I must admit that I wasn’t great at speeches, or anything that has to do with opening my mouth. My mouth was only good for eating or chewing, for all I knew. I never liked reporting, reciting and standing in front of the class or anything that concerned talking. I preferred to think. No talk. Because when I did, it didn’t do me any good at all.
So when Chelsea Shaia, junior class vice president, waved a piece of paper in front of my face in the middle of Ms. Soledad Buenolino’s class—my world history teacher a.k.a. Ms. Minchin—I only stared at her and thought, God, she’s dumb.
“Are you going to stare at me forever or what?” she asked, looking at me with two primed eyes below two perfectly arched eyebrows.
I noticed she had on neon pink fingernails then, which she changed every other day, and her hair looked really shiny and black. She had her hair regularly trimmed every two months that made it look like it never grew or it never was trimmed at all.
“What?” I said, sounding bored and already diverting my eyes to the trees outside through the open windows.
I sat near the windows. It was one thing I liked despite my name being on the bottommost part of the student list after Chelsea Shaia, whom I had no choice but be my seatmate.
“Aren’t you really listening to anything that’s been said and done in this class? Are you even real?” she said incredulously, knowing I had not a care in the world whether she talked all day beside me or not at all.
I looked back at her, finally taking notice of the paper she was holding. “What’s that?”
“Jeez, you are impossible,” she said, harshly placing the paper on my desk.
It almost flew away if my hand didn’t catch it on time. A sneak peak told me that it was the result of last week’s world history quiz. And I got a passing grade, almost failing if not for the one point that saved me from it.
“Guess you need to study harder, Sta. Maria,” she wrapped up, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore.
I knew then that she only handed me my paper to say those words. She was like that. We never really liked each other. And she knew very well that I had no inclination whatsoever to be part of her posse and popularity. So we were never friends, really. If I remembered it right, all I did was stare at the window and look at the boys playing frisbee at the Luna East Arts Academy open field all throughout the exam, and I wouldn’t have got back to answering if Ms. Minchin hadn’t called my name. And now I almost failed, but didn’t. I smiled despite myself.
So far, so good. I didn’t have to tell my mom that I failed once again on my world history surprise quiz.
Lunchtime was always the same for me. I sat at my usual table with Molly—my best friend who would rather read a magazine than pick on her sandwich, because that was exactly what I was doing. Picking on my sandwich, I mean. The cafeteria was crowded as always, and the AC, even set on the highest degree, didn’t seem to be working. I could feel cold beads of oil forming at my forehead, threatening to fall on my sandwich in the slightest movement of my head.
I supposed I should have seen it coming. The moment Mang Ben gave me an egg sandwich for lunch instead of the chicken sandwich I ordered, the sign should have been there flashing right before my eyes. But since I wasn’t in the mood to argue, I ignored it like I would ignore my best friend’s constant complaints every time I would hangout with the intense-looking pariahs slash outcasts in campus. So now I was killing my time setting aside the bits of egg to my paper plate and silently praying that someone was doing the same thing I was doing just so I would feel better.
“And what do you think you are doing?” Trust my best friend to ask me that.
My best friend in question was a five foot seven tall girl with dark brown hair, cut just above the shoulders with bangs that bobbed on her forehead whenever she moved her head, compared to my five foot four and straight black hair.
I shrugged my shoulders, not tearing my eyes away from the sandwich on my paper plate, now looking massacred from my brutal picking and poking. “I don’t know.”
“You’re hopeless,” she remarked, and I knew she was shaking her head in disappointment. “Anyway, if you have better things to do than whatever you are doing there, you should check this out.”
I looked up to see her holding out what looked like the newest edition of the school paper. “Don’t tell me Noah is in there, because I already knew.”
“Wrong,” she said with an impatient look in her eyes.
Noah was the guy I had a big crush on since day one. He was like, so popular and so good-looking that the local magazines wanted to put his pretty face on their covers. He was the junior class president so it wouldn’t be a surprise if the school paper wanted to write about him.
I raised one eyebrow at my best friend. “Then what is it you think I should be dedicating my precious time with?” I asked, but weren’t expecting to hear anything that would really interest me at the very least.
“You,” she said as coolly as only an inequitable human being could.
I looked at her in confusion.
“I’m serious! Gossip girl is showcasing her brilliant side and I’m pretty sure the popularity-obsessed freaks and Noah de Mateo’s official fan club are clapping their ears at her now,” she said, words trying to come out without toppling each other.
Now that was Molly. The excitement in her face showed as she spoke.
“Huh?” Still, I was at a lost. I knew my best friend well enough to know she was getting more impatient.
“Here,” she said, shoving the paper to me in an attempt to clear her case.
I accepted it, leaving my paper plate if only to appease her dubious case. The school paper was opened in the middle. My eyes roamed unfamiliar words and pictures until my eyes settled on what seemed to be the star of the centerfold. Below Trisha Mendoza’s—the math wiz in elementary and now a gossip girl in high school—column was a title, screaming QUEEN STA. MARIA WITH HER SHARE OF HIGH SCHOOL LIFE with a picture of me—me?—having a really bad hair day as I walked along the hallway of Luna East.
