My head turned to him automatically in surprise. "You think I’m crazy?"
"No, not at all.”
God, why did he look so…awed?
“The guards called you Mad Max as an insult but that’s not why your friends called you Max. You earned it by protecting them, even at your own expense. That isn’t something many people can do. It’s amazing you were so selfless in the worst circumstances."
His leg knocked into mine. I saw the contact coming and it still jolted me. I jumped and landed on the hard desk under me. Temple withdrew his leg, but he was still gazing at me with too many warm things. I wasn’t used to being seen like that.
"The guards thought calling you a lunatic and madman was insulting you,” he continued. “When it really says everything aboutthem. Of course they’d think you were insane. They were aiding and abetting thesaleof other people. They were traffickers and abusers. Every time they made fun of you, all they were doing was proving how much soul you had and they lacked. Your compassion and sacrifices for other people were completely baffling to them."
"That’s really what you think?"
"Absolutely,” he responded immediately, leaving no room for argument. “And it’s what everyone who you protected in that basement thought about Max too."
All I did was exercise what small resistance I could and try to make life a little better for the others in the basement. I hadn’t seen myself the way he described at all, and it felt a little uncomfortable when thinking too closely about how he was talking about me.
But Temple was so convinced. It was impossible to resist getting swept away in the picture he painted. The picture he painted of Max.
Part of me felt tempted to use the name Max just to spite Aaron. He worried about my ability to face the past, but using this name proved I could take something that started there and make it my own. It proved I was moving on and the past couldn’t hurt me anymore.
However, that wasn’t truly why the name appealed to me now. It just helped give me the little push I needed to take the name… the name I already wanted to take.
Instead of the name being a bad reminder of the past,
it felt like was I honoring them, all the others I met there. From the few that were rescued with me to all the ones who weren’t nearly as lucky. I was remembering them and not the basement.
Besides, my life had started there, the life I was living now. The basement was my first memory of life. That included all the horror there, but the basement also gave me my first memories of strength, of hope, of kindness. The guards were awful, but Rachel, a woman I hardly knew, handed off her blanket without a second thought because she saw I needed it more.
“I guess this session was productive after all,” I said. “We learned something about me."
"We did?"
I nodded. “My name is Max.”
Lysander smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Max.”
12.Here Come the Feelings
Lysander
Something was wrong.
Sure, thingsseemedbetter than ever. The DSA’s former John Doe/Davis had come such a long way. There were still unanswered questions, but once Max started making progress, it was like there was no stopping him. The uphill climb he faced to get here seemed to be getting farther in the past every day.
So what unsettled me?
Since Better Tomorrow also catered to supernatural patients, he’d stay at their facility for now. Manifesting his abilities and learning to control them could generously fall under the rehabilitation category anyway, just one more thing Max needed to be healthy and whole. It also seemed like the easiest solution, him staying at a comfortable place that felt familiar to him, and keeping him close to professionals with more experience treating special patients like him might be needed.
Yet a potential problem existed just out of reach. I knew it was there but couldn’t quite see the whole thing. I was missing something. An unsettled feeling followed me as I stopped by Max’s room to pick him up. He immediately snatched up the book I set down on his dresser.
His eyes crossed at the long title. “A historical biography of someone I’ve never heard of. Cool.”
"He was a pioneer in the field of—"
"Something people don’t even do anymore?" Max guessed while browsing the back cover.
"Still, his contributions laid the groundwork for—"
