I'll Be Your Friend in the Daylight Again

[Maraoone]

((↻))

It was fifteen minutes ago, and Mattie Wilkinson was sat across from the girl.

He sat close to the fire, knees against his chest. A too-sparse blanket of warmth radiated from the light between them, threadbare enough that it left him chilled to the bones still.

His eyes shifted from the fire to the girl. The orange glow dimmed and flashed erratically, the edge of the darkness encroaching on, retreating from them.

He drummed his fingers for one, two seconds. Nervous habit. He cleared his throat.

"What's your power?" he asked.

She narrowed her eyes. Her gaze focused on the fire, instead of him.

"I told you this already."

His fingers drummed once more, kicking up dust.

"You hesitated." The words came out matter-of-factly. He was just testing the grounds here. Seeing what'd get answers and what wouldn't.

"Hesitated," she repeated, the syllables coming out unsteadily like chicken bones drawn from the mouth. "What do you mean? My English is... not best."

"You... waited," he clarified. Tone neutral. "You took too long. Like you were making it up."

Her eyes flickered up at him, a flash of defiance. "You think I'm a liar?"

A lump formed in his throat suddenly. He couldn't swallow it down.

"I- I'm saying—"

■

In, out, in, out, in, out went the air in his chest.

Mattie stared wide-eyed at the star-flecked sky above, taking a few moments just to get back to himself before he turned his head. Andrew and the tiger boy, Toma, he believed his name was, were still stood around the vicinity, eyes on the horizon for any potential interlopers. On the watch, like he and the girl had been fifteen minutes ago. And, the girl, she was still huddled in her sleeping bag, same as Mattie was. Asleep.

He hadn't ruined everything yet.

He turned back to the sky, let his breath get down to normal at a steady pace, until all that was left was steady streams of water vapor spiraling off from his mouth into the night air.

The thing with his gift was it felt real. He'd set it off on purpose, but if he got just a bit too involved, then he'd forget he was having a flashback in the first place. Something more tangible than a daydream.

But that, too, was the upside of it all; he hadn't ruined everything. He had all the chances in the world to get some answers from the girl.

It was curiosity, he thought. Important for escaping, he told himself, if the cops couldn't get to them, God forbid. But more than anything, it just, it felt like there were holes, her answer had seemed a bit too convenient. But, like, he couldn't say for certain. And he hated that, not having an answer. Being stuck in the in-between of truth and fiction. So, he was gonna get himself some clarity. Wasn't like it'd harm anyone, would it?

Well, if tiger boy tried to attack him in the middle of one of his flashbacks, he wouldn't know until there were claws at this throat. But, the guy had seemed a lot calmer, almost jovial, in the hours since, so he felt like it was a risk he could take. A test of trust..

He made sure the boys were still in their positions, far away from him, before he returned.

He closed his eyes.

↻

The girl was across the fire.

He looked at her, and chose his next words carefully. Spoke them slowly, deliberately, the same way an intruder would take steps in the dark to not make a noise.

"Tell me more about your power," he said.

She shifted, fidgeted a bit. Spoke to the fire, rather than him.

"What do you want to know?"

He paused for a few precious seconds, wasted them thinking.

"How did you find out about it?" he asked eventually. "Your power, I mean."

She continued looking into the fire, wasting away more seconds before she responded.

"I learn about it when I am a child. I see the aeroplane, and I hear words. I think it is someone talking to me, but it is only the aeroplane."

Basically the same story she told earlier. Just mixed around a little.

Her eyes flicked upward, looking at Mattie. "What is your power?"

A lump went down his throat, for some reason. Didn't like being put on the spot much himself. He could lie, he thought. But then, in the three, four seconds he'd allow himself to think, he couldn't come up with a good enough story to sell.

"I have good hindsight."

He'd settle for the truth.

He chuckled to himself.

"I choose a memory, any memory, and I can go back and do anything," he continued. "Answer all my what-ifs."

He, too, spoke his words into the fire.

"Am I making any sense or?"

A pause.

"You can go back in time?" she asked.

"Only in my head. And only for a minute, at most."

A slight frown settled on her face, a slight deflation. "You cannot go back? Tell us all not to get on the bus?" she asked, the last word rhyming with loose.

He laughed at the question, no hint of mirth in his expression.

"Nah."

"Sad," she said. Her gaze settled onto the fire again, for their last few seconds. "It is a good gift. I wish I would have it."

He smiled.

■

His lips were still curled upwards when he came back.

The girl could open up. She hadn't seemed so settled so far in this reality. Not even when she slept.

His smile faded a bit when he remembered he'd gotten it the wrong way around, in the flashback. She was supposed to tell him her gift, not vice versa.

