Chapter Twenty-Five Thiago
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thiago
Remember the movie Interstellar? You have to.
That amazing Christopher Nolan flick with Matthew McConaughey traveling through space to try to find a new home for mankind.
It has all these crazy plot twists and incredible sequences and almost everything happens somewhere far off in the galaxy.
When I saw it, I remembered there was one thing that got my attention.
It didn’t have to do with the plot, per se, it was about this one scene that everybody seems to remember, just one: when Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey are supposed to find Miller’s planet, which is orbiting on the edge of a black hole, making time slow down; an hour there is like seven years on Earth.
Can you imagine walking on Miller’s planet and coming back to find your mother, your children, or your grandkids seven years older?
It would be insane, right?
Well, that’s what it was like for me, as if I’d been forced to go spend the night on Miller’s planet, as if someone had said, Get some rest, pal, don’t worry about anything, we’ll wake you up soon and you can get back to your normal life.
My normal life?
But why would I go back when I was so comfortable?
Why would I want to leave when I had her with me, by my side?
“You want to play again?”
I opened my eyes, and there she was. Her blue eyes, her blond hair. She was still just five years old, which didn’t make any sense, or maybe it did, if I told myself this was how things happened on Miller’s planet.
“Again?” I asked, drawing the word out, which made her smile even wider.
“But this time, I get to hide,” she said, her eyes wide as she ran off.
“Fine.” I smiled. “One…two…three!”
It was an endless pleasure, playing with her again after all those years without seeing her, after thinking I would never see her again.
We had our little routine now, our pattern. For days, we’d been walking around that nameless lake, then eating macaroni and cheese (she never wanted anything else), then playing cards, hide-and-seek, or having tea parties with her dolls. Sometimes, if she was in the mood, we even shot some hoops.
It was like a retreat, and I was enjoying it. I had needed it, I’d needed to make up for lost time with my little sister, the sister who had died so many years ago. I’d never had a chance to say goodbye.
I used the time with her to talk about the day she was taken from us. She could barely remember anything. I cried and begged her to forgive me. She kept asking for Mom, constantly. She told me she missed her, especially when she went to sleep. But otherwise, she was happy where she was.
But where was she?
In my head, it was Miller’s planet, but that was because I watched too much sci-fi. We did have to be somewhere, though, right?
Did I ever tell myself we were in heaven? Of course I did. I think that was the first thing that went through my head when I saw her, but come on—where was everybody else? Were we the only ones who lived there, in heaven, in that other world, or whatever you want to call it?
That was impossible.
But since I didn’t have answers, I stopped asking questions.
I liked being there. It gave me space to think—and to start healing, even if it was alongside the person who’d made my heart ache in the first place.
Was I dead?
There was a moment when I started to think so. I even started accepting it. But then, why was it that I still had dreams, and why was she always in them?
Her, the girl I was in love with. So in love that I kept wanting to go back, even when Lucy was curled up on my lap. At times, I thought I heard her, not often, but I did. Somehow, I always felt her near me.
I could sense my mother and brother, too. I heard Taylor’s apologies so many times I knew them by heart. And I wanted to tell him to forget me, that he didn’t need to ask for my forgiveness. I was fine, I was with Lucy, I was…happy.
But was I?
Deep down, I think I always knew I could go back, and that’s why I was calm. Calm especially with regard to my family, my mother. I knew how much she’d love to hear all about Lucy, how it would ease her soul to know that her daughter was safe and sound.
As for Kam, I could remember one time when she screamed a bunch of things at me.
It had only been a few days ago. Or at least, it felt like a few days.
I know when that happened, I had really wanted to go back and tell her how I felt.
I wanted to apologize for not keeping my word, for letting her down.
And I wanted to ask her to wait—just wait for me a little longer.
That was the only time I felt closer to there than to here, closer to my life on Earth than on Miller’s planet, but the feeling lasted only a second.
Then I stopped hearing her voice.
She was gone.
And it was strange, because her voice was like a thread that kept me connected to my life on Earth, but the thread was getting thinner and thinner, and I started to just want to stay where I was. I was comfortable there, and I had my sister to keep me company.
Earth had given me lots of headaches, I had come up against so many obstacles in my path, and then there was the shooting at school, which had ruined everything. Why should I go back there?
Then I heard her voice—her beautiful voice echoed again somewhere. Or maybe it was all in my head?
Thiago, please, come back. Come back to me, please.
I looked up into the sky, and a drop fell on my face.
Did it rain on Miller’s planet?
“Those are tears,” my sister said.
She had come out of nowhere and taken my hand.
“Tears?” I asked.
She nodded. “They’re hers. Kami’s,” Lucy said, as if she had just seen her the day before, or as if she were seeing her right now.
“How do you know?”
“I just do,” she said, shrugging. “She wants you to go back.”
At first, I didn’t say anything. I just let the rain soak my face, my hair, my clothes, and then I knew it. “It was you, wasn’t it?” I asked.
Lucy smiled. “What do you mean, it was me?”
I kneeled and looked her straight in the eyes. “It was you who guided me through the school. It was you who got Kam and her brother out of there. Am I right?”
Lucy nodded.
“I knew I could never be that lucky on my own.”
“They shot you in the head,” my sister said.
“And yet I’m still alive…here…with you…on Miller’s planet…”
“Where?” she asked, laughing.
I didn’t reply, and she continued, “This isn’t a planet, dummy.”
“What is it, then, smarty-pants?” I asked.
After a second without speaking, she answered, “I guess it’s just the place you were supposed to be during this time.”
I didn’t understand what she meant, but I didn’t ask for an explanation either. We just watched the rain, quietly sitting next to each other.
“You’re going to leave, aren’t you?” she asked.
I looked into her blue eyes and hesitated. “I don’t know…”