TIFITY

May I have this dance?

The bond Evangeline and I had grown immeasurably fast after I told her about "the bruises stuff". It was as if confessing such a huge secret made us get closer, just as it happened when she told me about her suffering from anorexia. We were aware that sharing our concerns and problems wouldn't solve everything magically, but we at least felt we had somebody who would listen to us no matter what we had to say. I had never felt so loved by a friend before, and I can say I directly could feel that she worried and cared about me. To be honest, it was difficult for me to trust people and believe they had some sort of affection towards me, but I never had any doubts when it came to Evangeline. I was so lucky (for once) to have come by such an amazing person. Summarising, life was still shit, but Evangeline's presence made it much better.

Many of my greatest memories are starred by her. I can recall we once were just sitting on a bench while listening to the background music. Tensaya was dancing so graciously next to us. The melody was slow but so pleasant at the same time. I knew Evangeline loved dancing with her whole heart. The truth was that she barely had time or space to practice, so, although I was the clumsiest at it, I decided to ask her the question straight away: "excuse me, mademoiselle, may I have this dance?". We both took it as a joke, but she looked me in the eye and gave me her hand as an affirmative response. A little and shy smile could be seen being drawn on her face, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't smiling as well. I had never seen my friend looking so happy. It was wonderful to see her beautiful smile grow along with her contagious laugh caused by my remarkable clumsiness. Seconds after, we fell to the floor because of me being the worst dancer, but we couldn't help laughing so hard that our eyes were even tearing. I can confirm that was one of the best moments of my life, along with this other thing that happened two days after.

We had asked Tensaya to change the music to God is a dancer and Evangeline was dancing her heart out when she stopped all of a sudden. I had no clue why she did, nor why she came to me right after. But I soon would discover the reason why. "You said we could be whatever we wanted here, didn't you Al?", she asked me out of nowhere. I was surprised by the question, but I nodded after a couple of seconds or so. Then, she just smiled and went to tell something to the little genie. She whispered so I couldn't hear anything, clever move because I was all ears. Right after telling him whatever she was thinking of doing, she went back to dancing until the music stopped, something that had never happened before. I was feeling so lost when a grand white piano appeared unexpectedly at the top of the hill. 

"Come here", Evangeline said. I was so mesmerized by the beauty of the instrument, that I couldn't help but stare at it. "I asked Tensaya to draw a piano in the notebook so you could finally play something and show me how talented you are Al". I felt my world falling when these words came out of my friend's mouth. It was true that I'd always wanted to play the piano, but I forgot to tell her I didn't know how to do so. In my defence, I have to say that I thought of it as obvious, but that's not the thing. "Um... I'm afraid to tell you I cannot play it for you Evangeline", I said all ashamed. What was a surprise for me was that she already knew about it. "Just try", she begged me. I had this feeling she had an ace up her sleeve, but I could not tell what it was. Being all clueless, I stepped towards the piano and sat down on its bench. I let my fingertips touch each key on the board as carefully as possible. A feeling of satisfaction invaded my soul as I felt each one of them and a desire to play such a masterpiece overrun me. "Go ahead", Evangeline said after noticing the fear I had to make a fool in my eyes.

"Alexis is the best pianist". If I had known Tensaya had written down this previous sentence, I surely wouldn't have been so anxious to play Für Elise on that grand piano. It seemed as if Beethoven himself was playing his bagatelle. My fingers were moving by themselves and I couldn't help but feel extremely happy about it. I felt every note running through my veins as a feeling of euphoria took over me. The moment I played the last note and separated my hands from that majestic piano, I realized tears were falling down my cheeks. I was such a sensitive person and my emotional self was left clear. It was one of the best experiences I had ever had, and, once again, I had to thank Evangeline for it.

*****

We spent day after day in Tifity. We would just lay down on the grass and look up to the sky to see the moving cloudy animals. It felt amazing when we did so, it was very refreshing and calming. Another thing that we loved to do was walk through the forest of the wonie trees. It took us a while to try them though, although they looked so tasty. I wanted Evangeline to take her time, and when she had decided to eat one, I thought we'd just do so together. I have to say that the day she tried a wonie, I felt like the proudest mum ever, knowing that eating was an insanely difficult challenge for my friend. However, we sadly never got to try the Oreos due to lack of time. The fact of the matter was that we would have to stop travelling to Tifity at some point. Not because we wanted to, of course not, but because of the black hole in the door waning. Every time we crossed the door, the portal to our dimension became even smaller. I guess this happened due to an error in my calculations. Even now, I'm not sure if it was the same favourable mistake that led to all of this, but I felt the need to find a remedy so the hole wouldn't close forever. I had this hunch of it happening sooner or later, but I lost nothing for trying. 

I dedicated myself to revise all the calculations one by one with the only aim of finding out which the mistake was. I would be able to sort out the black hole problem. I must admit I was afraid to find it out because that meant I'd have to repeat every calculation all over again. I couldn't stop asking myself what would have happened if I had got everything right; would Tifity exist? Or would it just be the fruit of our imagination? I was afraid of checking all the equations I had solved, that favourable mistake being the main reason why I got to create a new parallel universe to escape to. I was so committed to the job that I spent 19 mornings, one after the other, looking for the error. With all the calculations adjusted, I decided it would be better to wait until we went back to Tifity to tell Evangeline everything. I wish I'd known what destiny had planned for us.