Tomorrow, Sean Diaz turns twenty-six, and then goes back to a past where he has no future.
Today, he stands in his tiny studio apartment with a backpack over his shoulders. He has a flight to Seattle, but all he is taking are a change of clothes, his toiletries, the Puerto Lobos lighter which traveled every step with him across two realities, and the sketchbook which holds the past he cannot escape.
This is the last time he will see his home in Los Angeles.
Last time he'll see the stains on the walls. The window that does not close all the way. The faucet that leeks throughout the night.
It's a shitty apartment. But it's his.
He worked hard.
Got a sweet job in a sweet city.
Even has a boyfriend who wants to move into a less-shitty apartment with him.
Sean takes a sticky note from the top drawer of his desk. He writes: You deserve good things, even if you don't get to keep them.
He presses the sticky note onto his pillow on the bed where he and Toby made love a few nights ago. It's a note that he will never see again, but maybe by writing it down, the message will find him in that other life, where he needs it the most.
Then he stands in the doorway, hand hovering above the light switch. Breathes in the rice and chicken smells that creep up from the Chinese restaurant downstairs. "It was a good life. While it lasted," he says, then turns off the light and locks the door.
# # #
Crammed between two other passengers on his flight, Sean listens to a playlist of his favorite songs, eyes closed, hovering near sleep. The tracks range from Gorillaz to Misty Mice to Frank Turner, a soundtrack of his life that stirs memories with each note.
The music helps him feel at peace with what he has to go back to and what he has to give up . . . until the playlist hits "I Found a Way" by First Aid Kit, the song Cassidy performed in Beaver Creek, and Sean's sense of acceptance suddenly cracks.
Some of it is remembering Cassidy, jarringly being thrown back into that other life amplified by lines like: There's a heavy load upon our back/of things we carry from the past. But mostly it's the lines:
I need your condolence
And your trust
But I won't ask
Won't ask for much
Because he has a plan of what he wants to do with Dad tomorrow, but there is one thing he has not decided:
Does he tell his father everything?
He needs his father to know . . . but Dad knowing the truth means Dad knows him.
And Dad might not like knowing Sean Diaz.
# # #
Dad picks Sean up at the airport, with a gray beard and standing next to the car he has impossibly had all of Sean's life. Though their interactions have still been awkward dances around the subject of Daniel, Sean jogs the last few steps to wrap the man in a hug, breathing in the cheap aftershave and motor-oil smells. And when Dad hugs him back, it still feels like being sheltered by the strongest man in the world.
"It is good to see you, mijo," Dad says.
"It is always good to see you, papa," Sean says.
Street lights flicker on during the drive to the house. Sean sets his backpack in his bedroom with the window Dad replaced after Daniel's graduation party, and when he comes back to the kitchen, a cake about the size of a basketball sits on the counter, Happy Birthday, Sean written in purple icing.
"I know your birthday is still a few hours away," Dad says. "But would you like to get the celebration started early?"
Dad insists on plugging twenty-six individual candles into the cake, which he lights before Sean can retrieve the Puerto Lobos lighter from his bedroom. Packed so densely, the candles' fire glows like a small sun in their kitchen. Before Sean blows them out, Dad tells him to make a wish.
There are a lot of things Sean has wished for in his life. That his mom would come back. That he could fix the day his dad died. That he and Daniel could both be safe and free.
But none of those wishes ever came true, not without a cost. Sean knows there is no point in wishing for a world where himself, his brother, and his father can get together for barbecues on the Fourth of July and birthdays. Those are wasted wishes, and Sean is tired of wasting wishes. He would rather ask for something he can actually have.
He blows out his candles with a slow stream of air from the bottom of his lungs. "Do you want to know what I wished for, Pops?"
"It does not come true if you tell me, son," Dad says, opening the drawer for forks.
"I think this one will," Sean says, pulling out a candle and sucking off the icing—struck by the weirdness of not having to share with Daniel. "I wished for my dad to drink a beer with me and tell me stories about Puerto Lobos."
Dad sets two saucers on the counter and smiles from behind his beard. "I believe that is a wish we can make come true," he says and hands Sean a bottle of beer from the fridge.
They start in the kitchen but end up on the living room couch, demolishing half the cake and an entire six pack as Dad tells stories from Mexico that Sean has never heard before.
Stories like the time Dad's family had too much food in their house for a week because Sean's abuela saved the neighbor's daughter's quinceañera by sewing up a dress that got ripped by two younger cousins horsing around the day of the party. "Mi madre laughed," Dad says, "because they never knew she used duct tape too."
