# A Far, Far Territory

The good luck is that his mom's living room has ceiling beams. So, the rope goes up, so does he (but onto a bench), passes the knot behind his neck and tightens it from behind. Jorge hums a song he just invented. He lifts his foot, trembles. A small jump and that's it. The divorce ends, the contempt from his daughters and his ex and the litigation over the settlement. Living with his mom again in the house in Colonia Unión ends. Just one jump. He never would have imagined that before killing himself he'd feel such tranquility.

Someone rings the doorbell.

It's eight in the morning on a Friday. His mom is still asleep. Again, the doorbell. He has to open; if not, his mom will see the rope and the bench. And gathering the courage took him months this time. He goes to the door. After all, delaying suicide a few minutes isn't a problem.

He opens and before him stands a man he barely recognizes, like a not very faithful copy of someone he saw every day. Jorge squints.

"Aurelia? No fucking way!" he says, with a smile.

"Pichi, Jorgito, remember," he answers.

They hug. It's maybe twenty years since they've seen each other. High school is a far, far territory.

"Sorry," says Jorge, emotional, off balance. "It's just that a shitload of time has passed. How did you know I was here?"

"I didn't. I rang to see if your mom was still here. Thought maybe she still lived here. And surprise. How are you?"

Jorge thinks it wouldn't be bad to tell him the truth: terrible. That a rope and a beam are waiting for him. He decides to lie.

"Good. Chill. Normal, you know. Lucky you found me. I live in the south now. Come in and we'll have coffee. Have you had breakfast?"

He says it and immediately thinks of the living room scene. How to explain? Luckily, Pichi saves him.

"Hold on. Come."

Pichi takes him by the arm and leads him half a block from the house. There sits an '81 Gremlin, freshly painted, with original hubcaps and a nice plate that says "classic car." It's just like the one Pichi stole from his mom to go skipping school to La Marquesa that time in high school. Same model, same color, same tinted windows. But that's not as surprising as the fact that outside of it stand Figuras, Flash, Martín Rica, Eleonora and Maritza. All more bald, more wrinkled, with more sagging breasts and dressed like the adults they are. Seriously, high school is a far, far territory.

Martín Rica takes him by the neck and kisses his forehead, Maritza hangs from his arm, Flash has tears in his eyes and Figuras and Eleonora take him by the shoulder.

"What the hell! And you all?" says Jorge while greeting everyone again and again.

"Twenty years, Jorgito, and still with a dumbass face," says Rica. "Well we came to see you."

Pichi walks toward them. Eleonora catches up, passes her arm through his waist and rests her head on his. He speaks.

"Jorge, what are you doing today?"

"Killing myself," he thinks.

"Nothing. What? There's a plan?" he answers.

"We're going skipping school," says Eleonora.

Everyone cheers.

"Damn, give a heads up. Like this how," says Jorge.

He can't help the smile on his face.

"It's kind of rushed, but well... it's like an emergency," says Figuras.

Everyone goes quiet. Jorge doesn't understand.

"They detected pancreatic cancer in me at the beginning of the year," Pichi continues. "Already metastasized and now it's in the lungs, the brain. They told me if I live three months it's a lot."

"No fucking way, I'm so sorry," says Jorge and approaches Pichi, who already has teary eyes. He keeps talking.

"But enough, no dramas," he wipes his tears and smiles. "The thing is like this. I feel more alone than ever and I don't want to spend these three months so fucked up. So I got a Gremlin and came for you all. And yeah, it's kind of cheesy, but I'd like us to go 'skipping school' again. For the good times. Luckily I contacted everyone during the month, they signed up and I brought them. You, Jorge, were the only one we hadn't located, but look, here we are together. Finally. You in?"

Everyone looks at him. It would be impossible to say no.

"Sure," he answers. "Just let me tell my mom I'm going out so she doesn't worry. My wife and the girls are in Querétaro."

That last part isn't a lie. What he didn't tell them is that they went there to not have to see him.

Jorge enters the house and doesn't wake his mom. He quickly unties the rope, puts it away in the service patio, puts the bench back in place and leaves a note: "Went out with some friends. Back in the afternoon." He takes his cell phone from the coffee table and sees it has no battery. He finishes writing the note: "Leaving my cell." Jorge puts on a sweatshirt and leaves.

