Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops XLVI - "The Cave"
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All was quiet in Elizabeth Pond, at least on the southern side. Within his apartment, Isaac occasionally heard the sounds of troop convoys and firetrucks rumbling by on the street below, but that seemed par for the course in the Pond. Maybe something had happened up in the northwest near Manabi Station. The first generator of the Dunn Electric Factory was apparently activating far ahead of schedule - in a few days, actually. Perhaps it needed some extra security or something like that.
Isaac wasn’t exactly in a curious mood at the moment. Now that the appeal of friendship and ice cream in the Russet diner had faded away, Isaac was in that late night mood of staring at the ceiling. He wasn’t alone - Reed sat next to him on his couch, staring at the ceiling alongside him.
Some time ago, Reed had returned to the diner, the backpack full of boxtops in her hand. As the members of the table gawked at her, she simply mumbled a “sorry” and departed. Amid the looks of confusion, disappointment, and anger, Isaac and Audrey followed her out. The rest of the classmates stayed behind - this seemed like a problem best solved by Reed’s closest friends. And maybe some of them were too upset to talk with Reed, anyway. And they also stayed behind to support Mackenzie when she meticulously counted every boxtop to make sure none were missing (and then they had to escort her back to Ms. Mogami’s care again).
Reed’s thievery raised a lot of questions, but from the look on her face, neither Isaac and Audrey felt like asking any. They sat in silence on the train ride to the border, through the border, and then the subsequent ride to Kenji Station. As they slowly walked down the stairs back to street level, Audrey invited Reed over that night. Looking rather reluctant, Reed finally caved in.
While Isaac showered at his place, Reed showered at Audrey’s. Afterwards, Reed joined Isaac in his room. When she arrived, she placed her greatcoat on Isaac’s coat rack. However, she looked awfully uncomfortable in just a t-shirt and shorts borrowed from Audrey, so she threw the greatcoat back on as she sat next to Isaac on the couch.
They sat in silence for a long while.
“Comiendo techo,” Reed mumbled. The long bandage across her nose, courtesy of her fight with Babs, might’ve made her look goofy in different circumstances, but she just looked defeated at the moment. “That’s Spanish for ‘eat the ceiling’. That’s what we’re doing right now.”
Isaac was indeed looking at the cracks in his ceiling, or maybe nowhere in particular. “No kidding.”
Audrey would take a while in the shower (you can’t rush perfection!) so it would just be Isaac and Reed for some time.
Reed shifted uncomfortably on the couch. “You ever get stuck in a rut, Isaac?”
“Well, right now isn’t so fun.”
“I mean beyond that,” Reed said. “I’m not talking about an in-the-moment kind of feeling. I’m talking about something that lasts for a lot longer.”
Isaac withdrew his attention from the ceiling so he could focus on Reed’s question. “Yeah, I guess I’ve been in a rut before.”
He went to elaborate, but a sudden feeling stopped him. In the school courtyard this morning, Reed had a point - Isaac always told her to open up, but he himself had never opened up to anybody. Right now, he could understand Reed’s fears and hesitations. Once you open up to someone, you can’t take it back. The new revelations will influence that person’s perception of you for better or worse.
But Isaac needed to practice what he preached. And she was his friend. That perception could only change for the better.
Isaac scratched at his cheek. “When my mom died, I was in a real funk. I felt like I had a huge weight on my shoulders, and I even had trouble getting out of bed-”
Isaac stopped, realization dawning on him as Reed listened with interest. Last month, in Domino Dojo, he claimed he didn’t really understand Reed’s trouble with things like that. But maybe he really did. Maybe all the fun and adventures he had after overcoming the funk made him try to whitewash it, pretend that it never happened. And the government and school textbooks said that such things shouldn't be openly discussed, either. There were reasons why he never really talked about it. But today’s vision quest of his own backstory in the arena, along with actually speaking about it with someone, both of them reminded him of all the old feelings - or rather, the lack of them during a dark period in his life.
“Life seemed really heavy back then,” Isaac continued. “But, fortunately, the weight was eventually lifted off my shoulders.”
“How’d you do it?” Reed asked.
Isaac reflected on his past experiences. “Effort, I guess.”
“Effort?” Reed repeated, not quite believing it.
“Actually…” Isaac said, not quite believing it either. “It was more like…effort and discipline, the two together, is what helped me survive. I did the things that had to be done because they needed to be done. I don’t really know where the effort and discipline comes from. I guess you just gotta do it. Maybe you need a purpose. But that’s easier said than done.”
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He tapped his finger on the couch’s armrests, trying to piece together his train of thought. “The weight was still there. Effort and discipline helped me survive the weight, but it never got it off me. What really removed the weight was a change of scenery. Moving from Patuxet to Narragansett.”
Isaac glanced out the window, seeing lights from nearby buildings. “New experiences force your brain to work differently. You can’t take all the usual sights and sounds for granted anymore. You have to adjust which gives the brain a workout. And I also met a whole new group of people to interact with. Audrey, you, Dan, Mr. Shokahu, everyone else in the Academy. I think the worst part about a rut is that it makes you forget that things can be different.”
