by Masha Leyfer
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“But your leg–”
“Screw my leg. You can hold me up.”
Nathan considers that.
“Okay.” He helps me up. I hold on to his shoulders and he puts his arms around my waist.
“Let’s dance, then.” We begin to do something approximating a waltz, although between our complete inability to dance and my leg dragging behind me, it must look completely ridiculous.
“Do you remember the last time we danced?” I ask.
“Yeah. I was really drunk,” he smiles.
“I think those were the happiest moments of my life.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“It was just me and you and the ground was shaking and nothing mattered.”
“You know what I remember from that night?”
“What?”
“The entire world was spinning and you were the only thing standing still.” I blush. Nathan laughs. “You’re blushing.”
“I know. That’s just very romantic.”
Nathan laughs again.
“It’s what I do.”
I put my head on his chest and we continue to sway back and forth, drawing patterns in the dirt with our feet. I listen to the sound of his heartbeat, regular and steady, pulsing out the rhythm of our movements. He spins me around. I laugh, tripping a little and then falling back into his arms. I look into his eyes, blue and beautiful. They generate a sort of addicting energy from the inside.
“Your eyes,” I say.
“What about them?”
“They’re so blue.”
Nathan laughs.
“You’re the most wonderful person in the world.”
I put my head back on his chest.
“I love you, you know,” I say, still listening to his heartbeat. He puts his hand on my cheek, bringing it up to his own and we kiss again.
“I love you too.”
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
In several days, Big Sal deems me fit to go back to my tent. I sleep in my own blankets for the first time in almost a week. I didn’t realize how much I missed them. I feel like a child, but I grip the blankets tightly, inhaling their familiar scent, the scent of pine needles and smoke and me. The smell of home.
Most of all, I missed my little purple bunny that has always watched over me from the corner of my bed, whether it was before the Blast, in Hopetown, or here, in the wild, on top of a mountain. It’s the last reminder of the little girl with a future as bright as the sun who finally made it to tomorrow.
The next morning, I walk with Mike in the woods. Rebekah has given me a wooden staff to walk with so that I don’t have to rely on somebody else’s support. I still walk slower than usual, but my limp is getting better and I hope that it to heal soon.
“Are you sleeping well?” Mike is asking.
“Spectacularly.”
“Really? No pain bothering you?”
“You sound like my mother,” I roll my eyes. “And she’s a doctor. But no, not even nightmares.”
“Your nightmares have ended?”
“More or less.”
“And no new ones have arisen?”
“Surprisingly, no. I guess I wasn’t that traumatized by Wednesday.”
“Well, thank goodness.”
“You know, if I had died, my last words would have been, ‘I don’t regret this.’”
“That’s a good thing to end on. It’s good to die without regrets.”
“That’s not true. You need enough regrets to have a fully life. ButI want to die proud of what I’ve done.”
“Well. It’s a little early to be thinking of that, no?”
“No. Not really.”
“Oh?”
“I mean, look at how close I was.” Mike pales. My almost-death seems to have shaken him more than it’s shaken me. “And besides,” I add, “everything you do, as well as everything you don’t do, counts in the end. Why not start preparing now?”
Mike shrugs.
“I guess even I can’t find anything wrong with that. But you’re starting knowing how things will end. Don’t you want surprises along the way? That makes life more interesting, no? If you build off of what you have and see where it takes you instead of building to a certain destination.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s not like having a clear ending imprisons me.”
“No? How do you imagine you’ll be living out the rest of your life?”
“Doing this.”
“Fighting the CGB?”
“Well, yes, I suppose.”
“The CGB is almost over. What’s your alternative?”
“Well, I...I’m not sure. I guess I could settle down, and…”
“And what?”
“I don’t know. What do people usually do once they’ve settled down?”
“See what I mean? You don’t know, because you’ve never envisioned that future for yourself.”
“I guess. But until now, it’s never been a reality.”
“But that’s the entire point. It’s possible now, so now you can finally fight for it being a reality.”
“Yeah, maybe. But what about...everything else?”
“What do you mean?”
“You spend your life making the life you want a reality and you end up with no time for everything else.”
“But that’s the thing: what you’re calling everything else is the life that you want. In the ideal life, there is no separation between life and everything else. In fact, it’s barbaric that our society has gotten to the point that this distinction even exists.”
I consider that.
“I can’t argue with that. But admit it: you think about the end too, about death.”
“Of course. I think about it a lot.”
“Exactly.”
“We all do. It’s too addicting and too important to ignore.”
“What do you think about, exactly, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Mike sighs.
