The Boyfriend App E-Book

Phenomenal Pen

• Herausgeber: Phenomenal pen
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

CREATE YOUR OWN MR. RIGHT

Weeks before Valentine’s, seventeen-year-old Kate Lapuz goes through her first ever breakup, but soon she stumbles upon a mysterious new app called My Dream Boyfriend, an AI chatbot that has the ability to understand human feelings. Casually, she participates in the app’s trial run but finds herself immersed in the empathic conversations with her customizable virtual boyfriend, Ecto.

In a society both connected and alienated by technology, Kate suspects an actual secret admirer is behind Ecto. Could it be the work of the techie student council president Dion or has Kate really found her soulmate in bits of computer code? She decides to get to the bottom of the cutting-edge app. Her search for Ecto’s real identity leads Kate to prom, where absolute knowledge comes with a very steep price.           

Leseprobe

CREATE YOUR OWN MR. RIGHT

Weeks before Valentine’s, seventeen-year-old Kate Lapuz goes through her first ever breakup, but soon she stumbles upon a mysterious new app called My Dream Boyfriend, an AI chatbot that has the ability to understand human feelings. Casually, she participates in the app’s trial run but finds herself immersed in the empathic conversations with her customizable virtual boyfriend, Ecto.

In a society both connected and alienated by technology, Kate suspects an actual secret admirer is behind Ecto. Could it be the work of the techie student council president Dion or has Kate really found her soulmate in bits of computer code? She decides to get to the bottom of the cutting-edge app. Her search for Ecto’s real identity leads Kate to prom, where absolute knowledge comes with a very steep price.              

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The Boyfriend App

Phenomenal Pen

Prologue: A Princess Locked Away

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 humiliation and social suicide. She couldn’t begin to comprehend the level of stupidity she had shown. She was an honor roll student but she fell for the oldest trick in the book: she fell in love with the bad boy.

But who was she kidding? There were no books written about this. Her own ma, the loving and strong woman that she was, couldn’t have warned her about this. And Kate’s own trusty big brain? If it had hands, it would’ve washed them clean of all traces of this #EpicFail.   

Her brain had known what was going to happen. Her brain had warned her that Josh Guerrero couldn’t be trusted, that he couldn’t change. Being a player was in his nature. Her brain gave Kate plenty of heads-up but her heart was too happy to listen.

Her heart – her big, fearless heart – had told her that when the day came, they would all deal with it together. The same way Kate had entered the relationship, she would leave it unburned and with eyes wide open. She had thought then that she would be ready now but it was clear nothing could’ve ever prepared her for the day.

She wished she could thrust her hand inside her chest and massage her heart. She might as well yank the whole organ out and give it a telling-off. Or she’d try to figure out all the veins and arteries. They’d been studying DSL installation in ICT-11, so maybe she could figure out which wires went where and which ones were defective.  Maybe then her eyes would stop gushing tears without her express permission.

She tried to trace the point when everything had started to go wrong, right before they spiraled out of control. She kept thinking if she could identify such a point, things would somehow instantly get better.  

Why was Josh so hateful to her? How could he dump her so unceremoniously and replace her with Bernadette? The Super Glue of all people! It was in the canteen that Kate found out. She thought they were on the same side. She and him against the world. JOSH & KATE 4EVER in a heart pierced with cupid’s arrow, like the extensive graffiti in that bathroom; now nothing but trashy and meaningless scrawls.

How could Josh be so cruel? She thought he would never hurt her. He said so. He promised it. It was like she hadn’t known him at all. Or he her. The more she recalled his familiar face – his long hair, thick eyebrows, dark brooding eyes and aquiline nose – the sharper the pain she felt.

It was weird. The pain was emotional but it also bordered the physical. She kept rubbing her chest through her middy blouse as though that would ease it. She was having trouble breathing. She was crying so much she was getting sick and wanted to throw up. How could something so beautiful cause her this much pain? Now Kate knew that burning fire lurked behind an angel’s smile.

