"Unwinnable"
by Acey
"You know what I think?"
Mello starts off a lot of his conversations this way. In fact, if Matt can remember right, he started off their first conversation this way, six years before. You know what I think—utterly self-assured, as though he'd plow straight into exactly what he thought like a bulldozer, or a start to an inexpert thesis. A rough draft. A prewrite.
Matt inclines his head just to show he's heard, but he knows Mello would have continued anyway.
"I think that people fail because they want to fail."
"That's a new one," Matt manages, eyes on the screen. Tuesday afternoons are for Tetris, until dinner at six-thirty, which he picks at for a solid fifteen minutes before dumping his tray and heading back to the virtual, and preferable, reality of his computer, his games, his dorm. The Internet claims that Tetris is impossible to beat, but Matt figures he has enough Tuesday afternoons left in his life to pound that little theory into the ground."What makes you say that?"
In the corner of his vision he sees Mello make a face, hears the crackle of yet another chocolate wrapper. Teachers always expect Mello to have the fastidiousness of an obsessive-compulsive, but all the years of rooming with him have told Matt differently. Mello's slovenly as hell, more apt to crush a wrapper under one black boot than crumple it up and throw it in the trash. It's a good thing Matt doesn't care what shambles the room's in. Even better that the kid in charge of monthly room inspection is scared stiff of Mello.
Mello surprises him by dropping the wrapper into an empty cup on his desk instead.
"Well, look around, Matt. Three hundred orphans in this place between the ages of eight and fourteen. And each and every one of us with the same goal in mind."
"To be the next L." Matt shifts another Tetris block and forms a row that dissolves as soon as it's completed.
"Sure. And if you asked any of them right this minute they'd say it, too. 'I want to be L.' But," Mello snaps off another row of chocolate, "they don't."
"Course they do." Matt's finger slips on the keyboard, messing up the block formation. If Mello keeps on talking, he's going to have to pause the game. "If they didn't, they wouldn't study so hard. It's as simple as that."
Mello snorts.
"And they study so hard and yet they fail anyway."
"Maybe they're not studying the right way."
"Quit being obtuse," Mello mutters through another bite of chocolate. "They're not studying hard enough. They think they want it, but they don't want it badly enough. They're afraid of getting their best effort shot down, so they give it their worst effort. Their bare minimum. They do their studying two hours before the test itself. They do the essays at the last minute, so when they get them back they can palm off excuse after excuse. 'I didn't work hard enough, I could've done better.' They're upset, sure, but relieved on top of that. Because the teachers haven't failed them. They've failed themselves.
"And that's why," Mello finishes, smacking his lips, "to most of those kids, becoming L's just a dream they have to give lip-service to every day they start for classes."
"Not to me." But that's lip-service in itself. Matt's always liked to think of himself as beyond Wammy House's mindgames, smart enough to play his own instead. To reach for a controller instead of his homework. To lighten up and light up while he had brains enough to go against the ridiculousness of the situation, instead of becoming another of those hundreds of mindless kids, all bags under their eyes, shuffling steps. He likes to think he's not part of the system. But he's third in line to succeed L.
Mello gives him a look, then.
"Really."
"I want to be L." With a sigh he hits the pause button. The Tetris block freezes in midair. "It'd be a nice life. Get my own private right-hand-man, all the money I could ever want, all the cases I could ever ask for. I want that."
"If you want that, why are you only third?"
Matt stiffens. Mello's flopped down on the bed now, but Matt can feel his stare on his back still. And then he comes with a comeback.
"If you want that, why are you only second?"
Mello gets quiet, quiet enough that Matt wishes he could take back what he said, erase it like the Tetris blocks. Mello's stopped smacking his lips—the chocolate's gone, and so is what passes for his good humor.
"I don't know."
finis