THE MEDAL
The park stood on high ground, where a stone bridge crossed between the trees and the streets seemed to exist in layers below them.
Jeremy and Pollyanna walked side by side.
Manna walked between them, pulling at the little leash and stopping every now and then to sniff something.
“Jeremy, my grandmother wants to help you with your dyslexia,” Pollyanna said. “You can do it, you know?”
Jeremy looked at her.
“Why? Do you think I'm stupid?”
Pollyanna stopped walking.
“No! Never think that about me. I'm your best friend!”
Jeremy simply smiled.
She started walking again.
“And you're my only best friend, too. Wow... we're the outcasts at school, aren't we?”
“Until when?”
Pollyanna looked at him.
“But we have each other. That's enough, isn't it?”
Jeremy thought for a few seconds.
Then he smiled.
“Oh, right! The witch and the fag. Perfect!”
Pollyanna raised an eyebrow.
“Are you a fag?”
Jeremy stopped.
He looked at her.
“Are you a witch?”
They both burst out laughing.
They walked a few more steps.
“I'll leave you alone,” Jeremy said, pretending to be serious.
“No, you won't.”
They stopped again.
For a moment, they simply stood there, looking into each other's eyes.
Neither of them said anything.
Pollyanna smiled.
Jeremy smiled back.
Her fingers slowly tightened and loosened around Manna's leash.
For a few seconds, the world seemed to become smaller.
Until voices came from the other side of the bridge.
Miguel Fangio.
And his friends.
They emerged from between the stones and surrounded them.
Miguel grinned.
“Well, look at this! Boyfriend and girlfriend! How bizarre. The witch and the fag!”
Jeremy froze.
“If you two are gonna fuck, I want a puppy, Jeremy! I'm sure you're the little woman in this relationship!”
Pollyanna stepped forward.
“Stop it, Miguel! Go away and leave us alone!”
Manna began to growl.
Pollyanna moved in front of Jeremy.
“Ah...”
Jeremy tried to say something.
Miguel pointed at him.
“Shut up, Jeremy! You were born quiet, you'll stay quiet, and you'll die quiet!”
One of the boys laughed.
“Beat him up! Come on! Break his face again!”
Pollyanna began to panic.
“No! No! No! No!”
Miguel lunged forward.
Manna sprang.
The little dog clamped her teeth onto Miguel's arm and refused to let go.
“AH!”
Miguel desperately tried to pull her away.
Manna held on, growling.
Furious and terrified, Miguel began hitting her.
Pollyanna screamed.
“NO!”
In a brutal movement, Miguel finally managed to tear the dog away.
Manna was thrown over the stone bridge and disappeared from sight.
For one moment, nobody moved.
The world seemed to stop.
Jeremy stared at the place where Manna had disappeared.
Then he ran.
He scrambled desperately down between the rocks.
Miguel stared at his bleeding arm.
One of his friends grabbed him.
“Let's get out of here! We're screwed! Come on, Miguel!”
Miguel looked back one last time.
Then he ran.
Jeremy found Manna beneath the bridge.
She was lying among the rocks.
Breathing slowly.
There was blood in her fur.
Jeremy dropped to his knees.
“No...”
He picked her up.
“No! No! No, Manna...”
Her breathing was becoming weaker.
“Breathe... breathe... please...”
Tears began running down his face.
“My God, please...”
He held her tighter.
“Come on, Manna. Let's go home. Everything's going to be okay. Please...”
Pollyanna arrived moments later.
She stopped.
Looked at Manna.
Then at Jeremy.
She couldn't believe it.
Jeremy held the little dog against his chest.
“Please... please breathe...”
Pollyanna put both hands on her head.
She began to cry.
“Manna is dead...”
Jeremy looked up.
“Shut up!”
“Manna is dead.”
“Don't say that!”
He held Manna even tighter.
“She isn't dead!”
Pollyanna cried.
“Manna is dead!”
“Shut up, you witch!”
Pollyanna screamed back:
“Manna is dead, you fucking fag!”
They stared at each other through their tears.
Then Pollyanna took Jeremy's face in both hands.
Manna remained motionless in his arms.
The anger disappeared.
Only pain remained.
Jeremy sobbed.
“I'm sorry...”
Pollyanna kept holding his face.
“For what?”
“Please... don't leave me alone.”
She hugged him.
“I'll never leave you alone.”
Later, in Inês's backyard, there was a hole in the ground.
A shovel lay beside it.
A few flowers rested on the earth.
Manna was wrapped in an old rock-band shirt, the same shirt she used to sleep on.
Jeremy and Pollyanna buried her in silence.
Inês watched from the window.
She didn't interrupt.
Then she quietly left the kitchen and went to her room.
It was a kind of sadness that needed no words.
When they finished, Jeremy and Pollyanna remained kneeling beside the little grave.
They looked at each other.
Pollyanna cried without making a sound.
Jeremy did the same.
Then they moved closer.
And kissed.
It was a small, sad, almost shy kiss.
There was no passion in it.
