The Shineman’s Magical Diary

**This essay contains spoilers of Matt de la Peañ's The Living and The Hunted book series.

It’s a wild thing to see that post-apocalyptic stories have become so popular that there’s now a thriving Young Adult sub-genre sitting next to bone-chilling classics like I Am Legend, The Road, or Cat’s Cradle. As if kids weren’t already over-anxious, authors are now running them through dystopian futurism. A world in which humans have been thrown again into a state of nature is something that, turns out, appeals to teens and tweens as well as to adults. Enter Matt de la Peña and his Y.A. take on the American apocalypse in The Living and The Hunted. This series brings wealth inequalities, political access, and racial privilege front and center to the modern disaster/survival story. “Shy” works a summer gig for an LA cruise line, and as things fall apart (due to a multi-pronged catastrophe featuring earthquakes, fires, tsunami tidal waves, and an emerging, high-mortality pandemic disease outbreak) he comes to rely on a select band of surviving co-workers. “Shoeshine” holds a mysterious, stoic, and at times mythical role in Shy’s band of travelers. Despite some glaring indications that Shoeshine is a real person in this story, it also becomes possible that Shoeshine exists not as an actual character, and only as a fragment of Shy’s consciousness. Shoeshine is a projection of Shy’s representing everything that Shy “cannot” do yet, or does not yet have the will to express.

What’s in a Name? — Supporter and Supported

If we start by looking just at the names of these two characters, Shy and Shoeshine, we can start to break down the wall between them rather quickly. “Shy” Espinoza lives under the nickname given to him by his father, who often spoke about Shy as a child by saying, “Damn, this kid doesn’t know s**t from Shinola” (The Living 221). As Shy explains, his father treated him as cheap, a screw-up, like he “[doesn’t] know anything.” Essentially, Shy’s father told him this so much that he shortened the Shinola to just “Shy.” We see many moments during the story where it is obvious that Shy has deeply internalized this criticism from his father, and now lives under a cloud of self-doubt and social-aloofness. Stated simply, Shy is named after a kind of shoe polish, signifying his ignorance and limited worth. Meanwhile, one of Shy’s cruise-line co-workers is collectively nicknamed “Shoeshine.” We find out that this is a rather obvious nickname since he works at the shoeshine station. Furthermore, we are told Shoeshine is an “older black dude with the funky gray hair who was always writing in his leather notebook” (The Living 76). In his first interaction with him, Shy “felt like he could trust [Shoeshine],” while admitting he didn’t exactly know why. Shoeshine also tells Shy, fittingly, that, “Names have no meaning out here… I’m just … passing through” (The Living 78). Looking back, this can either be taken literally or as an admission that Shoeshine’s name is not meaningful because he is not separate from Shy, is only passing through Shy’s consciousness until Shy learns to fight his own battles, to make his reality in the moment using his will.

This idea of Shy looking to Shoeshine for support and guidance builds throughout The Living and reaches its climax in The Hunted. By the end of this second book, once Shoeshine has decided that he’s going to leave their team, Shy becomes upset, arguing that they’re being abandoned. “...What about us, man? We’ll never make it without you, Shoe. You’re the one who’s been leading us this whole time” (The Hunted 294). Surprisingly, Shoeshine simply responds, “Am I?” This is the last thing that Shy expects to hear. Shoeshine points to the events on the cruise ship and reminds Shy that there were always people following him, rather than Shoeshine. “The man in the black suit,” he begins to list. “Addie and her father. Carmen, Myself… out here in the desert. You can’t even see it… who else you’re leading.” Yes, Shoeshine acts as a model for Shy throughout the story. At times, Shy dislikes his actions or his attitude. But always Shy is watching and learning from Shoeshine. Or is he? “You see? You’re becoming who you already are” (The Hunted 194), Shoeshine reminds Shy earlier during a lull between dangers.

A Character Who Flows Upside Down — Blurring the Distance

As a narrative element, it could be entirely possible that Shoeshine only serves as a mental projection of who Shy needs to be, and represents the kind of man Shy wants to become. It’s not enough, though, that Shoe and Shy sound so similar, Shy even seems to take some of the consequences for Shoeshine’s actions. Shoe, at one point, puts one of their team out of his misery after being shot and losing blood. Both Carmen and Shy react with distress, anger, and confusion once Shoeshine takes their teammates' life rather than watching him bleed and suffer. Understandably, Carmen takes a long time in coping with this tragic and bold, yet humane, choice. Interestingly, the narrative indicates that Shy ends up dealing with much of Carmen’s response as if she is directing her horrified, grief-stricken anger at Shy and not at Shoeshine. While Shoeshine speaks over their friend’s grave, it is Shy who is the target of Carmen’s anger. “Carmen shot Shy a dirty look and stormed off” (The Hunted 199). Later, “Carmen glanced at Shy, but didn’t say anything.” This coldness from her continued. “Shy tried to talk to her a few times, but she only gave one-word answers.” Carmen is devastated and shocked by the death of their friend, she is angry at Shoeshine for his swift mercy-killing, and Shy is swept up in her reaction just as much as Shoeshine.

