Different Side

Chapter 6

Hazel’s POV

“Oh my god,” I gaped. “Ohhhh my god.” I repeated, still shocked.

When Tyler saw my reaction, he smirked then closed the door behind us with a loud click. The room before my eyes is huge. Really, really huge. You wouldn’t be able to guess the huge size of it from its exterior structure. Well, that’s not the point. The point is that the room actually has a freaking huge trampoline in the middle of the room, like what the hell! Well, that isn’t the point either. Oh shut up, inner me. For all that I can see, this room is PARADISEEEEEEEE.

Everything in this room are in small sizes, the chairs, the tables, the shoe cabinet, everything. The walls of the room is similar to the one outside, painted in rainbow colours. The only difference is that it has lots and lots of graffiti on it, pencil drawn, pen written, crayon doodled, and even spray painted. Before I allow my own curiosity to lead my legs, I imitated Tyler by taking off our shoes and placing them neatly on the black coloured shoe rack that was beside the door. Even through my socks, I could feel the welcoming warmness and fuzziness from the rug-covered ground. 

To the far left of the room, one whole row of light cherry wooden table is pushed against the wall with stools neatly pushed in below the tables. On the wall, it says ‘Lunch Time!’. As I slowly walked along the tables, my index finger traced each and everyone of them, reminiscing my own past as a child. I smiled as I read those hand written comments on the tables.

‘Today Auntie Lowell forced me to eat vegetables that I dislike’

‘Yay! I won Jason in the soccer match, loser!!!’

‘Auntie Lowell, can I stay here forever?’

‘Yay!! Today we've got fried chicken!!!’

‘Today I got punished by pulling my ears because I spilled the tomato soup’

‘Today I peed my pants and July laughed at me’

There are so many more of them but a loud sound blasted through the speakers suddenly, making me shriek softly as I covered my ears. I shot my eyes to the source of the sound and I realize that Tom and Jerry is playing on the huge visualizer screen at the front of the room. Two huge speakers are placed on each side of the screen while Tyler is adjusting the volume from the laptop that was plugged in on the ground. When Tyler looked up, he caught me staring at him and he smiled again.

“Do you like it here?” He asked nicely. I nodded quickly and watched his expression turn into a huge grin.

“Well, this is not the best part yet.” He informed.

“Well, shit, I already love it here,” I smiled. “Can you give me a few minutes or so? I still want to look around.” I requested.

“Sure, no rush.” He replied.

I smiled at him before looking away, breaking the eye contact. Right beside the row of tables is a large inflated playhouse, inside filled with those small hollow plastic balls. The temptation to jump into it right now is overflowing but it will look really childish, at least not in front of Tyler. I sucked air into my mouth then dropped the thought.

Next to the playhouse is the visualizer screen while on the other side of the screen is a tall cupboard. Right in front of the trampoline is a beige-coloured couch that is sitting not far away from the huge screen and the couch has fluffy dolls piling up on it. Oh, if you fall from the trampoline, you’d probably land on the couch, how convenient. Shut up, inner me.

To the far right of the room, there are five doors, each painted a different colour and there is a labelled sign for each of the door.

“You ready?” Tyler smirked. I nodded quickly, dying to see what’s hiding behind those doors. Tyler casually walked over to me and grabbed my hand, making my heart skip a beat. Three beats actually. He pulled me to the last door, the one furthest away from the visualizer screen. It is painted red, plain red and the label said, ‘Playroom!!’. Twisting the door knob, the latch dispatches and reveals the other side of the door. My smile soon turned into a grin, my brain bringing me down memory lane.