Zachary Small, 2016
Farmland. So much farmland.
We’ve carved the whole world up into ugly, flat, geometric shapes.
It’s such a big world, and there are so many small people down there, living their lives in their little farmhouses. Are they happy? Are they content with their little pockets of land, their little squares? Are they comfortable spending most of their tiny lives stuffed into those tiny squares? Toiling on the land, growing things, but never able to grow enough things so that they can actually eat? Never able to pay for their little houses and their little pockets of land, never able to truly provide a good life for their families.
They are all in debt. None of them actually own all that land, or their cars, or their lives. They are struggling to keep their heads above water.
But we’re free. Right?
It’s a wasteland. America is a wasteland.
We just do a good job of hiding it. We do a good job of accepting it.
It’s been hours. Hours of staring out the window of this private jet at the uninspiring topography of the heartland. After you’ve gone to war and fought for a country, you always come home and look at it a little differently. For me, the experience was disillusioning.
I keep seeing suffering, everywhere I go. Hearing about violence and poverty every time I turn on the television. People unable to afford basic medical care. Cops killing people for no reason. I can’t help asking myself, over and over again:
Is this what I fought for?
I try not to think about it. Mostly, I focus on Sophie. I remember her, and I feel calm. I feel warm inside, like she’s the one good thing in this godforsaken country. But I’ve been feeling unsettled for the past little while. My discomfort is only growing.
Last I heard from her, Sophie had finished meeting her biological brother for the first time at a winery in Michigan. And she ruined his wedding.
I texted her my condolences, and offered some advice from my own dealings with difficult family members, but she never responded. I saw the “…” pop up on the screen, as if she was about to respond, but then there was only silence. I stared at my phone for an hour before this plane took off, hoping so hard that she would respond. Desperate for some kind of confirmation that she still gives a damn.
But there was nothing.
She probably decided to tell her troubles to him instead.
The plane hits a rough patch of turbulence, and it gives me a funny feeling, like someone has closed a fist around my intestines and tried to yank them out. I have always hated flying, and I grip the armrests tightly. Closing my eyes, I breathe deeply for a few minutes.
When we hit another patch of choppy storm clouds, the plane jerks and shudders like a jeep driving over desert rocks. I think about Afghanistan. I think about everything I’ve lost. All the people I’ve lost. My fucking leg.
Lightning bolts dance around the plane, and I inhale sharply with a sudden realization.
If Sophie could interpret the wisdom of earthquakes, then maybe I can translate turbulence.
I can sense it in the churning of my stomach, that something is wrong. I feel exactly the way I did before the day I lost my leg. Only worse. I think I stand to lose a lot more than my leg. It’s hard to understand why I am so upset all of a sudden, but the emotions flood my body with fear and alarm. I grip the armrests of the airplane seat so tightly I could crush them.
I don’t know how to communicate this feeling. I don’t know what it all means.
“It’s all over,” I say quietly to the sleeping girl next to me. “It’s all over.”
She responds with a snore.
“Luciana, are you listening to me?” I say sharply, trying to get her attention. “Sophie is gone. I know it. She’s gone.”
“Yeah? Huh?”
“I know her. She’s lying to both of us. I know how she gets so wrapped up in her work, in her life. She won’t even try to remain close to us. She doesn’t keep in touch with anyone, you know. She has no friends. Have you ever seen her read a book? You could call her name fifty times, loudly, scream it into her face. She won’t even notice.”
“Maybe because that wasn’t her real name,” Luciana says with a yawn.
“No. She just can’t focus on other things—other people. She hyper-focuses on her current priorities and loses all concept of everything and everyone else. She loses her grip on reality.”
“So? What are you saying?”
“Cole is the book,” I explain sadly. “She’ll forget about us.”
“Oh, I see. You’re having a personal crisis and I’m supposed to be comforting. Alright, let me try to wake up,” she says, rubbing her eyes.
“It’s not a personal crisis. I’m just trying to inform you that we’ve lost her.”
Luciana makes a face. “Come on. Don’t be dramatic.”
“I’m not. Sophie has a one-track mind—and we are no longer on her radar.”
“Yeah, she is pretty eccentric. But she’s also a… virtuoso. A virtual virtuoso. Hey, that’s really clever!” Luciana grins, brushing a giant clump of tangled hair away from her face. “I should write it down.”
“It’s not that clever,” I tell her glumly.
“You’re just jealous because I’m basically a poet,” Luciana says, with her chin in the air proudly. “Anyway, I’m happy I got to work with Sophie for a few years. It was a blast. But she’s going to settle down where she belongs, now. With whom she belongs. She’s happy.”
“No!” I exclaim. “I mean, she is happier than she has been. But that’s only because she’s being honest about who she is. She’s hacking again. She’s not so repressed, like she was when she lived with me. The whole time, we were just living a lie.”
“Good point,” Luciana says, stretching languidly.
“But that’s not my fault,” I tell her. “It’s all because of you. You are the one who made her stay away from the Internet. You’re the one who made her so miserable.”
“Hey, hey. Don’t blame your failed relationship on me.”
“I’m only speaking the truth, Luciana. Sophie never had a chance to find out what it could be like to actually be with me and also be free. I’m just a reminder of being in prison to her. Of course she wants nothing to do with me.”
“I’m sorry,” she responds. “But Sophie never even wanted a relationship. Don’t forget, I’m also the reason she got together with you in the first place. I set you up, and gave her some bullshit work reason that she needed to live with you—for security.” Luciana rolls her eyes. “You were a cover. But, also—I just thought it wasn’t healthy for her to be alone. I could tell there was something kind of tortured about her.”
