The Orphans (Orphans Trilogy Book 1)

by Matthew Sullivan

  “That is enough, Charlie,” Malika said, holding her hand up to stop him. “Your validation is unnecessary.” She faced Naomi. “One’s physical appearance is an incredibly common source of negativity and doubt. And while that is especially true for women your age, it is also true that everyone here suffers from it to varying degrees.”

  “She’s right,” Eddie agreed. “I was actually just kidding about all that well-oiled machine stuff.”

  “I was kidding about the greasy stuff,” Naomi apologized.

  “I know.” Eddie said with a half-smile.

  Malika continued, “Here is a little piece of history: Since the creation of mankind, the so-called measures of beauty have changed many times over. In fact, at one point or another, all qualities have been considered ideal. Do not think that Lucifer did not play a role in that. His footprints can be found every step of the way. Most of his work is conducted off of the battlefield and is concentrated on weakening the human spirit. His objective was to make sure that everyone could conceivably question their own beauty. But true beauty is not a moving target. It is something that exists abundantly inside everyone and appears in every smile.”

  Encouraged by Malika’s words, Naomi couldn’t help but let loose a toothy grin.

  “That is exactly what I speak of,” Malika said. “Instead of emphasizing your appearance, you must remember that your physical body is merely a vessel. The only concern you should have for it is that you maintain it through good health. Now tell me something you love about yourself, unrelated to your physical appearance.”

  “Uh, okay,” Naomi said and then considered her options for a few seconds. “I guess I love how sharp my memory is. It’s almost photographic.” Her smile crept back across her face. “I’m also great writer,” she exclaimed. “I really love that. And I can always tell a song on the radio right after it starts to play.”

  “Perfect,” Malika said.

  “There are more things I like, too,” Naomi said excitedly. “They’re all just popping into my head.”

  Naomi’s enthusiasm was infectious. Charlie soaked up her energy and the glow created by her grin, which made her even more alluring.

  “Of course they are,” Malika said. “By choosing to focus on those things you love about yourself, you begin to view yourself in a whole new light. Eventually, you will only find things to love. But first, you must completely release your block. Tell yourself that you are free to let go of the belief that your body should be any other way than how it is right now. Repeat it as many times as you need to hear it.”

  The others waited while Naomi closed her eyes and did as she had been told. A minute later, she slowly reopened her eyes. “Thank you,” she said to Malika with a newfound calmness in her voice.

  “Thank yourself,” Malika said. “And if your negative thoughts ever resurface, simply release them again and replace them with two positive thoughts.” Malika spoke to the group. “That technique is something that all of you can benefit from. Who’s next? JP?”

  “Why not?” JP said. “But I feel like I need to say that mine is stupid, too.”

  “Say what you must,” Malika said.

  “It’s stupid because he doesn’t have problems,” Eddie said.

  “I wish that was true,” JP said. “I’ve got my fair share. But I’d have to say my biggest block is”—he hung his head, peered at his feet, took a deep breath, and sighed it out before picking his head back up—“well, I’ve just been hurt so many times in my life. I guess that I’ve kind of convinced myself that maybe they’re hurting me because of me. That maybe I somehow deserve it. That maybe I’m the one that’s flawed. That maybe I’m not meant to be loved.”

  JP’s words clearly struck a chord with Naomi.

  Charlie watched as she put her hand on his leg.

  “No one deserves to be hurt,” Malika said. “No one deserves pain. But you are allowing yourself to be hurt by determining your own value based on the opinions and actions of other people.”

  “It’s hard not to,” JP said.

  “That does not alter the fact that the opinions of others should never dictate your own sense of self. The only sustainable belief comes from within. No one should ever believe in you more than you believe in yourself. Conversely, you should never believe in anyone else more than you believe in yourself. Know that you have value and love yourself unconditionally, and you will attract more love than you could ever imagine, and it will be directed toward the true you.”

  JP smiled. He put his hand on top of Naomi’s, which was still on his thigh, and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  Charlie couldn’t help but feel jealous. An overwhelming desire to have the attention—particularly Naomi’s attention—on him swelled deep inside. “I’ll go next,” Charlie exclaimed, with more enthusiasm than he intended. His excitement quickly faded as all eyes turned to him.

  “Let JP finish first,” Malika said.

  “I’m actually done.” JP said.

  “Not yet,” Malika said and then reminded JP that he still had to release his feelings that he didn’t deserve to be loved. After he had, Malika turned to Charlie. “Now you may go.”

  “Okay. Well, um, I don’t actually know where to start.” Charlie paused for a moment. “I’ve never liked my body. I’ve always wished I was taller and stronger and a lot of other things. And sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever really find love.” He glanced at Naomi to see if she was still looking at him. She wasn’t. Charlie continued, “I guess I—”

  “Need to focus harder,” Malika said, cutting Charlie off before he rambled any further. “You are overlooking the one block that is bigger than the others. Close your eyes and ask yourself once more what your strongest negative emotion is.”

