Chapter 11
648words
I was no longer that transparent person hiding in the corner. At school, I became Mr. Smith’s most prized student, and some classmates would even come to me to form history study groups. On the street, Mrs. Hoffman would grab me and insist on giving me her freshly baked apple pie. Grandma Williams even gave me a spare key to her house, saying: “Emily, this is your home too.”
And my home, that place that once felt as cold as a morgue, began to have some warmth. Dad and Mom would sit on the same sofa, watch a boring soap opera, argue a bit about the plot, and then smile at each other. The smile was faint, but like the warmest sunshine of winter.
All of this was so beautiful, like an unreal dream. I stood in the center of happiness, wrapped in unprecedented warmth and acceptance.
I embraced everything I wanted.
Except for time.
The calendar turned to its last page, with that date circled in red pen, like an eye, staring at me coldly.
In the secret hideout, sunlight still filtered through the hole in the roof, forming a beam of light where countless dust particles danced, like a silent cosmic explosion. I sat on my “throne,” clutching that black notebook filled with scratches.
Jack sat across from me. He wasn’t reading a book or tossing stones, just quietly watching me.
“So,” I finally spoke, my voice surprisingly calm even to myself, “can you tell me now? How did I die?”
He fell silent, those usually calm eyes now like a foggy sea.
“Car accident,” he said after a long while, his voice very low. “On the day we first met. I told you before.”
“I want to know the details,” I stared at him. “I want to know what kind of car, which street, if I was… in pain.”
Jack didn’t answer my question. He shifted his gaze, looking toward that beam of light, as if watching a movie from long ago.
“Ten years ago,” he began, his voice somewhat distant, “there was a boy who loved to play. That afternoon, he was playing with a ball.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“He was holding that ball, bouncing it on the sidewalk by the street. Accidentally, he hit it too hard, and the ball rolled into the middle of the road.”
He continued speaking, as if telling a story that had nothing to do with us.
“Without thinking, he ran after it. He didn’t see the truck turning around the corner.”
The warehouse was terrifyingly quiet; I could only hear the sound of my own increasingly loud heartbeat.
“Just as the truck was about to hit him, a girl rushed over. She seemed to have just come out of the convenience store nearby, still holding a bottle of soda in her hand. She pushed the boy away with all her strength.”
Jack’s voice began to tremble, showing a vulnerability I had never seen before.
“The boy was pushed down onto the sidewalk, only scraping his knee. He looked back, just in time to hear a piercing sound of brakes, and… other sounds.”
He stopped, lowered his head, and covered his face with his hands. Sunlight shone on his slightly trembling shoulders.
“That boy survived. But for the past ten years, he has had the same dream every night. In the dream, he always tries to see what the girl who pushed him away looked like, but her face is always blurry. He only remembers that she had a ponytail and was wearing a white T-shirt.”
My mind went blank, and the blood in my body seemed to freeze.
Jack slowly lowered his hands, raised his head, and stared at me with reddened eyes. In them was an overwhelming sadness that I couldn’t comprehend.
