Don’t Let Me Go(112)
Billy sat next to her on the hood. On the driver’s side. And they looked up. Together. Grace held her hands out and made a ring, like the lens of a camera, to see if she could count the stars in just that tiny circle of sky. But even the stars through her lens-hands seemed infinite. So she set her hands in her lap again and took it in as a flabbergasting whole, breathing in deeply and then sighing.
“What’s that?” she asked after a while, pointing. There was a tiny, tiny light in the sky, moving. Not a plane. Something way, way farther away. “Is that a space ship?”
“I doubt it. Where are you looking?”
“Right there.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Right where I’m pointing. It’s real little, though.”
“Your eyes are probably better than mine.”
“It looks like it’s about a billion miles away. But it’s moving.”
“Fast?”
“No. Kind of slow.”
“Maybe it’s a satellite.”
“Oh. Maybe. But don’t they go right around the Earth? Kind of near it?”
“As distance goes, yes, that would be fair to say.”
“So if that’s a satellite, and satellites are in the orbit-thingy around the Earth…wow. Makes you wonder what else is even farther out there. You know. If we could see it.”
“Now you see what your teacher was trying to tell you.”
“Don’t break my brain again, Billy. I just got it all put back together.”
They lay side by side in silence for a time. Then Grace started to glance over her shoulder at Felipe and Clara, who were still in the front seat of the car. But she stopped herself, deciding that might be embarrassing. Depending on what they were doing.
She elbowed Billy lightly.
“Hey. Are they making out back there?”
Billy looked over his shoulder.
“No. Just looking into each other’s eyes.”
Felipe’s voice came through. “We can hear you in here, you know.”
“Lo siento, Felipe,” Grace said. “Lo siento, Clara.”
“Esta bien,” Clara called back.
They sat in silence a while longer.
“You seem pretty relaxed,” she said to Billy.
“Pretty relaxed. For me. I’ll be a lot more relaxed when we get home, of course. Don’t forget I’ve gone to the supermarket every week. For more than a year.”
“Is this the first place you’ve been that’s not the supermarket?”
“No. I went to the dentist.”
“You did? When?”
“Not too long after…Pretty early on in that year when I didn’t see you.”
“Yuck. Dentist.”
“I didn’t have too much choice.”
“So how does it feel to be so far from home?”
Billy didn’t answer for a time. Grace was beginning to wonder if he maybe never would.
Then he said, “Remember the time when we were out on my patio watching the stars? I was just now thinking…these are the same stars.”
“No way! There are so many more!”
“No. Same amount. We’re just seeing more.”
“Oh. Right. So they’re the same stars. That doesn’t really answer my question.”
“I meant it to. I was just thinking, if I’m under the same stars, then I can’t be too far from home. From a larger perspective, I mean.”
Grace wasn’t positive she knew what the word perspective meant, but she got the general idea.
“Hey. That’s good. For Billy.” They gazed a while longer, and then Grace said, “You still want to get home as fast as we can, though, huh?”
“More than you know.”
“How does it make you feel? I don’t mean being so far from home, I mean looking at all the stars there really are. How does it make you feel?”
“Hmm,” he said. “Like the world is big again. No. Not again. Like I only thought it had gotten small while I was inside, but now I see it was big the whole time, just waiting out there. Waiting for me to come back. How does it make you feel?”
“Kind of excited. But I don’t know how to say why.”
“And insignificant,” he said.
“In English, Billy.”
“Like I’m not important.”
“You are to me.”
“Thanks. Can we go home now? I’m running out of brave.”
Grace sighed theatrically.
“Oh, OK. I guess that’s about all I can expect from you for one time, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know why you put up with me.”
“It’s not easy,” she said, and jumped off the hood, silently wishing the stars goodnight. Reminding herself that when she got home, they’d all still be there. Whether she could see them from home or not.
THE END