If I live forever, I can live now

19

Professor Abbey was ordering a cup of coffee to an elegant waiter, and he looked too calm to be in the same planet that I was. I became aware that I had still not washed the remnants of my make up just when he noticed me. Too late, as always.

"Tessa." he said, as I sat in a fancy armchair in front of him. "I thought you left with Luke early this morning."

For an instant, I didn't get why he wasn't talking to me as if I had betrayed him. Just a moment later, I realized he still didn't know that, and I thanked God for ignorance. There was no such thing as being naively trustful.

I shook my head.

"I can't leave, Professor. I'm stuck in here."

"What do you mean? You're scaring me, Tessa. Are you in trouble? You look sick."

I looked at him and didn't manage to get a single word out of my clogged mind. That thought took me back to the summer nights when I was little and dad and I slept at the garden in our house. I insisted on going camping and living adventures, and that was the closest thing he could offer to me. Most of the nights, he slept, and I drifted back and forth in my most imminent worries, as if the whole world depended on me, as if I couldn't afford to get out of my conscience even for a few hours. He usually woke up after a few hours and found me in the middle of some fantasy, looking up at the sky, which was normally the scenario of all of them. I was very little, but still I understood I couldn't relax because my mind was too full, of both worthy and worthless information. Dad, in despair to help me sleep, taught me a method to unclog my mind that I had continued to use every time it got saturated. This time I used it again.

I closed my eyes and expelled forcefully, and I pictured all my thoughts getting out, each of them in one colour. They got away, Luke in red, Kate in babyish pink, loneliness in grey. All of them were wrapped in a big, purple bubble that represented fear.

I opened my eyes and found Professor Abbey impatiently waiting for me to say something.

"Do you want a cup of coffee, Tessa?"

"No, thanks, Professor. I think I'm cutting excitants out from now on. I just wanted you to look through these papers."

I handed him my folder, and he looked through it for what seemed too long even in my newly acquired eternity-wise time perception. Finally, he looked up at me, and stated:

"You should wait here. I am calling my lawyer."

"Aren't you mad at me?"

"Of course I am. At you, and at your fugitive helper." I cringed at his reference to Luke; at his reference to Luke as someone on my side. "But there are other people usurping all my anger right now. "

He got up to make the call, and I decided I didn't mind ruining myself by making a long-distance call to England.

"Lindsay?" I jumped as she answered the phone.

"I know, Africa told me. And then, I read the papers. This is all such a mess, Tess. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know, but at least I've got someone with me that's on my side."

"I know, but Luke and you-."

"No, I didn't mean Luke. I don't know if Luke's on my side, but he's definitely not by my side. Didn't Africa tell you that?"

"No, she must have missed that part."

"Well, I meant Professor Abbey. He's talking to his lawyer right now, so I figured I should do the same and call my terrifying older sister to kick the bad guys' asses."