Inferno (Page 120)

And so Sienna Brooks learned how to be a ghost. Invisible. She learned how to be a chameleon, a performer, playing just another face in the crowd. Her childhood passion for stage acting, she had no doubt, stemmed from what would become her lifelong dream of becoming someone else.

Someone normal.

Her performance in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream helped her feel a part of something, and the adult actors were supportive without being condescending. Her joy, however, was short-lived, evaporating the moment she left the stage on opening night and faced throngs of wide-eyed media people while her costars quietly skulked out the back door unnoticed.

Now they hate me, too.

By the age of seven, Sienna had read enough to diagnose herself with deep depression. When she told her parents, they seemed dumbfounded, as they usually were by the strangeness of their own daughter. Nonetheless, they sent her to a psychiatrist. The doctor asked her a lot of questions, which Sienna had already asked herself, and then he prescribed a combination of amitriptyline and chlordiazepoxide.

Furious, Sienna jumped off his couch. “Amitriptyline?!” she challenged. “I want to be happier—not a zombie!”

The psychiatrist, to his great credit, remained very calm in the face of her outburst and offered a second suggestion. “Sienna, if you prefer not to take pharmaceuticals, we can try a more holistic approach.” He paused. “It sounds as if you are trapped in a cycle of thinking about yourself and how you don’t belong in the world.”

“That’s true,” Sienna replied. “I try to stop, but I can’t!”

He smiled calmly. “Of course you can’t stop. It is physically impossible for the human mind to think of nothing. The soul craves emotion, and it will continue to seek fuel for that emotion—good or bad. Your problem is that you’re giving it the wrong fuel.”

Sienna had never heard anyone talk about the mind in such mechanical terms, and she was instantly intrigued. “How do I give it a different fuel?”

“You need to shift your intellectual focus,” he said. “Currently, you think mainly about yourself. You wonder why you don’t fit … and what is wrong with you.”

“That’s true,” Sienna said again, “but I’m trying to solve the problem. I’m trying to fit in. I can’t solve the problem if I don’t think about it.”

He chuckled. “I believe that thinking about the problem … is your problem.” The doctor suggested that she try to shift her focus away from herself and her own problems … turning her attention instead to the world around her … and its problems.

That’s when everything changed.

She began pouring all of her energy not into feeling sorry for herself … but into feeling sorry for other people. She began a philanthropic initiative, ladled soup at homeless shelters, and read books to the blind. Incredibly, none of the people Sienna helped even seemed to notice that she was different. They were just grateful that somebody cared.

Sienna worked harder every week, barely able to sleep because of the realization that so many people needed her help.

“Sienna, slow down!” people would urge her. “You can’t save the world!”

What a terrible thing to say.

Through her acts of public service, Sienna came in contact with several members of a local humanitarian group. When they invited her to join them on a monthlong trip to the Philippines, she jumped at the chance.

Sienna imagined they were going to feed poor fishermen or farmers in the countryside, which she had read was a wonderland of geological beauty, with vibrant seabeds and dazzling plains. And so when the group settled in among the throngs in the city of Manila—the most densely populated city on earth—Sienna could only gape in horror. She had never seen poverty on this scale.

How can one person possibly make a difference?

For every one person Sienna fed, there were hundreds more who gazed at her with desolate eyes. Manila had six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and a horrifying sex trade, whose workers consisted primarily of young children, many of whom had been sold to pimps by parents who took solace in knowing that at least their children would be fed.

Amid this chaos of child prostitution, panhandlers, pickpockets, and worse, Sienna found herself suddenly paralyzed. All around her, she could see humanity overrun by its primal instinct for survival. When they face desperation … human beings become animals.

For Sienna, all the dark depression came flooding back. She had suddenly understood mankind for what it was—a species on the brink.

I was wrong, she thought. I can’t save the world.

Overwhelmed by a rush of frantic mania, Sienna broke into a sprint through the city streets, thrusting her way through the masses of people, knocking them over, pressing on, searching for open space.

I’m being suffocated by human flesh!

As she ran, she could feel the eyes upon her again. She no longer blended in. She was tall and fair-skinned with a blond ponytail waving behind her. Men stared at her as if she were naked.

When her legs finally gave out, she had no idea how far she had run or where she had gone. She cleared the tears and grime from her eyes and saw that she was standing in a kind of shantytown—a city made of pieces of corrugated metal and cardboard propped up and held together. All around her the wails of crying babies and the stench of human excrement hung in the air.

I’ve run through the gates of hell.

“Turista,” a deep voice sneered behind her. “Magkano?” How much?

Sienna spun to see three young men approaching, salivating like wolves. She instantly knew she was in danger and she tried to back away, but they corralled her, like predators hunting in a pack.