Afterland (7 page)

“Thank you,” I say, accepting the gift from her.  I hug them one last time. “Goodbye, Mom. Goodbye, Dad.”

              I gather all my strength and walk over to the snowmobiles.

The four Rebellion members are already mounting.

              “I’ve decided,” I say, adjusting the weight of my backpack on my shoulders. Mike smiles. He must have seen from the beginning that I would say yes.

              “That’s what I thought. You can join Smaller Sally in the back.” The tall blond girl leans out and waves. I walk over and slip into the seat behind her.

              “I’m Smaller Sally,” she says. A wisp of blond hair falls across her face, but her bright blue eyes continue to shine through. “Named for age, not height.” She blows it back into her helmet.

              “I’m Molly.” The wisp falls back down, and she doesn’t bother to correct it a second time.

              I look out at the people of Hopetown watching. The separation between them and the Rebellion is very clear. And they’ve already ostracised me. I am no longer
one of us
, I am
one of them.
I survey the four members of the Rebellion. They haven’t accepted me yet. I am still the girl from Hopetown who said some stupid things to a man on a snowmobile.

              And for now, for this one moment when I don’t belong to anyone, not
one of us
, not
one of them
, just
one of me
, I feel free.

For the first time.

              “Alright gang, it’s time to get back home. We move out in one minute!” Mike shouts from the front. Smaller Sally hands me a helmet.

              “You ready, Molly?” She asks me with a mischievous grin.

              “No,” I admit fastening the helmet straps. It’s a little large and slides towards my right ear.

              “Neither am I,” Smaller Sally says. “But let’s go and change the world.” Those are the last words I hear before the snowmobiles jerks forward and all other sounds are drowned out by the motors of the rebellion.

CHAPTER 4

              We ride for a long time. After what seems like an hour, I can’t feel my legs anymore. Every time we go over a root or a large rock, I’m sure I’ll fly off. My arms are wrapped around Smaller Sally’s waist and I hold on for dear life.

              “You having fun?” Smaller Sally shouts to me.

              “No!” I shout back. She laughs.

              “Learn to love it. We ride these everywhere.”

Dear lord.
I swallow bile and vow to stay away from these demon machines for as long as I possibly can.

Smaller Sally drives as if she doesn’t have a care in the world and would fly into the sky if she fell off. I am terrified of what gravity would do to me if I let go of Smaller Sally’s jacket. We’ve been riding for two hours non stop now, and my knuckles have locked in position on the smooth leather.

But despite the horrors of the snowmobile, I am in a state of awe. This is the farthest I’ve ever been from Hopetown, and also the fastest I can ever remember travelling; automobiles are just a vague blur on my most distant memories. Despite my nausea, I can’t help but feel the adrenaline that comes from the thrill of the winds in my hair and the trees streaking by in a collage of green and brown, and I wonder if fear and excitement are two different things.

Through the terrifying exhilaration of the ride, it is easy to forget the most important thing.

I just left Hopetown.

To join the Rebellion.

I. Me. Molly.

Joined the
Rebellion.
I’ve dreamt of the moment I would leave Hopetown since we moved in. I don’t know what I expected it to be, but now that it’s happened, I can’t remember waiting for anything but this.

And here it is: my dream of thirteen years finally came true. It’s surreal. My thoughts run around in my head faster than they ever have before, wondering how this is possible, wondering what lies ahead.

Through the excitement and the confusion, a grain of fear grows in me. Dreams don’t come true for free. What is the price that I have to pay for this? I’m not the best person and I’m not the worst, but no matter who or what I am, this doesn’t seem right. I never worked for my dream. I haven’t built my life around leaving Hopetown or helping people. I’ve built it around coming to terms with my own powerlessness.

But despite all that, my dream came to me. It was given to me, just like that. Part of me thinks,
I don’t deserve this,
but the other half is screaming with joy, and I can’t shut it up.

“We’re almost there!” Smaller Sally shouts. “Less than twenty minutes.”

