by Masha Leyfer
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Um…Because if it wasn’t a fight, we would all be happy. With everything.”
“All right. So by your model, everyone fights against what makes them unhappy. So your greatest opponent is the thing that makes you unhappy the most, yes?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Mike raises his eyebrow in an unspoken question. I look down at my feet and fiddle with my fingers. I don’t think I can pinpoint a primary cause of my unhappiness.
Besides, I am happy.
Why are we even discussing this?
That’s not true. A voice in the back of my head whispers. You know you’re not happy, Why are you lying to yourself?
I roll my knuckle. I don’t want to answer that.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I have no idea.”
“I think I might have an idea,” Mike says.
“Oh? I’d like to hear it.”
“Your greatest enemy is yourself.”
“Myself,” I repeat skeptically.
“The person who makes you unhappiest is yourself. You judge yourself the most. You question yourself the most. You forbid yourself to be happy. And you know yourself best. You can predict every move that you make, and you know exactly how to counter it. And nobody can help you in this fight. You have to face yourself alone, and that makes it twice as hard. You probably didn’t even realize that you need to fight yourself. You are the hardest enemy to defeat because you don’t want to defeat yourself.”
“So, even if I win, I lose.”
“No, no. Imagine your personality as multiple pieces. Let’s say two, for the sake of simplicity. One part of you wants to succeed. That’s the simple part. It’s controlled by nature. It wants you to survive, it wants you to be happy and successful. Then there is the second half. That’s the complicated half. It doesn’t want you to succeed and it’s not completely sure why. It feels that you don’t deserve it. It’s afraid of taking that chance. It recognizes success as the end of your journey and it’s afraid of the end. There are a million reasons why, but it’s still not sure. The most complicated part about it is that it knows that it’s wrong. It recognizes that it shouldn’t be doing what it is but that simply doesn’t matter anymore. It has made the decision to do the wrong thing. That’s why it’s so hard to fight. Because it knows what you want better than it knows what it wants. You’re afraid to hurt it because it’s half of your personality. It knows it’s hurting itself but it’s afraid of its own success. It lives inside all of us, whispering things into our ears, and we are afraid to win as well. Both parts are afraid to win, both are afraid to lose, and all that happens, is that both sides end up confused in a standstill, waiting for the other part to make the first move, all the while knowing that the one who makes the first move wins.”
I stand there with my eyes widened.
“I think,” I stutter finally, “that you just explained me better than I ever could.”
Mike only shrugs.
“So you agree?”
“Yes, I agree a million times over.”
“The most important part of these fights isn’t winning, Molly,” Mike says quietly. “Your training with me is over for today.”
He leaves, and I remain stunned in the center of the field.
Well, I think. That was unexpected.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
Nathan and I walk to the oak tree to practice guitar again. I summarize my conversation with Mike.
“Mike made an interesting point today”
“Oh?”
“He said something along the lines of the most important thing about life isn’t winning, and, your greatest enemy is yourself, which is kind of like what you said about standing in the way of our own happy ending. And I guess that...I guess that really struck a chord, for some reason.”
“Huh. Interesting. Well, good thing that there’s more to life than just fighting, huh?”
“Um…”
“You do see that, right?”
“Um…”
Nathan stops walking and grabs me by the arm.
“Oh my goodness, Molly, do you seriously not see that?”
“Well...name an example.”
“For Christ’s sake! That explains why you’re so...so dark. You think that everything’s a fight and you’re afraid of losing it.”
“Well, yes. Do you not see it like that?”
“No! Sure some things are a fight, but there are so many things that aren’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like music, for example,” Nathan says, gesturing to the guitar.
“Well…”
“Well what? How can you turn music into a battle?”
“The battle to be good at it. Learning is a battle.”
“No, that’s not true!”
“No? Why not?”
“First of all, to have a battle, you need to have an opponent. Who is your opponent in music?”
“What isn’t?” I retort, “Self doubt, lack of natural talent, lack of time. Literally any obstacle is an opponent. It’s a battle against failure.”
“What about doing things for the sake of enjoying them? Don’t you do that?”
“Yeah, sure, I enjoy things. But it’s still a battle. It’s a battle again against being unhappy.”
Nathan throws his hands up in exasperation.
“Okay, what about something you can’t fail at? Like cloud gazing? How can you turn cloud gazing into a battle?”
“I don’t cloud gaze,” I say.
“All right, imagine you did.”
“Sure. You cloud gaze to be happy. It’s another battle against unhappiness.” Nathan scoffs. “And besides,” I add indignantly, “I could absolutely fail at cloud gazing. I could freeze to death. Even more likely than that, I could think about various things until they consume my mind and cause myself serious emotional damage…”
“Oh my goodness. Look up now, Molly.” I look up. The sky is in the midst of a sunset, exploding in colors all across the spectrum.
“All right. Yes, I see that it’s pretty. And?”
“Is it causing you serious emotional damage?”
“No, but it could.”
“But it isn’t.”