Or the time that Dad hid a stray dog in his bedroom for a week before Sean's abuelo found out and ranted that the dog had to be gone by the next day. The following morning, Dad woke up, no dog—Dad was sure that his father had taken it away. Instead, the pup and Sean's abuelo were napping together on the couch. "I got to keep the dog," Dad says.
Or the time that Dad and his best friend Eduardo were going to the city, and Eduardo's brother said they could use his car. "But he backed out at the last moment," Dad says, "so . . . I may have hotwired it."
"Holy shit, Dad, you stole a car?" Sean laughs.
"I like to think we borrowed it." Dad and Eduardo went to a club where they danced with two girls, and he snaps his fingers, trying to remember their names—María and Gabriela. "We danced until the club closed, and then afterwards . . ." The corner of his lip curls in a devilish smirk. "Well, maybe there are some things a father does not need to share with his son."
By the end, Sean's stomach aches, full of beer and cake, but mostly from laughter.
"Gracias, mijo," Dad says. "It was nice to relive those memories."
"It's nice to have memories you want to relive," Sean says, tapping an empty beer bottle against his chin.
"It is getting late," Dad says, checking his phone. The screen flashes that it is almost 2:00 in the morning. "But, Sean, is there something you want to tell me?"
"Excuse me?" Sean says.
"I have talked a lot about myself and our familia en México, but it feels like you have wanted to say something."
Sean stares at his bottle. This is probably it, the opportunity to tell Dad about the other life, about all of the things that have happened.
But the night of Daniel's graduation party, Dad reacted so badly when Sean tried to be honest. Dad kinda-kicking him out of the house . . . that sucked. Dad did not believe that Daniel has powers. And worse than dad not believing him, what if Dad confirms Sean's worst fear—that Esteban Diaz is ashamed of how his older son ends up?
Tomorrow will be their last day together. It is important that it is good.
Sean will do anything to make this day good.
"Nah," Sean says. "Estoy bien, Pops."
# # #
Sean can't sleep, so he digs through his childhood bedroom. Studies his track medals from high school and old drawings done as a child with a chubby hand gripping a crayon. Deep beneath his bed, behind a fortress of dust bunnies, he finds a shoebox with little league soccer ribbons and photos of him, his father, and his mother, in the years before Daniel was born.
The Sean in the photos grins, a smile that is too big for his face. And it is comforting to think that he was once a child who could smile like that, that there was a time before anything bad had ever happened to him.
Sunlight creeps through the window as Sean is reading a comic book he made with Daniel, about a dinosaur who sucks at skateboarding because he cannot reach his shoes to tie them, when something sizzles in the kitchen.
Eyes dry from not sleeping, Sean emerges from his room to find his dad grilling pancakes. "Feliz cumpleaños, mijo—officially," Dad says. "Today is your day—what do you want to do?"
"Oh, I have some ideas," Sean says, scrolling past birthday messages from Mom and Toby, to find the list he made on his phone over the last month.
First, Sean and his dad eat pancakes on the couch while watching old episodes of Top Gear, a show Sean has never liked but is Dad's lifeblood.
Next, a local independent theater has a mid-morning showing of this shitty B-movie called Chupacabras vs. Aliens. It's the type of bad where it's okay to cut jokes with Dad when the zippers on the aliens' costumes are visible and all the white people agree to split up as CGI monsters mow them down one by one.
For lunch, Sean and his dad eat at Hopper's, a burger place that is not good, but they often went here after Sean's track meets. On the television screens, the Seattle Mariners are playing the Texas Rangers, and Sean pesters his dad with questions about batting statistics. The numbers go over Sean's head, but he smiles at Dad's excitement explaining them.
After that, they get frozen yogurt and sit in the stands of the high school track where Sean won those trophies and medals in his bedroom. A boy, maybe an eleventh grader, breathes heavily as he checks his watch then sprints down the track. Sean and his dad reminisce about times when running was something that made Sean proud, not just his constant state of life.
"It has been a full day," Dad says, dropping his spoon into his empty yogurt cup.
"There is one more thing I want to do," Sean says. The boy on the track finishes his sprint, rechecks his watch. Drops of sweat fly from his hair as he shakes his head, mutters to himself, then goes back to the starting line to try it all again. "It is a bit of a drive, though."
"You know Esteban Diaz is always up for a drive, mijo."