She guessed everybody was talking about her right now. She rarely missed class and there was supposed to be a pop quiz in English today. Worse than the intense feelings of jealousy and heartbreak was the humiliation. How could she muster the strength to come out of the bathroom ever again, hold her head high and not let anybody see her swollen eyes? She just hoped to go on with her life but even that option had been taken away from her. 

Ma… she silently cried out as she thought of her mother and how much she wanted to feel her embrace. If only she could teleport from the bathroom stall back to her bedroom, where she’d stay forever. Her ma; caring, ever supportive and intuitive. When she noticed Kate was walking on air the first few days of her relationship, she had immediately guessed she was in love. At first, Kate tried to deny it but it seemed her ma knew her more than she did herself. She said she could see it in the glow of Kate’s skin and in her lively movements. She slept with her for the first time in a while and teased her about it.

Her ma whispered to her that she was happy Kate had found love. She explained that love made everybody happier, gentler and altogether nicer people. Love could change even those who were bitter and devoid of hope. But Kate’s ma also warned that people were sometimes not who they said they were. Beauty was only skin-deep. What mattered most was what was inside. What was invisible and essential, like in the book The Little Prince, which her ma used to read to her when she was a kid.

Why are you telling me these? Kate had asked her ma, still trying to deny it.

Well, it’s because I care about you so much and you have a very big heart. You wanna trust everyone around you because you have so much love to give. And it’s all right when you’re with me and your pa and your close friends, but sooner or later you’ll meet different kinds of people and some won’t be who you expect they are. I don’t want you to be disappointed and, most importantly, I don’t want you to change and lose your trusting character. Because that’s the part of you I love the most.

The thought of her ma and her warning, which Kate couldn’t really make sense of till today, made her cry even more. She was quickly running out of pocket tissue and even toilet tissue from the dispenser. The tears just kept pouring out of her. She thought she might flood the entire school if she kept at it.

She couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever though. The rough plan was to wait till the school closed and it got dark. She knew all about the ghost stories but didn’t care about any of those right now.  She was so upset she thought she could strangle a ghost to death, or back to life, whatever.

Grade 11 students took most of their lessons in the old building, which meant the bathrooms were housed in another structure. They were dirtier and older but they were also visited less frequently, which was perfect for Kate’s present needs. Besides, it was kind of suitable because right now she felt like something that had been discarded after its owner had lost interest.  

She had been crying so much she wondered where all the water was coming from, and how her small body could produce that much. She was also starting to feel thirsty. Thirsty and tired.

She noticed belatedly that her phone was vibrating. She rummaged through her shoulder bag and peeked at the screen, sobbing piteously. It was her bestie Lor (short for Lorraine) checking on her. It turned out Kate had been crying for two hours straight and it was finally time to go home.

Kate ignored all the missed calls and texts and put the phone back in her bag. Let them all think she had gone home early, she thought.

She couldn’t stop thinking of Josh Guerrero. He was stuck in her mind like a looped TikTok clip and she couldn’t get him out. All the happy memories that they shared now felt like the giant wheels of a speeding cargo truck, under which he had thrown her.

And the thought of Josh and Bernadette together made her blood boil. Kate never used to care or think about Bernadette in any way. She was just another student on another track. People even dubbed her the Super Glue because of her tendency to stick to any boy. But now Kate was forced to compare herself to her with regards to appearance, intelligence and personality.

She wished there was an off switch for love. But in the same way she hadn’t noticed when she fell for Josh, there was no end in sight for the pain. It felt infinite. She wished she was some kind of robot that could be programmed to forget, so she’d be back to her normal cheerful self who didn’t miss class and looked forward to every single day. She wanted to be her ma’s daughter again or the straight-A student that everyone in school admired her to be. 

The thought of her old self and where she was hiding atm brought another bucket of tears.

Part 1: The Brain

I'd unravel every riddle

For any individual

In trouble or in pain…

Oh, I could tell you why the ocean's near the shore.

I could think of things I never thunk before.

And then I'd sit, and think some more.

