I Fell in Love with Hope: A Novel

The Hit List, in it of itself, is a heist. Heists have three stages.

Planning.

Execution.

Escape.

When we first agreed to become thieves, Sony was all about the second stage. Her excitement outdid her. That night on the roof, she pointed across the city, to the sweets shop, the bookstore, and the street vendors. She was never about the tangibility of stealing but about the act itself. She wanted the rush, the nerves, the racing.

Neo preferred the planning, the hypotheticals, the logistics. He walked (this was pre-wheelchair era) to his room, rummaged through his cardboard box, and found an old notebook with a metal spiral spine, one he used to rip pages out of when he was dissatisfied. He held it up over his head on the roof, then dropped it onto the concrete beneath the night sky.

He took everything into account. He was the one who coined the term, Hit List. Because we weren’t just stealing, we were killing. Our targets laid on the first pages in smudged black ink:

Time. Time must always be the first.

Disease. Not pathogens, not titles derived from Latin, the essence of illness. The name of suffering.

Death. Death must always be the last.

There are more. We have endless names to take, to steal from.

The next page was the declaration. Dramatic, I know, but challenging such things requires it.

To all who stole from us, we defy you. You tempt the world and lay waste to it, but try and lay waste to us. Our minds are stronger than our bodies, and our bodies are not yours to call weak. We will kill you in every way we know. That way, when we must go, the playing field is even.

Time will end. Disease will fester. Death will die.

C wrote that. Neo took the pen and wrote it, but C crafted it himself, like a song. All except the final line. That one belongs to Neo. C was never about Planning or Execution. He was about being present for it all, not in the grips of elsewhere. He wrote what we all think but usually didn’t know how to say.

The following pages were the results of our execution. What we wanted and what we robbed. Things, yes, but also feelings, desires, chances- anything our three enemies run away with.

However, we were never doing this just for a thrill. That’s why, in the end, we will escape with all we took.

Our Escape is a collection of yet-to-be-filled pages. They lay at the latter end of the Hit List, waiting for the day we summon the courage to leave—a place where we will be unbound to our lives, happy and together and unafraid.

We call it Heaven.

By the time we were done writing, our seat bones ached. Dawn hit the skyline and illuminated the notebook now given a soul. Sony held her ankles, rocking back and forth, throwing out every idea in her head. C laid down, listening to me read aloud Neo’s words.

It’s a part of our lives.

The hospital has plenty of boredom to go around. Wake up, eat, take medications, undergo treatments, the ministrations that don’t belong to us. They belong to Time, Disease, and Death.

But the Hit List moments?

They’re ours.

___

Neo is in a state between conscious and unconscious. C and I sit at his bedside, waiting for him to re-enter the world of the waking. It’s been over twenty four hours since we saw him, and no one is more worried about Neo than C.

He tries to distract himself, flipping through a magazine he isn’t even reading. Seeing Neo this way after surgery is hard enough. The fact that Neo has a bruise trailing his neck and shoulder makes C’s jaw grind. He starts the magazine over once he’s reached the end, a nervous tic, like tapping your shoe.

“C,” I call.

“Yeah?”

“What does it mean to be beautiful?”

“Beautiful, how?” he asks. “Like a flower? Like girls?”

“Like Yorick’s skull in Hamlet.”

“Like who’s what in what?”

“I think that’s what I was in her metaphor. Or was it bones?”

“Whose metaphor?”

“I guess they’re the same thing.” Bones and skulls. It’s all hollowness.

“Are you talking about Hikari?” It dawns on me we’re not having the same conversation.

“She called me beautiful.”

C’s eyes flick from my feet to my head.

“You are beautiful,” he says.

“But she says I don’t have arms.” I extend them for emphasis.

“You have delightful arms.”

“She says I hunch.”

“You do hunch. You belong at Notre Dame.” He says that last part in French, so I don’t know what it means, but given that it’s probably offensive, I don’t ask.

“Do you know how to dream?”

“Sure.”

“She said I need to dream.”

“You seem pretty preoccupied with what this new girl thinks about you,” C says like I’m a child with a crush at recess. “I like her. I had breakfast with her and Sony. She actually reminds me of you in that strange yet likable way, only less awkward.”

“Less awkward?”

“Well, she probably knows how to dream. And stand up straight. And read sarcasm.”

“She knows how to read everything,” I say, pouting.