# # #
By car, it takes only an hour and a half to reach Mt. Rainier National Park.
Sean thought he was past the panic attacks, but as he steps out of the car and the smells of pine and mud sting his nose, as he sees the donation box he almost broke open for money, his feet ache as they remember walking for two days straight. His body feels weak, flooded with the sadness and shock that had burned him out to a dull exhaustion.
As he stands at the entrance, heart fluttering in his chest, he thinks maybe this was a bad idea, trying to overwrite rough memories with better ones, like he could regain control of his life.
But then Dad points to a white rectangle painted on a tree. "Do you remember when I taught you about trail markers?"
"I do," Sean laughs, and his heartbeat steadies. "That one means we should go this way."
The park is empty except for Sean and his father, the universe finally cutting Sean a break by giving him these moments unspoiled by others. Sean leads his dad through the trees and imagines the ghosts of two boys—a sixteen-year-old pretending he isn't scared, a nine-year-old not yet knowing he should be—who play hide-and-seek, bicker about Minecraft, and make up backstories for raccoons.
At the clearing by the river, the heaviness creeps back into Sean's heart. This rocky outcropping isn't the first place he and Daniel slept as homeless runaways, but it is when things became real that Sean was responsible for Daniel, that all of this was on him. The water burbling, the caw of the birds, the gentle breeze on his skin—they unlock dozens of memories Sean did not realize he had repressed.
"Let us sit for a bit," Dad says. "Your father is not as young as he used to be, and you look like you could use a break as well."
Sean pulls his father up by the wrist as they climb the gentle slope that hangs over Sean and Daniel's first wolves' den, and they sit, feet dangling over the side. Even though the forest is mostly pine trees, it is still greener than it was in October almost a decade ago. The river gently flows over the rocks, and a few, white clouds dot an otherwise clear blue sky.
Cotton candy, that's what Daniel said the clouds looked like. What a dork.
For a while, neither Sean or his father say anything. And for the first time in a year, the silence isn't awkward. Or tense. It's peaceful.
Like it's enough to be together.
"Have you had a good birthday?" Dad asks. "I feel like we did a lot of things I would want to do, like today has not been a Sean-focused day."
"We did exactly what I wanted, which was to spend the day with my dad."
"I know things have been hard lately, but there will never be a day that I do not want to spend with you, my son."
"Gracias," Sean says. "You know, I think this has been my favorite day. Probably ever."
Sean Diaz has spent a lot of time ranking his days, typically from 'bad' to 'even worse'. The day his mother abandoned them. The day his dad was shot. Being tied up by Hank Stamper. Waking up from a month-long coma facing a prison sentence with one eye and no idea where Daniel was. Being captured at the border. Sean's own sentencing. That first Christmas in juvy. Sean's eighteenth birthday when he was moved to adult prison. The day Daniel turned himself in. Daniel's sentencing.
Just a life filled with bad days.
But some good ones.
They are few and far between, but they are there, the way stars are hidden in a cloudy night sky.
The sun creeps towards the horizon, and Sean wishes this day would not end—but remembers he is done wasting wishes on things he cannot have.
His gift is more time. But that time is running out. And if he doesn't tell his dad everything now, then he never will.
But that doesn't mean he should.
Because what if Dad looks at him like a stranger, uses that I'm-not-angry-just-disappointed voice, is ashamed of all of the bad things the boy with his last name has done?
Sean digs into the pocket of his jeans, hand trembling, and pulls out the Puerto Lobos lighter. The metal clink echoes off the trees as he opens and closes it anxiously.
"That lighter is quite the traveler," Dad says, gently taking it from Sean. He runs his fingers over the Puerto Lobos etching, worn smooth by years of Sean and Esteban's thumbs. "I always hoped it would see Puerto Lobos again."
When Dad hands it back, it feels warmer against Sean's palm. "Do you remember when you gave me this?" Sean says. "It was before tenth grade. We went camping. I was so stoked to get father-son time, just you and me without Daniel. We made a fire with this lighter, and you told me that I was growing up. And that meant life would get harder, and I had to face it by being more responsible. And part of that was being a good big brother. You said it meant everything to you that our bond was strong, that I was strong for him." A flame dances at the tip of the lighter as Sean flicks it with his thumb. But with a flip of his wrist, the flame is snuffed out. "I tried to look out for Daniel, Dad. I tried so hard. And I could have done better. I know that. I know I fucked up, but I want you to know I tried." Sean runs a fist under his nose, dragging a thin line of snot across the back of his hand. "You're a good dad, Pops. Having you as a father is the best thing that ever happened to me."
