People say love can happen anywhere in church, at a party, even at a bus stop. Mine began in the dusty chemistry lab of my secondary school.
Her name was Ada. Miss Marvel Small neat smiling person. She had this aura of serenity that she wear like a coat which nothing could knock off her feet. In chemistry she sat two benches in front of me. Whenever Mr. Okafor taught, I would ever so often see her spinning her pen as if his words were the background music to whatever she was playing in her head.
I wasn’t looking for love. I was in SS2, focused on schoolwork and trying to keep my grades steady. Romance felt like something for older people people with money for outings, gifts, and all those extras. My biggest concern at the time was making sure my dad didn’t see my report card whenever my maths score dropped.
But one Thursday morning, something happened that I will never forget. We were setting up for a practical. I pulled my stool closer to my table, ready to arrange my beakers and Bunsen burner. Unde the burner, I noticed they is a small piece of paper.
I said to myself maybe it was a scrap someone left there. But curiosity made me open it. Inside was neat, slanted handwriting:
"You look too serious in class. Smile more :)"
When I froze for some seconds, I noticed someone is coming from my back. Then I slowly turned around, and I saw Ada starring at me with a special smile. At this time, it feels like the smile was for me alone.
From that day, chemistry lessons changed. They were no longer just about balancing equations or heating solutions. Every class became something I looked forward to.
The notes kept coming. Sometimes she slipped them under my burner before I arrived. Sometimes I found them in my locker. Some were silly:
"I think NaCl tastes like heartbreak."
Others made me think:
"If you could be any element, what would you be? I’d be Oxygen. Everybody needs me."
She drew me holding breaking and wearing laboratory goggle glass, under the drawing she wrote: "The scientist who stole my attention." I laughed so hard that day, Mr. Okafor asked if I was okay.
We didn’t talk much outside of the lab. No holding hands. No walking home together. No sitting side by side during break. Our little world existed only inside that dusty lab, in the forty minutes of each lesson. And maybe that’s what made it special. It was just like a secret that belongs to both of us alone. The everything changed.
It was the start of SS3. On Monday morning, Ada didn’t show up for school. I thought she was sick. The next day, she was still absent. By the end of the week, I heard the news her family had moved to Port Harcourt because her father got a new job.
She hadn’t told me. No goodbye. No last note. Just gone.
And a couple of weeks later, I opened up one of my drawers to clean it out, and found the old Also-Not-In-Love-With-School Ani in my chemistry textbook. And inside, between the pages, a beautifully square pile of all of her notes. So for the next hour or so, I went and sat on my bed reading them. I laughed at the silly ones, smiled at the sweet ones and when I got to the last one she ever gave me, my heart pinched a little.
It simply read: "Don’t stop smiling."
I don’t know if she wrote that knowing she was leaving. But those three words stayed with me.
Years have passed since then. I’ve met other people. I’ve experienced bigger moments and even real heartbreak. The smell of chemicals and lab hand gloves reminds me of then. I remembered the day I saw the note under the burner which was meant for me.
I understood something which I didn't understand then when I looked behind. Not everyone who comes into your life is lifelong to stay. Some come for a short while but give you much more than that – a lesson, a memory, or in this case, a smile you didn’t know you were needing.
Ada reminded me that the quote time are the ones that stays long in our heart.
Maybe that is the reason I still preserve the note till today, not that am holding onto the past, but to remember how beautiful those words mean to me anytime I look through it.
Love isn’t always big or loud. Sometimes it’s as tiny as a note under a Bunsen burner, telling you to smile.