― Ray Bolger, If I Only Had a Brain,

The Wizard of Oz

Chapter 1: The Legend of the Ghost Phone

Kate opened her eyes. It hurt to do such a simple thing. The curtains were still drawn in her room but she could see daylight filtering in. She had overslept, that much she could tell, the mystery was by how many hours. What really made it hard to get her bearings were her eyes themselves, which were swollen from crying and plastered with an unladylike amount of gunk.

She remained on her back and groggily groped for her smartphone next to her pillow and held it up. The power button had been battered from use and she had pestered her parents endlessly for a trendier model, but Christmas and New Year’s had come and gone and still no love. Kate held the phone upright. Thanks to an app called the Magic On and Off, she didn’t need to crush her thumb just to wake her phone up. The app detected the orientation of her device and could tell when she wanted to use it.

Kate had downloaded the app weeks ago and had been telling everybody in school about how indispensable it was. Sure she had to free up some space in her old-school smartphone with the peanut-sized memory. She had to delete other apps such as Tinder, which was creepy, and Pokemon Go, which was good while it lasted. Kate loved apps. It amazed her how there was an app for absolutely anything and, best of all, they were absolutely free (okay, maybe not absolutely).

Her eyes popped in realization of the time. She had slept until almost lunch and skipped two-thirds of the school day, which basically meant all of it. She groaned and buried her face in her pillow.

Wait…

She checked her phone’s screen again. This time she registered all the unread SMS and the events of yesterday came flooding back to her brain. An ice-cold fist clutched her heart and froze her veins.

Josh. That monster.        

She plopped back to bed and dropped her phone next to her pillow. Suddenly, she didn’t feel like getting up. Ever. The morning felt as dark as the morning right before a storm even though she could hear birds chirping outside.

She winced as she recalled her ordeal yesterday, how she saw Josh and Bernadette holding hands at the canteen and his whole gang smirking at her, her trip to the bathroom from which she didn’t come back out till evening, the dim creek where she threw her…

Her eyes flew open.

Kate slowly turned her head towards her phone as though she was seeing a ghost.

She screamed.

****

Mrs. Lapuz came up the stairs and into Kate’s room with equal parts alarm and calm. There had been plenty of times Kate’s emergency turned out to be just a minor bug sighting. Mrs. Lapuz was wearing her apron and holding a spatula.

Mrs. Lapuz took one expert look at Kate, who had fallen off the bed and was all tangled up on the floor in her blanket, and lowered her spatula. Without saying anything, Mrs. Lapuz walked towards where Kate had landed at the foot of her bed, sort of squashed between the bed, a chair and a bookcase. Mrs. Lapuz felt her daughter’s forehead.

Finally, she said: “Why am I not surprised that you’ve made a miraculously quick recovery.”

Kate tried to speak but no voice came out of her mouth, only wheezing sounds. Her eyes were as big as plates and all the blood had drained out of her face. She raised her trembling hand and pointed at the phone on her bed.

“Puh-puh-puh-phone…” she said.

“Oh that,” her ma realized what Kate wanted to say. “One of your classmates found it and returned it to me at the diner. But I know you, Rapunzel Kate Lapuz. It was really immature of you to try and pretend to have lost it. I know you’ve been wanting to get a newer phone but you didn’t have to throw away a perfectly good one just so you can get what you want. I mean, don’t you realize how much your father and I sacrificed…”

“Who returned my phone?!” Kate suddenly, finally found her voice again. Her shout startled her ma. 

“Just one of your classmates. He was wearing your school colors.”

“Did he look like a gangster?” Kate pressed.

“A gangster? No, of course not. On second thought, I did think he looked a bit unkempt.”

“N-not clean-cut?”

“Well, yeah, he could be. Maybe he’d been playing basketball or something because he looked quite scruffy. Like he’d been rolling on the ground or something.”

“That’s impossible!” Kate screamed again.

