It was a ridiculously hot and humid day sometime during the summer when I was visiting my parents. The temperature went past the hundred, the plants blinding green, the sky so clear and surreal it hurt to look up. Staying under the shelter was always the safer choice in this kind of weather. There were almost no people on the streets. Yet despite all the reason and resistance from my subconscious, I decided to head out.
Two weeks into the summer vacation of my third year in college, I received a package from one of my high school best friends, Liam. He sent the package along with a note, explaining how this bizarre surprise, or as he called it, “present from me in the past” ended up in my P.O. box. Liam went to a private university on the other side of the state and and majored in humanistic studies. He was leaving to study abroad for a year and a half in some developing country, so when he was packing he found some collection from our golden years and thought it was a good idea to send them to me.
It was not an unpleasant surprise. I was glad that he thought of me as the best candidate to guard his high school shame during his leave, though I believed the reason I was the most trustworthy guardian was because half of the collections probably contained my high school shame too.
I was excited to look inside the package, but I waited until I went back to my hometown to visit my parents that same summer. Liam had always been a sentimental person, he would have wanted me to look at the memories, from one fifth of our whole life span then, at the right place and the right time. So on that ridiculously hot and humid day, I thought it was a good idea to walk to our old high school in our hometown, and remember our good old days there. For sentiments’ sake.
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