THE PROMISE
What fascinated me most about Jeremy?
He never tried to impress me. He never touched me without a reason. He never tried to turn our friendship into something it wasn't.
He was simply looking for company.
Our loneliness screamed so loudly that, somehow, we became deaf to everything else. We could no longer hear the voices around us, the insults, the slamming doors, the arguments between adults. We could only hear the beating of our own young hearts.
We awakened something in each other. A beautiful, companionate feeling.
We never treated one another out of obligation.
Much less out of pity.
We treated each other as human beings.
And perhaps because of that, we carried every feeling in the world.
That Monday morning, during recess, Miguel Fangio appeared.
He was with a few other boys, as usual. He approached Jeremy with that smile that seemed to exist only to frighten people.
“So the little faggot found himself a new babysitter!”
Pollyanna immediately stepped in front of Jeremy.
“Get the hell out of here, asshole! Leave him alone!”
Miguel laughed.
“So now the retard has a witch to protect him?”
Pollyanna didn't move.
Jeremy remained behind her.
Sometimes, I felt that Jeremy was afraid of Miguel. It wasn't hard to understand why. Miguel was much stronger than him.
But there was something else, too.
Jeremy hated Miguel.
He hated him in a way that frightened even me.
Sometimes he wanted to knock him to the ground. He wanted to taste blood in his mouth and believe that it was the taste of Miguel's defeat.
But courage and desperation are different things.
And I knew this wouldn't end well.
Someday...
“Stained-face witch!”
Miguel shouted.
The other boys began surrounding them.
“Fight!”
“Fight!”
“Fight!”
The chant grew louder around them.
Jeremy looked at Miguel.
And before anyone could understand what was happening, he kicked him between the legs.
Miguel dropped to the ground.
Pollyanna grabbed Jeremy by the arm.
“Run!”
They took off across the schoolyard, burst through the exit, and kept running until they could no longer hear the boys behind them.
They didn't stop until they reached a junkyard.
They climbed onto the roofs of several old, rusted, abandoned cars and hid there until Miguel and the others finally gave up the chase.
When the silence returned, they lay on the metal roofs, staring up at the sky.
For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.
Then Pollyanna asked:
“What are your parents like?”
Jeremy kept looking upward.
“Don't even ask.”
She sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
Jeremy turned his head toward her.
“Sure.”
“You swear you'll keep it?”
He gave a small smile.
“Who would I tell? Everyone hates me.”
Pollyanna lowered her eyes.
“Forget it.”
“Tell me.”
She remained silent for a few seconds.
“What you go through with your family isn't exactly a secret. We hear the gossip. And when I look at you... I feel like it's true. That your parents don't really care about you.”
Jeremy took a deep breath.
“My life isn't fair. My parents aren't fair to me.”
Pollyanna looked at him.
“They aren't fair to any of us.”
Jeremy said nothing.
“Who said life has to be fair?” she continued. “And suffering doesn't justify anything.”
Jeremy turned toward her.
“Tell that to yourself.”
Pollyanna didn't answer.
“Sometimes...” Jeremy hesitated. “Sometimes I want to kill myself.”
She stopped breathing for a moment.
“And that feeling gets stronger every day.”
Jeremy reached into his pocket.
“I even have this.”
He pulled out a revolver bullet.
Pollyanna immediately curled in on herself, hiding her face behind her arms.
When she looked up again, she was furious.
“Oh my God... please! You're such an idiot! You stupid asshole!”
Jeremy held the bullet between his fingers.
“It would be better if I died...”
Pollyanna started crying.
“You selfish bastard!”
She punched him in the shoulder and snatched the bullet from his hand.
Jeremy stared at her.
“But I changed my mind.”
“Son of a bitch!”
He took a breath.
Then smiled, almost shyly.
“There is someone who would cry for me.”
Pollyanna couldn't answer.
They hugged.
It was a long, tight, desperate embrace.
She cried against his shoulder.
After a few seconds, Pollyanna pulled back just enough to speak.