C chuckles. “Are you jealous?”

“I’m suffering.”

“Sure sounds like it.”

“She’s making me suffer.”

“That’s what girls do.”

This girl. Yellow and amorous. She’s a story. A novel I’ve already read, but in a foreign language..

“She scares me, C,” I say, and it’s starting to taste like a stale truth.

“Why?” C asks softly, closing the magazine.

There isn’t a way to answer him. She’s marred with words in his accent, lit with a fire cousin to Sony’s, and molded with wit like Neo. When you meet someone infatuating, someone you can stare at and listen to and talk to without taking notice of time, someone you think of constantly, there comes the question of blooming addiction. Nothing addictive is ever good for you. Not Hikari and especially not Hamlet.

C drags a hand across my back, patting it. “Don’t overthink it. You always overthink. That’s why you have no arms.”

Coughing fills the room, an easy kind. C perks up. He’s quick to give Neo attention.

“Hey,” he whispers, moving the hair out of Neo’s eyes. “How are you feeling?”

Neo’s eyes flutter open, a darker color surrounding them. “As good as I probably look.”

“Mm,” C hums, patting down the sheets around him, making sure his back brace doesn’t pinch his skin. “Drink your juice.”

“Urgh,” Neo sounds, as the straw is forcibly placed against his lips.

“Now, please,” C says.

“I should’ve asked for more sedatives.”

“You’re finally up, huh?” Eric enters, tapping the monitor by the bed. He gently takes Neo’s arm to change his IV.

“Haven’t I been roughed around by medical professionals enough?” Neo groans, to which Eric flicks the inside of his elbow. “Ow.”

Our nurse feigns innocence. “I’m just looking for a vein.”

C sighs, his worry audible.

“Neo,” he whispers, caressing the purpling blotch of skin just beside his collar.

“Don’t say anything,” Neo says, hissing at the pain.

“I know it’s not from the surgery.”

“It sounds like you’re saying something.”

C doesn’t have the chance to retaliate. A loud pair of tip-toeing shoes trail past the scenery and kick the door open—dirty white sneakers.

“Hello, heathens!” Sony spreads her arms wide open, a full tote bag on her arm that seems to have something inside jostling around. “Eric! I didn’t see you there.”

“Why is your bag moving?” Eric asks, narrowing his eyes at her.

Sony grasps the bag closer to her body. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Did you steal a baby or something?” C asks.

“Steal? C, how dare you accuse me of such fiendish activities? Hikari, come defend my honor.”

Walking in behind the devil, my sun from last night emerges. Easy and warm with the morning. She and Sony seem to have gotten close in all of a day. I guess flames tend to take to each other no matter where their light is from.

Hikari laughs at Sony. She says hello to Neo in that soft voice, touching his brace, saying more, asking things. Neo doesn’t seem to mind. He’s there with her, despite the drugs, listening, responding, not drawing to the window he likes so much. She can read anything, I forgot. Even someone so hell-bent on hiding his pages.

“Oh. Flowers,” Sony says, her nose wrinkling in distaste.

Beside me on the window sill, bouquets lay next to unread cards wishing recovery in messy cursive. I haven’t always understood irony, but I like this particular piece. For someone you wish to live, give them something that is dying.

“What do you have against flowers?” Hikari asks, touching the wax paper and the petals.

I’ve been staring at her face for so long that I didn’t see the little clay pot in her hands. Two little clay pots. They can’t be larger than juice cups, plants surfacing an inch’s worth from the soil, still in infancy. She lays one down next to the bouquets, her offering, sans card, and alive.

“I have nothing against flowers,” Sony says, taking a single stem and motioning with it. “I have everything against flower corpses.”

Adjusting the little pot under the light, Hikari caresses the barely there leaves, dusting them, positioning them, so they’re kissed by light between the blinds.

“Did you sleep well, Sam?” she asks, leaning back on the heels of her palms, her leg crossed one over the other, chin propped on her shoulder. It’s a mandatory question. A flower of conversation. She says it with satire. She’s teasing me. She’s acting.

“No,” I say. “The sun was out.”

“Ah,” Hikari breathes. “It kept you up?”

“Actually, Hamlet did.”

She fakes a gasp. “How dare he?”

“It’s alright.” I’m inclined to tease her back. “Hamlet is beautiful.”

“So it’s his beauty you like.”

“And his meanness.”

