“We should do this more often, shouldn’t we?”
Nate laughed as he noticed the girl behind him catching her breath. Ella lifted her red graduation gown to her knees, avoiding the tall grasses that started to give her legs an itch. In fact, they were everywhere—covering the wide meadow ahead of them with endless patches of green, making them feel a new sense of freedom they did not understand—they felt infinite.
“Yeah, who cares what the teachers have to say. I got my diploma—let’s run away,” Ella grinned at her best friend and lied on the grass, looking at the summer sky. “Graduation ceremonies are so boring.”
“At least they… they reserved a great place for us, with this view,” Nate agreed, sitting with his arms around his knees. He sighed. “Life is calling us. No more high school is awaiting us after this long, long break.”
“But we’re still gonna be together, right?” Ella sat down and took Nate’s hands. He smiled. “Of course, Ella. I think I’m cursed with being your neighbor for my entire life.”
“Hm?” Ella giggled as she leaned closer to him, her eyes brightly lit under the afternoon sun. She was indeed beautiful—although Nate had never taken interest of her perfect brown curls, or her petite figure, or her smile. She had always been the same Ella that he met on his first Christmas carol ages ago; the Ella who loved chasing dragonflies and making wishes out of skinny dandelions. She would always be that girl to him…
“Blessed,” Nate corrected his own words and ruffled her hair. Ella shrugged and stretched her arm to a nearby dandelion and plucked it.
“Really, Ella?”
“Why not? It’s the last time we’re gonna be labelled as classmates,” Ella took another dandelion and forced Nate to hold it. “Make a wish.”
“I really wanna be a journalist,” Nate closed his eyes for a while, picturing the college life he had been dreaming for so long.
“That’s silly,” Ella blurted. “And less manly. I hope your future girlfriend won’t think like me.”
“Of course she won’t. She’ll support me all the way—be my company wherever my boss wants me to write…”
“It’s never wrong to dream big,” Ella stuck her tongue out and stared at her dandelion. “There’s just too many wishes I wanna make, I feel like I’m gonna confuse God with them. Like, will he be interested to know which among my wishes do I want the most? What if he runs out of power before granting all of them? And—“
“Ella,” Nate stopped her. “Our God is infinite. Go ahead. You only have one dandelion.”
“But there’s so many more of them out there—“
“Na-ah. We gotta get back inside. I don’t mind missing the teachers’ speech but I really need the food.”
“Okay,” Ella pouted like the little girl she’d always been and held her flower tightly. And she said those words Nate never managed to sweep out of his mind ever since, “I wish we would always be together—and have each other’s backs. I wish no matter where life takes us, we would always hold on to the friendship that we’ve built for so long. I wish I would never run out of wishes, because every time we drift apart, I’d always make another one to bring us back to where we belong.”
And at that moment, something different crept into his heart.
YOU ARE READING
Tearing Paper
RomansaThere's this girl. She spends every day tearing paper, as if nothing she writes ever makes sense. There's this guy. He spends every day watching her, although he knows he isn't ready to love again. When he finally dares himself to make a move, they...