“Yeah. More than we realized,” I mumble. I briefly wonder to myself whether it would be best to leave things the way they are. But something is nagging at the back of my mind, like a hook piercing through my brain matter and dragging me back to all the pain I don’t want to think about. “We built something real, Lucy,” I tell the woman softly. “She’s my best friend. We live together, for god’s sake. What am I supposed to do? How can I just go home to that empty apartment?”
Luciana shakes her head slowly. “Zack, people break up sometimes. It happens. It hurts like hell, but you’ll get past it with time. I’m sorry, but you’ll move on. You’ll find someone new.”
“No,” I say, incredulous. “No, no, no. Come on, Lucy, be serious. Who could compare to Sophie Shields? She’s brilliant, insane, and totally fucking… wonderful. The funny thing is, I didn’t even know how wonderful she was before all of this. I loved her, and I wanted to marry her—but now? I am completely, head over heels in love and in admiration of her. To know her like this, to know her past, and everything she’s been through.” I pause, shaking my head. “I would have treated her differently if I’d known. I would have been more sensitive. I would have been better.”
I look at Luciana squarely, with resolution in my face.
“I can still be better.”
She puts her hands in her hair. “Oh my god, Zack. You need to let it go.”
“If I do, I’ll regret it forever.”
“And that’s normal,” Luciana says loudly, with exasperation. “Everyone has regrets they need to live with. Do you know how many people ever get second chances?”
“I have to try,” I tell her. “Right now—it’s not too late. There’s still a window. Right now, she’s still my Sophie, my girlfriend. But if I wait too long—she’ll become someone else.”
Luciana sighs and returns to lying down across the seats opposite from me. “I’m going back to sleep.”
“No,” I tell her suddenly. “Let’s go to Michigan. Redirect the plane to Michigan.”
“What?” She opens one eye. “Zack, what happened to you while I was sleeping? Did you get hit by a lightning bolt and have some kind of epiphany?”
“I don’t know. It’s just been building and building up in me. I can’t accept this. I can’t just let her walk away, Lucy. She’s one in a million.”
“Fine. Then go after her.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Luciana says with a yawn. “If you’re really this fired up about the situation, maybe you’re right. Maybe you deserve a second chance. Maybe it is wrong of her to just ditch you for her millionaire architect boyfriend. Especially since he faked his death and put her through hell. Lead with that.”
“Are you on my side?” I ask her in surprise.
“Not really,” Luciana admits. “Those two have serious history. That’s a deep connection you can’t possibly compete with. But if for some unimaginable, preposterous, highly unlikely, bordering on impossible reason, Sophie decides to give you another shot and move back to D.C.? Well, I get one of my best hackers back, and the only person around the office I actually want to hang out with on my lunch break. So, I might as well pretend to root for you, for selfish reasons.”
“Thanks,” I tell her bitterly. “I really appreciate your vote of confidence. Will you redirect the plane?”
“No!” she says in annoyance. “Do it on your own time, after we land. I’m going back to sleep.”
When she curls up on the seats like a cat, folding her hands together under her cheek, I feel the frustration growing inside me. I briefly consider the possible repercussions of the actions I am about to take, but there is strange kind of electricity in me, causing me to spring into action almost against my will.
Grabbing my handgun, I point it at the sleeping CIA agent before me.
“What about now?”
She pries one eye open and stares down the barrel of the Beretta.
“Seriously? Are you seriously doing this?”
“Yes.”
“I gave you that gun. And the concealed carry license. And a job!”
“Some things are more important.”
Luciana sighs and opens both eyes, before sitting up and stretching. “Fine, fine. I’ll go tell the pilot. Lower the gun.”
I try, but I can’t seem to stop pointing it at her. My hand is shaking, and my finger is on the trigger.
“Wow,” she murmurs. “You’re seriously serious. Okay, okay!” She holds her hands up in surrender, before rolling her eyes and moving to the cockpit.
I still can’t seem to lower the gun. I am pointing it at Luciana’s back, finger still poised to shoot.
She glances back at me warily in the middle of her conversation with the pilot. When she returns, her face is no longer tired. She stares at me with appraisal before sighing and reaching for her phone. She cautiously moves over to sit beside me, and I keep the gun pointed at her the whole time.
“I know you’re hurting,” she says softly. “And I have the perfect cure for that. Put down the gun and let’s play Candy Crush.”
A muscle in my jaw clenches. “Candy—what?”
“Just trust me on this. It’s unbelievably therapeutic. I wanna shoot people all the time, too, Zack. But I can’t go around doing that, so I just play Candy Crush. Want to join me?”
“I… I don’t know how to play.”
“It’s easy. Look, you just try your best to match up three candies, but ideally four or five.”
I stare at the grid, looking for matches. “Like this one here?”
“Yes!” she says excitedly. “That’s great. Here’s another good one—”
She interrupts herself to slam her palm into my wrist, shoving the gun away, before grabbing my arm and twisting me to the floor.
However, I am prepared for this, and I counter her every motion, twisting and restraining her until I have her pinned to the floor, with the gun still in my hand and pointed at her.
“Damn,” she mutters. “I thought that would work. If I can’t disarm a man with Candy Crush, how can I even call myself a CIA agent?”
Releasing my tight grip on the gun, I spin it around to show her the handle, before placing it on the floor near her head. I lift my hands in a gesture of peace.
“I just wanted to show you that I didn’t let my guard down,” I inform her. “I couldn’t let you physically disarm me, but I don’t want to keep a gun pointed at you. Besides, I am intrigued, and I do want to play Candy Crush.”
“Yay!” she says with excitement. “Okay, let me show you some cool tricks for getting a higher score. The most annoying part is when you need to break the jellies, and these stupid chocolates keep growing everywhere—”
“How can chocolate ever be a bad thing?” I ask in surprise.
“Boy,” she says, shaking her head. “Now that you’re done taking me hostage, I’m about to teach you.”