I suffer the last twenty minutes in silence. Meanwhile, I note, we have started going uphill and have been rising at a gradual slope for approximately half an hour. I sneak a look back and instantly forgive the discomfort of the ride.

Holy shit.

I can see just about everything we’ve passed for the last hour and a half. It’s stunningly gorgeous. I can see more of the world every second right now than I have ever seen before. The world is spread out beneath me and the wind is caught in my hair, and I feel powerful. I almost forget about the terror of gravity and the churning in my stomach, because on top of this mountain, I am in control of everything below it.

Eventually, the view back towards Hopetown is obscured by forest, but the view to the Northeast is equally stunning. We ride single file up a narrow cliff pass. To the left is a steep drop where I can see kilometers and kilometers of forest spreading out like a green carpet. Everything is covered with a thick coat of snow. The wind plays the icicles on the pine trees in melodic clinking. We ride into another forest and soon into a large clearing.

“Here it is,” Smaller Sally announces proudly. “The heart and home of the Rebellion.” She surveys it with pride. “Oh, you can get off now,” she adds. I slide off immediately and take off my gloves to rub my back. It feels really good to be on solid ground again.

I take in the camp. Tents are clustered around the edges, each of them approximately three meters away from the other. In the center is a bonfire with a large kettle brewing over it. Around the fire lie logs as improvised chairs.

“Hey! Mike, Smaller Sally, Nathan, Anna! You’re just in time for lunch!” The call comes from a woman in her early thirties stirring the pot.

“Wonderful,” Mike says, taking the snowmobiles into a wooden shed on the edge of the clearing. “And we brought a new recruit.” Smaller Sally gives me a gentle nudge on the shoulder and I step forward.

“How wonderful.” The woman walks up to me and shakes my hand. “I’m Big Sal,” she says. Her hand is rough and warm and her handshake is firm.

“Molly.”

“Welcome to the Rebellion, Molly. I hope you like soup.” Then she addresses the rest of the camp.

“EVERYONE, FORM A LINE! DINNER IS READY!!!”

Immediately, everyone drops what they’re doing, pulls out bowls, and scrambles to the center. Big Sal quickly relocates to the bonfire and begins distribution of the soup, often waving the ladle around threateningly, shouting to keep the line straight.

“C’mon, Molly,” Smaller Sally says. “Let’s eat.” She pulls me up to the back of the line. I twist each of my fingers in nervous anxiety before we make it to the front. When it’s my turn, Big Sal magically produces an extra bowl, set of wooden utensils, and small metal knife for me.
Does she always have extra tableware with her?
I wonder.

She looks at me menacingly and says,“Don’t lose this.”

I nod.

“Of course not.” And I mean it. I left a lot behind to get here and I intend for my life here to be perfect. I won’t let anything go wrong, not even something as simple as a lost spoon.

I sit next to Smaller Sally on a log. Once everybody settles down, Mike begins talking.

“Gang, we have a new recruit.” He gestures to me. “Introduce yourself.”

“Um...I’m, uh, Molly,” I say as everybody turns to me. I curse myself for stumbling twice on a two word sentence. Everyone responds with their own greetings.

“The rest of you guys introduce yourself now.”

“Smaller Sally.”

“I’m Hannah,” the young woman to Smaller Sally’s right says. She has wavy brown hair and brown eyes.

“Matt.” Short brown hair and beard with thin rimmed glasses.

“I’m Kristina.” Long brown hair with extremely energetic eyes.

“Big Sal.”

“Nathan.”

“Rebekah, with a ‘K-A-H’. Survival specialist..” Golden-brown hair that reflects the sunlight. She’s wearing a leather jacket that looks several sizes too large. She speaks with a slight accent, especially on the consonants. Is it German? I’m not sure. Everybody in Hopetown spoke very similarly.

“I’m Emily. Fighting director.” She’s like a powder keg - short, but bursting with energy. Her hands are constantly moving.

“Nicholas.” His back seems to be bent from the weight of bearing too many problems.

“Anna.”

“Desmond.” Tall, with fiery hair. He reminds me of my mother, although I’m not sure exactly why.