“I think about my mother’s death a lot. I’m not sure what she was sick with, but by the end, she was losing her mind. She didn’t recognize any of us, me and Nathan included. We kept trying to get her to recognize us, to say our names, but she wouldn’t. We would ask her if she knew where she was, who she was, and who she was with. She would answer, yes. We would ask her to give us the answers, and she would say, I am here, I am me, and I am with you. And we would ask, and who are we? But she would just smile and shake her head and say, of course; you know. One time I asked her if she was happy. This was early in her state of deterioration, back when she still recognized us, but we could tell that she was losing it. She answered, Of course, dear, I’m dying, how could I not be happy? I’m not sure what exactly she meant by that, but I… I think she regained a little awareness at the very end of her life. Her last words to us, she said right before she died. Nathan and I were at her bedside. She stirred a little and said, My rebels. I don’t know. It had a big impact on me. Especially her last words. They sort of defined me. I suppose somewhere deep within me is ingrained the belief that I belong to the past and it’s very difficult to get rid of that.”
“Is that why you’re fighting for today? To belong only to yourself?”
“Yes, I suppose it is. Because if you belong to yourself, you can live. If you belong to somebody else, you live their life, and why would you ever want that?”
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
A week later is the fourteenth year anniversary of the Blast. We light candles and go down to the river, letting the little lights sail down the current. All around the world, people are performing their own rituals. In Hopetown, all the shops would close. We would keep all of our lights off, close the shutters, and stay inside. It didn’t say anywhere in the description of the ritual—not that there was an official one—that silence had to be maintained, but my family, at least, didn’t talk. If we did, we would speak
in something quieter than a whisper. Even the drunk choruses would hush, as if they felt the weight of mourning in the air.
I watch the lights float down the current and wonder where the river goes. Maybe somebody else will find the candles and maybe they’ll know why they were lit. By that time, of course, the wind or the water would have extinguished them, just like the Blast tried to extinguish us.
After the lights disappear around the riverbend and we’ve stood in silence for what seems like an appropriate amount of time, Mike raises his head and begins to speak.
“Gang. Today marks the fourteenth anniversary of the Blast. That’s fourteen years that we’ve lived in this post-Blast world, in this so called afterland. We can never return to the world before the Blast, but we can make the Blast worth it. I know that that sounds impossible, but that’s really what we’re doing. Making today and tomorrow worth living in just as much as yesterday was. We are the Rebellion. We will always be the Rebellion, CGB or no CGB, because what we’re fighting isn’t just the government. We’re fighting the entire dark side of the world and that’s a hard thing to do. There is so much darkness in the world, that sometimes, it’s very easy to forget why we we ever started fighting in the first place. But the answer to that is, where there is darkness, there will always be light. Always. So even in the darkest moment, remember that the sun will always rise, the Earth will always turn, the stars will always shine. Remember that there is a reason that we’re fighting this war. Remember that, no matter how bleak the world seems, there will always be a Rebellion.”
We all stand in silence. I think about how long a time fourteen years is and I think about how lucky I am to remember the world before Blast. Those born less than fifteen years ago don’t remember anything but this. This is their standard. They don’t know anything better than this, so I suppose they must find it normal. Wrong, perhaps, but normal. This is what the world has always looked like to them. They must live without any hope that it will ever be better, simply because they don’t know that it could be different.
That must be terrible, living without hope.
After some time, we begin to trail back to camp. Nathan pulls out the guitar and we begin to sing songs about war. All of our voices are cold and distant, and the songs seem hopeless, but something about the way that we sing them gives me hope.
I know only one war song. It’s bitter, but not hopeless. That’s been my attitude towards the CGB all this time. Bitter, because I couldn’t believe that people could do what they were doing, but not hopeless, because they were still human, and there was still a chance that they would feel regret and then, everything would change.
That’s really the last thing that keeps us human: recognizing the humanness in others. I suppose that’s what kept us together as a species. We recognize another human being and we feel compassion. However small, the desire to help others is always there. That’s what holds us back from pulling a trigger, throwing a bomb, ripping the beating heart out of another human being. We can’t function alone. We need the support of a network of humanity, even if it doesn’t reach us directly. Even the knowledge that that network exists is enough to keep a person going. But that same instinct is what allows us to to kill. We believe that certain deaths will create more life. That’s why we bombed the CGB, after all. Who knows? That may be why the Blasters bombed the Earth.
Someday, the human race will go extinct. I don’t think it will happen as a result of a natural disaster, or because the sun will explode, or anything like that. I honestly don’t believe we have that long to live. I think that we’ll die out much earlier, and the reason will be simply that we’ve lost our humanity. We won’t recognize each other anymore. We won’t feel the need to help each other, to stick together. Everyone will have to fight their battles alone, and the weight of that will crush us.
But as long as we’re human, we will live.
The catch is, that no matter what happens, through tragedy and sorrow and blessings and happiness, through death and devastation and plenty, no matter how much we receive and how much we give, no matter which way life takes us and what we have are forced to face we have to remain human
CHAPTER 33
I shoot with Smaller Sally in the Field of the Fallen. Even though training has been relaxed the past week, we tend to do it anyway. It’s just a comforting habit and all of us are good enough at shooting that it’s an almost mindless background.
“Hey, Smaller Sally,” I say. “Do you believe that this is coming to an end?”
“If you mean the CGB, then yes, of course I do.”
“And after it’s over, what do you plan on doing?”
