What do the stars feel when they look at Us?

Chapter 2: Understanding

Today we went home late from school. It was a Monday. There'd be holidays soon.

Pedro and his parents lived in a tiny apartment in the middle of the city, so, as always, he said goodbye early and left for another road.

Linda and I walked the whole way home. We do that sometimes. Whenever our parents are away and no one can fetch us. Even though it takes at least an hour.

We both live just outside the city on a hill. She does further up than I, they are the only two houses around.

Linda laughed. Linda laughs a lot. And when she does, it seems like she feels all the happiness that I can't feel.

And she talks. A lot.

But not like Pedro. Pedro talks a lot about himself and that's alright. I like that. His life seems like an adventure. It seems like all the books we read during work breaks.

But Linda never talks about herself. She talks about her friends, mostly.

She has a best friend. Gina. Gina doesn't have boobs. I mean, she does, obviously, but my friends don't say it like that.

From Linda, I know that Gina has a parrot, which is..., interesting. It can say "Shit. Fuck. Cum." Linda said that Gina's dad taught that to him. Gina's dad owns a restaurant, somewhere close to where they live. She's been learning how to cook from him since she was little apparently.

Linda really admires her. Just like she admired the birds sitting on electricity pylons. And there were a lot of them on our way home.

And as the pylons got fewer and the paths slimmer we reached our destination.

"A tiny piece of heaven" is what Pedro called it. I think he was over-exaggerating quite a bit. You can't deny that the view from our homes is quite spectacular because you can literally see just about anything around you. The only things limiting your field of vision are other ridges bordering the horizon.

It was just that Pedro generally over-exaggerated everything. He called it being a hopeless romantic. And that's alright. I kind of got to like that.

Linda always just stands there, at the exact same spot. Next to a bench, next to a small memorial. And she just stares as if on every day that she lived here, she found a new spot to lay her eyes onto. A spot so fascinating that it takes her minutes to soak it all in.

And I just stand next to her, silently waiting. It's one of our rituals. Rituals that only came to existence because we've been around each other for so long.

-

As I entered the house my mom and I live in, something felt off. It was unusually dark, the lights wouldn't turn on. It's not a catastrophe because, you know, a blackout is a kind of thing that does happen once in a while.

So I called my mom and told her about it. And she told me to wait until she's home.

Power will probably be back before she is anyway.

There's something magical about irregularities like these. Because it was so dark in the house, the darkness outside seemed way brighter. And because the whole hill was without electricity, the city glowed.

I stood at our living room window and kind of felt like Linda. Maybe that's similar to what she always feels when we walk home.

I think irregular people are made for situations like these. Because that's where we fit in. Daily situations, no matter how often they happen, can become challenging without a simple reason.

There's peace in a little chaos. It's proof that the world turns.

-

Later there were knocks on the door. I walked into the kitchen, leaned onto the sink to look outside towards the entrance. To see who's there. I had stared in the other direction for minutes beforehand.

It was Linda again, with a bunch of candles in a box. She looked excited. Pale lighting from lanterns threw shadows onto her face. Her brownish-red hair looked like dark brown with thousands of miniature wildfires burning through it.

I let her in.

"I don't really want to be alone in the house right now."

She shook the candle box demonstratively.

"And I brought these!"

"Can't really send you away then, can I?"

"No, you can't."

She made her way into the living room and placed the tiny wax torches everywhere. Lit them in seconds. Just like that.

Linda came into the room and made it her own.

"I found a great song earlier, though", she said.

Linda often showed me songs. They're weird, in absolute unison. None of them were ever not weird.

"You want to show me?", I asked her.

She smiled weirdly. Smirking smiling. Heavily demonstrating wrinkle placement.

So she put it on.

And then something even weirder happened.

She started to dance along as if I wasn't in the room. To be fair, I was still on the doorstep between hallway and living room.

The song was weird. It consisted of the same rhythm and melody without any kind of lyrics or vocals for over three minutes.

It wasn't for me. But I kept standing in between hallway and living room.

-

When we were younger, Linda used to go to dance practice. And because my mom wasn't working full-time back then, she always supported Linda's parents by accompanying her. So, obviously, I did, too.

One time Linda tried to match my kneecap incident. She badly hurt herself while basically running into a wall.

I held her hand as we sat there, waiting at the reception of the emergency department. Of course, my mom had told me to.

But somehow, I can still remember the grip of her hand on mine. And how it was filled with tears. That she laid against my shoulder eventually. Back then when she was still bigger than me.

-

I entered the room. I took her hand. It weirdly still felt the same.

She moved it around gracefully and close to every beat of the music. She didn't mind me at all.

Her eyes were closed. The song faded into the background. Just like the lights surrounding us.

I think today was the first time that I ever really looked at her. Like, in detail.

Probably because of Pedro and probably because I want to understand her.

I don't know if understanding feels anything like this -

But if so, I don't mind at all.