Just Like Heaven

Chapter Three

Upon receiving my notebook and feeling relieved, I looked down at my watch, seeing that I still had two hours and a half until I had to be home for lunch. So I thought to myself that it wouldn’t hurt to stay a few more minutes to chat.

      “So… are you a part of church’s choir?” I asked the boy, finding it curious that he was back here in this room, practicing the piano.

      “No, not really.” Adam shook his head hesitantly, dropping his gaze away from me. “My father’s the janitor here.” I said nothing and only nodded, so the boy went on and pointed at the notebook in my hand. I felt like he was trying to change the subject. “Did you write them yourself?” he asked. “The poems.”

       “Poems?” I repeated with a smile. “I really wouldn’t call them that. They’re not good, I know –”

      “I thought they were brilliant,” he said briskly, breaking me off.

       I looked up at him with a smile. No one had ever said such a thing about my writings. Although that was probably because I never let anybody read them. Long ago I had tried to read a few pages to my mother, but she only scolded me and said that I should spend more time studying rather than wasting my life dwelling on what isn’t real. So I decided never to let anyone read them from that day on.

      But now, hearing a complete stranger say that they were good, gave me an overwhelming feeling of joy that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I didn’t even know it was possible to feel this way.

      “So… um… do you live here?” I asked, finding myself desperate to make small talk, but felt like I was embarrassing myself. “In the church, I mean.”

       “No,” said Adam, giving me a shy smile. “My father and I live in a house nearby; number twelve. It’s the church’s property. It’s right by the creek that passes the church.”

       “Creek?” I raised my brows at him in surprise. “I didn’t even know a Creek passed this town.”

       “Well, of course.” He chuckled lightly. “It passes from the church too, you know.”

       “Really?” I took aback.

       “Yeah, right behind it.” Adam nodded. “I can show you, if you want.”

       I hesitated at first and glanced down at my watch. I still had time, I reassured myself. So I looked back at the ginger boy before shrugging casually. “Yeah. All right.”

       With that, the boy’s smile widened once more, his dimple reappearing on his freckly cheek. He gestured me to follow him and so I did, walking out of another door at the back of the church which lead to the back yard. I had been there only once before when I was nine; my grandmother had passed away and she was buried in the cemetery here. But I couldn’t remember the creek, or rather didn’t even pay much attention to it. Perhaps at the time I was too busy thinking about death that I forgot to live.

      Adam and I passed the graveyard and entered a small field of green grass and walked through it over the sound of singing birds. But it was the creek that caught my attention.

       “Nice place,” I said, looking around.

       “Oh, but it gets better.” He smiled.

       “What do you mean?”

       “C’mon. I’ll show you.” And so he started walking again, me following him right behind, having no idea where he was taking me, yet I somehow felt drawn to keep on moving forward.

      And the when we finally turned the corner just as the creek did, I came to a stop at what I saw. Right at the edge of the water, there was a magnificent cherry blossom tree, filled with beautiful pink little flowers on each branch. I found myself smiling as my feet carried me toward the tree.

      “Your timing is great,” said Adam, snapping me back to reality. “It’s only like this for the first few weeks of April.”

       I didn’t know what I should’ve answered to that, so I remained silent. Instead, I kneeled down by the water, right underneath the tree. With each spring breeze that passed by, a few blossoms would travel down with it, falling upon the surface of the creek.

      “It’s so still,” I muttered under my breath, feeling at peace as I watched the water. I was not intending for Adam to hear, but when I figured that he had in fact heard me, I regretted it deeply. I hated to show people this side of me.

       I expected him to make fun of me, just like many of my so-called-friends did in middle school – back when I didn’t care to fit in with others. But Adam did something I never expected.

       “It’s not still, really,” he answered me ever so calmly, as if talking about such things was a normal friendly conversation that you made every day. “Take a closer look. Watch the blossoms.”

      I frowned in confusion before turning my gaze back on the seemingly still water, but the closer I got to it, the more I realized that it was on the move. Just then did I realized that the fallen blossoms were moving forward along with the creek.

     A few sank down the moment wind brought them down and they touched the surface, but many were carried away with the seemingly still water, and I wondered where they were all destined to go. Perhaps this creek would join a river far away from this church, and then another, and another one after that, until they all merge together into the sea, carrying the blossoms away with themselves. A part of him wished that he could let himself go along with the water, going as far as it could wander. 

       “I always come here when I need to be alone,” said Adam, breaking the silence once more. “It helps me think. And in summers when the water’s a bit warmer, it’s great to just deep your feet in it.”

       I turned to look at him with raised brows.

       Having noticed the confused expression on my face, he laughed. “What? Haven’t you ever done such a thing before?” I shook my head. Now it was his time to give me a look of utter disbelief.

       “Strict parents,” I reasoned.

       “So? Didn’t you go away with your school friends over the summer by lakes or bonfires all night long? It must be fun.”

        “Fun?” I scoffed. “Where do you think my school is? Coney Island?”

       “Oh, sorry.” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “That was just my idea of what usually happened for summers. But I wouldn’t really know. I was home schooled. Although, except for that short period that I went to church school.”

       “Wish I was home schooled,” I mumbled bitterly, sitting down on the ground leaning against the cherry blossom tree sorrowfully.

      “How come?” Adam asked, sitting beside me and crossing his legs, bringing them toward him and hugging his knees into his chest.

       “Because it’s pathetic, that’s why!” I huffed, shaking my head as I stared ahead at the creek. “You go there every day, learning things that are never going to be a use to you, just so you can go to college, where you’ll learn more useless things.”

       “Woah, you sure know how to make everything in life seem worthless.” He chuckled.

        “Not everything,” I corrected him, “just things that the world has convinced us that is essential; like marriage and kids. Or having a boring yet secure job, just to stay alive.”

        “Then what are you planning on doing about it?”

       I turned to face him. “What?”

       “I’m just saying.” Adam shrugged. “You claim that you hate routine. So I was wondering what you have in mind to change it.”

       “Nothing.” I blinked at him, regarding his question. “There’s nothing to do. It’s a fact of life. This is how future is for all of us. We have to accept it the way it is.”

       “You say you want to have a different life, but you’ve already surrendered yourself to the rules.” Adam smiled. “You can’t make memories while sitting at home and protesting that it’s the world’s fault that you have no stories to tell.”

       I don’t know what irritated me more; that what he had said stung, or the fact that deep down I knew it was true. So I just shook my head at him.

      “You don’t even know me,” I muttered grimly, getting to my feet. Not knowing what I was even supposed to say, I just gave him a polite nod. “Thanks for – er – showing me around, I guess.”  

      But before he could get the chance to answer me, I had already turned on my heels and left, my notebook clutched in my hand and my own thoughts haunting more and more with each step that I took further away from Adam Smith.