The line between Shy and Shoeshine is blurred throughout this narrative. If it seems only a tad blurry so far, what happens after Shy and Carmen leave the Blythe Intaglios without Shoeshine makes everything all the more incomprehensible. Shoeshine’s last request to Shy was for him to “chuck [Shoeshine’s journal] in the [Hassayampa] River” (The Hunted 295). Shoeshine has, throughout The Living and The Hunted, kept a journal writing practice. Shoeshine even explains why he has kept this journal, saying, “the power is in the writing… not the record of it. Once the word is on the page its energy is lost. Once a journal is full, it’s no different than dead skin to be shed.” Shoeshine relays to Shy an old legend about the Hassayampa River (the name means the river that flows upside down) that says any man who drinks from the waters of this river will no longer be able to tell the truth. “I’m afraid that’s where my thoughts belong…” Shoeshine implores. “No one man can ever own the truth. Truth is not a fixed thing. It evolves and morphs and inverts. What is true today may not be true tomorrow.”

There is powerful language here to dissect. Shoeshine wants his journal to end up in a river that blurs truth and lies, a river that flows and flows upside down. If we’re feeling a little confused, here, perhaps that is the intent. Shoeshine says that the journal is full and is dead skin to be shed, while at the same time he is dying and Shy’s team is “shedding” Shoeshine. Shoeshine tells Shy that his thoughts belong in the Hassayampa River with the water that makes men lie. Shoeshine also says that truth is not fixed, that it changes from day to day or moment to moment or person to person. So, what seemed true about Shoeshine— that he was a cruise ship employee, that he was an ex-Special Forces soldier, that he saved Shy’s life repeatedly, that he helped the team steer their sailboat from Jones Island to the California Coast, that he was shot by the Suzuki Gang in Venice, that he kept a journal, that he spared Marcus from suffering, that he worked under the name “Nightwatch” at the assisted living residency— may be only an evolving feature of Shy’s experience and Shy’s ability to deal with the world, with catastrophe, and with the people he loves and cares about.

What happens to the journal once Shy reaches the Hassayampa River? Shy finally reads it (which doesn’t need a key to unlock, after all [perhaps because Shy owns the journal]) and is shocked that it’s Shy’s story from the beginning of The Living— it accurately describes in detail when the comb-over man jumped over the railing to commit suicide in front of Shy. “His entire body went cold when he saw his own name in Shoeshine’s neat handwriting… It was too weird… How could Shoeshine know what Shy and the comb-over man said that night” (The Hunted 301)? This is possible proof of a ‘Fight Club moment’ where the division between Shy and Shoeshine falls apart and is replaced by a clear awareness that Shy’s experience is entirely accessible by Shoeshine, and vice versa, as they are the same person. Reading the journal Shoeshine kept is reading a journal Shy made and kept from himself, disguising it, instead, as Shoeshine’s. To his surprise, Shy launches the journal off the bridge and into the river, where “some kind of crazy witchcraft spectacle” occurred. The river bubbled and boiled and spewed forth red light while the sound of human screams swirled around him.

It’s as if Shy destroying Shoeshine’s journal is a mythical event whereupon he is giving up his dedication to the delusion that Shoeshine is separate, is someone else outside of his mind. This is, perhaps, the only moment in the series where anything like magical realism enters the narrative. Must Shy endure this startling and terrifying psycho-emotional breakthrough in the silence of nature in the middle of the desert night to come to terms with everything from his own experience?

Delivery of Proof — Honoring the Outsider

While this essay has attempted to highlight specific moments that illuminate the possibility of Shoeshine being only a projection from Shy’s mind and soul, there are certainly moments where Shoeshine appears to be a real character involved in this story, just like Shy or Marcus or Carmen or Addison. He shoots the LasoTech corporate assassin on Jones Island, saving Shy’s life. He distracts the Suzuki Gang in Venice and is shot in the leg for it, again saving Shy’s life. He ends Marcus’ life in the desert. He leads Shy and Carmen to the assisted living center where multiple employees recognize him as “Nightwatch.” These same employees even tell Carmen and Shy about their years spent working with Shoeshine. Still, there are possibly more instances in which Shoeshine could be removed from the scene as a projection from Shy’s mind and have the story still make sense.