“Do you know what my secret is? Do you know why I'm here?”
Jeremy remained silent.
“My mother...” Her voice broke. “My mother died of cancer years ago.”
She wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
“And my father... that bastard abused me when I was a child.”
Jeremy didn't move.
“I ran away from him years ago. I left with my grandmother. We came here, far away from him.”
Pollyanna began crying again.
Jeremy hugged her once more.
This time, he was the one trying to protect her.
“No one can hurt you today.”
She closed her eyes.
Jeremy remained silent for a few seconds.
Then he said:
“Can you tell me one of your terrible jokes?”
Pollyanna let out a laugh through her tears.
“Don't make me laugh! I'm still really angry with you!”
But she was already smiling.
No matter how much I hated him in that moment, he made me laugh.
And then I fell in love with him.
I don't know exactly when it happened.
Maybe it was there in that junkyard.
Maybe it had happened before.
Maybe afterward.
Our friendship could have become something more, but from that day on, I never stopped thinking about him.
There are moments in life that seem to have no meaning.
Moments that God—or chance—places in front of us without any explanation.
And sometimes, it is precisely in those moments that we find a meaning capable of changing our lives and the lives of the people we love.
That was when we heard a noise.
A small whimper came from underneath one of the cars.
Pollyanna frowned.
“What is that?”
Jeremy stood up.
“Sounds like a puppy.”
He climbed down and knelt on the ground.
A moment later, he returned carrying a tiny female puppy.
Pollyanna's face lit up.
“Can I have her?”
Jeremy looked at the puppy.
“She’s a girl.”
Pollyanna took the puppy into her arms.
“She’s adorable, isn't she?”
Jeremy studied the puppy's eyes.
“She has your eyes.”
“Mine?”
“The same.”
Pollyanna widened her mismatched eyes.
“Really?”
She brought the puppy's face close to hers and compared their eyes.
“They are!”
She smiled.
“She'll be called Manna. With two n's!”
The puppy had mottled fur in shades of brown and black, like a little fluffy fox.
Manna.
That's how she entered our lives.
The days passed.
In the classroom, Jeremy tried to follow the teacher's lesson while everything around him seemed to lose its speed.
Or perhaps it was the opposite.
The words on the board distorted. The voices sped up. Time seemed to race too quickly.
Outside the window, a tiny spider slowly descended along its web.
Everything moved fast.
Except her.
The spider kept descending, as if the entire world had been placed in slow motion just so she could reach the other side.
Then the bell rang.
The students stood up.
Jeremy gathered his things and left.
At the school entrance, he saw Miguel and his friends.
The chase began again.
Jeremy ran.
And once again, he managed to escape.
Manna grew.
She was no longer the tiny puppy they had found in the junkyard. Now she ran through Pollyanna's backyard among the other animals she had rescued from the streets.
Jeremy was there more and more often, too.
One afternoon, he left home to visit Pollyanna.
His father shouted something from a distance.
Jeremy didn't answer.
He kept walking.
When he reached Pollyanna's house, he found her in the backyard with Manna.
He entered through the back door.
Pollyanna appeared a moment later holding a small video camera.
“Smile! I'm filming you!”
Jeremy turned his face away.
“No, Polly! Stop it.”
“Why?”
“I hate you.”
Pollyanna smiled.
“No, you don't. If you hated me, why would you be here with me?”
Jeremy tried to hide his smile.
He couldn't.
Pollyanna smiled back.
For a few seconds, they simply looked at each other.
A few hours passed.
The sun slowly changed position.
Later, they went outside to walk Manna.
Inês walked them to the door.
“Be careful! Come back before it gets dark.”
“Don't worry, Grandma!”
Pollyanna held the leash.
Then she looked at Jeremy.
“Let's take Manna for a walk. Coming with me?”
Jeremy crouched down and gently stroked the puppy's head.
Manna wagged her tail.
He looked up at Pollyanna.
A small smile appeared on his face.
“Yes.”
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