He closed his eyes again.

Another try.

↻

His eyes were locked with Cecilia's this time around. He felt uncomfortable, doing this. Like he was performing empathy more than enacting it, feeling it.

But he only had so long to worry, anyways.

"What happened up there, if you don't mind my asking?" That was why there was any doubt in the first place, right? Because of the position she'd been in earlier, all scared and at the mercy of someone else. So, why not start there? he thought. Maybe get some headway there.

"Why was tiger boy"—he gestured to a figure slumbering next to the fire, wrapped up in a jacket—"attacking you?"

"I don't know," she said in a hushed tone. "I have scissors, to protect. He tell me he wants them, and he try to take them. I stab him, and then he... he jump on me. I think... he will kill me."

She didn't spare the tiger boy a single glance the entire time she spoke. Instead, her hand rubbed against a red splotch on her arm.

He wasn't sure whose blood it was.

He scratched the back of his head. Stared at the ground.

"I'm sorry."

He allowed himself a few heartbeats, an inhale and an exhale.

"I'm glad you're here still," he said.

She looked up at him wide-eyed. "Why?"

He blinked at her a few times.

"Because I... don't want you dead?"

A few more blinks.

"Sorry, did I say something wrong?"

Her eyes seemed wider still. She shook her head rapidly.

"It is not wrong, it is just... surprised. I do not think... people here will care about me."

Huh.

"I don't..."

Mattie didn't have many friends. Or any, really. But, he didn't have enemies either. To all the other kids in school, he was just another guy in the hall.

Mattie was scared, of course. He was scared that the terrorists would make good on their noontime promise and blow their collars up. He was scared Isabella's bug swarm would somehow keep growing until it swallowed them all. He was scared of things getting heated. There was an alternate timeline, a timeline he had no plans of visiting, where Mattie had listened to his gut and not intervened, an alternate timeline where the girl wasn't across the fire from him.

But, it was just that. He was scared his classmates would lose control, but he wasn't scared of his classmates. He still had some basic trust in their humanity.

What was it like to live without that?

What happened to her?

"I care about you," he blurted out. He blurted it out, and it felt absolutely like the right thing to hear. Like what she needed to hear from someone.

"I want you to know that," he continued. "I care about you."

A moment or two passed. Her eyes met with his.

"What is my name?"

Her name?

Her name.

"Uh."

She shook her head in disgust.

"Mentiroso. It is Cecilia. I am Cecilia Moreno. You do not know me, so how can you say you care for me? You are not knowing anyth—"

■

↻

The next time he got to this point in the conversation, he got it right.

"Cecilia."

The pupils in her eyes dilated ever so slightly. And, all at once, all that defiance and fire and tension bubbling behind her expression faded away, just like that.

Eventually, she said, in a voice barely audible above the desert breeze, "I... I don't think anyone will know."

■





↻

"Cecilia, right?"

They were across the fire again. Back at the start.

She jerked her gaze towards him, wide-eyed. And then she nodded. "...Si."

"Okay," he replied.

He took in a deep breath. Exhaled steadily.

"Before I say anything else, I just want you to know this. I care about you, like I care for everyone. I want us all to make it out of here. Got it?"

She nodded less surely. Some of the muscles in her face pulled taut slightly.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay," he repeated.

Another deep breath.

"And, I know you were in a tough situation earlier... you were fighting for your life. So there's no judgement from me. None at all. But I need you to tell me."

A lump went down his throat.

"Is your gift what you said it was?"

Her posture stiffened, just a little.

"Why are you asking?"

Chills ran down his shoulders.

"Because if we're to make it out of here, I need to know whether you can talk to those planes or not."

His fingers drummed against the sand.

"It'll be our secret," he continued. "No one else will know."

Cecilia's eyes scanned him up and down. They locked onto his gaze. "You do not trust me?"

"I trust you," he answered. "But I also know I'd say anything, anything if I were pinned to the ground by someone twice my size."

He looked right back at her.

"Again, our secret."

Her eyes flicked to the sleeping forms of their two companions. Her voice dropped to a low whisper.

"If I am lie, I will be killed. You think I do not know this? There is no secret."

"..."

Why are you asking? she asked him. Not 'My gift is what I said it was.' Why are you asking?

Cecilia didn't trust anyone. She didn't even expect anyone to know her name. She was trapped in a country much different than wherever she'd come from, among classmates she didn't even know, where there was every incentive to harm and betray.

She'd told him everything he needed to know, he thought. As much as he possibly could.

So, he said, "Okay."

He agreed with her.

"There is no secret."

((■))