Page 7 of Meet Me in Another Life

She leaves him the European Space Agency badge she got at the Odysseum, the one she didn’t wear the night they met because she was afraid what people might think of her. She puts it at the back of the table, turned toward his face. She is sure, now, that she will never reach the stars. If she was on the right path, Santi would still be here, and he would be coming with her.

“I hope you found what you were looking for,” she says.

Two nights later, she buys a can of spray paint and walks to the old town at three in the morning. Over the faded words at the base of the tower she writes, for him, WELCOME TO FOREVER.

Open Your Eyes

Santi is late.

It’s not unusual: lateness is a trait in him, unchangeable as the curl in his hair. Still, there are better times for it to manifest than on the first day of a new school year. Bad enough if he was still a student: unforgivable in a teacher with twenty-five years’ experience. He hurries past the fountain in the center of the cobbled square, dodging the crowds. As he passes the ruined clock tower, he looks up to check the time, forgetting that the hands are stuck as always at eight minutes past eleven.

This morning, he woke sprawled across his bed as if he’d fallen there from an unfathomable height. It’s a dream he’s had before. This time, it took thirty minutes of walking around his apartment, examining the evidence of his life—his cat Félicette meowing for her breakfast, the tablecloth crocheted by his mother, the picture of Héloïse on the balcony, looking apprehensively at the approaching rain—until he felt like it was his own again. Now, he steps from the busy market into the quiet courtyard of the international school and tries to gather himself into coherence. Unconsciously, his hand reaches into his jacket to touch the smooth wood of his grandfather’s knife.

He enters the classroom under the gaze of thirty assembled seven-year-olds. The faces are different, but everything else is the same. The lonely déjà vu of being a teacher: living the same year over and over, surrounded by children for whom this is the only version that matters.

“Hello,” he says. “I’m Mr. López. I’m your science teacher. In this room, you’ll be learning about the world and how it works. About the things we know, and the things we’re still figuring out.” He scans the room, meeting their eyes. “If there’s one thing I hope you learn this year, it’s to pay attention to everything around you. Don’t take anything for granted. That’s what science is all about.” He’s been working on this speech for years, dropping a word here, refining a phrase there, but he doubts the children are listening. They’re sizing him up in other ways: his accent, his gestures, his clothes. Deciding, as unconsciously as animals, whether or not he is part of their pack. “I thought we’d start by getting to know each other,” he says. “Raise your hand. When I call on you, tell me your name, and what you want to be when you grow up. I’ll write it on the board, so we can all learn something about each other.” A flurry of hands shoot up; most stay down. “If you don’t put your hand up now, I will call on you later. But there’ll be less space left on the board, so you’ll have to be smaller. Hands up if you don’t want to be small.”

The number of hands increases slightly. He smiles and picks a boy on the right. “You were first. What’s your name?”

“Ben,” the boy says.

“And what do you want to be when you grow up, Ben?”

“A footballer.”

A predictable start. “Great. What’s your team?” As the boy starts to answer, Santi cuts him off. “Real Madrid, same as me! Cool.” Laughter from the other children. He turns to the boardand draws a cartoon boy heading a football. When he steps back, some of the kids giggle. It’s not exactly a work of art. He always meant to spend more time on his drawing, to take his skills from adequate to impressive. But his doodles are enough to keep the children’s attention.

“Next.” He looks over the sea of hands. His eye is drawn to a girl with mid-brown hair, tall for her age, with stark blue eyes that look older than the rest of her. “You,” he says. “What’s your name?”

She lowers her hand. “Thora Lišková.”

“Lish-ko-va,” he repeats, copying her stress on the first syllable. “How do you spell that?”

She tells him. “It means Fox,” she adds with somber pride.

“Really? My name means Wolf.”

She smiles back, a goofy grin that makes the boy next to her snigger. Santi’s heart hurts. One of those kids the world hasn’t yet closed down, her joy like a target on her back.Stay how you are, Thora Lišková, he prays silently, although he knows it’s no use. He gives it a year before she starts caring more about what people think of her than what makes her happy. “And what do you want to be?” he asks.

She doesn’t hesitate. “An astronaut.”

Santi manages to smile. He has no problem with the ones who want to be footballers or vets or racing drivers.Go on, he tells them.Chase your dreams.Even though, statistically, they will end up working in call centers. But the ones who want to be astronauts are harder.

He swallows down half a lifetime of regret. “That’s a tough choice,” he says. “But worthwhile.” He draws her in blue: a tiny, relentless figure in a space helmet, planting a flag on a miniature planet. When he turns back, her face is pink and she won’t meet his eyes.

He goes through the class until the board is full of rappers, cake decorators, doctors. Thora floats at the edge, as if she’s about to step off into the untrammeled world beyond. “Now,” Santi says, handing out lined paper, “I want you to write and illustrate a story about your future self. Imagine you are what you told me you want to be. Show me what it’s like.” He sits down, ready for fifteen minutes of relative peace.

A hand waves at the corner of his eye.

“Yes?”

“What about you, Mr. López?” Thora, her face bright. “What did you want to be?”

He lies without hesitation. He can’t show her a living example of someone who wanted the same thing and failed. “Obviously, I wanted to be a science teacher,” he says. “And here I am.”

Scattered laughs and groans. None of the children he’s drawn on the board are teachers.

Her hand goes up again.

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