Highway to Happy

Perfect book in a perfectly empty coffee shop

I read “Looking for Alaska” months ago, but as I try looking back at the year that was, I can’t help but pull it out of my disorganized bookshelf and run through a few parts. You see, I have this habit of highlighting sentences, even entire paragraphs, in books that really made marks on me. Not to memorize or anything, it just makes re-visiting books much easier. Like today.

Reading anew transported me back to the very moment I started flipping the pages of this John Green novel:

My head was comfortably resting on his leg with his hand running through my hair, as if serving as our physical connection since we were both lost into each other’s books. I was reading the first pages of Looking for Alaska when I came across the words “Great Perhaps”. It was on page 5. Somehow those words hit me. So I grabbed my highlighter and marked them. I even read the paragraph aloud for the boyfriend, stealing a few seconds from his own reading.

It was a borderline sunny and rainy afternoon. I was with my favorite person. With a coffee shop all to ourselves. How could I think about anything related to a Big Maybe? Because here with me was what used to be my Great Perhaps.

I know this is, like, supposed to be a flashback of the year we just left behind and I intend to write about that, too, if time permits. But when it comes to “us”, I truly could not draw a line between years. It’s like a before and after. And “Looking for Alaska” reminded me of our before.

(I am the worst at book reviews, so this is not going to be one. This is just pieces of the novel that stick with me until today. If you are looking for a good review better check the net.)

Highschool is where people expect you to do the most stupid things and live the most interesting parts of your story. Saying it that way, perhaps, I haven’t lived up to everyone’s expectation. I was pretty much the boring A student. I was part of the honor roll, wrote for the school paper and was handpicked by the Principal as the student to take her place on Teacher’s day. Lame, right? In my defense, I also played for the Varsity (basketball) and was an adopted member of the cheering squad. Perhaps, I was busy juggling too many things to give time for those “interesting” stories.

So, I barely went out on weekends. I barely slept on class. I cheated, yes, but only on homeworks. I was never the classmate who had the most fascinating stories on disobeying school rules and highschool rebellion. I have a clean record, so you know. But, before you judge my little miss perfect ass, I did something, in highschool, something our concerned parents and over-protective brothers and skeptic friends all warned us about:

I fell in love.

We were young and naïve, surrounded by a bubblewrap of invincibility. We weren’t even allowed to take hold of a steering wheel yet we dared take hold of each others’ hearts. Hell, that was stupid. But it was the best time to be stupid.

# posted by Liana : 5:59 PM