What Remains Here

Chapter 13

"Well, when are you guys starting?"

"Now?" she said, with a bit of a laugh. "It's crazy that I came up with all of this and totally forgot to figure out when we should start. That's why you're here. I know we have to start early, but I've thought about this in such ambiguous terms that I haven't finalized all the details."

"What about creating, like, protocols for diplomacy, like what we should do if we meet new people, what we should offer up, and, like, how we should vote on diplomatic stuff. I don't know because I agree that it's hard to create stuff when we haven't met another group, but I don't know. I wish that I had done Model UN or something because I'd probably know that better."

"No, I think those are great ideas. Let me just jot these down on my invisible notebook," Mira said, goofily gesturing in the air with an exaggerated pen motion, which made me smile a bit in amusement. "We definitely need to train to be on the same page so that everything runs smoothly during first contact–"

"Why does it sound like we're talking about aliens?" I said a bit jokingly. "'First contact' and, like, creating a communication protocol, as if we don't speak the same language, and all that–"

Mira laughed a bit. "I know. It's so weird, and I feel terrible laughing about it, but it's hard to figure out what people are thinking about these days. I just don't want to over-create protocols, and strip away all sense of humanity. We've all got fundamentally the same values, even if all this wants to pit us against each other."

"Wow, that's very hopeful. Definitely crazier than anything you said last night."

"Okay, what is this crazy thing that I said last night?" she said with a smile. "Did it have something to do with Charles?"

My face immediately fell because she wasn't supposed to know that I had opened Charles' letter since I'm certain that I heard her snoring loudly last night, inebriated to the point where anything less than a volcano erupting in our background wouldn't wake her up. Of course, she could have been faking sleeping, but that's not something she'd do, or maybe, because I was hallucinating from being up close to 22 hours, I hallucinated her sleeping.

That means she would have seen me crying over the letter, and everything will be awkward from now until forever (or however long I have left) because there's anger and there's crying. It's easier to forget and brush off the former, but the latter lingers in the air of every conversation in people's words and the concern in their eyes, carrying the burden of your grief in their memories. It's like Mira has bigger dreams to worry about, and the most selfish thing that I could do to her is take her energy away from it to worry about me, even if I didn't mean to do it.

Even though I managed to regain my composure after a solid handful of seconds being totally shell-shocked, the best answer I could offer was a stuttered, "Huh?"

I could tell that she noticed my visible reaction before she turned around and pointed at the torn envelope cover that I had left on the countertop in my exhaustion and sadness from yesterday. "I noticed that it was out this morning. I thought it might've been some good news because things were so great yesterday, but I–"

"It was pretty good. He just told me about his family's plan for moving, just to provide a guide for us in case we have to move and let me know that they're going to be alright. And some cool puns. That's all," I lied, putting on my cheeriest voice and breathing a heavy sigh of relief inside.

Because I didn't want to talk about this with her, I rapidly pivoted to a different topic. "Also, the crazy thing that you were telling to me, at least, was that I should dance with Caspian on the floor, which was kinda absurd, you know."