“I don’t know. You know, to tell the truth, it’s very difficult to imagine my life without this. It’s become such a large part of me. Even if the Blast never happened, I think I would still be trying to do this. It completes me, you know?” I nod. she sighs. “But it gets tiring. It’s hard, to fight all the time. And we’re all so young, too. Nobody here really ever had a proper childhood. We were all cut short. We were never static. It was always this: running and fighting. I’m ready to stop. Or at least take a break. Yeah, I guess that’s it. I wanna live the life that I never had. The simple life. I want to relax. Settle down. Take a break from all this.”
“But what does that even mean? Settling down.”
“I don’t know, Molly. Maybe getting a house, a quiet life somewhere away from all the turmoil.” She shrugs and then adds quietly. “A child.”
“A child?”
“I mean, why not? I’m twenty-three, and with the CGB gone...why not?”
“No, no, I think that’s wonderful. Do you want a child?”
“You know, I really do. I didn’t think about it much before, but nowadays, now that it’s a possibility, it’s seems like it’s always on my mind. I wanna be a mother.”
“That’s wonderful! You’d be an amazing mother.”
“I hope so. Anyway, steering away from this topic of conversation before it we expose all the flaws in my potential motherhood, what about you? What are you planning to do once this is over?”
“I don’t know. It seems like everybody’s planning to settle down and leave this behind, but I...I don’t know. It scares me.”
“Settling down scares you?”
“Yeah. You know, it’s just seems that once you stop fighting your battles, you become insignificant.”
“Well. That’s not true. The battles you fight aren’t what make you significant.”
“No? Then what does?”
“You make yourself significant. Your personality, the effect you have on the people around you. You can simply exist, and you could still be significant.”
“I guess.”
“You’re so obsessed with being significant. Have you ever thought that maybe it isn’t that important?”
“What? No, I haven’t. I mean, isn’t that why we’re all here? To try and make our mark?”
“I wouldn’t say so.”
“Really? Why?”
“Why do you need to be significant, Molly? What do you need to prove? If you let life take its course, you’ll find where you fit in instead of forcefully pushing yourself into situations where you don’t belong.”
“You say that, but what if you miss your opportunity?”
“Chances are, you won’t. Once the opportunity comes along, you’ll know it. If we assume that joining the Rebellion was your opportunity, my ideas stand, no? The opportunity came to you, you just had to take it.”
I nod.
“True. But what if I didn’t run out to meet you? I would’ve missed it.”
“But that’s exactly the point. When the opportunity comes, you have to seize it. While it’s not there, you shouldn’t run from what you have to find it. Imagine if you had run away from Hopetown earlier. You never would have found the Rebellion and you probably would have died.”
“Alright. I guess I see your point, but,” I sigh, “if you live like that, you have all
the chances of just spending your whole life waiting. And what if you never get the chance to change anything? You have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and create that chance for yourself. But that’s not what you’ll be doing. You’ll still be waiting. And waiting’s okay when you’re young and you have your whole life ahead of you, but what about after that? You wait your life away and you never end up anywhere.”
“Gosh, Molly, that’s somber. I don’t know. I guess it’s different for everyone. We spend so much time trying to create rules for success, but the truth is, they can’t always work. If you force rules on people, you just end up hurting them. They think that they’re unsuccessful, but in truth–”
“They’re just playing by the wrong rules,” I finish.
“Exactly. I tend not to look back and not to look forward. I live in the now, and if something does happen to come along, I’ll take it. I haven’t tripped yet. But I’m good at looking under my feet. Other people are good at looking ahead, and if you tell them to live in the now, you don’t help them, you block off their view.”
“Well said.”
“Thank you.” She sighs and shoots another bolt. “Who knows how things are going to be after the CGB? The Fallen Angels might take over, like it says in the Tertiad. Or something else might happen. We have no way of knowing. We just have to always remember to move forward, no matter which way we’re looking, and then, hopefully, things will work themselves out.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
I spend most of that night thinking about the future. I am reminded of how life was right after the Blast. The future was uncertain and we were afraid. I suppose it’s like that before any major change.
But during the Blast, I was four. I was dependent on my parents for my survival. But this time, I am driving the change myself. The moments that will define the future are now and our generation are the people who are doing the definition.
So what if we’re doing it wrong?
The fears that I had the night of my first raid come return to me. What if we’re making decisions for people who don’t want us making them? Isn’t that what the CGB was doing? What if we’re just as bad as the CGB? Maybe we’re dragging people into a revolution that they don’t want a part in. Why do we know what’s better? I sigh and toss around, trying to sleep, but the closest I come to oblivion is an irregular type of unconsciousness. After several hours of throwing pillows from one side of the tent to the other, I decide that I need to talk it out with somebody. I quietly unzip my tent, careful not to wake anybody else. I’ve only heard anybody get up in the middle of the night once and that was because it woke Emily, who spewed a strongly worded string of curses at the offender, followed by a suspicious clang. I would rather not be her next midnight victim.