Her ma placed her beefy arms on her wide hips. “Now listen, Rapunzel Kate Lapuz! Don’t you raise your voice at me. Who do you think you are coming home so late and sleeping in your school uniform? Then in the morning you had a fever and a headache and mumbling about God and super glue!”

(Note: In the Philippines, the name Josh was pronounced like the word for God, especially because the letter J was not in the original Abakada alphabet and the vowel sounds were much shorter.)

At first, Kate was bewildered by what her ma said but soon realized she was still wearing her middy blouse, necktie and skirt. She took a reflexive whiff of her underarms to check if she still smelled like a girl. The sour smell that assaulted her nose reminded her of the long walk she took coming home last night, because she skipped taking the jeepney, a staple mode of public transportation in the country. She had worried other passengers would see she had been crying or, worse, some CITS teachers coming home late would turn up on the same ride.

“…your father coming home tired without dinner on the table. If you were gonna be late you should’ve at least…” her ma was still nagging as she was wont to do when Kate was acting extra weird or just teenagery.

Kate was only half-listening. She couldn’t take her eyes off the apparition of the phone on her bed. It was the exact same one. The same purple cellphone case printed with Snoopy. The same scratches and scuff marks from all the countless times she had dropped it.

But it was insane or she was cray-cray because the last time she saw her phone, it was at the bottom of a gully.

****

Kate’s school, Concepcion Integrated Technology School – High School (CITS-HS), sat partly on an island-like plateau and was interspersed with rugged land. The whole city itself was part lowland and part hill. One naturally formed creek ran through the school and, during especially long days of rain, it would overflow. But in the typical Philippine climate, the creek was as shallow as a brook, stagnant and no more than two meters wide, occasionally bringing in curious smells from the neighboring subdivisions. The long school drive had been built perpendicular over it but it retained its heavily shaded gully which was several meters deep.

The creek had fed the rich imagination of many generations of teens and was the favorite setting of a whole lore of urban legends. The most notable of said legends featured the mythological tikbalang, a local monster that was an anthropomorphic horse and smoked a long fat cigar, and the junior high student who committed suicide by throwing himself down the creek and bleeding to death. When Kate finally got out of the girls’ bathroom at six pm yesterday, it was getting dark but she made a long detour to the infamous landmark.

Kate wasn’t particularly brave. Heck, she couldn’t even kill a spider, pick up the clump of hair clogging the bathroom drain or look under her bed and all the stuff and dust that had gravitated and accumulated there. Yesterday evening though, she felt like she could punch a ghost if one dared to show itself. She was just so angry at Josh and Bernadette.

Like a suspect coincidence in a romcom, at the exact moment Kate stood on the steep sides of the creek gully, her phone started ringing. It was Josh. The ring tone she had assigned to him was John Legend’s All of Me. Nuff said. She answered the phone filled with hesitation but also hope.

Imagine her surprise when she didn’t hear Josh’s voice but Bernadette’s. She wasn’t saying anything. She was just making these incomprehensible noises and weird moans. Kate’s eyes widened when she realized she was making out.

“Ugh, that’s disgusting!” Kate screamed as she threw her smartphone down into the gully. She hadn’t completely made up her mind about what she intended to do but the call clinched it.

“Oh fudge!” She covered her mouth as she watched the device hurtle down the several-meter drop. It landed with a soft thud on the creek’s muddy bank below. Kate couldn’t decide if it was lucky or not that her phone just missed the water.

“No no no no no no no,” Kate whispered as she thought about all her contacts, apps, games and saved notes, which contained important school stuff.  There was still a tiny glow from the phone screen and it looked like an orphan firefly in the darkness. 

Kate did the only thing left to do. She stood above the gully and reminisced precious memories with her fallen comrade. Indeed she felt like a soldier who had fought alongside the bravest gadget. Her phone was a true friend who was always with her and never complained, who endured a lot of spilled beverages, drops, bumps and hard-hits.

They had been through a lot together. Stayed up late to play Candy Crush, listened to a ton of music, preserved memories, laughed at the most viral posts and hilarious chats.

“RIP my phone,” Kate said and bowed her head.

