Neil (10),

Hey, kid.

          Wow, you are having fun in the pond now. Look at your hands; they are like pickled cucumber. Don’t worry, I’m not grandma, and I’m not going to call you home. Take your time. Just for your information, two years later, some factory will drain some poisonous water into this pond, and all the fish inside will turn their bellies to the sky, scary white bellies, like the shrouds for dead. “So it goes.”

          Oh, this “so it goes” is from a book called Slaughterhouse-Five by an American writer, Kurt Vonnegut. He uses this phrase every time some living thing dies in the book, and he himself died after falling down a flight of stairs in his own home in 2007. “So it goes.” Don’t look so confused; you will fly across the Pacific Ocean and come to the United States to attend high school six years from now, and read this book in English in eight years. Surprising? So it was to me; I didn’t think it was real until I landed there and saw all those people with white skin, blond hair and a high nose bridge walking around, not in movies, but really around me.

          During my flight there, I always thought I would have an air crash. Of course I didn’t; otherwise, how can I write to you now? But even if I did, there’s nothing for you to be sad about, as Vonnegut says:` “When a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past.” Yep, my death at sixteen won’t exert any influence on you; you were here, are here, and will always be here, in the pond, as a ten-year-old. The only difference is that there won’t be Neil older than sixteen any more. All the Neils will stand like the numerous road lamps along a dark street, shedding light at the same time. You count, count, and count, but when you come to the end of the road where there is only absolute darkness lying beyond, you stop and raise your head. There it (he) is, the last shining road lamp, the sixteen-year-old Neil who died at the moment of the air crash.

          Forget it, don’t panic. Hey, look at your face. You look just like a football player when he sees the derivation for Fermat’s Last Theorem. It’s none of your business, so why bother?

          Oh, grandma is calling you. I need to go now.

Bye, kid.

Neil (18)