children involved, right? Are they missing too?” I looked back and forth between Friedrich and Marko.
    “We are talking real children here, aren’t we? Are there any real children missing?” 
    Marko snickered, which was apparently more than Friedrich could take. He smashed the folder onto the table, his lower jaw moved side to side before his lips became locked in a sharp pucker. He stood, the chair shot out from under him, nearly hitting the far wall before it came to a stop. He turned toward Marko and whispered something that I couldn’t quite make out, then grabbed him by his sleeve and pulled him into the hallway. I had originally thought the two of them had been set up as part of a good cop, bad cop arrangement, but I was starting to realize it was more likely a version of crazy cop, sane cop.

Chapter 14
    The folder. He had left the folder on the table. I looked behind me. I looked around the room, the door was shut. There wasn’t any two-way glass but I knew the room was surely being bugged. I reached across the table and carefully, quietly slid the folder toward me and flipped it open. The cover sheet listed all of my basic information, full name, height and weight estimates along with a general description. My most recent ID photo had been pasted over a stack of other photos that were presumably also mine. The next page was covered with a list of addresses. Addresses for all the places I had ever lived or visited for more than a couple of weeks. Some of the addresses weren’t immediately familiar but came back to me once I gave it some thought. It was funny to think that someone had bothered to note addresses for places that even I had forgotten about.
    There was a section including all of my school records. The names of the schools I had attended, the teachers, my classes, all listed. I looked around the room again to make sure I was still alone and continued to turn the pages slowly so they wouldn’t make any noise. The following section contained medical information, a summary of all my visits to the doctor from the time I was born, fever, flu, goose egg, broken wrist, torn ligament, sprained ankle.
    I was well aware of the fact that files existed. I knew they had files on people they were watching, the suspicious, unsavory types that were sure to eventually cause trouble. But me? Why me? Could they really have a file like this on everyone? Why? Why hadn’t anyone ever mentioned this to me? Why hadn’t Anja mentioned anything about files? Surely she would be aware of their existence. She had such a strong opinion on everything else that had to do with government bureaucracy, the unnecessary intrusions, the lack of privacy, but never the files, why hadn’t she complained about the files?
    The next section was separated with a tab. The pages were typewritten, very well organized, each entry was dated, some with time stamps. There was a notation about a spelling competition, how far I had advanced, the word I had