Eighteen hours later, the phone was on her bed.

****

“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 already broken up?” Mrs. Lapuz said, sounding more sensitive and changing the topic. “Why, when I was your age I had long courtships and relationships before I ended one. And I had plenty of suitors, too. There was this one guy who…”

“Ma!” Kate whined. “I don’t wanna hear about your past relationships again. I just wanna think pa is your first and only love, OK?”

“Well, I gotta be honest that he wasn’t. I was popular,” her ma said. Then, seeing Kate’s half-disgusted expression, she said: “Oh all right! But honestly! Did I raise you in a barn? When was the last time you cleaned this room? There could be snakes crawling in –”

“Was he tangible?” Kate asked in a whisper.

“What?” Her ma heard the question perfectly but she just had to ask. She had known for a long time her daughter was sometimes weird, but it could be very taxing. And today was not a good day because earlier her husband had talked her into letting Kate be absent from school. She felt as though her daughter had pulled a fast one on her and her patience was wearing thin.

“Tangible,” Kate repeated. “Did you touch him?”

“OF COURSE NOT!” Mrs. Lapuz screamed. “Why should I? Do you want me to go to jail for child molestation or something? What’s gotten into you? Did you hear a word I said?”

Kate became tight-lipped. Her lips were literally a thin slit on her face, which was still as white as a sheet. Her eyes were saucer-wide as they took in the unholy vision of her resurrected phone. But her stomach spoke for her. To be precise, it growled.

“Harump!” her ma interjected. “At least your stomach has a brain. Get changed and have lunch with me. Your uniform’s four days early for school.”

Mrs. Lapuz left the room and stomped down the wooden stairs. Lunch sounded – and smelled – like a great idea. Kate thought she’d put off getting changed till after lunch. Partly it was because she was starving but mostly it was because her closet was at the head of the bed and near the ghost phone.

She slowly stood and walked to the door, not taking her big eyes off the gadget and making sure to give it the widest berth possible. In case it leapt up to her face or something. She already had one foot out the door when her phone beeped to notify her of one spam SMS.

Kate screamed and ran down the stairs.

****

After having lunch and taking a shower, Kate felt rejuvenated and was back to her sane, or at least reasonable, self. The first thing she did was boot up her laptop, which was blue and whose lid was smothered with puppy, volleyball and witty stickers. Before it, she had a clunky PC but she saved up working part-time at the diner where her ma also worked. Every day after school, for most of her junior high years, she bussed tables and washed dishes. She also bought portable Bluetooth speakers from CD-R King with her hard-earned moolah. 

The second thing she did was start 7 Rings on Spotify before moving on to Facebook, the most enduring socmed platform in the Philippines. She had a ton of PMs from Lor, Dion and the Bali Girls (which was what her besties called their small clique who had bonded over volleyball). She avoided these private messages because once seen, they couldn’t be unseen and, if left unanswered, tended to acquire the urgency of a live grenade, especially between couples and girls. She just had to content herself with looking at the notifications and previews while taking care not to click them. They were prolly all the same anyway, just asking how she was and were superfluous clones of the text messages on her phone.

Speaking of which, she had made peace with her back-from-beyond-the-grave phone. In fact, it was now getting charged on her bed after she had picked it up like a radioactive mutant fish. 

Now that she thought about it, it was possible for someone to go down to the creek, get her phone and then deliver it to her ma. It would’ve been extremely hard but humanly possible. It was actually also incredibly sweet. But till she found out who her real-life guardian angel was, the act would just have to remain unsung and ghosty.    

It could either be Dion or Josh trying to win you back, her heart theorized. Those are the only guys who: A. Know who your mom is and where she works and B. Know your number and can ring your phone to know where you dumped it.

Seriously? her brain said. Just stick to what your good at, heart, and leave all the fact vs. opinion sorting to the pro.Dion I can understand but that jerk Josh is the reason that phone got thrown in the first place and why we’re in this gigantic mess. Stop defending him and putting a halo on his head. He’s never gonna change. Once a devil always a devil!

