Kate had been to the new building’s rooftop only twice. The second and last time was during the incident with the nerd. Kate was talking to Dion Agustin about the prom posters when it happened.
In the Philippines, prom was usually scheduled on Valentine’s Day itself. CITS’ theme that year was “Timeless”; a product of Dion’s imaginative genius. The decorations were futuristic and involved giant papier-mache robots, gadgets and Dr. Who’s police box in the middle of the gym. They also planned to put up laser lights and special effect smoke. Kate thought the whole concept was original and that Dion had such good taste.
Dion Agustin was the exact opposite of Josh Guerrero. He was the School Council president and all-around CITS golden boy. He always donned his trademark plastic-frame glasses and perfect Edward Cullen hairdo and was impeccably dressed. Although all guys were required to wear the same short-sleeved white button-down shirt and navy blue trousers (P.E. polo shirt and jogging pants on Thursdays), Dion’s shirts were crisp, wrinkle-free and spotless. He didn’t wear any cologne like Josh and only the basic-courtesy underarm deodorant, but his shirts always smelled of fragrant fabric conditioner. Most of the teachers noticed and complimented him without fail, praising his mother and even asking what brand fabric conditioner she used.
Mrs. Agustin was a different story altogether. She was dubbed the school mom and was president of the Parent-Teacher Association. Kate guessed like mother, like son. Mrs. Agustin had her own freelance catering business called Agustin OG Treats, which was quite famous and profitable in Concepcion City. Kate’s ma said it was because Mrs. Agustin baked the most sumptuous waffles, macaroons, cassava cakes and brownies; the last was fudgey and melted in the mouth. Kate couldn’t help but agree. Agustin OG Treats prepared far tastier food than the swill they were served at the canteen; probably healthier, too.
Every time Dion celebrated his birthday or when he won an award for some competition (which happened a lot), Mrs. Agustin would throw in-school parties that were open to everybody. Those events were like marathon fiestas to fit the forty-minute lunch break. But all her efforts had paid off because Dion was graduating class valedictorian and was groomed to go to the University of the Philippines, the state and premier university. Kate had seen Mrs. Agustin only a couple of times but thought she resembled Vilma Santos, the Congresswoman of another district in their region.
On the day of the rooftop incident, Dion was talking to Kate about renting a photo booth for prom when a couple other 11th-graders she barely knew came to tell her something urgent. The boys said that their classmate, the nerd, had been forcibly taken by Josh and his gang to the rooftop. Everyone in school knew who Kate was to Josh, but she didn’t know what they expected her to do. The boys looked very scared, however, so Kate wasted no time and ran to the new building.
“Kate, don’t go there!” Dion called after her. “It’s not safe.”
Kate didn’t have time to think about her own safety. She was worried that Josh would finally do something extreme and jeopardize his future. Her rough idea was to talk some sense into him.
The new school building had four floors. It was meant for the 7th, 10th and 12th-graders. Kate and her friends thought it was because newcomers needed to have a good first impression and the graduating class needed to have a good view that they could take away with them. It still didn’t explain the distance she had to cross though, to get to the building and then climb to the rooftop.
The door looked like most rooftop doors. It was small, dusty from lack of use and covered with graffiti. Kate remembered stepping through it only one other time when she was on 7th grade. Their TLE teacher had borrowed the key from the janitor, divided them into groups and let them figure out a practical problem involving a hard-boiled egg, a plastic bag, some Scotch tape and popsicle sticks. Long story short, Kate and all the other students had to pick up a lot of broken Humpty-Dumpty paratroopers off the concrete patio below.
The open rooftop door looked ominous to Kate, simply because it was such a rare sight. As her breath came ragged and her heart pounded, she felt as though she was running up the exit of a dark tunnel. It felt slightly claustrophobic. But it was what greeted her along with the dazzling brightness that would be etched in her memory.
Josh and The Retaliators were standing around the 11th-grader. The nerd, for some crazy reason that made Kate very embarrassed, had been stripped down to his tighty-whities, socks and his Coke bottle eyeglasses (cracked). The Retaliators were jeering at him.
Kate raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. Then her eyes settled on Josh, who was at the head of the lynch mob and carrying something in his hand. It was a leftover from New Year’s: a local firecracker called Judas’ Belt, which was a string lined up with a hundred smaller triangle-shaped firecrackers and capped with one big firecracker at the end. Once lit, it created a series of noises similar to machine-gun fire.
Josh was holding a Zippo close to the fuse and saying: “Come on, kid. We just wanna check your dance skills. Prom’s coming and you gotta learn the moves, you know.”
The rest of The Retaliators guffawed.
“Maybe we should tie it around his waist,” said George, who was one of the meanest and scariest of Josh’s friends, because of his shaved head and a round cigarette burn-scar in his left check.
George had also given himself the alias Bullseye, based on Daredevil’s arch nemesis in the Webflix series, and because he was the proud owner of the most fearsome slingshot in the country. It was gun-accurate up to fifty meters and had victimized many a poor kid and even some adults.
“Yeah, maybe he’d fly like a rocketeer,” agreed Luke, who was a chain smoker and had yellow teeth that even Josh was secretly disgusted by.
The fact that everyone was nodding and chuckling, including Josh, bothered Kate. It was so unnerving she called out Josh’s name in a tiny, frightened voice. Almost like a whimper.
