June 2015
I t always amazed me how resilient some people could be. We would always adjust even if our ‘normal’ was actually quite strange to others. Me having powers felt regular. It was just another day, another lunch hour at school. I knew that I wasn’t the same person I used to be last month, but the rest of my world was still the same. For years, no one tried to say anything to me that was unnecessary. Sometimes I got the occasional invites to parties, but I knew this was only because I was hanging out with Alyssa. There were times when I got a “good job” from some random student on a piece I wrote in the school paper, but nothing really earth shattering. They still kept their distance, unsure of what to make of my “situation.”
I decided to stay in the library for my lunch hour. I wanted some peace and quiet, away from the chatter of other people I didn’t want to listen to. There was an old armchair tucked away at the back, between shelves of old books no one would really borrow. I sat there with a book on my lap that I intended to escape to. I opened the pages and inhaled the wonderful scent, a smile spreading across my face. But it quickly disappeared as I felt the painful jab in my gut, like a dull throbbing pain that had become familiar to me. I knew I wasn’t hungry because I ate quickly before rushing to the library. It definitely wasn’t constipation.
Like a scene from a romantic movie on perfect cue, I saw him behind the shelves. His eyes flickered quickly to meet mine and he walked toward me with deliberate steps. My skin prickled as he approached. I took a deep breath to contain the pain and when I looked up, he was already in front of me. The pain in my gut throbbed even more. I had heard of butterflies in the stomach but this wasn’t it. That was supposed to be a bundle of nervous excitement. This one felt like dangerous pain.
“Hi, I’m Jason. You’re Karina, right?” he said, extending his hand. I kept staring at my book.
“Um, yes, I’m Karina, and I know who you are. We’ve been sitting beside each other for over a week now,” I said in my most detached tone, not bothering to shake his hand. I was not normally rude but I couldn’t help it.
He didn’t seem to mind this or my tone. He sat on the floor next to me—so close I could smell his shampoo, or maybe it was his cologne. He smelled of the forest and a hint of citrus, and his skin was so much smoother up close. How can a Norwegian be so tanned?
“I heard you’re from the Philippines?” he asked.
I just nodded. I didn’t want to get too friendly. After all, I was the last person in the school he actually spoke to and that stung a bit. He even talked to the school janitor at the gym, even if I was less than five feet away from him.
“My mom is from the Philippines as well. We moved to Norway when I was small but I still remember what it was like and I miss it sometimes. Don’t you?” he asked with a shy grin that looked much too calculated.
I just shrugged my shoulders, “Sometimes.” It was hard not to admire how he looked given how close he was. He was probably the only person in campus who could make the school uniform look hot.
“Can you actually talk or are you one of those one-liner type of girls? I mean, I’ve heard you talking to your friends so I know you can talk well,” he grinned.
My heart jumped a bit, knowing that he actually noticed me before and he had been listening in to my conversations. I knew I should be worried in case he overheard some of my private talks with Mark and Alyssa, but knowing he noticed me excited me a bit. It was getting too hard to keep up the one-line responses, plus I wasn’t really good at small talk so I decided to just be upfront.
“I do talk, really well, in fact. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk to you given how you basically avoided and ignored me since you arrived in school. I’m not really sure what I did to deserve it but if you’re like that then I really don’t want to get to know you,” I said, more forcefully than I intended to. I was expecting him to get mad or walk away, but instead he let out a loud laugh.
“Wow, you don’t mask your feelings do you? I understand why you’re mad and I do apologize for being so rude. I just wasn’t sure how to approach you. I saw you on my first day and you looked, um, aloof. Then you started talking in class and you are really smart. Normally, I don’t talk to smart girls because they always see how dumb I am after a sentence or two. Probably like what you’re seeing right now,” he smiled.
I tried to suppress my smile, but it was impossible not to after his nervous blab. Another jab in my gut again, not as bad as before but still painful. It felt strange talking to another teenager. Yet it did not really feel like he was a teenager. The way he arranged his words and apologized for being rude, high school boys just would not say things like that unless in front of the principal.
I did my best to ignore him, hoping he would go away. But he didn’t. He stayed beside my seat even when I pretended to read the book. I snuck glimpses at him as he took out an old copy of something from his bag and started to read it. He caught me watching him and he smiled.
“Tolkien. A very old copy. It was a present,” he said, handing me the book. I couldn’t help but take it. It felt heavy in my arms, wrinkled with age. I placed it close to my nose and inhaled its scent. When I opened my eyes, Jason was staring at me. I returned the book to him, embarrassed by what I did.
“I do that, too,” he said quietly as he placed the book in his bag. He stood up and started walking away but then he paused, hesitating a bit.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” he said, so low it was hard to hear him. He walked away without turning back. I felt my stomach settle and a heaviness lifted from my chest. I let out a huge sigh but I wasn’t even certain what I was sighing about. I packed my bag to look for Mark and Alyssa. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like being alone anymore.
I found them in our usual spot outside. I cruised through Mark and Alyssa’s conversation, only half listening. I kept turning my head to where Jason was sitting with Melissa, and I smiled every time I caught him looking back at me. I felt like I had just added another complication to my life, but one that I wanted to have.
