Chapter Thirty-Seven
HECTOR
She can’t possibly be inviting me in for that. Memories issue forth, as if they happened a million years ago—from the first night we kissed. A lot of kissing. Is this what she’s inviting me in for? Turns out, what she wants is way more intimate.
She wants me to talk.
She’d asked me about my dad while we were walking. And now that we’re squished in side by side, she asks again. “Tell me about your father.”
I don’t know why she cares. All I know is that the reason I’m here is so that I can leave him, my uncle, and my mother behind. Far, far behind. I can choose to talk about them on my own terms, or never ever again. Which is why I’m pissed that she’s insisting on this. I don’t want to be the thing that distracts her from herself. I don’t want to be the magical, broken boy who heals all her own problems. Maybe it’d be better to be in the freezing cold out there.
I stare at the tent seams, being puffed tight by the wind outside. “Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” she says, which is also infuriating. Satisfying her idle curiosity is not my responsibility. I already told her enough as it is, about how I’m constantly feeling torn by who and what I am. I cross my arms and close my eyes, hoping she’ll drop it, when she says, “No, I do know. Because you’re wearing this thing, like a cloak. It’s so heavy. Sometimes, it looks like you can’t even breathe.”
Silence, and then…
I exhale loudly.
The silence cracks with hoots and laughs, from both of us. After we catch our breaths, she sighs.
“I won’t hurt you.” She pauses and thinks. “I won’t hurt you like that,” she adds. God. What does she mean? That she won’t tear me to pieces or drown me in my sleep? Or psychologize me to death? She closes her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve no right to ask. I’ve no right.” She turns onto her side to face me, and the curve of her hip makes her sleeping bag rise in the middle. She uses her hands, palms together, as a pillow. Just like a child. “Good night, Hector.”
“Good night, Anda.”
Her breathing becomes regular, and I feel the warmth of her body next to mine, while the bitter cold seeps in through the wall of the tent on the other side. A weird gradient of death and life.
And in the middle of it is me. One guy, trapped on an island with a beautiful girl who’s willingly one millimeter away, and he’s just given her the emotional Heisman for the night.
I suck.
...
“Come with me.”
“Wha—?”
I only now realize I finally did fall asleep. It’s still dark out. Pitch-black. Anda is nudging my ribs insistently and tugging at my wrist.
“Come,” she says again. “The clouds are leaving. I want to show you something.”
My body feels like it’s been squashed by a Mack truck. My legs are sore, and I’m still so exhausted. After all, I’m barely over being sick, and we just hiked all day. But Anda won’t take no for an answer. She tugs and tugs, and I wipe my sleep-heavy eyes and crawl out of the tent, groaning. She leads me slightly out of the campground to a higher elevation. She’s taking me to the peak of Sugar Mountain at what, midnight?
“Look,” she says. Her head is back and she’s gazing at the sky. I look, too, but it’s still wispy with a film of gray.
“It’s cloudy.”
“Oh, wait.”
She sweeps her arm overhead, as if she were polishing the sky with her palm. When I look up again, it’s clear. Holy shit, not just clear.
A wave of incandescent green and purple is smeared across the sky in a thick ribbon.
“Is that…?”
“Yes. The aurora borealis. It’s caused by a collision of solar wind and magnetospheric-charged particles in the thermosphere.”
“Right. That.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Once,” I say. “When I was a kid.”
We just stare at the unearthly color for a long, long time. She slips her fingers into mine, and I tighten my grip on her hand. It’s so small, so thin. She shivers a little, and I pull her closer. Seeing this thing reminds me of how alone I am. Of how alone I could be, if I wanted.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the aurora shift. It reaches the horizon, and the ribbon of color changes just so. It looks like a figure, standing on the edge of the universe.
It’s absolutely stunning.
I glance at Anda, wide-eyed, giving her an Are you seeing what I’m seeing look.
Anda sees it. She frowns. It’s not beautiful to her, whatever it is. When I look back, it’s just the same thick ribbon of light in the sky again. I rub my eyes. What the hell?
“Did you—” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“It’s getting colder. You’re tired. We should go back.”
We crawl back into the tent. It doesn’t seem quite as cold now, so we lie on top of our sleeping bags. Anda throws her leg casually over mine and closes her eyes, once again using her sandwiched hands as a pillow. I watch her until her breaths come shallow and regular. She’s dead asleep.
I wait for what feels like another ten or fifteen minutes, just watching her. Her eyelashes are a dark fringe, and her eyeballs zigzag occasionally as her slumber deepens. I wonder what she dreams of. Then again, maybe I don’t want to know.
I take a few huge, deep breaths. And then I whisper, “My father is six feet, four inches tall. He loves sportfishing, building model airplanes, and criticizing Hollywood war movies.” I lower my voice. “And he hates that I was ever born.”
Anda doesn’t move. She’s still unconscious, and I don’t know whether to be glad or sad that she didn’t hear me. But just as I start to drift off, I take one last sleepy glance at her face and see something shiny.
A wet streak on her face. And yet she’s still sleeping. How odd.
I don’t wake her.