“And I’m Mike, as you know.”

“Umm, nice to meet you all,” I say. Again, everyone responds, saying that it’s very nice to meet me as well. I struggle to imprint all of their faces on my memory, afraid that I’ll forget their names at an awkward time.

“Your training begins tomorrow,” Mike tells me. “Eat up.”

I nod bluntly and try not to scream.

I just joined the Rebellion.

I still can’t believe it. I’m afraid that I’m dreaming, that I’ll wake up and I’ll be back in Hopetown with the same life and the same problems I’ve always had, but this is real. Terrifyingly real. This is so much more real than Hopetown ever was, and I guess I’m not really sure how to feel about that.

I’ve always been afraid of reality, I realize now. Hopetown was a brutal piece of reality, but if there was one thing we did best there, it was wishing ourselves into another dimension. The drunks lay on the street and didn’t feel the cold, because they imagined a different life. I stared out into the horizon and wondered about what could have been. My mother told herself optimistic lies so often that she really started to believe them, even though it wrenched her heart out.

This place, this camp, this new home of mine, is real in a completely different way. There is no denying reality. There is only changing it.

I could try changing reality a bit. I’ve always wanted to, after all. I just didn’t really…

Hopetown was a different world that it might be worth it for me to forget. This is my life now. This is the choice that I made and I burned my bridges back into the past the moment I ran out of the gate to meet the snowmobiles.

I survey the camp some more. It’s beautiful. Even more beautiful than the ocean. The ocean has always been beautiful to me in an intimidating way; it was beautiful in a cold manner and not something I could love. Only revere. I believed in the ocean because it was the only thing left to believe in. It was too big for me to understand, and therefore, I could mold whatever cast I needed right onto it.

This place, however, with its spectacular view of the forest, mountain breezes, and smell of smoke and pine needles has a different feel. It’s not perfect, and its beauty lies in its imperfection. This is the type of place that I can grow into.

The ocean was my mind. This is my heart, a heart I’ve been missing my entire life. The ocean used to whisper to me that I was complete and didn’t need to fill the hollow spot in my chest. It whispered that it was natural and healthy, and that filling it would only force me to carry an extra weight. But this mountain, these forests, these smells, are preaching the opposite, and I find it harder to move on than I thought. Emptiness is a type of completion of its own, and while the past and the future struggle for a spot inside of me, it is only easier for the emptiness to take hold.

Soon after I finish eating, Desmond comes up to me, holding an oblong bag in his hand.

“Hey, Molly, I’m Desmond, if you remember. I’ll show you around camp.”

“Um, okay. Thank you.”

I stand up, taking my bowl with me, and follow him.

“So, this is our camp,” he says, planting his foot in the ground. The sunlight reflects off of his reddish hair. “We eat in the center, live on the edges, and train everywhere. There are several fields all within a kilometer of here that are our primary training areas. We also have a lookout post over to the West. Thos
e
–
” He gestures to three larger tents at the edge,
“
–
are the infirmary, the weapons storage, and the food storage, from left to right. Don’t go in the food storage if you don’t want Big Sal after your head. Behind that, we have a chicken coop
—
you can’t see it from here
—
but we have fresh eggs for breakfast at least once a week. They’re what Big Sal calls ‘free-range’, so don’t be surprised if you see them wandering around, and don’t touch them, or you’ll see which one of us is really the superior species.” He smiles a little at his own joke and I smile too. “That shed over ther
e
–
” he points to a shed on the far side of the field,
“
–
is where we keep the snowmobiles. We have six, but we rarely use them all at the same time. You know. Just in case.” He pauses meaningfully. “Anyway, let’s go set up your tent before it gets dark.” He leads me to the edge of the clearing where there is an empty space. “Your tent will be here. Eventually, you can choose to move in with someone else. I’ll show you how to fold it up. We’ve been here for a pretty long time, but in case of emergency, be ready to move.” He unzips the bag. “This is your tent. It’s very easy to set up.” The unfolded tent is a circular top with four folded legs sticking out of it. The fabric is attached to the top.