深圳外国语学校初一(12)班 刘璐

    Liu Lu, Class 12, Junior 1, Shenzhen Foreign Languages School

    I was woken up in the middle of the night by a sharp knock on the door. Wondering who it could be at this hour of the night, I rose from my bed and opened the door. And I guess you could imagine how stunned I was when an angel appeared right in front of my eyes, dressed in a long white tunic and holding a piece of paper in his hand.

    “Who, who are you?” I stammered, blinking under the blinding light given off by the halo on his head, “What are you here for?”

    The angel didn’t seem to notice the panicked look on my face. He glanced at his paper for a few seconds, and what he said after that completely freaked me out. “You have 24 hours left to live in this world. After that, you’ll have to go with me — to heaven.”

    “What? Why?”

    But I didn’t think he heard me. With a flash of another beam of blinding light, the angel was nowhere to be seen. So I was left alone standing in front of the opened door, having trouble rationalizing this whole thing out.

    The next thing I remember, I was sitting on my bed and staring at the same sunlight that pours into my room from the window every day at six o’clock. How beautiful it is, I thought, and how weird it is. My mind flew back to mornings before, when I just wouldn’t stop complaining about the sunlight that went right through the curtains before waking me up from my deep sleep. Well, that may be true; but right then, all I could think of was how warm and bright the September morning sunlight was, and how it used to welcome me to a new day. However, as I remembered the angel’s words the night before, I knew this would be its last time to greet me. I got up and pulled open the curtains.

    “Thank you, sun,” I murmured. “Thank you for embracing the world every day. But... goodbye.”

    I washed up and got ready for school. It was strange that the schoolbag I hated so much before didn’t seem so heavy that day. Outside, the golden mixture of sunlight and the cool air enveloped the apartment building. That scene was so nice; especially when you look at it through the eyes of someone who has only one day left in this world.

    “Thank you,” I whispered, to this place which had been my home as long as I could remember, “thank you for always being there waiting for me every day. But... goodbye.”

    The walk to school that day was a short one. Even the classroom seemed so friendly that I just couldn’t help running in and sitting down on my seat. Then I looked up, at my classmates, the classmates who had spent so much time with me and knew almost all my deepest, darkest secrets.

    It was tough for me to accept the fact that today would be our last day together.