Anecdotes of a Hobo [[on hold]]

Ten - Coincidence

A/N:

Waray - a Filipino dialect native to the provinces of Leyte and Samar

moreno - a boy with tan complexion

To the first person who voted on all four parts of When a Psychic Writes, this is for you. I know, like many others who appreciated my first story, that you are a hopeless romantic. And I am too, which is why I had to write this chapter.

-----

Meira saved the money that Bobby's mother gave her for babysitting. Eventually, she saved enough to buy an ipod touch: the first expensive thing she bought using the money she earned. If only life was this easy in Maceda, then her family wouldn't have left. Well, too bad, because IT'S NOT. Reality bites real hard.

It was one of those boring days in between Christmas and New Year's when she and her brothers had nothing to do. Meira curled in her family's couch wrapped in a warm, fleece blanket. Andy was reading a book and Mark was taking a nap. Rex and Jimmy were playing with toy cars. Broom broom. Their father? At work as usual. The TV was on BAM, the global Filipino TV network, and it was airing a Filipino soap opera. The TV station does this three times a day, one in the afternoon, one at night, and the last one at early dawn. Unless a soap-opera addict worked until one or two in the morning, no one really watched the early dawn showings.

Bobby's mother didn't work today, so Meira wasn't needed to babysit. Instead, she was sitting comfortably and listening to songs in her own living room. Her song of choice: Sometimes by Britney Spears. Meira had it on replay. She made a mental note to download a cover of Sometimes from Youtube. Maybe an acoustic one. For now, she was content by staring blankly at the soap opera her mother was watching in the living room, while she imagined the first time Andrei talked to her. This memory was so fresh in her mind, that whenever she talked about it with her new friends she would often say the cliché: Just like it happened yesterday.

The year was 2006 and Meira was only twelve then. He first caught her attention in September of freshman year, three months after the Philippine school year starts in June. It was Meira's first year at Philippine Prep-Maceda Campus. That was how the teachers called their school because it was more convenient than saying Philippine College Preparatory School for Science and Math-Maceda Campus. The school's whole name was quite a mouthful.

Anyway, before that moment, Meira recognized Andrei as the older brother of a girl she used to know in grade school. Meira didn't see him before freshman year because he went to a different elementary school in Maceda. In her first two months, Andrei, to her, was always frowning. She often got a glimpse of him by the stairs. She always found him leaning on the classroom door, minding his own business, probably waiting for his teacher to start class. The bell rang already, and Meira often made it to school late. She absentmindedly climbed up the stairs to her classroom in the second floor, like she did everyday since June. She often climbed the stairs whilst looking down at her feet, not because she was shy. She did that because half of her wanted to watch her step and the other half of her wondered if she polished her black school shoes enough. Quite a neat freak, huh? She spent ten to twenty minutes a night doing this after dinner. Initially, she did this because of her mother's endless nagging but later on, Meira realized that the habit calmed her. However, it was frustrating when Meira had to walk through mud and puddles after a fierce storm—something that happened very often in the months of September to February, in the part of the country where she used to live.

It was on a September afternoon that Andrei decided to talk to her. Meira also remembered that it was a Friday because it was the deadline for their group's project. Meira and her groupmates were huddled together in the corridors outside their classroom on the second floor. They stood around their project: a paper airplane.

"It won't fly," one of them said. He was a skinny boy with short hair.

Two sophomore girls approached. One of them suggested, "Maybe you should take some tape off. I think you put too much."

"Oh okay," he responded. He said something more to the sophomore girl but it was related to high school gossip.

The girl standing adjacent to Meira walked away and mumbled something about getting a snack in their classroom. When she left, there was a void space next to her. Minutes before the group's discussion about their project, Meira saw Andrei passing by. He was probably curious as to what his sophomore classmates were looking at, so he approached them and he filled the void space that Meira's groupmate left. He stood next to her without saying a word.

Meira's eyes switched from the paper airplane on the floor, to her shoes. It had just rained that September morning and her shoes were muddy at the bottom edges. She hated cleaning the mud from them. Frustrated by the sight, she looked blankly in front of her. And it was in that second that she saw in her peripheral vision, that the boy standing on her right, had been observing her. This. Is. Weird...

Can he sense the tension in her eyes? She didn't know. She felt herself awkwardly suffocating even if she didn't look him in the eye.

Whoo...it's getting hot in here. Maybe if I slooowly move away from this sophomore he wouldn't notice.

Barely breathing, Meira raised her left leg, ready to take a side step, just a few inches away from the boy. She wasn't going to run, she just figured that a little distance would give her some space to breathe.

But, as coincidence would have it, she never completed that one step.

"WHAT'S YOUR NAME?"

Meira heard the question that Andrei blurted loudly in Waray, Maceda's dialect. Even after three years, those three words still rang fresh in Meira's ears.

She was taken aback, surprised. Meira found herself staring at this sophomore's face. Whether she was paler than she already was or blushing red, Meira didn't know. All she remembered was being frozen, and looking at this boy with wide-eyed amazement. She stayed like this, for probably a full five seconds. It was flattering. At twelve years old, this was the first time a boy had asked for her name.

Meira stared at him long enough to know that he was moreno, of medium height, and had a nice smile. It wasn't hard to see him as a boy with many friends. Meira remembered her first impression of him. How ironic for someone so friendly, to have a frown plastered upon his tan face.

Upon gazing at him for a long time, she turned her attention to the people around the two of them: her classmates and two sophomores.

Meira wasn't thinking straight. It was probably because she couldn't breath. Suddenly, her mind was occupied with worry. Meira's teachers and friends often said she had a softspoken voice. What if he doesn't hear me the first time? That's not very smooth. What if he hears my name wrong and called me Mayra? I'd have to correct him and THAT would be rude. Besides, she thought not hearing someone’s voice and saying someone's name wrong are offensive acts. She had been offended both ways so many times because of her soft voice. She didn't like it. Was she oversensitive? YES. But not having enough oxygen in her head only confused her more. She continued to stand there not knowing what to do.

Then, her body couldn't take it anymore. She inhaled for the first time in what seemed like forever. She blinked two times. Unconsciously, she dropped her tense shoulders and then tipped her head down to stare at the paper airplane on the floor, totally ignoring the question. Was she blushing? She had no idea.

"Haha, real smooth Vince," one of the sophomore girls decided to break the awkward moment. Most people call Andrei, Vince. Meira was sure she was blushing now.

"Uuuyyyyy...." the other girl teased.

Andrei shuffled, but Meira wouldn't take her eyes off the paper airplane. Like the fourteen year old boy that he was, he ran towards the stairs, on his way to his first floor classroom.

Meira watched him run. It was the same way he ran when he played basketball in the school quadrangle. She had observed him doing so in the three years she was a student in Philippine Prep.

If she could replay the moment, she would have answered the question just like any sane girl in her position would, "My name is Meira," she would have said the words with a warm smile.