Look, her heart said gently. There’s no direct evidence that Josh was the guy Bernadette was macking out with on the call. For all we know, it could just be the Super Glue’s ploy to drive Kate and Josh farther apart. 

God you’re stupid, her brain said. I told you from the start Josh’s no good for Kate. He’s nothing but trouble. A trash wannabe gangster.

No, he isn’t, her heart said.

Yes, he is.

Is not!

Is too!

Shut up, heart! Kate screamed inwardly. Her heart sort of deflated while her brain blew a raspberry. I followed you the last time and look where it got us. God, I just wanna reach twelfth grade and graduate without becoming a social pariah or effing up my future. Now I can’t even step out to the porch without feeling eyes on me. How do you suppose I’m gonna face everybody on Monday?

Everybody literally meant the entire school. The problem was probably not as serious as she thought, but at the rate of how rumors spread in high school, Kate knew she wasn’t just being paranoid. She heard her speakers go blip blip buzz buzz and thought that her schoolmates’ phones were probably blasting away about her right that instant, but since she was the main topic she was out of the loop. She could almost feel the invisible transmissions zipping past over her head.

Chapter 2: The Bad Boy

When Kate was in junior high, grades 7 to 10 in the Philippines, students were divided into sections based on their academic performance. First, the sections borrowed the names of the planets in the solar system, then flowers, then chemical elements (or at least the most precious metals) and finally scientists. Luckily, Kate and her friends always managed to land the top sections. And so, she was in 7-Mercury, 8-Sampaguita, 9-Platinum and 10-Einstein.

It was certainly debatable whether Mercury was better than Earth by being closer to the sun, or whether platinum was more precious than gold or palladium; to say nothing of there-is-no-disputing-tastes themes like flowers and Albert Einstein. But then again, the practice of dividing students based on anything would raise even more questions, so nobody asked how the school admin came up with the section names.

Josh and his gang, who called themselves The Retaliators (Filipino: Resbakers), mostly belonged to the same sections back in junior high and suffice it to say that Kate rarely saw them.  

Kate only barely tolerated Josh’s high school gang activities. She thought it smacked of immaturity. But then her heart would oddly speed up every time she saw Josh riding to school on his dark-blue-and-white Ducati and wearing the black helmet with a cute emo skull sticker. And when he offered to drive her home one day, her knees felt weak and threatened to buckle under her. All her friends advised against it and insisted they just wait for the public-transport jeepney or walk 3 miles to Bayan (literally “Town”), where most students lived. They usually did that to avoid the cramped jeepneys and save the nine-peso fare.

“It’s too hot to walk,” Josh said. “UV’s gonna damage your skin. I’d hate for that to happen.”    

Against all logic and the alarm bells ringing inside her head (she had never ridden a motorcycle in her life, only a public-transport tricyle or auto rickshaw, which had a side car), Kate answered breathlessly: “All right.”

As he gave her his only helmet and fastened the strap delicately under her chin, she thought he was confidently intimate and got a blast of his designer cologne, which was perfect for the weather in the tropics. She also thought he could be gentle if he wanted to, contrary to what everybody expected of him.

He tilted the motorcycle so she could lift herself. At first, Kate was undecided between straddling the passenger seat and sitting with both her legs on one side. Josh helped make up her mind by saying she’d enjoy the ride more if she could feel the wind blowing in her face, which was not a terrible idea considering that the skirts of CITS-HS girls (and those in most Catholic schools) are one to two palm-widths below the knees. Heels no more than one inch tall and no knee-high socks, period.

Her heart was beating so hard she worried he might feel it through her middy blouse and the Adidas jacket on his back. As the wind whipped hard against them and her arms tightened around his abs, he didn’t shout back at her to try and make awkward conversation. Instead, he let her savor the moment; the thrill. But she also thought he drove slower and more carefully on her account.