“But it could.”
“Why don’t you just chose to ignore the bad side of it? Just see the beauty.”
“Okay, maybe for the sky, but not everything else.”
“Why not?”
“Um...Because I…I’m afraid if I drop my guard something will happen, you know? Everything in my life has been a fight so far, and so far I haven’t exactly lost. Yet. I want to keep it that way.”
“If you stop treating everything like a fight, it will stop being a fight.”
“Sure, that’s how you see it. But I think that if I drop my guard that makes me an easy target.”
“Why? What happened to make you see life that way?”
“The Blast happened, Nathan. The constant, never ending battle for survival. Remember Hopetown? I don’t know if you noticed, but there were piles of drunks on the street. Piles. Half of them were already dead. Every winter, a solid chunk of Hopetown’s population died. They just disappeared and nobody cared. Nobody remembered. They just stopped. Every day, I was afraid it would be me. Do you get it? I walked those streets every day and saw people dying. Those were the people who stopped fighting. I don’t want to end like that.”
Nathan is silent for a moment. He frowns, opens his mouth to say something, but decides against it.
We walk up the oak tree and sit down simultaneously. We look out at the sunset, not saying anything, just observing it. We sit silently, waiting for the sun to set, watching the sky change colors. When the sun finally sets below the tree line, Nathan breaks the silence.
“So you’re afraid of dying, huh?”
“It’s not so much dying, as dying wrong.”
“Dying wrong?”
“Yeah,” I say, leaning back
against the tree. “I don’t want to die with too many regrets. I don’t want the only thing I’m thinking about at that moment to be all the things I did but shouldn’t have and especially all the things I should have done but didn’t. You get it? I don’t want to die feeling empty.”
Nathan chews his lip and stares out into space.
“What if you regret never taking a break from the fight?”
I remain silent for a moment.
“I don’t know.”
We sit in silence, contemplating on various topics until the sky darkens and the first star comes up.
“I don’t think I can think of a song to compete with all that,” Nathan says finally. I laugh. He thinks for a moment. “You ever heard of Linkin Park?”
“No.”
“All right. They were a band back in…” he frowns. “My memory is failing me. I think they were in the nineteen-nineties. They had a song, I’m not sure what it’s actually called. I think I’m losing what I don’t deserve. It’s the best one I can think of that goes with what you just said. Anyway it goes like this.” He places the guitar over one knee. “Let’s see if I still remember.” His fingers hover uncertainly over the strings for a moment, and then he places them in a chord and begins to play. Through the sound of the melody, I pick up several strands of lyrics.
Innocence burning in the sky…
I’m swimming in the smoke of bridges I have burned. So don’t apologize, I’m losing what I don’t deserve…
We were meant to be apart, in separate chambers of the human heart…
The blame is mine alone…
He finished, and again, I feel the slight confusion that comes after a song ends, as if I’ve been transported back to my old world without knowing I ever left.
“What do you think?” Nathan asks. “Want to learn it?”
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
“Okay. Remember A minor?”
“Uh...no.”
“It’s this one.” He places three fingers on the first two frets and hands me the guitar. I place my fingers the way he showed me and strum to make sure it sounds right.
“Exactly. The first phrase: I use the dead wood to make the fire rise, is on this until rise, which is on C major. That’s like this.” He moves my fourth finger down to the third fret on a different string. I strum again. Slowly but surely, Nathan teaches me the song. It does match what I said. It’s apologetic but not entirely hopeless. I like it.
“What do you think it’s about?” I ask on our way back.
“The song? Hm. I’m not sure. I need to think about it. Do you have any ideas?”
“Very undeveloped ideas. It’s about regret, I’m pretty sure. I think maybe it’s about his life. He was handed opportunity after opportunity that he didn’t take, and now, it’s too late.”
Nathan nods. “Hm. Yeah.” He pauses for a moment and I can tell that he’s thinking. “I think it’s an apology, too. That he ended up on the wrong side of the fight and it hurt people, including him. And there’s nothing he can do about it.”
I mull that over.
“What if we’re on the wrong side?” I ask.
“We’re not,” Nathan replies certainly.
“But how can you know that? Do you think the Blasters thought they were doing the wrong thing?”
“The Blasters killed hundreds of thousands of people. How can that possibly be the right side?”
“What if there’s more to the story than we can see?”
“Such as?”
“Such as a motive. A justifiable reason.”
“For mass murder and setting the planet back hundreds of years?”
“Who knows? What if there is?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But doesn’t it bother you?”
“Do you think the Blasters are right? Or the CGB?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“But it concerns me that we might not know the whole story. I mean, what are we even trying to achieve? Full freedom from the CGB, right? But what happens then?”
“Then people are free from the taxes that they can’t pay. The CGB stops exiling and executing people. The people don’t live in constant fear, and-”
“Yes, but what then? That doesn’t stop the...I’m not sure how to say this best...the cycle. There will still be good people and bad people. If not the CGB, someone will take advantage of people weaker than them. We can’t stop that. What if the CGB is better?”
