Before you open your eyes, you know you’re not home. The weighted blanket gave it away, wrapped around your body like a tortilla, turning you into a breakfast fucking burrito on that cold, cold early morning. The weather — that was the next sign. You know, it’s never really cold in Bahia, so where the hell are you now, shivering, curled up like a kitten on the hardest mattress you ever laid on (so different from the one in your bedroom)? If you pretend you’re still unconscious, maybe you’ll convince your brain you are just dreaming, and it’ll take you back to the place where you belong.
Except you know that’s just not how it works. Too bad, it’s too late now: you have to face reality and whatever the fuck it looks like today.
Right. You open your eyes and, holy shit, it’s snowing outside, you see because the curtains are open and the street lights are on. It’s the middle of the night still, which makes it easier for you to sneak out without drawing any attention, but, of course, where would you even go, when you are so obviously away from home? You don’t need to be a genius to realize you’re not in Brazil anymore, and definitely not in northeast Brazil.
By the way, where exactly are you for that matter? Where — you kick aside the weighted blanket to get up before turning around but, when you do, you see no one sharing the king size bed with you. You run your eyes across the blue and silver wallpaper, the blue lamp shedding light on the nightstand, the messy desk filled with notebooks and drumsticks, and then… drumsticks? Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Drumsticks? You get closer just to be sure, and, yes, surely enough: drumsticks.
Before you can throw yourself out of the window, falling from what looks like three or four stores, the door opens wide and someone enters the room, scaring the shit out of you. In return, they scream too, and suddenly you’re face to face with Chris, half a decade after you last saw him in a hotel room in New York, where you bawled your eyes out because it was time to say goodbye to him and leave the country. And now that you think about it, now that you kind of know where you are, you freak out a little. Their president doesn’t really like non-white foreigners right now, and if you need to go back home by plane, how are you supposed to explain to the authorities that the reason they don’t have any records of you entering the United States lately is because you tele-fucking-port during your sleep?
“Shit.” It could’ve been you who said that, but it wasn’t. Chris is frozen, staring at your face in disbelief while holding one of those damn drumsticks up high, ready to hit you in the head with it. You won’t let him because it wouldn’t be fatal; thanks for the offer, though. He says your name in a weird way, like he almost forgot how it was supposed to sound, and you notice that his hair is so long now he could put it up on a ponytail. He’s not wearing a shirt or his glasses, and that’s kind of how you last saw him too, when he called you an Uber and tried to cancel it right after because you started sobbing out of nowhere. He was confused then by how sad you got, and, to be honest, you were too: you didn’t know at the time that you could fall in love with someone after only five days of meeting them, and the realization was terrifying.
Well, now he looks even more confused, of course, still holding the drumstick, and you decide it’s finally time to talk. “I can explain,” you say in English, but can you? Can you, really? Your uncle jumped off a bridge after realizing he couldn’t fix your brain, the one he himself fucked up by putting a chip in it that obviously didn’t work how he intended, so you were left without any hope and without any knowledge of what the actual fuck was going on and would continue to go on until the last of your days. You start telling Chris the story from the beginning, but the sentences come out all broken, not because you can’t speak his language, but because, one: you didn’t think you would ever see him again, and two: because you had never traveled this far before in your sleep, so what if next week you wake up in Saturn or in a completely different galaxy? The only person who could’ve answered any of your questions is dead, so what are you going to do?
Chris still hasn’t put down the drumstick, so you keep your distance, and you swear to him you didn’t sneak in, because how would you even know where he lived, and why wouldn’t you just text him if you wanted to meet, when you never really deleted his number?
Once he’s finally not freaking out anymore, the two of you sit on his bed, side by side, close enough to each other that you can smell his shampoo and feel the warmth coming from his body, and he says he obviously doesn’t believe you, because why would anyone, but that you can keep talking about all this in a few hours because right now he is really, really tired, and need to get some rest.
He offers to sleep on the couch or even to pay for a hotel room for you, but you basically yell “No!” because you want to prove your point. You want him to be there when you disappear, so he knows that, even though you sound crazy, you’re not actually lying. So he knows you’re not a stalker that illegally crossed all those borders in the American continent just to hang out with him for one more night. Not that you wouldn’t, but what matters is that you didn’t.
Funny enough, he agrees, and mysteriously trust you to lay down besides him like it was still New York, like it was still five years ago, like you were still so drunk you couldn’t even remember where you grabbed dinner that night or all the corners you kissed and grabbed each other’s butts or anything, really, after the sweaty concert he played in the tiniest venue you’ve ever been to.
Now you’re back to the hardest mattress to ever exist, under the same weighted blanket that had you rolled up like a burrito ten minutes ago, trying to calm yourself down enough to fall back asleep knowing perfectly well that, Jesus, now it’s going to take you another couple years to get over this man again.
Somehow, Chris falls asleep first, like there isn’t a random person in his house at all. For some reason, he lets you hold his hand and even smiles at you before giving up trying to stay awake. Finally, when the sun starts to rise, melting some of the snow that now covered the road, you fall asleep too, even though you kind of don’t want to.
Before you open your eyes, you know you’re back home. On top of you, just a thin sheet this time, thank God, and, under you, a nice, soft mattress. It’s warm. You kick the sheet away and open your eyes. Through the window, you see clear blue skies, and the sun is so bright it hurts to look at it. You’re on the seventh floor, so you can see the beach right from where you are, the white sand sparkling against the green Atlantic Ocean in the distance. You realize it’s Valentine’s Day in the United States, but, in Brazil, it’s just the beginning of Carnaval, the most single-people holiday ever to exist.
“Shit.” It could’ve been you who said that, but it wasn’t.
You turn around to see Chris sitting on your bed, eyes wide open, more confused than ever.
“Shit,” you agree. Because… what the fuck just happened?
Maria Clara Klein was born and raised in Brazil, where she still lives. Her work, always South-America themed, has appeared in Brazilian speculative fiction magazines such as Mafagafo and Escambanáutica. She now makes her English-language fiction debut.
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