Yeo Eun Ki/ Final draft of chapter 4/ Tuesday 1pm

A little patch of heaven

It's a porch. A back porch. Just mere two concrete steps leading up to the cream colored door with a silver D printed at the center top.
  If someone passed by my old home, they would never realize the wondrous comfort its back porch gave to the occupants. To a passing car, my humble home would not look like much. A bad location to live, they might say, judging by how close it was to the train tracks. But little do people know about the quiet world that lay past the solid front door, through the snug living room, beyond the immaculate kitchen, and out the back door.
  After angry fights with friends I would slam the back door shut, slide down the stair and sulk. After a particularly harsh scolding from my parents, I would shut the back door meekly behind me and sit on the back steps. Then almost always, I would promptly dissolve into tears, my bare feet cold against the stony and unforgiving concrete. During blazing summer days, the porch's hard, rough surface would leave bumpy imprints along my tanned brown legs as my friends and I crowded about, slurping down icy popsicles of rainbow colors. In the evenings, stars would gleam faintly in the vast open sky as I sat listening to the sound of crickets.
  But my favorite memories of that porch are reading countless books perched at the edge of those concrete steps. On Saturday afternoons, it was almost a ritual to grab my newest paperback novels, settle myself down as comfortably as I could on those steps, and flip to page one. And then the adventure would begin. I would be carried away by the black and white pages to meet eccentric detectives or children who attend a magical school, battling blistering blizzards and scorching deserts, traveling to Timbuktu and back all the while sitting under the comfortably cool shade of my porch. And after finishing a book I would sometimes sit for a long time, still dazed from the thrills of my journey.
  I felt safe on that porch, knowing I could enter the comfort of my home with only one leap. I could catch autumn leaves, throw snowballs, daydream about cute boys, and still be in time for dinner. If I turned my head right, I could wave lazily to my neighbor cooking barbeque on his coal black grill. And if I squinted to the left, I could catch the last of the fiery setting sun disappearing into the trees. It was the door offering me access to a world away from grades and school, and I went up and down those steps nearly every day. And even today, no other place has more meaning to my childhood than that back porch.