8:52 pm
After reaching its destination, we had to get off the bus. We went inside the mall and called my parents to come pick us up.
"So. . .what now?" Russell, my boyfriend, asked me. Can't you believe that? I couldn't believe it either.
"I'm going to take you to my parents," I announced confidently. "After that, I don't know."
"You literally just told them right now to pick you up," he said. "Couldn't you have just. . .told them while we were in the bus?"
"We were having a cool conversation!" I protested. "I didn't want to interrupt that with some lame call to my dad."
He raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, I give up. But. . ." He looked around. "now we just have some time to kill."
"We can still do the stuff we haven't done," I replied, with a mischievous glint in my eye.
I took his hand. "Come on."
-
We walked hastily, as if we were going somewhere, but we stopped at the bookstore.
"Have you ever been to one before?" I asked him as we entered the store.
He shook his head. Typical.
Ahead of the entrance, we were greeted by a table of bestselling books. A copy of each book was made to stand upright to showcase the covers.
One of them piqued my interest so I walked closer and grabbed the book to read the title.
"The Book of Life: An Anthology by Deidre Clayton. . ." I muttered. On the cover there were badges of honor: reviews from popular critics and authors, a Pulitzer prize badge, and the usual New York Times #1 Bestseller.
I turned to the back and skimmed through the blurb. Thank God for a blurb on the back; if it were only reviews, he would've put it down without hesitation.
"Can I see?" Russell asked timidly.
"Yeah, sure," I replied, giving him the copy.
I wandered around the bookstore while he slowly read the cover of the book. My eyes darted past colorful covers and. . .their interesting artistic choices. (I'm looking at you, weird romance books with abs on the cover, I thought.)
Russell caught up to me minutes later, with a now-opened Book of Life.
"You're not supposed to rip off the plastic cover!" I hissed, making some people perusing the textbooks aisle look at us.
"Really?" he asked quizzically. He lifted the book. "It has a good first story."
"What's it about?" I asked, genuinely interested this time. I wanted to know, but I wasn't going to open the book.
"It's a different version of Death-Cast called Life-Cast, which tells you who the person dying is going to be reincarnated into."
"That's. . .nice to hear."
"Do you believe in an afterlife now?"
I paused. "I believe in Life-Cast. I believe in reincarnation. Because I want to meet you, over and over and over and over again."
-
9:19 pm
We were holding hands as we rode the escalator up to the highest floor of the mall. On my free hand was the copy of The Book of Life.
He pointed at the distant arcade when he turned his back. "That's the arcade you took me to. It's close to that? How come I've never seen that before?"
That was an enclosed ice skating rink beside a food court. Even at this time of night, it was crowded. However, there were few people in the rink.
"I want to try that," Russell announced.
"Yeah, sure," I said without hesitation. But when we got on line, that was when I realized we didn't have money to buy two tickets.
"You're lucky," the cashier told us. "The tickets are free as long as you are both Deckers."
"We are," I replied.
"Identification please."
"What?"
Then, the cashier instructed us fo access our accounts in deathcast.com. We managed to confirm our identities and thus were given a receipt.
Next, the guard at the entrance stamped our wrists as a sign of entry. After that, we had to rent some skates for our use.
And finally, it was onto the ice.
I entered and the coldness of the rink hugged me. Thankfully, it wasn't cold enough to freeze me off. I had a hard time balancing on the ice, and it even made me fall over a couple times.
Russell hesitated on the entrance, but laughed at my spectacular fails.
It took me a lot of time to get a hold of pushing myself forward and turning with my body.
"Come on!" I called to Russell. I came to his aid as he took his first steps on the skate.
Immediately, he fell back and I had to catch him.
He was blushing as I helped him up.
"Let me help you," I said.
So, I took his hand and we went through the basics together. I helped him move forward. We tried sync skating together, but he was always left behind.
"You're getting it right," I encouraged him as he caught up to my skating. We were zooming past the people in the rink.
"It's time to do it on your own," I added. And then, I let him go.
I watched him struggle to his feet, but then, he gave me a small smile as he adjusted himself. He then moved forward, passing by me. I followed him, humming as I took myself away from my worries and focused on the freedom of gliding across the ice.
Someday, in another life, it may be something I always did. Never worrying about anything, feeling what I felt like before I got the alert.
I breathed a deep, beautiful sigh. It was perfect.
-
10:05 pm
The ice skating rink closed at 10 pm, so we were now descending on the same escalator we came with. The mall was closing too; there were barely any lights on and the stores were closing up. People--mostly employees--were scrambling to the nearest exit.
Russell couldn't stop raving about the ice skating, his voice reverberating around the now-abandoned mall.
"It was amazing! I--I never dreamed I would do something like that!"
He hugged me and kisses me on the cheek. "Oh thank you thank you thank you!"
"You're welcome," I replied, smiling. "You know. . .I'm happy that you're happy."
"Well. . ." He twirled around in the dress he was wearing. "I'm happy that I make you happy."
And then we were promptly escorted out by the security guard.
We exited the same way we entered. As I overlooked the dark and lonely streets, I was reminded of our encounter earlier today. And all those moments leading up to this. . .it was all a blur.
"Weird. . .my parents aren't here yet," I mumbled.
"What?" He turned to me.
I reached for my phone, which was at its lowest battery, and checked the messages.
-
P
apa
on the way na mi. . .ur mother is here too
Papa
stuck on traffic. . .hang tight
-
I pocketed the phone. "He's stuck in traffic. They must be coming back from the north, if my mom is with him."
"Your mom works there?"
"Yeah, he's a doctor."
"Ah." He looked ahead, clearly in thought. "I have an idea. What if we started walking there? We might be able to meet them conveniently."
"I'm not so sure about that. . ." I replied.
"C'mon!" he chided. "If the dark scares you, I can protect you from it."
The thought of it made me chuckle. "Street kid in dress fights the almighty darkness. I like the sound of that."
On that note, we started walking north, following the sidewalk on the street.