wattys 2020 winner • mystery/thriller
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Everyone thinks she is dead. Even I thought so, too.
While the town spoke of her dead name, Amethyst Cambray is actually alive, and she is asking for my help.
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15
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I WAS A regular teenage boy before Amethyst came to enter my world.
Well, it does sound odd to use regular though. I have dead parents and an angry aunt, and I send myself to school. But at the very least, old mothers would rate me 10 out of 10 if it's me being a good kid is being talking about.
That being said, it's only normal for me to fall in love. The first time I did was when I was fourteen years old, three months into living in Ashmore.
Hindi ko alam kung paano, e. Gano'n naman talaga, 'di ba? Love strikes like thunder. If it hits you, it hits you. And it hit me.
At the bus stop every 7 AM, there would always be this girl waiting right across the street, her hair tied up in a bun, wearing different kinds of sweater every morning. A car would pull over in front of her, and after it goes, the girl would disappear.
Sinabi ko 'to kay Tanya. She raised her other brow at me, and said, "you'll just end up crying, but enjoy that sentiment of yours as long as you still don't."
She's such a goth, an emo-girl of early twenties that I just find her totally senseless. The hell was she talking about, I thought to myself, but not until now did she start to make sense to me.
As a fourteen year old, all I thought of was trying to talk to the girl across the street, wanting to make her smile or laugh. That's all I had in my head, and . . . nothing else. I figured that that's what love is all about. All smiles, not crying like Tanya always say. I am proud that I used to think this way despite the tragedy that happened in my family.
Well anyway, this 'love' went on for a few more weeks, and then I did not prepare myself for the very first heartbreak I'll experience with a girl . . . or not. Imagine my surprise when I saw my crush on an empty classroom kissing another girl.
I immediately fled out the room. I knew I shouldn't have assumed her sexuality; I was the one at total fault for being such a coward.
I was so devastated and traumatized that I did not show up in work for days. Pumasok lang ako nang tinawagan ni Tanya ang bahay ko at binalaang magpapadala siya ng kabaong sa 'kin kung hindi pa ako papasok. Siyempre, pumasok ako, sino'ng hindi papasok kung ganyan na ang banta sa 'yo?
After that happened, I realized how much I don't know about love. About how naive I was to think that it was just about making each other happy; about how it was just about each other's smiling faces. Love isn't like that. Love is much, much, deeper than that, and sometimes, love means letting someone you do not know stay inside your own house . . . even if it meant risking your safety and your favorite couch.
I think of all this as I sit beside Amethyst on my favorite couch.
We fit in one. Her place is always on the sofa, but whenever I get comfortable of having to sit on my favorite couch, she'd begin insisting to sit with me. Well, not that I don't like it. She becomes a hundred times closer to me when she does this, and I like the feeling of . . . having her close.