This is less of a rhetorical literary exercise for amusement, and more of a literal possibility given the context and dynamics of narrative in this series. One of the last events in The Hunted is that Shy finishes updating Shoeshine’s map before reminding the reader that “no one person can own the truth” (The Hunted 360). If Shoeshine is, indeed, a figment of Shy’s emerging maturity— someone who embodies “old-man strength” (The Hunted 46)— then the ending of The Hunted serves as a reminder from Shoeshine that Shy is not the one to tell the story of what happened in California with the LasoTech Romero’s Disease pandemic spreading after the earthquakes. It’s not Shy’s place to sit in the comfort and security of a camp in Arizona and write the story of what happened. Even when he had the whole story in Shoeshine’s journal, it wasn’t his place to deliver this as proof. Shy invoked Shoeshine’s words at the very end to prove that he needs to get back into California, back across the river “to see if anyone would follow… to help fix this” (The Hunted 361).

There is still more to be said concerning Shoeshine’s departure from the narrative at the Blythe Intaglios. These massive and ancient art installations in the desert are a fitting place for Shoeshine to disappear from Shy’s story and Shy’s awareness. These humongous silhouettes tellingly show an invisible man. Someone who is there only because he is not. Not only this, but they survive symbolically as a reminder that people existed “before capitalism set its invisible trap” (The Hunted 295). Arguably, it is this capitalist trap that has contained Shy for most of the narrative, a trap from which Shy is attempting to escape (with Shoeshine’s guidance and example). This trap tells Shy that he’s not important enough, not good enough, not strong enough, not powerful enough, not smart enough, not confident enough, not in control enough, not helpful enough, not attractive enough. Whether Shoeshine is real or imagined, it is interesting to connect that Shy had to come face to face with a giant ancient invisible man in the desert to be able to give up his reliance on Shoeshine as his guide and savior. It is only after leaving the Intaglios that Shy can finally stand on his own choices and decisions— only after leaving behind the invisible man in the desert.

Storytelling can balance a line between real or imagined to extreme highs and lows. While there’s no way of telling if balancing this line was Matt de la Peña’s intention in crafting this series, the effect is startling, significant, and not easily ignored. As mentioned, Fight Club reveals a narrative that works in two completely different ways. It works when the character is included in the story, and also when that character is absent. This adds an element of humor to the tone. Chocky employs a kind of real/imagined balance that renders the narrative chilling and unsettling until this ambiguity is finally exposed. It could be argued that the character named "Justice" from Sherman Alexie's Flight is presented to blur a line between real and imagined. In The Living and The Hunted, this real/imagined boundary is never directly addressed, and certainly never resolved. In fact, it seems like it’s not actually there (until one is taken by the notion and begins to look a bit closer). At no point does Shy declare, “Ah! Shoeshine was never really there after all…” And yet, this possibility opens an entirely new and exciting reading beyond the story. Although some of Shoeshine’s final words to Shy were, “I’m exactly what you see, young fella. Nothing more. Nothing less” (The Hunted 297), Shoeshine had also given Shy a lot of advice about “becoming who you already are.” Is Shoeshine integral as a projection or trope for Shy to use in that becoming process? Is Shoeshine a vision of the old man Shy would like to become? An old man who can see beyond the lies of capitalism and through the thin facade of civilization, a facade that helps us “pretend to understand the logic of things” (The Hunted 96). Shoeshine may just be that important of a model for Shy that he transcends reality, and goes beyond “meaning and order and authority… [beyond nonfiction or beyond] fiction.”

Shoeshine is an inner voice projected outward; a wiser, older version who knows the beauty of stillness and unanswerable questions; a Socratic mirror image who invites us to ask, “Who will open their eyes to it? Who is humble enough to look beyond his own flesh” (The Hunted 97)? Shy begins and ends his journey alone, and he is changed by those he meets. In the end, real or imagined, Shoeshine pushes Shy to the point where— all on his own— he can finally stand up, leaping from the precipice into the unknowable mystery of the future, shouting, ‘It is I. I am humble enough to help.’

Works Cited:

1. Peña, Matt de la, The Living. Penguin Random House, 2013.
2. Peña, Matt de la, The Hunted. Penguin Random House, 2015.
3. Palahniuk, Chuck, Fight Club. W.W. Norton & Co, 1996.
4. Wyndham, John, Chocky. Ballantine Books, 1968
5. Alexie, Sherman. Flight: A Novel. Black Cat, 2007