There was grief.
There was fear.
There were two children trying to find somewhere to put a pain too large for their bodies to carry.
Death brought us together.
And only death could separate us.
It taught us so much that, in moments of sadness, we learned things happiness could never have taught us.
In my unhappiness, I found someone who understood me.
Someone who shared my pain.
In this world where I had always hidden, someone found me in the dark.
Someone heard my loneliness.
Jeremy didn't come like an angel.
He came as a friend.
As a companion.
As someone who, without hardly saying a word, touched my soul without even realizing it.
For the first time, it seemed that I could trust someone.
Someone who had found my demons and, without realizing it, had begun driving them away.
I wasn't as afraid of the dark anymore.
But one question remained inside me.
Did Manna die so I could be happy?
Never.
Was life playing a cruel joke on us?
Maybe it was destiny.
Maybe it was simply chance.
Or maybe we were nothing more than puppets trapped in a game too cruel for us to understand.
Life is difficult.
Rare.
Sad.
But it is the only one we have.
And because of that, perhaps we have to hold on to every little moment of happiness it gives us.
Ever since I was eight years old, I had nightmares.
Always the same room.
Dark.
Locked.
The floor covered in cold mud.
There was someone there.
But they had no face.
Only a silhouette covered in darkness.
It was freezing.
So cold.
I had wings.
And they became covered in mud.
Then they were torn away.
I felt something tighten around my neck until I could barely breathe.
I tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
The cold mud covered my body.
In the dream, I lost any sense of who I was.
I stopped being a person.
I became something abandoned.
Discarded.
An empty vessel with nothing inside.
Then I would wake up.
With a terrible taste in my mouth.
Crying.
Always crying.
But there was a strange force inside me.
Something that made me stay alive every day.
Maybe it was faith.
Maybe it was simply instinct.
It appeared whenever I was afraid.
It kept me alive.
And then it disappeared, leaving me alone again.
Now that force had returned.
Maybe it was Jeremy.
Jeremy had arrived.
My Jeremy.
And somehow, he had saved me.
On Sunday, Inês sat with Jeremy on the porch of the backyard.
She explained to him about free institutions that could help him with his dyslexia.
Later, he and Pollyanna sat together on the porch.
They held each other.
They were still grieving Manna.
It was cold.
Neither of them wanted to talk about her.
The following day, in the classroom, Jeremy watched the lesson pass quickly before his eyes.
The words.
The movements.
The students.
The clock.
Everything seemed distant.
When recess came, he found Pollyanna in the schoolyard.
She approached him slowly.
“Hi?”
Jeremy answered quietly:
“Hi.”
Pollyanna looked a little embarrassed.
“Um... Miguel was transferred up north. He went to live with his parents.”
Jeremy stared at her.
“But...”
“Forget it.”
She smiled gently.
“You're at peace now.”
Jeremy wanted an explanation.
He wanted a reason.
Sometimes we think we need to answer violence with our fists.
We want to turn our pain into someone else's pain.
But no pain is healed by another pain.
Time doesn't erase everything, but it teaches us how to carry what remains.
Everyone fights a battle inside themselves.
And every one of those battles deserves to be respected.
We make mistakes.
We learn.
We practice.
And then we learn again.
Jeremy tried to speak.
“But...”
Pollyanna interrupted him.
“You have me.”
He looked at her.
“The rest is in the past.”
Jeremy smiled.
“Okay.”
Pollyanna placed her hands behind her back.
“Close your eyes. I have a surprise.”
Jeremy closed them.
Pollyanna stepped closer and placed something around his neck.
“You can open them.”
Jeremy looked down.
It was a medal.
A small chain.
And hanging from it was the bullet.
The same bullet he had once carried in his pocket.
The same bullet that, that day, represented his desire to die.
Now it had become something else.
Jeremy touched the medal with his fingers.
He read the small inscription.
“To the survivors...”
He looked at Pollyanna.
“A medal.”
She smiled.
“I love it.”
Jeremy remained silent.
For a few seconds, he simply stared at the gift.
It was strange to think that this tiny object, which had once represented death, now meant something else.
Hope.
He looked at the medal with the eyes of a child who was beginning to believe again that a future could exist.
As if everything bad could disappear, if only for a moment.
It wasn't just a gift.
It was something that came from someone special.
From someone who knew how to turn small things into something meaningful.
From Polly to Jeremy.
He felt loved.
Protected.
As though, in that moment, no one could hurt him.
Then he leaned toward her ear and whispered:
“With you, I'll always be home.”
Always.
Those words gave me a strength I didn't know I possessed.
I wanted to tell the whole world.
To scream.
To say what was happening inside me.
It was a strange sensation in my stomach that rose toward my head, almost making me dizzy.
A knot in my throat.
And the need to make a promise to myself.
Like a prayer:
I love you.
With Jeremy, love finally made sense.
It was as if that moment could last forever.
One eternal second.
A place where we could remain together without fear.
Without guilt.
Without pain.
Without loneliness.
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