Evelina
Silence, aside from the sound of muted brushing of the bristles and the faint tap of her feet on wood. Fine dirt piled up in front of the broom like seafoam. Tigerlily Champion who can't even battle.
Three-quarters swept. The lacquered wood floor gleamed richly in the wake of the broom. It was still – Tigerlily Champion who can't even battle – still a poisonous little mantra, and heavens knew she hated it. She sighed, just a little. Not to block it out. Not to embrace it. Merely to let it be, and sweep.
She was still tired. Mindfulness sounded like a wonderfully serene concept – the reality was, it was hard work. It would be perversely easy to give up on being in the moment and slip back into obsessing over Qara. Obsessing over Qara, and everything else. Chuck said mindfulness took practice. Eve had to just trust that, somehow, because it felt like it was barely working. He was right about the sleep therapy. It worked. The old lore made no sense, but it worked. Eve smirked to herself. I wish to know the Way of Master Chuck.
She'd come to a realisation, while sweeping through the halls. Something about Qara spoke to her, some fear she hadn't hitherto understood.
Lunchtime had crept up on her again. She swept the dirt off the verandah into the garden and wandered off towards the refectory. This time she was second-to-last to the table, mostly because she took a wrong turn. Today lunch was steamed fish and mixed greens with cashews and sesame seeds. Eve applied herself to her food, more or less ignoring the Gym trainers. She wasn't one of them, and they all knew it. She wondered what they did think of her, this strange trainer who wasn't training in their midst. Why was a pokémon nurse meditating at the Fighting-type Gym? Who flipped out barely two minutes into a Gym battle like a bloody lunatic.
She almost didn't notice she'd finished her lunch. And she felt a bit better.
Eve was feeling annoyed. The solarium was too bright. The room was stuffy with afternoon heat. The air smelled of teenage sweat, cheap body-spray, and incense.
What a lovely place to meditate, she couldn't help but think. But perhaps the point wasn't to be tranquil.
"In your own time … come back to normal alertness," Chuck said, and clapped his hands. "Once again, boys and girls, to your evening chores. Not you, sport."
The Gym trainers filed out. A couple of them glanced back at her. Calm down. I'm not the new star pupil.
"How have you been feeling?" Chuck said.
"A little better, Master, I think."
"Any thoughts on our last session?"
"I don't think you really get what it's like," Eve replied patiently. "The best way I can explain is with a memory. I was … fourteen, I think. Maybe a bit older, something like that. I remember I used to wear hoodies a lot, hoping to blend into the background. Didn't always work. Anyway, I was heading home from school when some lady comes running up, absolutely hysterical. Turns out her nidoran had tried to eat something it shouldn't have and was in the middle of a hell of a reaction. Don't tell me they have iron stomachs … she must have seen my hair, or recognised my face. A panicking trainer, a nidoran wheezing like a broken kettle, and she didn't think twice about throwing it all on my shoulders, because nobody thinks for a second that a Joy can't cope!"
"Did you help her?"
"Of course I did! Any one of us would. And that's why she asked. But that's what it's like, your life follows a, a script. They don't see you, they see an archetype! They don't see someone tired or stressed or hurt – and you know what? That's because we make damn sure people don't see!" She paused for breath. "You can't even trust boyfriends half the time! I thought I'd finally found someone who saw me and the moment he got bored I was plan B! A third wheel in my own fucking relationship!"
"So why not change yourself? Wear your hair a different way, a different colour. Stop treating pokémon. Everything?"
"Everything? Let me tell you about everything. Does anybody stop to think about everything? Once nobody took us seriously, our legacy is -" Eve paused. "We are sensible! We are self-reliant! We are capable! It's been like that for every one of us for a hundred years!"
"In the Nightmare, you weren't Joy. Nobody knew you, either. And yet this was not a good dream."
"I was missing my pokémon as well; what's your point?" Eve snapped. "No, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Master."
Chuck didn't say anything. Qara. Quaint, strange, lonely Qara. Her next words did not come easily. She could see the wall in her mind's eye, a cliff of pale yellow stone.
"It." She brushed away a tear. "It was lonely. My pokémon weren't there."
"Being left without a script is lonely, hmm?" Chuck said quietly.
"Haven't you been listening to me? I don't. Want. A bloody life script!"
"Really?" Chuck replied, suddenly direct. "You are sensible, self-reliant, capable. A lot to be proud of, and you wear it -"
"So self-reliant that I have to be here – do you have any idea how embarrassing it would be if people found out? You've never seen my cousin Sonia when she's in a bitchy mood, have you? My cousin Riley? My aunt Adeliza?"
"You don't want them to know because that would affect your prestige in the family pecking order."
"Yes!"
"So you measure yourself up to the family standard."
"No!"
"Could have fooled me, sport."
"I am not happy with my life! I don't fucking get to be me anywhere!"
"Then why do you insist on clinging to an identity you don't even like?"
"Because what else is there?"
Eve scowled defiantly at Chuck, eyes stinging, throat tight. I will not cry. Not this time.
"What am I supposed to do?" she choked out.