The agreement is that they won't ask about the cancer. Later in the week, he'll invite them to his apartment and tell them whatever they want to know. Right now, what's important is the trip. From the passenger seat, Rica passes around cups full of Presidente and Coca-Cola ("Same as that time, gang"). Eleonora takes charge of passing out cigarettes ("Delicados for everyone, but Marlboro for Flash, for being prissy") and, like that time, Pichi handles the music: a Size cassette.

While Jorge smokes for the first time in who knows how long, he thinks about this moment. It seems like everyone is in the same place as twenty years ago: Pichi at the wheel, Rica in the passenger seat, and Eleonora and him on Maritza's lap, Flash and Figuras. They take the exit to Toluca and, around nine, they're already on the highway toward La Marquesa.

That afternoon, a few days before graduating high school, they made this same trip and got off at the same place: Cuatrimotos Tena. Today, the track is just like in their memories, with yellow grass and full of mud. Everyone eats chorizo verde and cecina tacos, like on the first escape. Except Rica, who ate two bean tlacoyos (today he orders four) because even back then he had the idea of being vegetarian in his head.

During university (for some, because neither Maritza nor Pichi nor Figuras went), they saw each other a few times. New friends slowly distanced them, until they simply stopped hanging out. Then, kids, jobs and debts.

Already at the track, everyone rents their ATV and starts going around. They splash mud and stain their shoes with grass. Jorge ate too much and prefers to wait about fifteen minutes because his IBS is no joke.

Next to Cuatrimotos Tena, there was a small lagoon. "Today it must be dry or pretty contaminated," Jorge thinks. When his intestine lets him get up, he goes looking for the lagoon out of pure nostalgia. He only has to go around a couple of empty cabins and there it is: identical, with ducks, a small dock and two canoes. A woman tells him he can go swimming and that she sells cheap swimsuits (just like that time, like that other lady who also sold swimsuits). Jorge is glad they've conserved this place so well, clean, stopped (it seems) in time.

He returns to his friends and waits for them to finish their ATV laps. He tells them about the swimsuit lady and that the lagoon is still there. Everyone gets excited about the coincidence, especially Pichi. They can, then, go swimming like they did that time.

Long before that Friday before graduating high school, they already knew Aurelia was gay. That's what somehow made them friends. Maritza was picked on because her mom cleaned houses; Flash was too skinny and missing lots of teeth; Jorge stuttered; Figuras had vitiligo on his face; Eleonora aborted at thirteen in the school bathroom; Martín Rica was obese.

Aurelia was the "butch" of the high school. One day in sophomore year, she got fed up that the seniors in gym class told her all she needed was a good screw. With pure left hooks, she broke half the basketball team's noses. Two centers jumped her. They broke her nose too. After they stopped kicking her, Jorge approached with some toilet paper. Since it was already dismissal time, Aurelia asked him to accompany her to a clinic. There at the door were Maritza and Eleonora smoking. Flash was waiting for the bus half a block ahead; and Rica and Figuras also had to go to the clinic that day. They all knew each other by reputation, they were all the outcasts of the high school.

As if Aurelia's broken nose had broken the ice, they started talking to each other one by one and, before they knew it, they were a gang heading to the clinic. Jorge was embarrassed to speak because of his stutter, but he laughed wholeheartedly.

For Aurelia, going skipping school that Friday before graduating was fundamental, something she had planned for months. Like now, they ate, swam and, well into the afternoon, at a bonfire they improvised with trash, she confessed that this wasn't just her goodbye to high school, but to herself; or a welcome, rather. No one understood. Aurelia told them to wait a bit and went to the car. Twenty minutes later, she came down with baggy pants, military boots and a flannel shirt. Her hair, before shoulder-length, was now buzzed.

Maritza understood instantly. They cried while hugging. Slowly, everyone else got up and joined them. That's when she told them that, really, it had never been her, that Aurelia was like a costume. She had decided her real name long ago: Ricardo, and affectionately, Pichi.