Sean stares at his new skate shoes, already stained and caked with mud, but he can feel his father's eyes on him, studying him like a doctor eying an injured patient.
"Sean," Dad says, "are you okay?"
"Estoy bien, papito," Sean says, sniffling.
Dad scratches his knees, and his fingernails scrape against the denim of his jeans. "I cannot help but notice that today felt a bit like a goodbye. I remember those pamphlets your school sent home about suicide. Are you thinking of hurting yourself?"
Sean laughs. Because he is going to end his life, but he isn't going to die. "I am not going to kill myself, Dad."
Dad crosses his arms over his chest, stares out over the river as a fish jumps out of the water. He draws in a long, slow breath that seems to rattle his lungs. "Then are you thinking of changing the past back to the way it was?"
Sean blinks, and his eyes sting with tears that he did not realize were there. "What?"
Dad picks at the black grease stuck beneath his thumbnail. "The night that Daniel got arrested, you told me with conviction that Daniel could move things with his mind. And the more I have thought about it, as crazy as it sounds, what happened the day after his graduation—that is the simplest explanation. And about a month ago, Daniel called me on a Wednesday—which was odd, since he calls me on Thursday. And he told me that it was important that he saw me as soon as possible, that he could not explain over the phone, but it was about you. And a few hours later, you called me in the middle of the night asking to spend your birthday with me. So I went to see your brother, and he floated my cell phone and moved a chair across the room, and as much as I did not want to believe it, I knew what you told me the night Daniel was arrested was true. That is when your brother said that you had a power of your own. That you had lived a different life, and you had changed time itself to give yourself—and him—a better one. He said it was not his place to tell me what happened in that other life, but that he was worried that you were going to go back to it. He said you would try to say goodbye to me first. And if I ever had a day where it felt like you were saying goodbye, I had to do everything in my power to stop you."
"That's a, uh, pretty wild story," Sean says, scratching at the tattoo on his arm. "You believe all that?"
Dad's beard is long enough that he can pull the part that grows below his lower lip into his mouth with his teeth. "Christmas about three years ago, you changed. I saw it in your eyes, especially this one," Dad says, and he points a finger at Sean's left eye. "Something had happened to you, something too big for a semester away at college. You were different. Like you had lived beyond your twenty-some years."
"Hypothetically, let's say that it's true," Sean says, staring at his tattoo. "How would you stop me from changing things back to the way they were?"
"Well, how about you tell me about the life I am stopping you from going back to first?"
Sean scratches his arm until red lines have crossed out the face of the older boy on his tattoo. The pain burns in his forearm. He doesn't know how to start—doesn't even know if he should. He stammers, says he knows it sounds crazy, but he begins the same way he told Daniel in the motel outside of Away:
"Once upon a time, in a wild, wild world . . . there were two brothers, Sean and Daniel. They lived in peace with their papa until . . . until a cop's bullet took their dad away."
And then the dam is cracked. It all comes rushing out, a flood that wracks Sean's body. And he tells his father everything.
It's too much story for them to keep sitting on the outcropping. So as Sean tells about being tied up and surviving in the cabin and Mushroom and hopping the trains and danger always following them, they walk through the park. Up to the picnic area where Sean sat and overlooked the cliff, feeling the heaviness of loss. Back down to the bank where Sean and his brother gathered wood. They even skip rocks by the river, like Sean taught Daniel to do all those years ago.
Mostly, Dad just listens. Occasionally, his face turns pink, and Sean stops to let his father wipe at wet eyes. Sometimes Dad asks questions: "So you are telling me that after you woke up from a coma missing an eye that you scaled the outside of a hospital building then walked across a desert with broken ribs?"
"I don't know that my ribs were broken," Sean says, rubbing the back of his neck. "But they never healed right. And I didn't walk across the whole desert. A trucker picked me up after about fifteen miles."
Dad stares at him, not blinking.
"You do believe me, right, Pops?"
"I believe you, Sean," Dad says. "However, you realize there are marines who could not do that. I do not think you understand how strong you were. I am impressed that my boy—who whined the entire hour that I made him help me repair a fence when he was thirteen—could become a man who was so strong."
"What else could I do? Daniel needed me."
And for some reason, that makes Dad actually cry.
