The Boyfriend App

There are few words in the English language that come close to describing the intense feeling of being in love. There are even fewer words to express the unbearable torment of heartbreak. And the heartbreak from someone’s first love? Forget it. But this was the precise emotion seventeen-year-old Rapunzel Kate Lapuz was experiencing inside a stall in the girls’ bathroom. Kate, who took pride in having English as her favorite subject and being called Ms. Grammarly by her English teacher in junior high, found herself at a loss for words to describe what she was feeling. Outside, it was a sunny Thursday afternoon in sleepy Concepcion Integrated Technology School - High School on one of the 7, 641 tropical islands of the Philippines. For Kate though, it felt like a giant hood had been slipped on top of the world, extinguishing all light and sucking away all breath. Had the whole world in fact ended, that would’ve solved a lot of things. At the top of Kate’s list were public humiliatio

“Whu-hu-hu-Who gave you my phone?” Kate repeated the question. “Whu-hu-hu… Are you an owl?” her ma mocked. “Speak properly and clean up this mess. Don’t think for a minute that you can play hooky today. Now that you’re here, for once can you please make your bed and pick up these things? Honestly, how can you live like this? And how is it possible that all your stuff is on the floor!” “Ma!” Kate cried out. “This is important! What did the boy look like?” Her ma was a bit stunned by the urgency in her voice. “Like I said, a good kid but not so neat. A bit of an average Juan. Definitely polite. Why? What does it matter? Is he your boyfriend. Huh? Huh?” “Maybe,” Kate answered, then corrected herself: “No. I’m back to being single.” “Is this the reason why you’re at home and not at school, Rapunzel Kate Lapuz?” Kate didn’t answer. {Here’s the nub,} Mrs. Lapuz thought to herself. “You haven’t introduced your boyfriend to me yet and you’re alre

Josh made many other confessions to Kate; about how he felt as an only child, just like Kate, and his mother being a caregiver in the UK like so many other Filipino professionals lured by greener pastures overseas and driven away by her mother country’s lack of opportunities. She would care for so many patients and children but not the one she missed the most: her own child. She dreamed of someday bringing Josh to the UK on a residence card but with the UK leaving the EU and protectionist politics creeping in, that dream was taking longer and becoming more remote. This explained why Josh never lacked money or material things. He was practically loaded and had the best imported sneakers and comic books shipped on his birthdays. He could afford to eat at restaurants every day, which he did because his father was usually too wasted to look after him. Apparently, the LDR with his wife had driven Mr. Guerrero to loneliness, the bottle and into the arms of a different woman each night. It

“This doesn’t concern you, Kate,” Josh growled. “Turn around and head back where you came from. You didn’t see nothing.” “Yeah, run on back, Little Miss Sunshine! This ain’t your world,” George sneered. Kate had no idea where he got the moniker or if he came up with it just then. The nickname terrified Kate because it gave her a glimpse of their true opinion of her. It also felt like the group consensus; that she was someone who was whittling away Josh’s resolve. It was a sick kind of jealousy between romance and brotherhood, which were the two futures Josh was torn between. Still, George’s and Luke’s leers terrified her more. It was as though they could probe through her school uniform, all the way to her soul. Kate was so scared she almost did back up. A glance in the nerd’s direction and the pleading expression behind the thick glasses froze her to the spot. The gaze said: Don’t leave me. So Kate held her ground. She literally stomped her school shoes and held her head higher. S

Kate thought the most interesting and touching part of Dion’s email was the fact that, for the first time ever, Dion had communicated with a personal tone. For the entire year they had worked together, often for long hours after school, he had never once sounded to her like anything except a very polite person. Kate just thought he was a genius because he would give her advice about high school and talk to her about cutting-edge gadgets and research that he had read about on the web. He treated her like a younger sister – at least that was how it felt. Whenever he asked her if she was hungry or tired, she had never made anything out of it other than the concern of an older brother. But now that she thought about it, she had probably been too focused on Josh that she failed to notice the times when Dion was actually being tender. Like that one time before she and Josh got together, Kate caught a cold and was sniffing and miserable in first period. When Dion found out, he bought all the