The Masked Truth(28)

“All right,” he says, shoulders lifting. “I’ll … take care of him.”

“No, I wasn’t trying to convince—”

“I have this.” Fear flickers behind his eyes, but he squares his shoulders. “I have this.”

“Maybe I can—”

“No, you’re right. It’s not sexism. You’d do better as a distraction. I’d do better taking him out, as you put it.”

“Do you know how?”

“My father is an army general, remember? He’d be a poor one if he didn’t give me some military training. I can put Cantina in a choke hold …” He trails off and that smile evaporates fast. He pulls back, gaze going distant, as if he’s seeing something I can’t. A memory, like my flashbacks. It’s his father, then. Or it was—I can’t imagine his dad would still hit him when he’s eighteen and six feet tall.

“Something,” he says. “I can do something.” That straightening again as he pulls on that overly British accent. “Right-i-o. Onward and upward, then. The trick, old girl, is to avoid the gun. At all costs, avoid the gun. Particularly the barrel end.”

He goes still, wincing, as if realizing this might not be the right thing to say to me, but I snort a laugh for him.

“He doesn’t have his gun,” I say. “Remember? Aaron or Brienne got it from him. I’ll still be careful, though. Now let’s do this.”





MAX: TEMERITY


Temerity: excessive confidence or boldness.

Timidity: showing a lack of courage or confidence.



In his year four, Max had gotten the words confused, telling his teacher that temerity caused a friend to refuse an oral presentation. No, Max, she’d said. It’s timidity. Temerity is the opposite—being too cocky, too full of yourself. Timidity is Jay’s problem; temerity is yours.

His classmates had laughed. Max didn’t care, which was, perhaps, a sign that his teacher was right. He’d never suffered from timidity. He’d been brought up to be confident, to be bold and even brash. The confidence from his mother—you’re smart enough to be anything you want to be, Maximus. The boldness from his father—show them who you are, and don’t let anyone make you feel like less, Max, that’s how you get somewhere in this world. Be an officer, a leader of men.

If anyone thought Max was a little too full of himself, that was their problem. Their insecurity. Their timidity. He didn’t crow over his successes or mock others for their failures. Needing to put others down suggested a lack of confidence, his mother would say. You don’t climb up on the backs of others, his father would say. Eyes on your own horizon.

The truth—

Yes, Maximus, tell us. What is the truth?

The truth is that it’s easy to hold on to temerity when you’ve never had cause to doubt yourself, and as soon as you do …

As soon as you do …

Max can see his target across the room. Cantina, Riley calls him. The Cantina alien in Star Wars, the one Han Solo shot. That’s what Max had thought when he first saw him, and yet he hadn’t been sure because these days, he wasn’t sure of anything. Oh, he could fake it just fine. Tallyho and all that, whatever it meant, and yes, he wasn’t even sure himself, but he could say it with all due confidence, the same way he’d said “temerity” in year four and he hadn’t cared when he was corrected, hadn’t been embarrassed to use the wrong word, because you won’t learn if you don’t try.

Every time one is corrected, it is not a humiliation but a learning experience. Yet even in the confines of his own mind, he hadn’t allowed himself to say more than that their captor’s mask came from Star Wars.

Timidity. Doesn’t suit you, Maximus. Not at all.

But it has to, because he isn’t sure, isn’t sure at all, can’t tell if what he sees is real, if what he hears is actually there, in the same plane the rest of the world inhabits. Temerity for him is dangerous. It lets him look at his best friend and be sure, so sure of what he sees that he nearly kills him.

Max forces himself to start toward Cantina. The man is resting with his head on the desk. He’s alert, though. He moves too often to be asleep. Can’t make this easy.

Max had crawled into the room, to avoid being a blur spotted out of the corner of Cantina’s eye.

Speaking of blurs …

He’d seen one, in the hall. A shadow passing the end, just at the periphery of sight. Except there was no shadow, because Riley had been facing that way and she didn’t see a thing. Didn’t see the way he jumped like a scalded cat, either.

Timidity: showing a lack of courage or confidence.

Not a lack of courage in his case, though Max wasn’t really sure what courage was. Oh, yes, technically, he knew:

Courage: the ability to do something that frightens one.

But what is courage really?

Well, boy, let me tell you about courage. Courage is being in Afghanistan, in a convoy heading through Taliban territory—

Sorry, Dad, really not the time. Can I call you Dad? It depends, doesn’t it? On your mood, on what else is happening in your life, and you’ve never said I can’t call you that, but there are moods, and I can read them, and sometimes it’s just best to go with sir, isn’t it? Yes, sir. I understand, sir.