Since that day at the library, Jason found several excuses to come up to me at school to talk during the week. Sometimes, I found myself lingering a bit longer after class to see if he was around.
I opened my locker and caught something drop. It was a package covered in brown paper tied with a brown string. How strange. I looked around but no one was paying attention to me, as usual. I untied the bow and gasped as I took out the Tolkien book Jason was carrying with him in the library. There were no notes or markings to indicate who it was from but I knew it was from him.
I smiled and shook my head. It must cost a fortune. I couldn’t possibly keep it, but a huge part of me was dancing inside. I had never owned a book as old and as expensive. I tucked it carefully in my bag and closed my locker door. I turned around and found Melissa and her pretty posse behind me. I stepped back, startled by their sudden appearance.
“Hi Karina, in a rush, are we?” Melissa said in her high perky, venomous voice. How could a person sound so friendly and scary at the same time?
“Hi Mel, what’s up?”
“It’s Melissa. Not Mel,” she said, eyebrow arching. “I hear you’re becoming quite close with Jason. Isn’t that nice?”
“Yep, it’s great. Can I help you with something? I really need to head out,” I said, moving away from the circle. Melissa glided like a ballet dancer to block my path. I almost tripped trying to avoid bumping into her.
“I’m just curious, what do you guys talk about? He seems to be quite … expressive when he’s around you.”
“Books,” I said quickly. I wasn’t about to engage in a catfight with Melissa. The less I said, the better.
“Oh, you don’t talk about your mother’s case? I took the liberty of filling him in because, you know, someone has to warn these new students about the school’s unusual situations,” Melissa said, baiting me. I could see she desperately wanted me to snap.
I grinded my teeth and clenched
my hands, calming myself down. I gave her my biggest and fakest smile.
“Thanks for filling him in, Mel. You’re such a swell girl,” I said, before roughly pushing past her. I walked away without looking back. In the hierarchy of things to worry about, Melissa was like an ant at the bottom of my list. I had to learn to let these things go. I walked faster, thinking instead of our Friday night ahead.
It was the Friday night. The night of the monster with bat wings and half a body. The night started out innocently enough.
We decided to crash at Alyssa’s place for movie night. We wanted to call it a slumber party but Mark pleaded we spare him the humiliation of being part of a girls’ slumber party. Mark provided the movies and I picked up the pizza and popcorn. Just as we were settling for our first movie, Alyssa suddenly remembered to ask about Jason.
“Are you guys, like, going out or something? You seem to be hanging out a lot at school. And every time you see him, you get that look on your face,” Alyssa said, nudging me with her elbow. I saw Mark roll his eyes.
“Oh God, girl talk. I’m gonna get us drinks downstairs. Please be quick with this segment of the program so I can come back with my dignity intact. Quick gossip and that’s it,” Mark said, leaving me with Alyssa.
“We’re not going out. I don’t think so anyway. We just sort of, like each other’s company. Maybe it’s the half Filipino thing, I don’t know. We barely talk about our cultural heritage. I just kind of, really, really like being around him.”
“Well, Melissa is absolutely furious at you, even more now. If I were you, be certain what all this is about so you claim he’s your man. Otherwise, the vultures will snatch him away.”
“The thing is …”
“What?”
“Every time he’s near me, I feel something strange,” I said, hesitating to explain the jabs in my gut. Alyssa raised an eyebrow.
“Strange? Like what kind of strange?”
“It’s hard to explain. It’s like a pain in my gut. Like spider sense or something.”
“Spider sense? Do you think Jason is dangerous?”
I shook my head but couldn’t say anything. A part of me believed he was not dangerous, but another part was sending me mixed signals.
I sat there quietly for a moment, not really sure what to say. The more we talked, the more I was interested in him. But my life was much too complicated to add anything else to it. The problem was, how do I explain to a teenage boy that I couldn’t hang out anymore because my destiny was set in another world? He’d probably think I was a freak if he ever found out—not that he would anyway. I turned to Alyssa and faked a smile, but she could read my face like a map.
“Honestly, I think it’s about time you got interested in a boy. I was starting to think you were a lesbian. Not that I minded but people were starting to talk that we were girlfriends instead of girl friends, you know? Unlike you, I do actually want to date guys but they get confused because they’re not sure if I’m straight.”
“No way! No one thinks we’re gay!” I chuckled.
“Why do you think they snicker and say LG when we pass by sometimes?”
“LG?”
“Lover Girls,” Alyssa laughed. I couldn’t help but laugh, too. It wasn’t my fault none of the boys at school interested me. I needed better conversations than Xbox games and basketball results. Plus, I wasn’t interested at anyone who believed all the stuff that had been whispered about my family anyway.
After the laughter tapered off, Alyssa turned serious.
“How’s your dad taking this whole thing?”
I let out a long sigh.
“To be honest, I’m not really sure. He keeps things to himself. But I could see how much it has affected him. He never expected how bad things would turn out after we moved here.”
Our move to America was fuelled by an opportunity with Dad’s profession. He was creating an app while waiting for his contract to finish in Manila. The app got bought out and with it came a job offer in Silicon Valley. It was good that we saved up the money he got from the buyout instead of travel the world. It supported us when Dad took time off work after Mama disappeared.
