39

By evening I was on a plane again.

The contrast was jarring. One moment I was outside my body, the next I was in a cramped cabin full of tourists. They were coming home from Italian vacations where they’d taken pictures in front of old things, eaten at overpriced restaurants, and spent most of the time on their phones. I could have been one of them.

Nobody knew I had just staged a funeral in a sea cave. Nobody knew that I was a high school dropout, my emergency credit card maxed. Nobody knew that I had absolutely zero clues about what I was going to do when I made it back stateside. And, most importantly, nobody knew that I had to say good-bye to the sleeping boy next to me when this plane touched down.

Daniel was in a Dramamine coma again. Or at least he appeared to be. His head was slumped down, chin on chest, and a single spot of drool dotting his thick lower lip. On the ride to the airport, we’d both sat shivering under a ratty blanket we found in the back of the van, too dazed to say much to each other.

We would be together on our first flight, but then we had to part ways. Daniel’s parents hadn’t been too thrilled to learn that their son was suddenly in another country. They were threatening to cut off their share of next year’s tuition if he didn’t come home right away.

All this came as a surprise to me. Somehow, I had assumed that Daniel would be coming back with me to stay at my dad’s again when our voyage was over. But even as I articulated this thought to myself, I could see it was ridiculous. My father had threatened his life. It was probably safe to say that his couch privileges had been revoked. So we had the length of an international flight to say good-bye.

Only we didn’t seem to be doing that.

Instead we were watching bad movies. One after the next, pressing play at the same time on the touchscreens attached to the seats in front of us, and staring forward like lobotomy patients. We were swilling ginger ales and eating bags of “lightly salted” peanuts. We didn’t laugh. We didn’t cry. We stared.

Then the movies were over and I was left watching Daniel drool. Grace was somewhere at the back of the plane. When we’d found out there were seats together this time, she’d wordlessly given them to Daniel and me. Maybe if she’d been closer, she could have cut the tension.

“I’ve been thinking . . .” he said suddenly. “. . . about when I go back to school.”

I had been zoning out. When my vision refocused, I saw he had one eye open.

“Jesus. Don’t do that,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Just start talking out of a deep sleep. It’s freaky.”

He opened his other eye.

“I haven’t been sleeping,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“And we have to talk about this.”

I took a deep breath. I took my earbuds out and he calmly started to talk.

“I’ve been pushing this around in my mind, and I keep coming back to two basic options. And, to be perfectly honest, they both seem a little crazy to me. The first one is that we say good-bye at the airport and that’s it. We said our farewell to Jonah, so our reason for . . . being together is gone if you think about it in one way.”

I watched his face. It betrayed nothing.

“And the second option is that I go back home, and in a couple months, back to school, and then . . .”

“Don’t say it,” I said.

“I have to say it at least once.”

“No you don’t.”

He sighed.

“Long distance,” he said.

“E-mails?” I said.

“Among other things. I mean, you have to admit, it’s how we started.”

“It’s how you started,” I said.

This stung; I could tell. But he didn’t break eye contact.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I said.

He rested his hands on his tray table. His fingernails were chewed to nothing.

“What if there were rules?” he said.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Things to make it more . . .”

He paused for longer than he needed.

“Real,” I said.

“Yes. That.”

He slumped lower in his seat and looked at the screen in front of him.

“What if we can only send one message a day, and the rest is by phone or video chat, so that there’s something more to it. And . . .”

“I can’t do it,” I said.

“Tess.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not trying to be unreasonable. I just can’t do it. It sounds like hell to me. Returning to hell.”

This quieted him. I hadn’t meant for it to come out so harsh, but there it was. I’d said it. I watched Daniel’s face fall. I took a sip of ginger ale and the bubbles stung my nostrils.

We both sat there for a moment, until the roar of the engines was the only thing I could hear. Then, eventually, Daniel turned away and I put my earbuds back in, and we sat in excruciating silence for the next hour or so as the plane made its way back to American airspace.

■   ■   ■

We landed at O’Hare. We trudged through customs. And we walked through the cheesy neon light thing on the moving walkway that I loved when I was a kid. Grace kept her distance—probably as much for her well-being as ours. We were almost to the crossroads of our gates when Daniel finally stopped and just stood there, holding his duffel bag in the fluorescent light of the airport.

He looked completely drained. I’m sure I did, too. Someday I would have to ask myself why the guys I liked were always so sad. But that was a question for another time. I walked up close to him.

“It’s been nice getting to know you, Daniel Torres,” I said. Then I paused. “Actually, it’s been kind of fucked up and strange. But nice too. Not without its nice moments. Anyway . . . thank you.”

“For what?” he said.

He seemed genuinely shocked to hear my words.

“For making all the stupid decisions that made this possible.”

He just looked at me.

“I mean it,” I said. “Without them, I’m not sure where I’d be.”

His face turned a little red, and I couldn’t tell if he was going to laugh or cry or maybe just tell me to go to hell. Instead he said:

“I just don’t know yet, Tess.”

“Know what?”

He took a step to the side and looked down.

“Who we are without him.”

I met his eyes. There was sleep in the corner of one. I had the sudden urge to wipe it away.

“Me neither,” I said.

Around us people were dragging their suitcases past us, going around the two-person obstacle in their path without a second thought. Ours was a movie that played occasionally at airports. Everyone had seen it before.

“We could find out,” I said.

He nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “We could.”

But he didn’t sound convinced.

“Letters,” I said.

“What?” said Daniel.

I wasn’t sure I had really said the word until it came out again.

“Letters,” I repeated. “I would like you to write me letters.”

His lips parted. I kept talking.

“I want you to use a pen and write things to me on a piece of paper,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what kind. And then put that paper in an envelope and put a stamp on that envelope. And send it to me. And I’ll do the same thing. For you.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I haven’t written a letter since I was a kid,” he said.

“Great,” I said. “So you know how.”

He looked at his phone. He needed to get to his gate. His next flight would be boarding soon.

“What if they’re terrible?” he said. “What if they’re so terrible, I can’t send them?”

I closed my eyes.

“Then you can’t,” I said.

We looked at each other one more time. This was the part in the movie where we were supposed to fall into each other’s arms. But I guess we didn’t get the script because he just turned and walked off toward his gate.

I watched him join in with the other travelers. Some were walking like the undead. Others were seated at gates nearby, tapping screens, watching real movies, reading books. They were staring wide-eyed at the stories they’d chosen, looking for a way to pass the time, until they arrived at their final destination.