“What can be worse than this?”
“I don’t know. But that’s exactly the point. We don’t know. There could be something.”
Nathan considers that.
“Think of it this way: if we win against the CGB, there will be uncertainty. Yes, you’re right. We don’t know. Something terrible could happen.”
“But that’s bad.”
“No, no. Hear me out. Right now, we live in certainty. We know that it will be bad. I think this is worse. You get it? We live in a world with no hope. We know that this is the end. Everywhere, people are certain that they’re going to die. That’s not right. I don’t mean old people, I mean people like you and me. People younger than us, even. Children. You even said so yourself.” I nod quietly.
“It’s a world of certainty,” Nathan continues. “The Rebellion are the people who are uncertain. We need to give hope to the rest of the world. Because what’s happening now is ridiculous. You get me?”
I nod slowly. “Maybe you’re right, although hope is cruel. It’s just...I’m afraid of the unknown.”
“I am too,” Nathan admits. “I’m terrified, to be honest. It’s scary to not see where you’re going, but it’s even worse when you can see the edge and you know you can’t stop yourself from going over. What I’m trying to say is, as much as I’m afraid of the unknown, I’m even more afraid of the known.”
I shrug. “Maybe you’re right. I guess we’ll hope for the best and prepare for the worst. To uncertainty, then.”
“To uncertainty.”
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
Nathan and I train in the Field of the Fallen, the same way we do every evening. It flits through my mind that back in Hopetown, I hated the repetitiveness. And yet, even though every day is the same here, just as it was before, it doesn’t bother me anymore. I shoot three bolts in rapid succession. One hits in the head, right in between where the eyes would be, one hits at the heart, the other in the stomach.
“I think your aim is better than mine now,” Nathan says. I laugh.
“That’s not true,” I say. “I bet you could hit every point I just hit with your eyes closed.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You sure? What if you tried?”
“Are you challenging me?”
“Yes.”
“Done.” He props his crossbow against his shoulder, measures the distance, closes his eyes, and fires. With his eyes still closed, he recocks it, and pulls out another bolt, carefully puts it in, and fires. I find myself mesmerized by the way his fingers move, the way his veins protrude from his hands, and the way his forehead creases when he is focusing. I’ve never noticed that before, I think, as he shoots the third bolt.
“Well, did I hit?”
“Um...yeah.” I say, looking at the target for the first time. “You hit really well, actually.” Nathan opens his eyes. All of the bolts are within a hand’s breadth of mine.
“Huh, what do you know? I guess I you were right.”
“I’m always right,” I smirk.
“Oh yeah?” Nathan teases me.
“Yeah. Absolutely,” I raise my eyebrow cockily.
“Really?”
“Want to challenge me?”
“Sure. I’ll prove you wrong eventually.”
“Deal. Anyway, we better get going. It’s getting pretty late.”
“Right. You need to get enough sleep today. Tomorrow’s the raid.”
“Yeah.”
“Good luck, by the way, in
case I haven’t told you before.”
“Thanks. And you have. This is the seventeenth time. I’ve been counting.”
“Oh. Well...Extra luck, then.” We leave the field. “When do people usually start going on raids?” I ask. “What stage in their training, I mean?”
“Usually, your first raid will be about three to four months in. It’ll be a simple one, without any expected fighting. It more or less happens when Mike thinks you’re ready. He’s never been wrong. The sign for that is he calls you by name. I don’t know if you noticed, but he probably hasn’t called you ‘Molly’ yet.” I freeze.
“Say that again?”
“Huh?”
“Did you say that when he calls me by name, it’s a sign that I’m ready to go on a raid?”
“Yes.”
“He called me ‘Molly’ yesterday.” I say quietly.
“Seriously? Are you sure?”
“Yes. He said, the most important part of these fights isn’t winning, Molly. Your training with me is over for today. And then he left.”
“Wow! And it’s only been a month! That’s, if I’m not mistaken, record time. By a lot.”
“No, it can’t be. He probably said it by accident.”
“Mike never makes mistakes. Definitely not those types of mistakes. It’s probably more of an effort for him to say somebody’s name once than never to call them by name at all. He meant it.”
“No.”
“Yes. Congratulations, Molly! You’re gonna be going on a raid soon!”
“Nathan, this is ridiculous. I’m not ready for a raid.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Um, because it’s been a month.”
“So? You’re accurate with your crossbow. You have a level head. You know what you’re doing. And besides, it will be a simple raid. You’ll do great.”
“I definitely do not know what I’m doing,” I protest. “And being good with a crossbow–which I’m not– is not enough. So I can shoot. That’s it. Great. Let’s go out and change the world!” I wave my hands around sarcastically. Nathan smiles gently.
“That’s not it, Molly. You’re much more than just an accurate shot.
“An average shot, and besides, I am not ready for that much pressure. What if I crack? And then I screw something up? I’ll lose my head. I have no idea what to do in that situation.”