The Coast Guard

Captain and First Mate (Prologue; Mark POV)

There’s actually a reason why Claire Corona went smack-dab in the middle of my radar, other than the facts that her brother is classmates with my little brother and that with her small smiles and sharp wit I honestly find her kinda cute. But all that came after the fact, which brings me back to my main reason – it’s ‘cuz one Wash Day Tuesday many weeks ago, I was mostly interested by the quote on her T-shirt.

Short but sweet: “Keep calm and carry on.” Very good, very helpful advice.

This was the same day I realized that my best friend just might be in love with me, so this advice had been doubly relevant for me at the time.

Sounds like another teen movie cliché, no? But not quite – my best friend happens to be Noah Montecillo.

Lemme explain. When I was in pre-school my family was already friends with the Montecillos, so it was kinda a given that we were gonna spend a lotta time together as a result. Noah’s been my best friend ever since, and I can’t even imagine how my life would’ve been without him.

…this’d normally be the part where I’d laugh brightly and say “no homo!” but…should I? Or would that be rude considering our situation…anyway.

We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember, and he’s probably the only one who I can say knows me better than I know myself. I mean – c’mon. We bonded over ice pops and too much Chippy and one-sided childhood crushes and all-nighters and ever since I was old enough to think about fake wedding plans I always knew he was gonna be my best man. It’s only natural – I mean, he is my best friend.

Little did I know that he apparently wants to be my bride. Or my groom? Whichever. I dunno.

It was somewhere along the time when people first started pairing me up with Anna Samuel, one of the drama club’s most popular girls and the soprano singer over at the church near our place. She’s really pretty, with her nice wavy hair and bright eyes, and sometimes she smiles at me so gently and it makes my heart jump in my chest but I don’t like her like people think I do. Seriously. I dunno where they’re getting these ideas, but hey, I could do much worse.

This was also the time when Noah got a lot more jumpy than usual. Irritated, annoyed, the whole nine yards of his usual mood swings – I kinda expected this, ‘cuz this was also the time when they were having elections for the Student Council, and Noah was then five times busier than he normally was, so I never really expected there to be a deeper reason behind all his angst and anger. But it was one of the things that he let slip really made me reconsider this assumption.

“I don’t see why they keep pairing you up with all these girls,” he had said, as we both busied ourselves with chomping through an extra-large-sized bag of chips. “They don’t even know you all that well, y’know. It won’t work.”

He had looked at me then, way too intensely for someone who’s just listening to his best friend rant about other people’s ‘shipping’ habits, and as he looked away with his cheeks slightly pink that’s when it struck me – that Noah knows me more than anyone else does and if he were a girl we’d be fair game for couple jokes by now.

Back then he had shrugged it off and took advantage of my epiphany by swiping the chip bag outta my hands and scooping it selfishly in his mouth, but I hadn’t forgotten about his words, or the rush of blood behind his pale cheeks. Still can’t, don’t think I ever will.

‘Cuz, seriously – I’ve spent all these years telling him, as he cheered me up with video games and soft drinks every time some girl I liked shot me down, that when his time came I’d help him with the person he’d like, just as much as he’d always helped me. What am I supposed to do, when it turns out the person he happens to like is me, Mark Sanchez, his childhood best friend who has absolutely no idea what to do with girls liking him, much less with guys?

So this is why, after we got to our next class and got split up into groups for some project, even after we got introduced to our project plan and dismissed, I was still kinda in a daze.

“Hey, stop.” a girl’s voice said, barring me from pending death by collision with sliding door, and I looked up on instinct. Tan skin, crossed eyebrows, long dark hair, and that red, red T-shirt with its familiar white lettering. Keep calm and carry on.

I have no idea what the hell I am supposed to do with Noah and the feelings he may or may not have for me, but if I keep spacing out like this I wouldn’t even be trying to at least figure something out. So, nothing to it, then – I just have to keep my head and go with the flow. Just like I usually do.

“Thanks there, you really saved my life.” Literally and metaphorically. “Sorry, but I didn’t get your name…?” Was it something with a C? This is embarrassing; I don’t usually forget my classmate’s names. Kinda an occupational hazard of being the class’ pageant bet, which is yet again another thing I seriously have trouble getting on board with, but that’s for another existential crisis.

She purses her lips and sighs. “Irrelevant. Please move out of the way.” Then she looks at me with a capital-L Look of such total impatience, as if she’d absolutely enjoy cutting me down if I ever think of being a holdup. So I swallow hard and nod mutely as she turns away, somehow following her down the hallway – hey, I didn’t mean to, okay, it’s just that we’re going the same direction.

A few steps away from me, though, she’s stopped by a ringing in her pocket – a call on her cell phone, one she takes with a resigned sigh. “This is Claire.”

Oh, right, my mistake – this is Claire Corona. I think she used to be classmates with one of the girls I usually get partnered up in Science with. And the reason why I didn’t recognize her at sight is ‘cuz she isn’t exactly the kind of girl who’d go to basketball games and nonacademic events, which make up around seventy percent of my socialization time. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person I’d notice come socialization time, in fact.

“No, Rina, I said that you could go on without me,” she says, as her fingertips tap some kind of hollow tune against the metal railing of the staircase. “I mean, c’mon, we’d both write it the same – they’re best friends! Of course Makoto knows his best friend likes him, at least on some subconscious level, I mean, it’s obvious.”

So Claire writes fanfiction? I don’t know much about anime – ‘Makoto’ sounds like an anime-ish name – but I think I’ve seen it recently around the net before, something about sports and too much ab definition. I remember being self-conscious for a good hour and vowing to work for more defined abs before the next pageant. If she writes fanfiction for that anime, that sounds interesting.

“Well, don’t bet yourself too much about it, Rina. The first time I wrote that kind of romance, I was worrying about the same thing.” she replies to something this ‘Rina’ said, making a turn down the staircase – and I make the same turn just in time for her not to see me; not too far, not too close. Listening in like this makes me feel a bit…guilty, really, but it’s not as it would be easier for me to take another route. “I mean, I just can’t relate. They’re best friends who fall in love a lot, sometimes with each other, and there’s a lot that’s not going for them!”

Huh. This sounds familiar.

“But then I realized: it’s just the same as every other love story. It just so happens that they’re both guys.”

Oh.

She ends her call soon after, asking her friend if she got it and sounding really nicely pleased when she (presumably) does, and it’s then that it all falls into place for me: I dunno anything about guys liking their male best friends and how these kinds of stories are supposed to go and/or be dealt with, but, even if it’s on some fictional level, Claire does.

So when she walks away, completely blind to the fact that I just heard her on the phone, I make a mental note to talk to her the next time I see her.

Hey, it’s always nice to be friends with another elder sibling. And who knows, she might have the answers I need.

.

.

.

 

fin.