The sun has crept to the horizon, painting the sky above the trees orange, by the time Sean and his dad sit down on the rocks in the Diaz brothers' wolf den. But as Sean starts winding down the story, his dam is so broken that he blurts out the things he never told Daniel, the things too bad to record in his journal.
Like the guy at the bus station he and Daniel slept in before finding the cabin. The man kept making eyes at Daniel, and when Sean confronted him, the man offered Sean money if Sean would sleep with him. And Sean came this close to letting his first time be with some creep in a public restroom stall, and he thought about that money as they went to bed hungry the following night.
Or the time in Humboldt County when everyone was drinking around the campfire. Sean had turned down their offers of pot and alcohol at first, thinking he needed to be clear-headed to watch out for Daniel. But he smoked his first joint and drank his first beer in months. And then kept drinking. Past the point when he knew he should stop. The next twenty-four hours were black, but later, Cassidy said she and Jacob had nursed him back to health while Finn kept Daniel away.
"And then there is the worst thing," Sean says, digging his fingers into the bone of his shoulder as if it can keep his voice from cracking. "The worst thing I did was at the border. We were staring down all those cops and Agent Flores, and I thought: they took my dad; they took everything. Some part of me knew they would never treat me fairly, that my only future was in Mexico. I wanted to cross the border so bad. And I wanted Daniel to hurt them. He would have done it, if I had asked, and that's when I knew how broken I was, when I was going to ask my brother to hurt people. I fucked up so much, papa. I got Daniel shot. I lost my eye. I lost my way, and I know you must be so ashamed of me." Sean presses his face against his tattoo of the two boys with the wolves, and his body shakes. "I know we don't believe in Heaven or whatever, but every night in that other life, I lie on the cot in my prison cell, and I know Esteban Diaz is disappointed in his son who made so many mistakes. I tried to make you proud, but all I did was let you down. You are the best person I will ever know, and me? Soy un ladrón sucio con un ojo."
Dad's silence is so loud it drowns out the river and the crickets chirping from the forest.
This is exactly why Sean didn't want to tell him. Because Dad cannot understand how he could have raised a fuck-up like Sean Diaz.
"That day that Daniel was arrested," Dad says slowly, "you stood in front of me, and I wondered what had happened to my gold-hearted Sean. And I think I understand now, that he was still there, but life had asked him to be stronger than any boy—any man—should have to be. So his golden heart was broken because hearts are only built to hold so much pain. Sean, I could never be ashamed of you. Not in this life. Not in any life. I am so sorry that you had to shoulder so much, and if I could take it all away I would. But, mijo, you were brave. And you always tried to do the right thing, even when there was not a 'right' thing to do. And you were strong for your brother, when he needed you the most. My son—my dear, courageous Seanie-boy, I am so very proud of you. Siempre y siempre y siempre. It is the world that is broken—not you."
Everything is blurry, but Sean thinks his father smiles. And then Dad's arms are around him, and Sean breathes heavy, damp sobs into his dad's shoulder like a child who has been lost, alone in the wilderness for far too long.
# # #
On the drive back to Seattle, Sean feels like he has set down a weight he has carried for so long that he forgot it was breaking his back. Sure, he has to go back to a life that is mostly bad days, but now is still his favorite day of his life.
So he turns on the radio, and enjoys one more drive with his dad.
# # #
When they get to the house, Dad parks in the garage but asks Sean to follow him up to the front yard. The streetlights have come on, and the missing fence is a scar on Sean's childhood home. Dad stands in the grass near where their property meets the Fosters' and asks, "Is this where I died?"
"It was a little more over there," Sean says, pointing.
Dad stares at the spot, and it is eerie, like a ghost hovering above his own grave. "So how do your memories work?" Dad asks. "Do you remember both of your lives?"
"Mostly," Sean says. "Everything from the first one, that is clear as day. I have most of my memories back from this one, but I had to work for them. Some things are fuzzy."
"Do you remember the day you got your acceptance letter to college?"
Sean chuckles. "I don't. It's funny. That seems like that should have been a big deal."
"It was December. Your senior year. I came home from work, and you had gotten the letter that afternoon but were too scared to open it. So we went to your room, and I gave you one of those 'Dad Talks' you needed back then. And you opened your letter. And, Sean, when you saw it said you had been accepted—and that they were giving you a scholarship—you were so excited. I do not think I have ever seen you so proud. You had worked hard and earned something." Dad's fingers slide down his beard, drawing his face long in the nighttime shadows. "But then I saw that light inside you dim. You told me that you could not go. Because you had made plans with Lyla to go to Washington State. And then you said that Savannah was too far away from us, that you needed to be here for Daniel and me. You rattled off these reasons to walk away from your dream, but they were about other people, not yourself. Not what you wanted. And all of those reasons made you sad. Finally, I asked you what Sean wanted, and after a lot of coaxing, you finally said that you wanted to go to school in Georgia but that it was selfish, and you did not want to let everyone down. And I told you about how there were people who said I should not leave Puerto Lobos but that I had to do it, for me, because it is not selfish to put yourself first some of the time."
