Chapter 8: Aftermath

It is evening and the sun is beginning to set when my mom drops me off at my house. I feel exhausted, almost dizzy, a dense, foreboding pressure, centered at my forehead. Must be getting a headache. The rays of the setting sun feel surreal, as if the sun has no right to its methodical daily rhythm. Not today. Not while I’m feeling this discombobulated. Someone should really tell the sun to take a fucking break every once in a while. To give me some time to catch up to reality. Just a few hours, really. Nothing major. Just a bit of time to catch my breath and process the thing that just happened. Someone should really make sure I’m okay and find my way back to normality. Someone. 

I open the door, finding Nate and Sarah at the dinner table. They’re having sandwiches. Fancy sandwiches, if I know my friends and housemates, with fresh vegetables and a homemade sauce. Befuddling, really, how much time we spend on food preparation. I slump my body into a chair facing them, my body moving towards the comfort of their proximity without any need for relay through conscious thought. I take a deep breath out, involuntarily, collapsing into my chair. “Hi Leia”, Nate says warmly. I feel grateful for his warmth, his solidity, physical presence. I can feel the warmth emanating from his human body, only a few inches away from mine. My body feels cold in comparison to his warmth. Sarah wordlessly cuts her sandwich in half, sliding one of the pieces over to where I’m sitting. It makes my stomach growl, causing me to notice that I have, in fact, failed to eat anything all day besides a slice of chocolate cake at grandma’s house. I vaguely remember what the cake looked like (brown) but have no memory whatsoever of what it tasted like. Nate puts his hand on my arm, anchoring me like a balloon on a string that was just about to fly away.

“How is your grandmother?” Sarah asks, her tone quiet and a bit worried. I feel comforted by my friend’s concern. It’s good to have friends who care, I think to myself. Then I raise my hands in a shrug, trying to indicate the bewildered uncertainty I feel in response to her question. “Not sure.” I say after a long few seconds of collective confusion. “She’s home.” I guess they already knew that. But somehow it’s the best summary of grandma’s state I’m capable off. Maybe my brain is simply in information overload on this question, the question of how grandma is. Maybe that’s why it’s leaving me hanging now, without access to any normalcy-compatible statements I could make. Part of me is looking over the last few hours, trying to piece together the experience into a summarizable external perspective. “She released herself from the hospital, against the advice of the doctors,” I say. “But she’s in a lot of pain. My mom is really worried. She didn’t want to take her painkillers”. Sarah nods, reassuringly, as I continue to ramble off all the facts I know about the situation. Nate looks at me warmly, his large green eyes full of compassion. 

We finish our sandwiches in companionable silence, my friends and I, sitting around the dinner table. There isn’t more I know how to say about grandma and both of them are attuned enough to avoid switching to another topic. They must have been talking about something before I dropped in on their dinner, but now the grandma topic is heavy in the air and other topics are yielding to its significance. After dinner I remember that I still have two bottles of sparkling water in my backpack, a forgotten sickbed gift that grandma missed out on. I pour each of us a glass, enjoying the slightly bitter taste of the carbonation and the uneasy tingling it induces in my throat and belly. Sarah, who has choir practice on Monday nights, gets up first. She puts the empty dishes into the sink, before giving me a long hug. “I see you later Leia”, she says sympathetically. “Hang in there, okay?” I nod, hugging her back tightly. 

“Do you want company?” Nate asks, after Sarah has left, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the living room couches. I nod. I do want company. Not sure if I am going to be good company, but overall I’d rather not be alone right now. I slouch down on the couch next to Nate, facing him, my knees pulled into my chest. He turns to face me, his warm body still radiant. His gaze is steady as he looks at me. My own body is no longer cold but has become transparent, somehow, as if it’s made out of a clear, see-through substance. “How are you really, Leia?” he says, his eyes piercing. They look like green crystals. Emeralds. His voice is a little rough, as if he, also, isn’t quite comfortable with the intimacy of the question. As if he knows that there’s a box here, a box that could be opened, but once opened can’t be closed again. I sigh. The space between feels like it’s made of the same transparent substance. Like water one could swim through. Somehow it makes him feel closer. His eyes meet mine again, the piercing green mesmerizing. Like he knows the choice he’s putting in front of me. Like he knows… me. My shoulders start trembling around my legs, shaking, really, as if my body has finally decided to let go of its altered state. I close my eyes and hug my legs tighter. “Nate”, I say. He nods at me, encouragingly. I take a deep breath, making the choice. “I think something really weird is happening to me Nate.” 

It takes the better part of an hour, to explain even some of the basic parts. Mara. Meeting with Julian. The weird dissolving, the felt senses of other people’s minds. Nate is an attentive listerner, gentle and attuned. He knows when to make eye contact and when to look away, to give me space to work out my thoughts. When I tell him about grandma, her pain, he puts his hands on my knees. Comforting. Reassuring. Like he’s giving me some of his energy, to keep going. “Wow”, he says, when I’m finished with my story. “Wow.” Then he’s silent, long seconds of Nate silence. It’s not an entirely uncomfortable silence, but it’s also by no means comfortable. “Do you think I’m crazy”, I say, fishing for his response. Any response. He shakes his head. “No”, he says. “No. I…” he lets the sentence trail out, unfinished. The air between us feels tense. Vibratory. My body is still shaking intermittently, a big, full body tremor through my upper body that leaves me feeling both relieved and vulnerable. “You what?” I ask, impatiently. He shakes his head. “I don’t know if I fully get what’s happening for you”, he continues. “But I think I can sort of feel it.” I cock my head at him curiously, wanting him to say more. “You seem different”, he says. “Like you’re more real somehow. Like you have more detail.” I nod, slowly. “Like the forest”, he says. “The forest makes me feel this way. Like my vision is better, has more detail.”

At some point during hour two of conversation, Nate makes us two cups of tea. I’m still shaking, and he puts my cup on the couch table, rather than handing it to me. “Leia”, he says, his voice serious. “This feels important. This whole thing.” I nod. In acknowledgement. Or maybe agreement. It does feel important. Or maybe it fgets to feel important now, now that I have an ally in the chaos of it all. “Yeah”, I say. “What do you think we should do?” He thinks for a while. “Do you think they’d train us?” He asks. “Mara and Julian?” I think for a moment, then nod. “Yeah”, I say. “I think so.” Us. Train us. Somehow, in the last two hours this whole thing has turned from a me thing into an us thing. And somehow that makes it feels exciting. Exhilarating. “I will text him”, I say, and then I do just that. Just like that.