The room spun. I saw myself in the tunnel. I saw the boy. I saw the flames. The smoke. I don’t remember anything after that until I opened my eyes and I was sitting on the floor next to Peter, who was holding a Chinese takeout container.
Once I said I felt well enough, he helped move me back to my chair at the table where Richard the USS Pledge guy was still sitting. I explained that I got panic attacks sometimes and I apologized. I sat there not making eye contact with either of them. Richard had to go because he had an appointment at the eye doctor.
He reminded me, “Don’t forget to tell little Richard I say hello if you see him. I miss that kid. Will you tell him that?”
I told him I’d tell him.
Peter ate chicken fried rice while I sat there and figured out my part in the history of the future.
It was all pretty simple. I was the family member who would be harmed in that tunnel. Not my child or grandchild. I will be an old woman and Peter will be an old man. And I will be the leader of the exiles.
I watched Peter eat his chicken fried rice with a plastic fork. We would be married one day. No hurry.
I looked around the mall. All those people would be dead one day, just like I would be. No hurry.
As I put Darla’s camera back around my neck, I realized that I was no part Darla. I was not on my way to the oven, not on my way to the closed garage with the car keys and not in any way like Bill the headless man who blew his brains into rancid ceiling art.
I would live. I would really live.
I took a picture of Peter eating his lunch and smiled at him. This might have been a flirtatious smile. I know it wasn’t the same kind of smile I’d given him a half hour before. This was more of a one-day-I’m-going-to-be-your-wife smile. I don’t know why, but it made him look at me in a whole new way. We locked eyes.
But I didn’t get a transmission.
Weird.
I looked right at him—stared right into his pupils.
Still nothing.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“Um. You?” I answered.
Still no transmission. I said I wanted dessert so I went to Señor Burrito and ordered fried ice cream. On my way, I made eye contact with three people. No transmissions. The old guy who’s always working at Señor Burrito? No transmission. The lady on her lunch break from the hair salon? No transmission. I tried Peter again when I got back to the table. Still nothing.
I shared the fried ice cream with him and we didn’t say much between bites.
The sky had answered my sky-prayer.
The bat was gone.