"What I think you're beginning to understand is that you're defining yourself by your name," Chuck said calmly. "The opposite of acceptance is not rebellion; you became a champion because you wanted the glory of being the first of your family to do it. But here's a question. You say your boyfriend hurt you because you're a Joy, but what if he was simply a jackass?"
Eve took a deep, steadying breath. "If that's so … I don't know any other way to be."
"You know, a Fighting-type will only evolve when it understands who and what it is. And herein lies another noble truth." Chuck leaned forwards slightly, peering at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows. "You have one key question before you: what do you want? When you know that, you will know yourself."
Thankfully ignored by the handful of evening surfers, Eve sat on the sand, wrapped in her hoodie dress over her dojo uniform. Cianwood summer evenings were usually on the chilly side. Cupped in one hand she held the photo Josh had sent her. It was already curling at the edges. She'd kept the envelope too, just because there was something endearingly dorky about the way he'd stencilled the address, presumably to make sure it was delivered. Square. Square who could cry with joy in seeing staryu evolve en masse. The evening sky was changing from blue to indigo. A few early stars were peeping out.
Eve glanced at the back of the photo - 'Wish you were here x'. She'd been convinced she'd pushed him away, and in a way, she had. But in the midst of that moment, which must have been so magical, he was thinking of her. Eve tapped out a text message.
I miss you. Thur 21:26
Gail was soaring on the evening breeze again, a darker shadow against a darkening sky. She shone piercingly white, illuminating the beach like a floodlight, and swept off to sea with an exultant cry.
I'll be on Silver Rock Isle. Thur 21:28
She'd tried to push him away, but for some reason he'd stayed. And the waves rolled in.
"Why?" Eve said to the sea.
"It's under no obligation to answer you, you know," Chuck said.
"Master -" Eve said, starting to get up.
"No, no, sit sport."
Chuck sat down on the sand a couple of feet away, watching the sea, and apparently paying no more attention to her.
"I'm going to the Silver Conference. I want to finish what I started. I want to spend time with my friend before he goes to the Academy," Eve said, eventually. The thought that Josh might not make it never occurred to her. "After that, I don't know."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
"That's a good start," Chuck said encouragingly.
"It is?"
"Did you think it would all come in a moment of golden clarity?" Chuck said facetiously.
"I think they call that enlightenment," Eve mused, just as facetiously.
A joyous, raptorial scream floated in from the sea.
"Your pidgeotto evolved," Chuck observed.
"She's a simple creature," Eve said, watching Gail wheel against the blanket of stars. "Pokémon are endlessly fascinating."
"We can learn so much from them."
Gail sounded so happy to be a pidgeot. Maybe there was a noble truth somewhere in that, too.
"What's the photo?" Chuck asked.
Eve pointedly held it face-down against her leg. "Something for me."
As she had done every morning, Eve got up at six. She dressed in a dojo uniform. She made her way to the refectory for breakfast. This morning, for once, she was looking forward to it. After all, the Gym had a fine philosophy of food – generous portions, uncomplicated food with no rubbish in it.
But today, the refectory was empty. Furio was waiting patiently by the table.
"Er. I'm not late, am I?" Eve said.
"Breakfast is postponed today," Furio replied, smiling faintly. "Come."
Furio led her through the winding corridors, back to the central courtyard where she was first admitted into the Gym. He stopped at the edge of the henge, gesturing for her to go on alone. The early morning light was bright but clear, without the glare of afternoon. There wasn't any sound but for the fountain babbling cheerfully. The branches of the leppa and cheri trees gently nodded, casting a shifting komorebi over the circle.
Chuck was waiting for her in the dead centre.
"Twelve days ago, I told you that ours is a long and honourable tradition. You came to us lost, angry, and fractured. The challenge before you was unlike that of any other student here. And now, perhaps, you are wise enough to find your own Way. Congratulations, sport."
He held something out. Lying in the middle of his huge palm, a badge in the shape of a rounded fist.
For some reason, all she could think to say was, "Does this mean you won't give me breakfast?"
Chuck's booming laughter filled the henge, rich and irreverent and sincere. And Eve could not help but laugh as well.
A/N: I said at the end of Chapter Thirty Seven that I'd come back to the question of mental health and fiction at the end of the arc. I struggled with the question of how much to abstract, and how many creative liberties to take, over the course of Eve's chapters. I generally dislike and distrust 'neatness' in fiction that deals with mental issues and/or personal growth. There's a tendency to depict the understanding of why one is mentally ill as being the same as being cured. It's not. It's merely the beginning. And likewise, media tends not to present therapy in an especially positive light.
There are enough thoughts to work through to sustain many more chapters of many more words than this. And certainly, Eve's arc could realistically involve a longer, harder struggle than is depicted here. But what I wanted to put forward was perhaps a hard truth - that therapy can work, but you have to want it to work. Chuck's quasi-religious approach is, again, fictional, but the essence of it is intended to be relatable.
In an unusually apropos parallel with this chapter, discussing how to depict mental health in art, especially for an ethical goal, could sustain many, many more words than these. So in the interests of being pithy, I will leave these few words do the work of many more.