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“Financial…”
“I knew that. Financial company.”
“Yeah, right. I forgot you got the highest in Math,” Lala said sarcastically, “did you see the look on their faces when Solis announced…the…the…you as best in Math in… our class?”
“What do you mean? I was always good at Math! I was just too lazy.”
“You did something. I know. C’mon, I’m your best friend, we tell each other everything.”
She really wanted to know. Rita, for all her cunning ways, took it as an opportunity to teach her friend more serious stuff.
“Oh…look, La…is that a bottle of solvent right beside you?” True enough, as Lala turned, there was a bottle of clear liquid conveniently stowed under the tracks.
“Oh no…no, I don’t do solvent.” She started to panic but was too intoxicated to get up.
“Coward. I’ll let you know if you sniff some.”
“C’mon, Rita, no fair.”
“Sniff some and I’ll tell you what I did.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to mix beer and that…that stuff?”
“No. Done it several times.” It didn’t surprise her that Rita had tried the stuff more than once.
For some reason, as she comes near the tracks, she feels a chill go up her spine. What happened, Rita? Out of habit, whenever she felt frightened, Lala raises her hand to her neck to touch her crucifix pendant. What she finds makes her even more scared, as her hand feels nothing of that familiar metal thing that always hangs by her neck.
Oh! Ma would be so mad at me! Where did I leave it? She moves closer to the tracks because as logic tells her, it might have fallen down there, somewhere, and she was too drunk to have noticed.
“Did you know that our chances of having a better life is like going through an eye of a needle?” Lala is clearly hearing Rita’s voice now and it was no comfort at all.
“Rita?”
“I felt so powerful, La. Solis kept on begging for more. Men…they’re pigs.”
“Rita, what did he do to you?” She goes closer to where Rita died.
“Just like any blood-sucking male monster would do. But he thought he won…or something… because he had that look as if… as if… he knew…”
“As if he knew what?” Lala feels silly talking to the wind.
“That I was that kind of girl. But I can’t blame him. Even my father thinks so.” Lala remembers seeing tears coming out of Rita’s eyes that moment. But then everything becomes hazy, she can’t remember exactly what happened next and she feels so light, like when she was walking home hours after midnight; she was crying and laughing so much at the same time that she might have woken up Luding.
“Lala don’t forget, tell Mama everything. Tell her why I did this. Tell her you tried to stop me.”
Suicide! Rita killed herself. Why didn’t I stop her?
But images in her head tell her something else. She remembers Rita lying on the tracks, smiling and crying at the same time.
“Be sure you tie it tight so I can’t get up and go. You think it’s gonna hurt?”
“It hurts!” Lala shouts back at the wind, for she remembers now. Without her knowing it, Rita tricked her into sniffing too much. She was so wasted that she did everything Rita told her to do. She went along with it, thinking that they were both high up there.
“I don’t think it’s gonna hurt. It would be too fast for me to feel it, right La?” She remembers now how scared Rita was, but determined nonetheless. That was when she took off her crucifix and put it around Rita’s neck.
“This will make you brave. Be sure to…to return it, you hear?” She was sure she would see Rita in the morning, get her necklace back, and they would laugh at all this, for she thought it was just a game.
Lala cries as she has never cried in her life before. It wasn’t a game and Rita is really dead. She runs to her mother as fast as she can, and for the first time, the wind hurts her eyes, her face. For she can smell the stench in the air now, the rotten life Rita was talking about.
Perhaps Rita was right, she tells herself. I was so naïve; I thought everything could be beautiful.
And what more could break her heart than to see Luding clutching the necklace, with the crucifix still intact, crying for her daughter who’s been sucked up by hell on earth? And like her daughter, she wishes that, for a brief moment, the roaring train would drown out all the craziness in her world.
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Writer Profile
Feyikemi
WRITING IS MY PASSION. I have always loved writing - both in English and Filipino.
I would like to believe that I have touched some people's lives with the feature articles and poems that I've written in the past. And I hope my future writings will affect many people.
I delve into the deepest and darkest areas of the human soul, where very few people deal with and many prefer to suppress.
My style is always to let out angst in a creative way.
I also write about love, joy, and inspiration and I'm looking at sharing them here.
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Comments
u r butiful khaingwinhtun | Jul 9th, 2005
U R Beautiful......
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