He rubbed his temple. His past experiences had made him realize by now that everything came with a caveat. “Though, I guess I was lucky in that I got a change of scenery. Not everyone has that luxury.”
Reed carefully pondered his words and ran a hand through her hair. “I had that luxury, too. A few times, actually. I moved from Acushnet to Narragansett during middle school. But the change in scenery didn’t help all that much. I actually think it made things worse.”
“Cambridge Middle School?” Isaac ventured.
Reed slowly nodded. Isaac anticipated the usual dark look, but she seemed receptive to revealing parts of her past today. Maybe everyone relaying their backstory, including Isaac, got her in the mood. Or maybe she just felt more comfortable.
“I went there for two years,” Reed explained, carefully choosing each word. “Things didn’t go so hot for me. I transferred to the Academy at the start of high school. I guess I got the luxury of two changes in scenery.”
She toyed with a loose string on the sleeve of her greatcoat. “It’s funny, I was actually going to go on about how neither change of scenery worked, but the past year or so here has been pretty nice, actually. Audrey was my first real friend. You’re not so bad yourself. Even people like Coleridge or Piper, I like them a lot better than the kids at Cambridge. And they like me a lot more, too. At least, I hope they still do.”
The uncomfortable question of boxtops hung in the air.
“I stole them,” Reed said, reading the burning question on Isaac’s mind, “Because…well, I actually had a lengthy conversation with a chili dog vendor about this. The world kicks me around so I kick you guys around. I pull you guys down to my level rather than lifting myself up to yours. But Chili Dog Man got me thinking…the whole thing about the world kicking me around, what if that’s just the rut talking? What if I’m just still basing my life on how things were in Acushnet and Cambridge and applying it here, even if it’s not true. Life in the Pond isn’t perfect, but the people here at the Academy, maybe I kicked them first.”
Isaac thought about Reed’s past few months-worth of feuds. In the majority of them, she was just as guilty as those she argued with. If Reed hadn’t escalated any of them, would any of those feuds have existed in the first place? Would Mackenzie have jerked around Reed with the boxtops if Reed hadn’t jerked around the whole Academy with the funeral thing? Surely there must’ve been a better way to handle the Academy forcing her to attend practice every day.
Isaac wiped his face. People and life were fickle things. No clear answers immediately presented themselves to him. Simple answers did, sure - just suck it up and do what you’re supposed to do! But since people were all different, answers like that weren’t universal. What worked for him wouldn’t work for everybody. What Isaac told Harriet down in the sewers - maybe an answer like that would’ve worked if he was arguing with someone who thought like him. But clearly, she didn’t.
A low chuckle from Reed brought Isaac out of his thoughts. “This is the third time today I’ve been reminded of that stupid story about Plato and his cave,” she said.
“Oh, that’s right,” Isaac recalled. “We talked about it on the station platform with Stennis this morning.”
“There’s an ending to that story we didn’t get to talk about,” Reed explained. “To make a long story short, the prisoners in the cave think that the cave is reality, the guards bring a prisoner to the surface, and that prisoner realizes that the outside world, that’s the real reality. But then, the prisoner returns back to the cave to tell the others. But the other prisoners don’t believe him. The cave is their whole world and reality. They won’t willingly leave it.”
Reed plucked the loose string off her sleeve. “If you’re used to the cave, so used to the rut…wouldn’t it be really hard to leave? If that’s your whole world, then why would you believe that things could ever be different? You’d have to find it within yourself to want things to be different. That’s the only way you can actually believe. To get out of your rut, what did you want?”
“I guess I wanted to hang out with you guys more,” Isaac admitted. “My friends, my people, my country, and all that. I wanted to keep it safe. So, when it really comes down to it, maybe I just wanted to be stronger so I could accomplish all that. To make sure everybody I care about stays safe and can be happy, that’s what I want.”
“What a saint,” Reed answered dryly, though the look on her face suggested that she liked that answer. “As for what I want, I couldn’t even tell you.”
“What about hanging around in meadows and trees all day?” Isaac asked.
Reed chuckled again. “Sometimes, I just say shit, Isaac. That’s more of a thing that would be nice to have than a want, I feel. I don’t even know if I could want something. Maybe I just want to want something.”
She looked back up at the ceiling. “But this is all too simplistic, anyway. It’s not like you can just want your way into being satisfied. And I’m sure there are people who have strong wants yet still remain in the rut. And I bet there are people out there who have everything they could ever want yet are still stuck in the rut, too.”
Reed glanced over at him with a small grin. “Life’s a real complicated thing, isn’t it?”
Isaac answered with a grin of his own. “Ain’t that just the way.”
“Ain’t that just the way.”
Isaac looked at the way strands of hair fell across her face for a moment before she brushed them away.
“If you don’t mind,” he said. “Can you tell me more about life in Acushnet and moving to Cambridge and all that? It’s cool if you don’t want to, but I’ve always wanted to know.”
Reed looked at him wearily for a moment, scratching at her stomach. “Well, you just revealed something to me, so it’s only fair. Let me tell you a bit about the sad tale of Hibiscus Reed.”