He leans just a little closer; I feel it in his breath on my cheek and in every piece of me that’s touching any part of him.
The lights begin to come back on, slowly. I’m still holding on, holding on, my face tipped back, looking up at Elio.
“Sora,” he says, gently, and then when I don’t let go, he looks around. People are watching again. And starting to laugh. He lets go and I step back.
Mercifully, the room plunges back into darkness. Someone yells at someone else to fix the lights. It’s common, the power shorting out inside the Globe.
I have to leave.
I didn’t think one touch would undo me.
I think I might hear Elio behind me but I don’t stop. I hurt too much. I feel too much. This is dangerous. My father succeeded because he shut himself off before he left. I have to do that too. Though he doesn’t know it, Elio has put everything at risk.
The auxiliary power has come back on by the time I reach the transports, so I can get home. The night sky of the Globe throbs dull gray. We’ve never seen a real sky. I slam the door of the transport shut and it begins to move.
And I let myself look at other truths as I slide along in the dark.
My father lied to me. He never intended to come back to me. He never went back to the time of the Beautiful People. He didn’t believe in them. He had no faith. He went back to when he first met her. My mother. Just to be with her, even if it was for only a handful of moments.
Someone might say that was beautiful.
I don’t think so at all.
I don’t know what he planned to do. To stop her from having me, perhaps. I wondered for a long time if I would someday vanish, if he could change the future when he walked back into the past. But I didn’t go anywhere.
I’m here, but I’ve forgotten how to take up space. How to think about anything except going away.
I couldn’t change his mind. So I didn’t try to change anyone else’s mind, either. I let them think I’d been Outside too, and when they looked at me, I gave them the hard, flat stare of someone who has seen too much. When Elio or any of the others tried to talk to me, I didn’t answer back, or I said words that meant nothing at all.
What has happened to me is my fault too.
I can’t stand to be touched anymore. It breaks me.
I have to be healed. I have to be loved.
And the Beautiful People can do it.
The transport stops.
It’s dark inside my apartment, but that doesn’t matter. I walk to the little table, open the drawer, unlock the box with the key I wear around my neck. I don’t need light to do any of it. The sphere rolls perfectly into the hollow of my hand.
I know I can leave. It’s all I know how to do.
I think of the year: 2011. That will be the one. I look at an image from that time. Not the one of the wedding; I’m worried that if I choose that one, I’ll fly straight past the cake and the people and into that sky full of sunset and burn up before I’ve seen anything. Instead, I look at a picture of one of the Beautiful People. She walks across a red carpet and everyone stands near her, stretching out their ha
nds, screaming, calling to her, while she turns a beatific smile upon them.
I pick up the little glass world that my father gave me before he took what was left of my own.
This is how you leave.
You sit. You are quiet. You close your eyes. You think. You put the stone in your hand and hold it. There is no short way to this, no magical spell. Rushing will do you no good at all.
And not many people can do this. There is always something that holds them back and ties them down.
Not me.
I’m gone.