(2012) Heights LX, Anniversary Issue

but I wanted us to remain friends. He didn’t like it, he protested, he said he had been looking forward to us going to each other’s proms, but he ended up agreeing with me when I pointed out that he wasn’t even paying attention to how I once said I’d go in a baro’t saya just to test if he was listening. We just needed time away from each other, I thought, that’s all. Maybe a few weeks. Finals were close after all, and that was the summer before our own college entrance exam season.

But weeks turned to months without us seeing or speaking to one another. My seeing anything untoward ceased soon after too, to my relief. I also avoided coming near the balete ring, partly because just looking at it opened up a floodgate of memories for me, partly because one of my batchmates, a girl who liked to sit under those trees during lunch breaks, contracted dengue and died. The administration warned us to wear long – lasting mosquito repellant and to avoid staying too long at places like the balete ring or the creek running through the grade school.

Until now, I don’t know whether we were too caught up in our own issues or if I, on my part at least, had used busyness as an excuse. Maybe I thought a language could live on even when it hasn’t been spoken in less than a year, but the truth is, Meg, you lose a few more words every day if you don’t practice often. I entered my final year of high school without having even seen Vince once. I was afraid things would end there, but I was even more afraid of picking up the phone and hearing his voice — and worse, the strangeness beginning again. As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry so much on that end.

The CMA was having their annual sleepover at school. It’s something we do every year for orientation and initiating new members. We take showers in the creepy bathroom behind the chapel or the even creepier bathroom attached to the Speech Room (where we have our program half an hour after classes end for the day), we walk around the Mini Forest in pairs in the dark with only flashlights to keep us company, then we go to bed in one of the freshman classrooms, usually the one with easy access to the field, directly across the flagpole and the balete trees. Lights out at midnight, but of course some of us stay up and chat with each other, munching on junk food.

I went to bed sometime after midnight. I can’t remember the exact time I went to bed, sure, but I do know the exact time I woke up — 3:00. I know because I checked the wall clock as soon as I woke up. I sat upright in my sleeping bag and I was surprised to find everyone around me asleep (they’re usually up ‘til 5:00 sometimes).

I hope you never know the feeling of being woken up because of the intensity of someone’s gaze on you, sweetheart. And if everything goes according to plan, you never will.

Anyway, I couldn’t find who it was in the room. All the girls and even our moderator slept as if they’d been drugged. I dragged a chair around, I beat the blackboard with a textbook, I shook a few girls, I even sat on a few. Nothing happened. The light in the hallway was on, but dim and flickering, as if the bulb needed changing. I was scared, I didn’t want to get up, but I had to talk to someone, to make sure it wasn’t just 241