All the while what occupied Kate’s mind was the fact that people were looking at them from the jeepneys they passed by. Some jeepneys were full of schoolmates from various grades. At one point as they rode parallel to a jeepney, several seniors who were inside, presumably friends of Josh’s, cheered and whistled at them through the windows. They acted rowdily and did whatever they pleased. Josh flashed a finger gun at them and did a silent “pow” before overtaking.

That evening, Kate’s friends couldn’t wait to bombard her with questions. Her Messenger and phone inbox blew up with teasing and congratulatory messages. The fact that the rumor mill revolved around her made her glow with pride and feel like the prettiest girl in school. She was on grade 11 after all and Josh was arguably the coolest 12th-grader. 

It was a match of polar opposites. But Kate didn’t care because, the heart of the matter was, she saw the potential for Josh to change. She even thought she could be the catalyst for that change. She certainly felt it was her job.

The next day, Josh offered to drive her home again and, what touched Kate more than anything else, he also bought a bottle of sunscreen for her in case she said no. He needn’t have because she readily accepted his invitation. And then, the day after, he whipped out a purple helmet from behind him with a similar emo skull sticker, only girly. And for all the following days since, he became her personal chauffeur even though Kate always asked to be dropped off a couple of blocks away from her house. She felt she wasn’t ready to introduce him to her parents. She could never tell him but she was kind of embarrassed.

Josh sometimes waited for her to be finished with a special group work or with her duties as Student Council secretary. She would pack a fresh set of civvies so she could change and spray herself with the perfume that Josh gifted her on their first monthsary. They also sometimes took detours to drink soda and eat French fries at fast food chains (but not the diner where her ma worked) or hang out on breathtaking hill overlooks that were slowly being developed into resort-subdivisions.

During those intimate moments, Kate learned a great deal about Josh. She realized it hadn’t been easy being lumped in the lower sections. There were a lot of negative influences and, worse, a great deal of peer pressure. Even if a student wanted to study, he would be dissuaded by his classmates. And the effects stuck till senior high as evidenced by the fact that most of The Retaliators had selected the Technical Vocational Livelihood (TVL) track. 

Josh thought that by being the leader of his gang, he was actually saving everyone from bigger trouble. At least he was able to keep the less predictable members in check. Josh confessed he was sometimes scared of the members and it gave him enormous pressure to maintain his leadership. His being in a relationship with Kate, for instance, raised concerns about his becoming soft and unfit to lead. She made him look weak.

“I guess you’re sort of my Kryptonite,” Josh told her.  

Josh made all these confessions to Kate and more – 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 was kind of backwards but Mr. Guerrero had started to live the single life and Josh was in fact the more mature of the two. Of course neither he nor Josh told his mom about it but somehow his mom knew (Josh suspected it was because a relative or neighbor had informed her) and there were talks that his mom wanted a divorce. Josh simply thought it was long overdue because early on, he had noticed that his mom and dad talked less and less over the phone and, on the rare occasion that they did, they argued.     

Hearing all these things, Kate felt that Josh was more mature than everyone gave him credit for. Being the alpha male in his group also meant he had leadership potential. Kate was convinced his involvement in a gang and petty school pranks was just a temporary phase, something that most male students went through. Why, even university students had their brotherhood troubles – initiations, inter-frat scuffles. And when it came down to it, she, Lor and the Bali Girls weren’t the Mean Girls but they were no angels either. It didn’t mean she supported or encouraged cliques, just that she understood.

In hindsight, Kate had been rationalizing The Retaliators’ actions like copying homework in the men’s bathroom (forcibly taken from a teacher’s pet), cheating during exams, cutting classes, gambling, vaping and doing blow, putting whoopee cushion on the teacher’s chair and duct-taping a student to the wall. It was Kate’s theory that, because of CITS’ high academic orientation, the varsity teams for both men’s basketball and women’s volleyball were next to non-existent. Kate knew because she was captain of CITS’ volleyball team and they had entered the conference-level competition, where they were promptly and effortlessly eliminated. Kate thought the disorganized organized sport was a viable explanation for all the pent-up teenage male energy.