Grenade

SOL #23

March 24, 2009

Grenade

The sun was shinning today, – at least in this part of the city – and it was my favorite kind of sun light, cold sun light. Not the sun light that made your eyes squint so much that you can barely see and the muscles around your eyes start to hurt and that the moment you go outside, your sweating. No, this was the sunlight that shinned and like if you were in a field of flowers, not like if you were under a hot lamp.

“Nice day, right?” My dad said,

“Yeah.” I murmured back.

My head was filled up with the music of the piano concert I had heard millions of times. And as always, my dad had it playing the moment I got into the car. I stared up at the palm trees; it reminded me of that poem my dad had read to me. I remember his words clearly:

When you come back, the evening wind will amuse itself, combing palm trees.

It was a beautiful poem.

We must have been entering the gates to the parking lot. I saw the little yellow light flash on and off as the gates opened. We’re driving into the parking lot when, BAM!! A booming sound shakes the car; 5 thoughts come to me at once…

“Their attacking…run!”…

“What did they throw!? Is dangerous?”…

“Careful Ines, you don’t know what that was.”…

“Tell your dad, you need to get out of the car.”…

“Why us!? What did we do?!”…

An oval-like, black thing rolled down the car’s front window. Then all the thoughts get turned into one. Grenade. Then, I forget how to scream, I forget how to move, I’m just waiting for the big BOOM that will kill me in approximately 3 seconds. Then, everything is black. I heard my dad’s low, throaty voice laughing. Then another one, Estefania’s – my neighbor –gorgeous, incomparable voice was laughing. This was heaven? It must be. Maybe next, I would hear Laura’s soft and harmonic voice, or Mariana’s flawless voice, or maybe Gustavo Andres’s hoarse and deep voice. Or then I would hear Mathieu’s polished voice, or Mehr’s ravishing voice. And then last of all I would hear the most pleasant of all, Paulina’s radiant, stunning voice that I would never forget. My voice was like a violin, it could sound pretty if it was played right.

But then there was pain, I couldn’t be dead and have pain…could I? My eyes were hurting; I noticed a pressure on them. My hands were pressing onto them; I pulled them away slowly, as if they were glued there. I got out of the car; Estefania was with her dog, Bambi, on a blue leash, she was staring at something, I gazed at my dad and saw that he was looking at the same thing. The grenade. I was about to shout, “Look out!” or, “It’s gonna blow!” or something around those lines. Then I saw it closely, I saw the grenade. But, since when do grenades have a green and red color... Oh, right. I started to laugh, too. Standing in front of us, was a green and red mango that had fallen from a tree…LOL (laugh out loud).