Like a key notching tumblers in a lock, Dad's words bring the memory back to Sean's mind. It had felt like such a relief, having his father's permission to focus on himself, which he had never really done before, even if he fucked up learning how to do so while he was in college.
But something about this feels weird, almost like that day when Dad was working up to telling Sean that Mom was gone. "Why are you bringing this up now?" Sean asks. "What are you trying to tell me?"
Dad takes a deep breath. "I am trying to tell you that you do not have to change things back."
"Of course I have to change things back!" Sean snaps. "Daniel is in prison because of mistakes I made!"
"Your story made it sound like you were in prison for mistakes Daniel made," Dad says calmly.
"People got hurt here! Brody, Jacob, Chris, Finn, Cassidy—all of those people are dead here."
"I appreciate that those people helped you, and I love them with all of my heart for that—but none of those people are my son, and what happens to my boys matters more to me."
"But I fucked everything up! I made so many mistakes, and then I played with something I didn't understand, and I made everything worse. This is on me, Dad, and I have to fix it." Sean's words spill out of him, fast and desperate, like he's being dragged beneath the surface of an ocean as his father watches him from the shore. "Are you really telling me that you wouldn't give up your freedom for Daniel?"
"Of course I would give up my freedom for Daniel!" Dad says, raising his voice. "I would give my life for Daniel. But, Sean, I would do the same thing for you. You are telling me there are two options—either Daniel suffers or Sean suffers, and I do not like either of those choices because I want both of my sons to be safe and free."
"Well, that option isn't on the table," Sean mutters, crossing his arms.
"I know that, mijo," Dad says. "I cannot make this decision because it is not my decision to make—it is yours. But, Sean, I listened to your story, and much of it broke my heart, but what made me most sad was that you were so focused on what Daniel needed or what you thought I wanted that you forgot to take care of yourself, too."
"You weren't there, Dad!" Sean says. "If I wasn't responsible for Daniel, who would be?"
"But you needed to be responsible for yourself too. You cannot love people if you are always putting yourself last, my son. You said there was never a right choice, but, Sean, that means there was also never a wrong one. If you go back, you will be giving Daniel his freedom and a chance to live his life—and I will be proud of you for the love you have for your brother and the strength it takes to make that sacrifice. But if you stay in this life, then you are saving Daniel from the burden of knowing he cost you your freedom. Living a good life is just as noble, and I will be proud of you for honoring your brother's choice to give this to you. No matter what you decide, I will be proud of you."
And as Sean stands in the front yard with his father who died in another life, he remembers Daniel pleading with him: Don't give up everything because you want to protect me. You have to stop sacrificing everything in your life for me. He remembers how in that other life, he and Daniel put up walls that he came to this life to tear down.
He can't really stay here, can he? How can he ever be happy as Daniel wastes away in prison? It is like having his heart cut out of his chest.
But how can he go back to a life that he tried to end?
Maybe Sean deserves good things . . . but so does Daniel.
He always thought he knew what he had to do—but now he is not so sure.
"It is okay if you need some time," Dad says, setting a hand on Sean's shoulder. "I know you will make the right decision as long as you consider this: What does Sean Diaz want? And what can Sean Diaz live with?"
The words sound like the question Daniel asked at the border, all those years ago:
So, how does the story of the wolf brothers end?
# # #
Suddenly, your screen turns gray, and the scene of Sean and his father splits across its middle.
Two options appear in front of you, a choice that will decide the story's ending:
SACRIFICE SEAN
or
SACRIFICE DANIEL
Your decision will impact the world around Sean and his brother.
This action cannot be undone.
This action will have consequences.
Note: This story has two endings, and you can choose which one you want. If you want Sean to sacrifice Daniel's freedom and stay in this current life, please read the following chapter-the SACRIFICE DANIEL ending. If you want Sean to sacrifice his own freedom, go back to the original time, and give Daniel a chance at a regular life, read the SACRIFICE SEAN ending. Thanks for reading this far!