  Charlie nodded, and then closed his eyes. After a couple seconds, he slowly reopened them. “It’s fear,” he said with a seriousness that had been lacking before. “Fear of failure.”

  “To unlearn such a fear, you must first establish the meaning of success. What do you consider to be success?”

  “Saving my parents,” Charlie said without hesitation.

  “Of course. But this fear has been with you for longer than your parents have not. How else do you define success?”

  Charlie shrugged. “The same way everyone does. Money.”

  “Do you all share this a feeling?” Malika asked the rest of the orphans. They all nodded in agreement. She turned back to Charlie. “What if you amassed a sizable fortune, and then one day, the markets crashed and you lost most of your money? Would you still consider yourself successful?”

  Charlie wasn’t quite sure how to answer the question.

  “Of course,” JP said, jumping in. “Because even if he lost his money, he’d still have some assets, like a sick mansion and maybe a yacht. And at the end of the day, he’d still have relatively more than everyone else.”

  “I see,” Malika said. “So money is not just a means to transact, it is a means for comparison, and success is a comparison as well. You versus everyone else, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you agree, Charlie?”

  “Sure,” Charlie said.

  “Then imagine that the whole world is turned back to zero. Everything you have earned is gone, by no mistake of your own, and you now have the same monetary worth as everyone else. Would you still consider yourself successful?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.”

  “Anyone else care to answer?”

  The other orphans contemplated Malika’s question for a moment before Naomi broke the silence. “I guess it depends,” she said. “Is he happy?”

  Malika nodded, pleased. “That is the correct question to ask. Without that answer, it is impossible to determine whether he is successful or not. For happiness is the only legitimate gauge of success. The beauty of true happiness is that it does not require compar
ison, nor does it come at the expense of others. Either you are happy or you are not. If you can find happiness in every moment of your life, you are successful. So I ask you, Charlie Kim: Are you successful? Do you live happiness?”

  Charlie didn’t need long to think about it. He was happy at times, like when he achieved one of the goals in his plan, but he couldn’t say that he was happy in every moment, or even most moments, of his life. “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Because a lot of the stuff I do doesn’t make me happy. I guess I’ve always figured that I’ll have time to be happy later on, after I have everything I want.”

  “Stop wanting. Stop delaying joy. Start finding happiness, from this moment forward. Everything that gets in the way of that, let it go.” Malika paused for a second to let her words sink in and then spoke to the group. “All of you must let go of your notions of success or failure. Think only of happiness, and find it in every moment.”

  The others nodded in agreement, taking more from Malika’s message than Charlie had.

  “Let it go, Charlie,” Malika instructed him.

  “Okay,” Charlie said, but it was apparent that he wasn’t completely sold. In spite of his hang-up, Charlie closed his eyes, and did as he had been told.

  A minute later, Charlie reopened his eyes, but he was even less satisfied than before he had closed them. While Malika’s advice seemed so helpful to Naomi and JP, it hadn’t brought him the sense of relief he had hoped for or expected.

  Malika noted Charlie’s discontented look. “That might not be enough for you now,” she said, “but in time, you will fully grasp the power of those words and their meaning. All right, who is next?

  Eddie turned to Antony; it was between the two of them.

  “It’s all you,” Antony said.

  “Fine. I’ll go,” Eddie said. “I guess what keeps me from loving myself is that … I don’t know.” He chuckled to himself. “It’s kinda funny, I just said I don’t know.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, I guess I feel dumb sometimes, or a lot of the time. Actually, all of the time.”

  “And what makes you feel that way?”

  “School. Other people. Pretty much anything that could. I feel like it’s harder for me to remember things, or learn stuff, or even pay attention.”

  “And have you ever committed yourself to learning?”

  “A little bit, yeah. I’ve tried to.”

  “You have tried, but you chose to quit instead of truly committing. You have resorted to jokes and pretended that you do not care, but in reality, you care very much.”

  “Well … yeah. You pretty much nailed it.” Eddie chewed the corner of his lip and nodded.

  “Your intelligence has never been your limitation,” Malika said. “It is your feelings of doubt that hold you back. No one’s intelligence is fixed. In fact, the human brain grows most when you fail and continue to persevere. But you must embrace the challenges instead of shying away from them. You must push through instead of succumbing.”

  Eddie nodded with resolve.

  Malika continued, “Know that anything you truly want to learn, you can. It might not come as fast as it does to others, but do not worry about that. It will come if you truly desire it and are committed to doing the necessary work.”

  Eddie closed his eyes and let go of his long-held feelings of inadequacy.

  “And one more thing,” Malika added after Eddie opened his eyes. “Humor can be a great medicine, but it is a terrible mask.”

  “I’ll file that one away,” Eddie said with a smirk as he tapped his temple.