While Dad was buried in his grief, I took over the house budget and the chores. While other thirteen-year-olds were perusing celebrity sites, I was going through how-to articles on managing the household budget. I followed Mama’s budget book and figured out her system. I didn’t think Dad ever realized the transition. Or if he did, he never said anything. I guessed he knew he could trust me.
“Maybe you should reach out to him. You’ve taken on so much after your mother disappeared. You need some support. You are the only teenager I know who does the house budget, the groceries, the bills. It’s insane,” Alyssa said.
“We gotta do what we gotta do,” I smiled weakly.
“Enough about that, let’s talk about something else.” Just then Mark walked in, carrying softdrinks and a tea towel.
“What’s in the towel?” I asked.
“It’s a little bird, I think it’s still alive. It hit the window while I was getting us drinks and I didn’t want to leave it to die,” he said, placing the towel on Alyssa’s bed. He gently unwrapped it, revealing a tiny gray bird with black stripes and a yellow beak.
“Oh, poor thing! It looks dead. What are we supposed to do with it?” Alyssa asked, looking at me.
“I don’t know, don’t ask me,” I said, although I already knew what was going to come next.
“K, maybe you should try your powers on it. You know, bring it back to life or heal it or something,” Mark pleaded. He had always been an animal lover and hoped to be a vet one day. He had been working part-time in one of the vet clinics nearby.
“You know I can’t do that. I’m under strict orders not to try anything in case something bad happens,” I told Mark. Lolo Magatu had warned me about the enemies sensing my abilities every time I used it outside our house.
“Just try it really quickly, only a couple of seconds, and if nothing happens then that’s it. I won’t force you to do anything else. We’ll bury the bird and watch a movie,” Mark begged. “Come on, you always asked what your powers are for. This is it—to help poor animals. At least, try anyway.”
It was hard to say no to Mark after everything that he had done for me. He was right—a couple of seconds wouldn’t make any difference. What was the use of my powers if I couldn’t help anyone, right?
“Move aside. Here goes nothing,” I said, rubbing my hands together and kneeling in front of the bed, close to the tiny body. I placed my hands above the bird and closed my eyes, trying to picture the tiny creature coming back to life. Maybe because it was tiny, or maybe because I had had training, it took only moments before its wings started moving again. I moved my hand away and stared as the little bird struggled back on its feet.
“Open the window, Mark, hurry,” Alyssa called out. Mark rushed to the window and pushed it open just as the bird started flying. The bird did circles around the room, chirping gleefully like it was thanking me, before it flew out into the sunset.
“Oh, my God, Karina, that was awesome!” Mark said, hugging me and pulling me up on my feet. “You’re like Mother Nature or something, so cool!”
“I hope they don’t turn homicidal like the pets in Pet Cemetary. They won’t, right?” I joked, but also a tad serious. I didn’t really know what my abilities would end up doing and I had never brought anything back from the dead before. After the horror movies I had seen, it was normal to think that maybe they didn’t always come back right. Or maybe this was the power of the engkanto, bringing creatures back to life, healing helpless animals. I made a mental note to ask Lolo Magatu about it when I got home.
“Okay, enough excitement. Let’s just watch the movie and enjoy ourselves. Close the window and hit the lights. Let’s relax a bit and watch something gory,” I grabbed the popcorn and sat on the bed with Alyssa, while Mark made himself comfortable on the floor.
We decided to do a
zombie marathon and watched the two versions of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. By the time we finished the third movie, we were all zombied out. It was a unanimous decision to leave the nightlight on all night.
Minutes after settling ourselves in, I woke up startled to hear a scratching sound on the roof—or was it on the window? I brushed it aside as bats or some wild animal when it suddenly got louder. I sat up and looked out the window just in time to see a wing move quickly past it. I gasped. My heart started to pound in my chest. I wanted to believe it wasn’t real, but I knew something was out there. Something with wings, something huge.
I sat there, I didn’t know for how long, just staring out the window, trying to convince myself that it was just my imagination—a product of the zombie movie marathon. But then I heard it again, on the roof this time. I shook Alyssa and threw a pillow at Mark.
“Wake up! Wake up, you two,” I whispered in the dark. Alyssa rolled and grumbled while Mark continued to snore. I shook Alyssa again, harder this time.
“What? I’m trying to sleep here,” Alyssa said, raising her voice.
“Shhh, there’s something out there. I saw something outside your window.”
“It’s just bats. The fruit trees in our backyard are infested with them, now go back to sleep,” she said, covering her head with a pillow.
“It’s not bats. It’s something else. Something huge. Sit up and look out the window,” I pulled Alyssa to a sitting position. She managed to finally sit up and rub her eyes while looking out the window.
“There’s nothing out there,” she started to lie back down. Just then, the creature appeared again, this time slowing down enough for us to see its gigantic wings. Alyssa let out a scream, but I covered her mouth quickly.
Hearing Alyssa’s scream, Mark sat up fully awake. “What? What’s going on?!”
The Girl Between Two Worlds Page 5
