Page 86 of Meet Me in Another Life

Thora inhales, each breath feeling like it escapes through a hole in her. She’s back in the Odysseum, looking up at an empty spacesuit, at her distorted seven-year-old reflection in the visor. She hears Mr. López’s reassuring voice.If it was a small hole, the suit would decompress slowly. You’d just run out of air and fall asleep.On the beach, after the chime and the smell of smoke faded, she felt light-headed, as if she had been holding her breath. “Okay,” she says. “But Peregrine obviously fixed it before.”

Santi looks at her in anguish. “Because he’d stopped the fire. If he let the fire keep burning long enough to wake us—”

“The valve would stay open longer. I could suffocate before we wake up.” Thora hears the echo of her own voice, as if she is listening to this conversation from somewhere far away. “What are my chances?”

“Six percent,” Santi says. “So we’re not—”

She talks over him. “What about you? What’s the chance you’d survive?” He bites his lip, looking away. “Come on,” Thora says. “If it was low, you’d just tell me.”

He gives her a grimace of a smile. “Ninety-two percent.”

Their lives, reduced to two numbers. Thora bows her head, thinking about the numbers that make up this whole world: the trees, the parakeets, Santi’s murals. A calculation, a gamble. An equation with one solution.

“Can you make him do it?” She sees what he’s about to say and holds up a hand, forestalling him. “I’m not asking right now if you’re willing to. I’m asking if you’re able.”

“He would do it, if I asked. But we both—we’d both need—”

“We both have to agree,” Thora says, feeling light and heavy at the same time. “Of course.” For an instant, she’s angry, so angry she could set the world on fire. Then she laughs, surprising herself as much as Santi. He is looking at her, stricken. “What, you don’t see how funny this is?” She laughs again, throwing her head back to the starry ceiling. “It’s enough to make you believe in a plan.”

“We’re not doing it,” Santi says.

Thora blinks at him. “I’m sorry. Who’s in command again?”

“That doesn’t mean anything. You can’t order me to let you die.”

Thora crosses her arms. “Go on, then. What’s your alternative?”

Santi’s mouth opens. “We stay. We—take our time, we find a safe way for us both to get out.”

Thora laughs. “Takewhattime? Last I checked, we had less than six months left. And we’d already decided we were too far gone to do anything but sit and watch ourselves die.”

“We were wrong. We just need to try harder. We could do alot in six months.” He advances on her, angry. “You said it last time. Both of us or neither of us.”

“I was wrong. You know I was wrong. If one of us can get out, we take that chance. No question.”

Santi shakes his head. “We got this far by working together.”

She laughs at him. “Got where? Gotwhere, Santi?” She sweeps her arm wide in answer. “Here. Always here.”

He walks away. She watches him stand with his back to her, silhouetted by the video wall.

“Be honest,” she says. “If our positions were reversed, you wouldn’t hesitate for a second. You’d sign your life away before the question was even asked.”

He turns. “And you’d be happy to let me?”

“Of course not. But it wouldn’t make any difference. You’d insist anyway. And so will I.”

He sets his jaw. “I’m not going to let you do it.”

Thora gazes at him. “Hope and despair, Santi. Who did we realize we had to become to make it out of here?” She shrugs. “This is it. This is the risk that’s worth taking. This is the everything we had to be willing to lose.”

Santi sits down, head in his hands. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

Thora joins him on the floor. “You’re just upset to have been denied your chance at martyrdom. Sorry, pal, the lions get to gnaw on me this time.” She is in awe of how she feels: joy, almost euphoria, coursing through her like she is made of it. Sometime soon, this rush will be over, and she will have to confront what she has agreed to do. But for now, she rides the certainty like a chariot through the sky. For so long, she has been obsessed with making the right choice. Now, at what might be the end of her,she doesn’t feel like she’s choosing. There is one path, and she walks it with a glad heart. She marvels at the paradox: this constraint, this inevitability, feels like the freedom she has been kicking and screaming for her whole long existence.

Santi runs his hand through his hair. “God knows how to test me. And always, always in a different way from what I was prepared for.” A shallow laugh escapes him. “You’d think I’d be prepared forthatby now.”

Thora looks at him fondly. “Of course you still see God in this. Why am I surprised? You saw God in a coffee cup.” A laugh rocks him like a tremor. Thora moves to sit opposite him, takes his hands in hers. “You would do this for me, yes?”

---