Heaven Knows

11: Dominic

Heaven Knows OST:

♫ All you never say by Birdy ♫

♫ Don’t run away by David Archuleta ♫

Chapter 11: Dominic

How come people just wake up one day and realize they can’t be with you anymore?

I think it’s unfair to get burned in a fire that wasn’t even there. And it’s totally unfair to be left alone without an explanation or an acceptable reason. Now I’m starting to sound like a movie character. Maybe if I’d watch one, I’d see Anna on screen. Everything seems to lead to her because almost everything about me has always been about her.

After Heaven opened her heart to me, she closed her gates and she locked them for good. I know it’s complicated but I don’t know why she’s like that. Are girls really that moody? One day she’s sweet to me and the other she ignores me. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I love her and figuring her out always takes all of me.

I still leave messages on her locker’s door and when I get back, they disappear. That I know she’s in school. She just doesn’t want to see me. But why? Did I do something to upset her? She said she loves me but then she walks away.

When I finally caught her in the lockers’ area, she ran as fast as she could to avoid me. I tried almost everything to get her to talk to me. But every time I do, she just subdues me. It looks like she doesn’t want to get caught.

On the third time I went to her locker to post my note, I noticed the note I gave her yesterday was still there. Desperate I was to know what happened to my Anna, I booked the courage to ask her classmates. They told me that she wasn’t at school since yesterday. I didn’t know why I had an adrenaline rush. But I knew something was wrong here. So after school, I set out to Anna’s house.

Yet I found it empty. The door was locked and the lights were all off. I’ve decided to wait at their front porch when an old lady, living next door, noticed me.

“I think you should probably go home, boy.” she told me. “No one’s in there. They’ll probably arrive home tomorrow I suppose.”

I stood up briskly from the stall I sat on and I approached the balustrades that separated us.

“Do you have any idea where they might’ve gone?” I asked.

“They might still be at the hospital.” She said sadly as she clasped her hands together in a praying position. “The poor girl had a terrible attack last night.” she made a sign of the cross.

My eyebrows creased to that. “Did you mean Anna?”

She nodded and sighed. “Yes. That kind, sweet girl had been diagnosed with brain cancer four years ago, poor thing.”

When she said that, I felt the whole world had bent before me, like the whole façade was folding in front of me. The mountains crashed together and the ocean dried all at once. I couldn’t explain the pain building inside my chest for the shock of reality had came first and so, when pain came, it numbed me.

The good, old lady might have said something else, but I’ve already felt my feet moving away. I could not bear hearing another set of words about Heaven being sick. I slowly moved out of the front porch like a lost zombie. My whole world spun and quivered. I was lost.

When I looked up, my head made an illusion of Anna in front of me and I felt like laughing to the bones. What kind of mockery is this now? Does pain require you to be insane too? Only when she didn’t disappear, I realized she was the exact thing. Her mother followed suit and when she noticed me, she stopped on her tracks. Anna’s eyes passed by the door that closed next door—I heard it closed. At least my senses had the sense to be my sense. She looked back at me and swallowed hard. When she couldn’t get a hold of me anymore, she looked down at her trembling hands. Her mother approached her and she squeezed both of her shoulders in a half hug before passing me a smile and left.

I heard the door shut behind me and I was left with Anna and the eternity of unspoken words between us. None of the words seem to matter anymore, now that the truth has already triggered the pain. It’s hiding somewhere inside my body, waiting to prey on me when the time comes.

“She told you.” she said without meaning to sound like she was asking a question. She crossed her arms to hug herself.

I scoffed at her. “Were you even planning to tell me?”

She sighed heavily and she looked away. She looked away from anything, anything that wasn’t me. She bit down her lower lip.

“Or were you planning to tell me when you’re already gone.” My voice cracked and I didn’t like the sound of it. It was worse than hearing a cracker crack. “Was that your plan, huh? Tell me, Anna.” I said with an exigent tone. “So that I can prepare myself for severe impact to the heart because honestly, right now, I don’t know how to deal with these feelings. It’s choking me.” I felt a tear stray down my cheek but I let it flow so that she could see how my feelings are suffocating me.

She looked down at her shoes now. “I think the answer is already obvious.”

I exploded and I didn’t know how to hide it anymore. I didn’t even have a metaphor to describe it. Maybe I just exploded into a thousand pieces and it was hard for me to bring my pieces back together.

“All this time, all I did was to make you happy! Why was it too damn hard to tell me one simple thing?”

She took a deep breath and she looked at the car on a driveway. “Did you think it was that easy to tell you?”

I balled my fists and I gritted my teeth. “Was there a single truth behind the words you said to me? Or was it all a lie?” I said. “I loved you, Anna, and this whole thing’s making me crazy!”

Her face started to crumple and she wiped a tear off her face. “I told you not to love Me.” she swallowed hard. “I never asked you to do anything for me.”

I grasped her shoulders and I shouted at her. “Look at me, Anna! Please!”

She did. And when she did, tears fell like droplets of rain. She looked at me as if she wanted to run away from the pain. “What do you want me to say? That I’m sick? Yes, I am!” her voice cracked and more tears fell. “That I want to deprive myself of you? Yes, I do! But every time I try to move on, you’re right there!”

Slowly I relaxed my grip on her and she sniffled. “And every time I try to let you go, I just love you even more. It wasn’t just you, Dom. I am hurting too and I wish you know how much hard it is not to love you.”

She tried to walk away but I held her back. “Anna, please don’t walk away. I can’t.”

She turned to me with a sad smile. “Can you still love me even though you know you’re gonna lose me?”

“Anna, you can’t just come into someone’s life, make them feel special and just leave. This is bullshit!”

“That’s not an answer.” She wiped her tears and she started at the front porch.

“Anna,”

“The world has never been fair. Not to you and most especially not to me. Not even to everyone else.” She said without looking back at me. “I’m sorry, Dom.” Her voice cracked at the sound of my name. She took a steady, deep breath before adding, “But I hope that force field in your heart is strong enough to hold you now.”

She turned and she gave me one last lingering kiss and then she’s gone. Such ironic words to put into one sentence.

Her words were like icebergs. Too thick and too cold. They bump into me and I sink like Titanic. Only that this time, there were no survivors.