( Flash Fiction)
I like the song ‘My Heart Will Go On’ from that film where everybody drowned. I think it was called ‘Titanic’ and the song was sung by Celine Dion.
I’m following my heart and I’m going to live with Ade.
People will probably say I’m too young to have a boyfriend let alone make the decision to spend the rest of my life with him.
I’m only ten years old and forever will be. An age when I should be playing with my dolls and friends and running away from boys who try to kiss me. I shouldn’t even being thinking of living with a boy till I’m much, much older. I should be thinking about going to school and passing my exams so I can go to a good secondary school and then go off to university to graduate into something that will get me a thing called a career. And then I can find a boyfriend, marry and become a mum like my mum.
But things happen in our lives and sometimes we have no control over them.
Something happened to me that I had no control over; I won’t be going to school anymore, or Sunday school for that matter. I won’t be playing with my friends anymore or live at home. I’m going to live with Ade.
Ade is a year older than me and lives on the other side of town. He hasn’t been to school for a very long time because he’s very sick. But I’m going to make him better. I’ve never met him before but I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him.
Even his parents are excited that I’m coming to live with him. We are going to sleep in the same bed, eat the same food and even bathe at the same time. We’ll do everything together.
I’ll be forever ten years old and he’s eleven and both our parents are ecstatic about our union. I heard that they both cried with happiness at the thought of us both getting together.
I’m just a kid you might think and what are my parents thinking letting me go and live with a boy just a year older than me?
Surely it’s against the law you might think. I should be living my life doing kiddie-things – playing, going to school, having fun and growing up gradually. Definitely not running off to live with a boy! That’s things grown-ups do when they become boyfriend and girlfriend and hold hands and kiss and tell everybody they are getting married.
Before you start questioning my Parents’ morals or their sense of judgement. Before you start asking whether they are mentally sane or not, or whether they know there is a law against kids living together, let me tell you something.
You see after that car knocked me over when I was trying to cross the road and I died my parents were too heartbroken to let me go; they wanted me to live on.
At the request of the hospital they agreed to donate my organs to other sick children who needed them.
Ade had a bad heart that wasn’t working properly and needed a new one, urgently, so he could stay alive.
Being the right match he got my heart transplanted into him and I live on inside him and with him.
My heart will go on.