Josh turned to her like a dog disturbed from a bone while retaining some of the mask-like vehemence on his face. His brows were knit and his eyes were wildly lit. The corners of his lips were pulled down into a scowl, or a snarl. In that instant, he looked several years older than he was.
But as soon as Kate registered, surprise seeped into his face and began to soften it. He was quick to nip the transformation in the bud.
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“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 would’ve brought her blue laptop to her bed and surfed the Net on her tummy till her elbows went numb. But this wasn’t one of those days when she’d be in the mood to swing her legs up behind her while listening to the beats. No, today was a time to be somber and reserved. Like when taking an exam whose questions were the exact opposite of what she had studied. So Kate continued to sit at her study table and stare at the laptop screen. She had decided she wasn’t going to think of anything remotely connected to Josh or boys in general. Maybe just check her email or look at some cute puppy pics. Kate had asked her ma plenty of times about keeping a dog but Mrs. Lapuz wouldn’t budge because, in her own words: “Puppies and dogs are two very different things. If you only love the puppy and not the dog, then you’re not ready to own either. Besides, I know I’ll end up taking care of it, not you. So, no.” Speaking of, her ma had already gone to the diner. She had the dinner shift but she
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
Kate scrolled down to the screenshots below the app description and swiped her thumb to the left. The screenshots featured the same soft artwork and oil pastel colors: a park, a beach, sample chat exchanges, the guy’s bedroom, his wardrobe and a chart of various emoticons. The screenshots announced: | Create your very own customizable boyfriend! Enabled with empathic AI, Your Dream Boyfriend will listen intuitively to you! Travel around the world with him! Purchase upgrades for your stylish boyfriend makeover! | The most suspicious thing was the fact that there were no ratings yet. It just said “Unreleased. This app is in development. It may be unstable.” Kate read the maker’s name: Oishii Des Co. Ltd. {Sounds Japanese,} she thought. It appeared the same company was responsible for creating other apps such as the Personal Companion and Basic Counsellor, which both looked legit. Kate clicked the READ MORE link below the brief description. | Chat with him anytime anywhere.
Over on Lor’s end, Kate could hear a constant background noise of auto rickshaws honking, dogs barking and kids shouting on the street. She imagined Lor could hear the same from her end. But at least Kate didn’t have younger siblings who fought all the time and were as loud as stray cats in heat. Those were the worst (the cats), screaming like Dragon Ball martial artists and running on rooftops in the dead of night. Lor screamed with the scandalous voice of a fish market vendor: “Leonard! Lisbeth! SHUT UP!” Then, Lor’s youngest sister, a 1.5-year-old named Lily, opened the bedroom door and toddled into view. “Awww,” Kate gushed. “Lily’s so cute! I just wanna pinch those rosy cheeks!” “I know, right?” Lor said as she picked up her sister and bounced her on her lap. Lily cooed and laughed and tried to reach Kate through the screen. “I wish teens like us retained their kissability and huggability from childhood.” “What do you mean? You’re still kissable and huggable.” “Oh yeah
Kate was doing exactly what Lor told her not to. She was stalking Josh on Fasebook. First, she thought she would do something productive like change her relationship status. She hesitated just the slightest bit when choosing between “Single” and “It’s Complicated”, but in the end she went with the more obvious of the two. A few seconds after she did, Dion clicked Like and that cheered her up a lot. It was preposterous but she had felt what teens always felt when posting something: the fear that not a single friend would care. Lor’s warning about revenge or rebound relationships gave her the strength to continue steering clear of Dion’s day-old PM. But then the dang mouse moseyed to the left and over the chat panel, which she had turned off. Like a roulette pointer it touched Josh’s darkened tab and a label sprung sideways before Kate could do anything. It read: | Joshua Guerrero Became friends with Bernadette Medina 4 mutual friends including Lorraine Maliksi and Dion A
When the rhyme vanished, a small window appeared next to the oven. There were five tabs above it. The first tab had a hair icon, the second a face, the third a torso, the fourth a sun wearing shades and the fifth a shirt. Kate clicked the Hair tab and she was presented with a whole gamut of men’s hairstyles: undercut, curly, layered, wave, Harajuku matted style, asymmetrical emo, mohawk, crew cut, man bun, spiky, flat top, dreads, Elvis… Kate thought it was because the app-maker was Japanese or hair dyes were sold separately, but all the hairstyles were black. It was a good thing though because she was already having a hard time just picking the style. She settled on Layered after a great deal of toing and froing. Next, she clicked the Face tab and was presented with the close-up of a wireframe face spinning lazily. On the left edge of the window, additional tabs had appeared: Face shape, Eyebrows, Eyes, Nose, Lips and Ears. The character’s face would change instantly depending on
He was much less effeminate than the title character. Kate thought it was because of the thinner lips and the green eyes, which looked slightly unsettling but contrasted well with the long eyelashes (uncustomizable). But like the title character, he was still slim, tall and white. Kate had been presented with only three shades of complexion: beige, chocolate and chocolight. And though she had considered it, she fought the temptation to give her digital boyfriend the body of Thor (This was pre-Endgame). In short, he was still the K / J-pop idol minus the dyed hair and the mascara. But now Kate noticed there were only two icons at the bottom of the screen: a keyboard and a mic. [Oh hello] A light blue chat balloon appeared from the digital guy, to his right. His picture itself was static and wouldn’t move its mouth or anything. [I was not expecting any guests. What is your name?] A small box popped up. It asked: | WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR DREAM BOYFRIEND TO CALL YOU? | Kate thoug