“It’s just as well. I like Yorick’s arms.” Teasing. Teasing. Teasing. “Here,” she says. She places the second tiny pot that fits in the circle of her thumb and forefinger between us.

“What is this?” I ask, picking it up. Her warmth leaves residue on the clay, the idea like a shock of static to my fingertips.

“A little gesture.” I didn’t go through surgery. What have I been through to deserve a heartful offering? Or is this for my crippling case of lack-of-armness?

“What do I do with it?”

Hikari shrugs.

“What does one do with plants but watch them live?”

“Have I graduated from being a skull to a cactus?” I ask.

“That’s a succulent,” Hikari corrects.

“Alright. You’re all set, Shakespeare. Take it easy,” Eric says, patting Neo’s head and double-checking the vitals on his chart. “You be gentle with him,” he warns, pointing at all of us.

Sony presses a hand to her chest in offense. “Why are you looking at me?” Although the moment Eric leaves the room, she changes her tune.

The door clicks shut, and Sony’s tote bag ruffles. She spreads the straps, and from it, a creature pokes its head out. Matted fur and dull green eyes sit on its head, with a scarred triangle nose and a thin mouth to add.

“Aw, a kitty,” C coos. The cat makes itself at home, unfazed by its limited residence inside a carry-on. Sony sets the bag on the ground. It waddles out, one of its ears missing a half, its black coat showing an ashy finish.

Neo raises a brow. “What’s wrong with its leg?”

“What leg?” Sony asks.

“Exactly.”

The three-limbed cat makes its way onto Neo’s bed, sniffing his face.

“Hikari and I chased him down the street. We saved him from getting hit by a truck.” Of course, they did.

“She’s a girl, idiot,” Neo says, tilting his chin away from her.

“So? He acts masculine. He fits her well.” I’ll just say the cat’s name is Hee to make things less complicated.

“Hello, Hee,” Hikari says, voice gone tender. The feline hops from Neo’s bed to her feet and plays with her shoelace. She (or Hee) looks up at me, a kindred thing. It looks like it wants to tell me something. It sits in the small crevice between my feet and rubs its head against my leg.

“C’mon, Hee.” Sony bends down and scoops her up. “Warm up Neo’s lap.”

“My lap is fine.”

The cat doesn’t protest as Neo does. Her adventure in the city and under Sony’s reign has tuckered her out. She curls into a ball against Neo’s stomach as C pets her head.

Sony plops down on the bed too. A chill shivers through Neo, so she takes off her sweatshirt and puts it on his legs. As she does, she glances at Neo’s neck, stilling at the bruise that peeks over his shoulder.

She doesn’t say anything. She never does, but I see it lingering in her mind even as she removes the Hit List from the box under the bed and sighs away the tension.

“The next part of our everything,” Sony breathes, pen gliding across the sixth page filled to the brim with our stolen treasures. Her tongue sticks out between her teeth when she writes. “Hee. Taken–From–Death.” Her words are spoken both in speech and paper. “Baby’s–New–Best–Friend.”

“Don’t push it,” Neo grumbles.

“The infamous Hit List,” Hikari says.

Sony giggles. “I’ve got to add you to it.”

“Me?”

“We stole you. Or Sam did, I guess.”

Hikari smiles at me. “It’s a pleasure to be stolen by you, Sam.”

I blush so intensely that C can’t help smirking into his hand.

Sony unfolds the Hit List where past the declaration, across the lines, in the margins, stacked on top of each other countless brushstrokes paint our vigilantism.

Tangible things taken. Apples, The Great Gatsby, Six beers, a pack of cigarettes, a coffee mug with a chipped lid, an abandoned teddy bear, a cat.

Intangible things taken. A look at the park, a day laughing till our ribs hurt, a full flight of stairs in one go, an afternoon in the library from which we’re banned.

“That has such a nice ring to it,” Hikari says. “Everything.” The word comes out in a breath, a faraway concept washed into shore.

“Will you help us, Hikari?” Sony asks, but she looks at me until the last word. Then, her legs shuffle, and her fluttering, toothy grin faces the girl next to me. “Everything could always use another pair of hands.”

“You just have to add something. Something that you want. To the List,” C says, tossing her the pen. “That’s how you get initiated.”

“What if I want to steal something for someone else?” she asks.

“We could do it together,” I say. Hikari looks at me when I speak. “I–I mean, we could all write something down again and promise to steal something for each other.”