  All eyes turned to Antony, the last to go. He averted their gaze, took a deep breath, exhaled, and prepared to tell them his biggest obstacle to loving himself. It was something that he had never told another person, something that he always knew in the back of his head, something that he had never even fully admitted to himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The other orphans took some time to digest what Antony had told them. None of them had expected him to reveal what he had.

  After a moment, Eddie broke the silence. “I should have known,” he said. “That’s obviously why you’re so jacked.”

  “What are you talking about?” Charlie said.

  “I can’t be the only person that knows that all gay people are ripped.”

  “All gay people aren’t anything,” Naomi said.

  “They’re all gay, aren’t they?” Eddie said.

  “Well, besides that.”

  “Will everyone just be quiet?” Antony said. The heaviness in his voice made it clear that he was still very much struggling to accept his own admission. “I don’t know for sure if I actually am gay or not.”

  “Is this true?” Malika said.

  Antony shook his head and sighed in frustration. “No. I mean, I know I am. I’ve known since as long I can remember. I just don’t want to be. I never have.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Antony said. “I guess it’s ‘cause, like, everybody always wants to put people into different buckets, you know? The last thing I want is another bucket to be thrown in. I just want to be my own person.”

  “The two are not mutually exclusive,” Malika said. “You are and always will be your own person. While your sexuality is a part of that person, it plays no more of a role in defining you than the color of your skin, your gender, or any other inherited trait that the human world attempts to divide you with. That is to say, it plays no role unless you make the choice to let it define you. Others will surely make that mistake, but it means nothing unless you choose to do the same.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Antony said, slowly coming around.

  “Yes, I am.” Malika turned to the rest of the group. “This holds true for all of you: nothing about who you are, at your core, should ever be a source of shame. Each of you was made in God’s image. Therefore, any rejection of yourself is a rejection of God.”

  “I definitely wasn’t trying to do that.”

  “Then don’t. Accept and love yourself for who you are.”

  “I will,” Antony said with a smile. He closed his eyes, let go of his denial, and took the first giant step toward loving his divine self.

  “You have all moved in the direction of believing in yourselves, but that was only just the beginning,” Malika said. She flicked her wand and swept her hands downward. The flaming dome vanished instantly, while the blaze that had disappeared from the campfire returned in a flash of light and smoke. “Like an iceberg, most of it still lies beneath. Now that you have identified the tip, you must uncover the rest. You must go out into the woods on your own, and search deep inside yourself to find every last negative emotion and judgment that is holding you back, and one by one, let them go. Until they are all gone.”

  All of the orphans began their march into different corners of the woods. All except for Charlie, who held back from the rest of the group.

  “What’s next?” Charlie asked Malika as soon as everyone else was out of earshot. “Like, after this, what do we do for step three?”

  “Do not concern yourself with what is next,” Malika said. She rested her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Focus on what is. When what is next becomes what is, then you can focus on it.”

  It wasn’t the answer Charlie had wanted, but he knew that it was all that he was going to get. Instead of pushing her further, Charlie simply nodded, then chose the direction that none of the other orphans were heading in and began his journey into the forest.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Charlie wandered deep into the woods for well over a half hour before he found an old incense cedar that had fallen and split to make the perfect seat and backrest. He parked himself on the cinnamon-colored tree trunk and leaned back to get comfortable. />
  Charlie didn’t take even a second to consider the picturesque view of the expansive valley beyond the trees and the sparkling river that cut through it. He didn’t have the time to waste. He needed to get right to work. He retrieved his notebook from his pocket and skimmed his list of failures. None of his listed failures had a particular monetary value attached to them, and they all had made him unhappy, so Charlie figured that they were still suitable to be used for their motivational purposes.

  After reading over his list a couple times, Charlie flipped to the front of his notebook and added his new goal: find happiness.

  “Find happiness,” Charlie said to himself. He echoed the words a handful of times, hoping it would help them settle into his consciousness, build his confidence in their power, and magically alter his perspective; however, it didn’t. It only had the opposite effect. The more Charlie repeated the words, the more unreasonable they sounded, and the more his thoughts drifted away from his intention of finding happiness toward something else.

  Charlie didn’t doubt that Malika knew what she was talking about and agreed that her words sounded great in theory. But even so, he couldn’t fathom how he could possibly be happy. Focusing on what was and not what was next, like Malika had encouraged him to do, didn’t help, either. It only made him think of everything he was up against. At that very moment, his parents’ souls were trapped in some Beast, Terry and his men were most likely scouring everywhere for them, and an attack on Heaven was possible at any second. That was what was. How was he supposed to find happiness in that? It was completely unrealistic.

  As if all of his issues weren’t enough to keep him from finding happiness, Charlie recalled how he hadn’t received half of the attention he had hoped to get from Naomi. All that he had received was the knowledge that if there was going to be any competition for Naomi’s affection, JP appeared to have a significant head start.

  Charlie shook his head and pocketed his notebook. He scraped chunks of bark from the tree trunk with the heels of his shoes as his frustrations compounded. “Find happiness,” he repeated with each thrust.