Sophia watches me with a bland expression, as if destroying phones is a regular occurrence in her life. I nod at her, ready to go, and she turns without comment to the airplane. The back door is still open, and I motion for Blue to jump in, putting my bag next to him before circling around to climb into the copilot’s seat.
By the time I climb in, settling into the leather, Sophia has headphones on and mirrored aviators that remind me of Robert’s. Her pouty lips and elegant little nose are all I can see with the gear on. She is stunning. This epitome of what women are supposed to look like—tiny, blonde, even fragile-looking with her long neck. But she’s not what a woman is supposed to be.
Somewhere along the line she did something reckless enough to lose part of her arm. Maybe it was just a car accident, but I’m guessing more than that. Instead of taking her beauty to the bank, she put herself here—fighting with Joyful Justice. Following some ideal. She cares.
I care.
“How did you end up in Joyful Justice?” I ask as the plane taxis to the end of the landing strip.
Sophia speaks into her headset, ignoring me, totally focused on the task at hand. Blue leans forward, popping his head between us, and panting.
Sophia ignores him too. Her focus is complete.
The plane speeds up, the wind buffeting against the small craft. I reach down and grip the edge of the seat, steadying myself for take-off as the cabin starts to shake from the speed. And then we lift, the plane floating into the air, and we rise up toward the quickly brightening sky.
The island below us is dark green, edged in sand with aquamarine blue that quickly changes to almost black as the depths of the Pacific drop off. “You asked me a question?” Sophia says, drawing my attention back to her.
“Yes, I was wondering what brought you to Joyful Justice.”
“Idiots,” she says with a sly smile.
“Oh?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Maybe they are not all idiots. But I was a pilot in l’Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace Française—the French Air Force. When I lost part of my arm, they honorably discharged me with a pension.”
“And you didn’t want to stay retired?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. I did not become a pilot to retire. I want to die fighting, don’t you?”
I blink at her, surprised by the question. “No,” I answer honestly. “I don’t want to die.”
“Not today, no,” Sophia agrees. “But not in my bed an old woman with nothing to show for my life.”
“You can die old and have a lot to show,” I say, thinking of my grandmother. “Fighting isn’t the only way to live.”
“Not for me,” Sophia says. “And if you really believed it didn’t fulfill a life, then why fight?”
“For others,” I say, the words popping out. “I don’t do it for me. I do it because I can’t sleep…I mean.” I laugh. “I don’t do it for the peaceful night’s rest.” Sophia laughs as though she knows the nightmares that haunt people like us. “I like this life because I can feel like I’m trying. The idea of not trying. Of…”
“Just letting wrongs go without making them right,” Sophia fills in for me.
“Yes, exactly,” I say. “I can’t stand it. To be passive when I can be active.”
“So isn’t that for you, then? Isn’t that about you?”
“Yes,” I admit. “But not because I think it will offer a good life. Maybe just the only life I can live. But I also know it’s not for everyone.”
“But if everyone joined us, then we could all have peace. It is because so many are passive, that we must fight, no?”
I don’t answer for a long moment. Sophia glances over at me, then returns her focus to the way ahead. The sun rises to our right, the world ablush with newness—the sky and the sea pink with its rebirth. “I don’t think…” The sentence stops, tries to restart but can’t seem to go anywhere. “I hate to blame others’ passivity for the ills of the world. Aren’t bad actors the heart of the problem? How much can we blame the man who does not stop a,” I wave my hand around looking for something terrible, “a rape, let’s say, rather than blaming the rapist himself.”
“Why not blame them both?” Sophia asks. “If every time someone attempted something cruel, everyone around them revolted against it, how long would it take to end cruelty?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t know how anyone can stand to see something wrong happening in front of them and not stop it, but so much of the evil in the world happens out of sight. Before I lost my brother, I never would have considered vigilantism. I figured there were people who had that job—that it wasn’t mine.”
“I was a professional soldier,” Sophia says. “I always wanted to be one—my family are military.”
“So what about unjust wars?” I ask. “What about soldiers who fight in wars that should not be waged?”
“This is a problem,” Sophia admits. “I lost my arm in Afghanistan—could you question if I should even have been there? Yes, I think you could. Why would I be fighting a war so far from home because of an act of aggression against a country that was not my own? But I think the goal—as misguided as it might have been—was to keep us all safe. By destroying those who would harm us. Now I see that destroying another’s homeland will not save mine.”
A deep sadness settles into my bones as I think of all the homes destroyed in a futile attempt to save one’s own. Violence so often feels like the only option and yet… “I like how Joyful Justice does things,” Sophia says, pulling me out of my reverie. “We wait for people to come to us. And then we help them. We don’t try to help them against their will, you know. We don’t try to free people from their own governments without them asking. And we don’t go in and do it for them. I like that. I like the invitation, and the partnership. This seems like a good way to do things.”
The invitation and the partnership… Yeah, but what about just burning it all the fuck down?
CHAPTER THIRTY
We land as the day heats. Sophia stays with the plane to do whatever pilots do after they fly while I head over to where Merl leans against the van wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and combat boots. His three dogs plus Nila and Frank sit in a line, their tongues hanging out. Frank’s tail thumps and circles, his body vibrating with excitement. His gaze shifts from me to Merl and back again at tennis match speed—hoping, begging with his eyes, to be released from his stay command.
Merl comes forward and we embrace. “Good to have you back,” he says.
“You have no idea,” I say with a laugh.
“You’ll have to tell me all about it.”
“Yeah, I think we need a council meeting,” I suggest. “That way I can tell you all.”