Sony bounces to her feet.

“I like that!”

“We can tear out an empty page from the Hit List and tear it into five. We’ll write to one person in this room, one piece of everything, on one piece of paper we intend to steal for them.” Hikari pauses, the five of us in a constellation reflected in her glasses. “Like a thieving five-point star.”

“I like that.” We turn to Sony, but to our surprise, it wasn’t her. Neo shifts as much as the brace allows, petting Hee’s head, lost in the thoughts Hikari lent. He looks at her with a side-eye, unable to rotate his head. “Can I steal it?”

“For your writing?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Sure,” Hikari agrees, amused, flattered, still, mostly grateful.

“Hikari, you’ll steal for Sam,” Sony hands her one of them. “Sam, you’ll steal for me.”

“I’m honored,” I say. Sony ruffles my hair in response, pecking my forehead.

“I’ll steal for Neo.”

“Great.” Baby doesn’t even try to fake his enthusiasm.

“Neo will steal for C, and C will steal for Hikari.”

Sony is the first to write the note for Neo. She giggles as she does. Neo goes next. He doesn’t even have to think about it.

C leans closer to him. “You can just get me gummy bears again.”

“Shut up.” Neo hands the pen to him, the paper too. C reads it almost as impatiently as Neo wrote it, a little exhale and happy tone born from it.

“You’re adorable,” he whispers.

“And you’re still talking,” Neo says, rolling his eyes.

C writes his note next, putting a little thought into it first. He twirls the pen around and eventually decides on something before handing it to Hikari.

She takes her time. She waits as Sony and Neo bicker and C turns on some music. She waits, watching them interact with each other and with me.

She already knows what she wants to steal. She only starts to write when she knows I do too. Using her knee as a desk, the object of her thievery, whatever it is in this world she swears to steal for me, becomes immortal in ink. Then, Hikari lifts my plant, sliding it underneath without a word.

“Alright, you guys- The second baby’s got leg power again, we’re coming back with a vengeance,” Sony says, Hit List in hand. “You ready, Hikari? Sam?”

“Mhm.”

“Of course I am.”

“Boys?” Sony calls.

“Yes.” C gives her a thumbs up.

“Whatever gets you to stop annoying me,” Neo says. Sony pokes his ankle with the tip of the pen.

“This is the last thing we need before we have everything. Our great escape,” Sony says, sitting the notebook horizontally on her lap so we can all see the great big plan that comes before the empty pages waiting to be filled. “Our Heaven.”

The piece of paper tucked beneath the succulent stares back at me. I pick up the pot with both hands and keep it close to me. Then, I read Hikari’s letter. Three beats worth, a poem dedicated to me.

For Sam,

I’ll give you

A dream

If only the day we shared together didn’t feel like one…

This is a darker place than Neo’s room. The blinds are drawn, and a blue tint settles like we’re underwater. One of Sony’s doctors carries a chart, a resident behind him.

Sony sits at the foot of the bed, caressing the sheet as if Hee were there purring beneath her palm. Only she isn’t. Her cat is with Hikari. Hikari is with C and Neo. Only she and I are to bask in the sadness.

“Sony?” Her doctor clears his throat. “Did you hear what I just said?”

He’s a nice man. Some doctors fall victim to ego or poor dedication, but he’s been taking care of Sony almost as long as Eric. That’s why it’s hard for him to deliver what is, to be blunt, a death sentence.

I’ve tried to spare you the ugliness.

I gave you four children, all on the later edge of their adolescence. I gave you glimpses of their struggles, but I haven’t given you many moments of truth.

I haven’t told you that Sony’s skin is near translucent. It’s thin, past fits of hypoxia rendering some of her tissues feeble. Her throat is scarred from infections, making her voice crack at the ends. There are days she can’t get out of bed. You can tell she’s sick. You can tell she’s getting sicker. Even if she’s overcome that before, there are only so many battles one can win.

“Yeah, I heard you,” Sony says.

The nice doctor sighs. He pushes his glasses by the frame.

“There’s always a chance,” he says. “Probably around five or ten percent–”

“Chances don’t interest me. You know that.” Sony acts coy, holding back an awkward laugh. She caresses the space just beneath her collarbone like she did the sheet. She feels the rising and falling of her lung.

“So,” she whispers. “How much time do I have?”