When We Get There

Chapter 7

Ignacio finished reading his book soon after the plane took off. Night soon descended like a black tablecloth once the airplane found its way over the open ocean. After watching the sunset and the full moon rise, Ignacio flicked on the overhead light, which he liked to think was made especially for people who enjoy reading as much as himself and devoured the rest of the book. He even found some new favorite stories, which he had both mentally and physically bookmarked for later.

After finishing the final story, one that ended on a cliffhanger he didn't quite understand and was afraid he never would, he set the closed book down on the foldout tray in front of him. He tried to be as quiet as possible. Everyone around him was sleeping. One of the people in front of them had reclined back to do so, rendering him practically immobile there. In their row, Ignacio was the only one that wasn't sleeping. Across the right-hand aisle, there was a boy, head slumped on a closed window fast asleep, that Ignacio thought was close to his age. He looked the part, at least. Ignacio didn't understand why people always wanted to sleep, much less someone his age. If he and this stranger were back at home together, well, first of all, they wouldn't be strangers. Everybody knew everybody. It was only natural that they would do the same. But if they were there, and it was time for the weekend siesta, they would be playing futbol, rolling in the grass, playing on the train tracks一 anything besides sleeping or traveling. Occasionally, his parents would restrict him from going out to prevent waking the whole town, which had happened on at least one occasion. Now, he felt more restrained than those times, all stiff and cramped and wedged between two seats and the plane wall. He wanted to get off the plane already and run around, play futbol, even if it was in a place he didn't recognize.

Thinking about home brought a brief moment of nostalgia. A blunt wave of sadness followed and washed over him and, like a violent rip current, dragged him away. He remembered that last day he had spent in Urdampilleta, with his friends, the food he had eaten with his grandparents. He smiled and frowned simultaneously.

Ignacio realized he was staring at the boy. He hurriedly shifted his gaze somewhere else, anywhere else. The window. Nothing outside had changed much since the sunset. The sky remained dark, hazy, and undisturbed. It's as if the skies were more serene further away from the coast. It must have been cloudy, too, since not a single star shone in the sky. In their place, winking through the nighttime gloom like cat's eyes, were the yellowish-white lights of the mainland. Reigning supreme over all of this was the hauntingly full moon, whose white reflection stared up at them in choppy strands across the ink-colored waves. Against his will, Ignacio's mind drifted back home, out near the train tracks. If you followed those tracks south long enough, you could find this wide-open field where not a single living thing grew. He remembered when he and his friends would go there at night and stare up at the sky and see it in its original glory, untainted by trees or buildings or city lights.

You could see the true immensity of space there, the moon and stars and planets and even particulate space dust.

"You know what?" Carlos would ask all of his friends, everyone there, in those moments.

"What?" Ignacio or someone else always asked back. They already knew the answer; they'd heard it dozens of times already.

"I want to touch the sky one day. I want to feel it. I wonder what it feels like, just for a second." Everyone would make fun of him either because Carlos was being cheesy, they thought he was joking, or because they didn't understand what he meant. But now Ignacio understood.

I want to touch the sky.

Ignacio sat there for a while, sitting and thinking until he had an idea. He had wanted to put his bag away in the overhead bins to save himself some legroom, but the woman sitting at the end of their row had a rather large bag that occupied nearly the entire space. Both Ignacio and Pedro had to keep their bags tucked between their legs below the seat. Before, Ignacio had been upset about it, but now he silently thanked her as he reached down between his knees, careful not to push the seat in front of him too hard, and rummaged around in his bag until Ignacio found what he was looking for.