Flash asked timidly if she was going to "you know, have the operation." Pichi laughed and told him that it's not like he had that much money; that he'd think about it later; and gave him a loving noogie. Eleonora suggested they chip in for whatever Pichi wanted. Between everyone they gathered a hundred and twenty thousand old pesos that afternoon. Rica yelled: "Some funds for the new dude of the group!"

Jorge smiles remembering all that and, like that time, climbs a small hill next to the lagoon. From there he sees them swim: Rica isn't as fat anymore, Flash got dental implants, Pichi told them he was on hormone therapy and that's why "my shitty hair fell out. Damn testosterone," Maritza did a technical career in bilingual secretary, Eleonora adopted two girls, Figuras looks albino from the vitiligo and Jorge hasn't stuttered since he was twenty.

Also, like that time, Pichi comes out of swimming and climbs the hill to talk to him.

"How are you?" he asks.

"Really happy to see you all again," says Jorge.

"Me too. It's been a long time. Hey, how do you feel? Are you chill?"

"I mean, not everything has been perfect, but in general good."

"It's just that I want you to be chill."

Jorge finds it strange that Pichi insists.

"Yeah I am. Why?"

"It's just... Look, Jorge, how's the day? Doesn't it seem weird to you?"

"No. Well, yes. Like everything is happening very similarly. But it's normal. The point of coming here again is that everything be very similar, right?"

"Well yeah. But doesn't it seem weird that these damn ATVs have been open for twenty years or more? That they're called the same? That the lake is still here? That we ate the same thing? That I found the whole gang? Don't you think it's too much coincidence that I arrived just seconds before you...? Well before you did that."

Jorge gets as nervous as when he was sixteen. He stands up. Decades of therapy and the stuttering returns.

"Wh-wh-what the hell. Wh-wh-at are you talking about..."

"Listen a second," he speaks calmly and takes him by the shoulders. He feels Jorge tremble. "You're still in your mom's living room. You just jumped from the bench and you're running out of air. Your body acts on instinct and you're trying to take off the rope, but the knot has already tightened plenty. You're scratching your neck. Your tongue is blocking your trachea. You're dying, Jorge."

At that moment, Jorge sees his mom's old furniture again, the display case with Lladró knockoffs, the photographs from his sister's wedding and the salmon-colored rug. Everything is as he left it, as he knows it, only he sees it from a different angle, about fifty centimeters higher than normal. He tries to look another way, but his neck is locked. He can barely look down; his feet hang, unmoving, in the air. His head hurts; like he has a migraine, his vision clouds. He feels his arms cramp. He gasps for a little air. He tries to untie the rope, but it's a chain that binds him forever to the beam.

Jorge stops feeling anything. He only sees black for a few seconds. He returns to the lake. He can breathe again. He falls to his knees and starts sweating. Pichi hugs him and speaks in his ear.

"I know it's really scary. But it's not hitting you that bad. Maritza had her throat cut with a Gillette and Rica was killed by a bus. Eleonora agonized for days."

Jorge's breathing returns to normal and he lifts his face.

"Y-y-you?"

"With the cancer thing, I was like two weeks in intensive care. One day, they discharged me. I left the hospital and there was the Gremlin right in front of the hospital. In the bag I had the keys, I got in and tried to go back home, but I got here, to the lake. I was alone for a while. Then the Gremlin appeared again and, like on autopilot, I drove to Flash's house, months later to Rica's, and so on with everyone. You're the last."

Jorge's temples throb. His fingers go numb. He gets nauseous, but stops trembling. Pichi notices and stops hugging him.

"I think it's already passing. You're almost out. Come to the lake, what do you think? Right now when you touch the water you'll see you'll be really chill."

And he walks down the hill. Jorge watches how, with each step, Pichi becomes younger, the brown buzzed hair becomes long again, and the bags under his eyes disappear. He becomes a few centimeters shorter and the two huge scars on his chest fade. Jorge gets up after him. The others cheer for them and tell them to hurry because they're needed for water polo. Jorge feels lighter; his neck no longer burns. They start running to dive in.

At the same time that, in his mom's living room, his brain shuts off forever, water enters his nose and, submerged, Jorge opens his eyes.