By Eddlynn Jennifer Mangaoang
Please do not repost or copy to another site. Thank you. Enjoy reading.
Mari noticed an awkward aura enveloped her friend Sonia after they were introduced to Jay’s Kuya. It felt like they had something. Like a past.
In truth, when these men and women hopped out of the private bus, colored white and green with bold lettering on the side that said PIERCING ANGGITAY CLUB and their logo, a silhouette of a woman’s upper body and a horse’s body like a centaur’s, and strode towards them, Mari thought, damn, muy delicioso, because of the men’s handsomeness. The two female gamers in their team were also very, very pretty, both tall and fair-skinned. One of them, Sheila, had no make-up but still so beautiful.
Mari suddenly felt ashamed of herself. She was from the province and grew up in the rice field. She really had to work hard in her studies and even now she still does part-time jobs at a local internet café shop to have her own salary in addition to the money her parents gave her for tuition fees and dorm rent.
She remembered when she met her friends for the first time. Jay came from a wealthy family and lived in the capital. She entered their dorm room with a blue-and-black suitcase, which at that time she didn’t know was branded as well. She smelled of light perfume, but an expensive one, not like the baby cologne Mari used. Jay was wearing a GUESS t-shirt, ADIDAS sweatpants, and Nike running shoes. Mari swore Jay smelt like those balikbayan boxes her neighbor received every six months- expensive and imported.
“Oh, hello,” Jay struggled to bring her luggage inside the room. Mari, the first to arrive in their shared room, went and helped her. They dragged Jay’s two suitcases and several boxes inside the spacious room. Once they’re done, Jay turned to Mari and offered her a white and smooth hand. “How are you? I’m Jay.” She had a friendly smile.
Mari was kind of nervous because she knew her palms were full of callouses. “I’m good. I-I’m Mari.”
“Did you arrive today as well?” Jay lifted her messenger bag out of her body and dropped it on the table before looking all over the room. “Is this your bed?” She pointed at the lower bed of the first bunkbed flushed against the right wall. Mari’s pink bedcovers and Hello Kitty alarm clock on the headboard deck already.
“Yesterday I arrived, yes,” Mari said in broken English. Magkaka-nosebleed pa yata ako neto. “Bed? Ah yes, yes. My bed, yes.”
“Are you nervous about me?” Jay looked at her, mirth in her eyes.
Mari nodded her head, then shook her head no, her arms rose, and she waved her hands fast, “No! No, no, no.” She approached Jay and held her left arm. “No. I just... I just, my English is not good. I don’t speak good English.”
Jay was quick to tell Mari that she understood Tagalog and that by any means, Mari should speak in Tagalog freely. Now, Mari spoke Taglish like her friends without really thinking about correct grammar and be understood by anyone she talked to.
But yes, her friends were people who could afford to spend money like it came from a tree. Look at Sonia who was, as Mari observed, surreptitiously glancing at Kuya Ken. She was from a wealthy family as well. She was older than Mari by a year-and-a-half, yet they were the same juniors.
“Ha?” Dana gasped. Even Mari felt her jaw dropped when Sonia told them that she was nineteen, turning twenty in a couple of months. Dana and Jay were eighteen, and Mari hasn’t had her eighteenth birthday yet. “Bakit? You got pulled back?”
“Hindi, no!” Sonia pushed Dana’s face away from hers. She picked a slice of green mango and dipped it in the alamang. The fried shrimp paste’s odor permeated the air and it invited a stray dog looking half-starved. “I have a year-long vacation, my parents’ gift for me kasi I graduated high school in top twenty.”
“Top twenty?” Jay gave the dog a barbecued chicken foot. “Not even in the top ten?”
They laughed. Dana laughed the most. She looked like she needed an oxygen tank to help her breathing. Annoyed at them, Sonia rolled her eyes and slapped Dana’s back. “Sige, laugh more, you chararat. Laugh more!”
Dana continued laughing, almost choking on her isaw. She waved chicken intestine like a flag while smacking the table with her hand.
It was hilarious, but Mari thought about how she spent the summer after her high school graduation. It was hot, and the street was boiled by the sun’s intense rays. As D City was an hour from the countryside, Mari had to take the bus with her resume and portfolios to look for a part-time job in the area. At first, she found a job in a local restaurant as a waitress. It gave a good wage, but it did not allow part-time when the new semester come rolling in. She had to find a job that allowed part-time, allowed the employees to do their assignments and homework during free time or slow hours, and pay a good amount of salary.
Mari sadly walked along Santiago Avenue in the downtown area with her head down and tiredness marring her face. It was her third day of job-searching and she just finished a hopeless interview. Her third one. The sun, as usual, was high and painful on the skin, so she stuck to the areas with awning and tree-covered boulevards. Then, as if by miracle, she looked up and saw a hiring notice on a glass door. It said, HIRING NOW! Cashier, server, receptionist. No College Diploma Needed. Wage and Working Hours Can Be Negotiated. It was too good to be true for Mari.
She looked around. She learned that this was an internet café based on the logo and name welded on the building’s wall. Mari gripped her shoulder bag’s strap and with a huge breath in and out, she pulled the door open.
“Hello, ma’am, do you need a computer?” A boy around her age stood up from his seat and asked. He had a bright and friendly smile and was very accommodating.
“Ah, uhm, no,” Mari mumbled. “There,” she pointed at the door and his gaze followed her index finger. “I saw the hiring notice. Can I talk to your manager?”
“Aaaah,” he nodded. “Yes, well, our manager was out for a business meeting. Do you want to leave your phone number, so we can call you later?”
“I have a calling card here. Uhm, I can, I can also leave copies of my resume, IDs, and NBI clearance. Is that okay?” She’s nervous again. She hadn’t done the interview yet and they’re already telling her that they’ll call back. “I can also come back tomorrow?”
He chuckled smoothly. “Well, I see you’re really looking for a job. Okay, you can leave all those here and come back tomorrow. I’ll tell my boss you came by.”
“Thank you!”
“Haha. Good luck!” He waved goodbye.
It’s easy to say that Mari met and talked to the owner-manager, her Boss Jake, the following day and got the job. Almost three years now and she still worked as the internet café’s receptionist-slash-server.
She found Dana approaching her. She leaned down and whispered in Mari’s ear, “You saw that, right? Sonia and Jay’s bro?”
Mari nodded. Like a conspiracy, Mari said, “They be having a past, huh? I think they’re exes.”
“Oo nga. And ended the relationship bad, kung yung chilliness I felt in the air between them is to go by.” Dana swirled her wine like she was one of those aristocratic madams who observed the younger ladies during a ball.
“I think World War III is on the way,” Mari agreed; both of them observing the chaos currently ongoing in the lounge area with Sonia and Ken’s secret and controversial, because it is an issue hanging on the air.
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