I was sure my hair didn’t look anything of the sort. It was definitely photoshopped, I decided. Since I never go to school without blowing my hair to perfection.
“So?” I heard my best friend ask from across me.
I was pretty sure that it all started when Noah de Mateo punched the guy who accidentally threw his sandwich at me in the cafeteria. It would have ended there if only Noah didn’t leave a note on my desk afterwards. He wrote a note to tell me, command me rather, to rewrite the attendance sheet requested by Ms. Minchin. Maybe he thought he saved me at the cafeteria and I was only returning the favor. But since that day, my life had never been the same.
Girls started looking at me like Noah asked me to go on a date with him or wrote me a love letter. If that was the case, then okay fine, the beetches had every right to get mad at me. But the thing is, it wasn’t what happened. But since I wasn’t into speeches, as I already cleared earlier, I let the girls think what they wanted to think.
The result? Trisha Mendoza had pointed the tip of her arrow at me, ready to let go any minute she deemed—or what her bosses would have thought—the prefect timing.
My life would have been just the way it was if I told everyone the truth. There would have been no girls making up stories, no girls staring at me evilly, no girls looking like anytime they might hit me, and definitely no girls acting like I just stole their boyfriend from them.
Because one thing I knew for sure, despite Noah’s handsome face, prominent muscles in his arms and legs, six-pack abs and absolutely hottie aura, he was single, as in, no girlfriend since birth. I knew, because he kept saying it on all his interviews. And Noah hadn’t been just a pretty face and no substance. He was president of a couple of orgs, joining competitions academically in and out of the classroom, and flaunting his body every morning as captain of the men’s swimming team and every afternoon as forward of the men’s basketball team.
So the girls had every reason to swarm at him—and get mad at me for believing in something that never happened at all.
“What now?” my best friend said, totally raring to go.
“Totally expected,” I said as coolly as I could, looking up from the paper.
Molly stared at me in disbelief, opening and closing her mouth as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t get around with words.
Then, recovering from shock, she said, “This girl can’t go on writing about stuffs she doesn’t know. I can’t believe you’re letting her off the hook with this one!”
She was moving restlessly in her seat now, staring daggers at me from across the table.
“What do you want me to do then?” I asked disinterestedly.
She snatched the school paper from my hands, surprising me for a moment.
A thrill crossed her blemish-free face. “Leave it to me,” she said, her eyes finally dancing salsa.
“Wait. What are you planning to do? Are you going to slap her in the face? ‘Coz that would be a good sight to see, but not as good if there’s a principal involved,” I said in warning, willing her to look at my eyes.
She suddenly looked at me with a disgusted face as if the idea of slapping Trisha Mendoza in the face revolted her. “Is that what you think of me? Just wait and see.”
Leaning back on her chair, she said with amusement, “But I don’t think she’s going to like it.”
She, meaning Trisha Mendoza. I just stared at my best friend, not wanting to imagine what she planned to do.
Then, she smiled at me. “Don’t worry. You’re going to thank me afterwards,” she said.
I shook my head. I might sound beetchy sometimes, especially to my best friend, my brother, and my mother’s ears. But there was no way I could beat my best friend to it. At first glance, some people thought I was a queen bee while my best friend always got the charming and nice ensemble remark, when in truth she was the beetchiest person I’ve ever met in my entire seventeen years of existence. With my arched brows and sometimes-haughty attitude, I couldn’t blame them. But even if my name is Queen, I wasn’t in any way a queen bee, let alone a real queen.
Maybe I was just not exactly someone whom others would call endearing, because I spent too much time hanging out with the outcasts—almost belonging to the labeled group if not for my best friend who insisted that I didn’t belong with them. No, not at all.
I met Molly back in seventh grade and we’ve been the best of buddies since then. She would have been the perfect student if only she wasn’t a fashion dumbo. No matter how hard she tried to fit in to parties, she would look like a rug next to Chelsea, who treated parties and assemblages as fashion shows, alongside one of her minions Beatrice.
So instead of popular, Molly ended up with me. She was stuck, I should say.
I guess our status in school went like this: “No puedo hacer más por ser claro.” It was what my grandfather—he wasn’t Spanish but he loved the way Spanish words rolled on his tongue— when he was irritated loved to say and honestly I couldn’t understand a word that came out from his mouth.
The day moved so fast. I wouldn’t realize it was already dismissal time if Molly didn’t pinch my arm, give me a good body shake, and then tell me she had to go home early, which meant only one thing: she wouldn’t be doing her homework with me at the library. It wasn’t like she really needed to go to the library, because I knew she had books at home that were double the size of the books in our school library.
For a moment, it felt scary, but did I have a choice? It wasn’t like I could stop her from going home. Not unless I gagged her and strapped her hands on a chair or something close.
So as I walked along the corridors of Luna East on my way to the library—that was because Ms. Minchin gave the Junior Section A an ultimatum, which was to finish a 500-word essay about the island of who-knows-what-and-where-and-even-if-I-knew-I-don’t-care—I felt the stares of most of the students around boring into me, which I wouldn’t have noticed at all if Molly was with me.
While acting as if it didn’t bother me—when in fact it did—Noah came to make matters worse. He was on his way to the library, too, only he came from a different direction, and there was no way I could veer back to where I came from as it was evident that he had seen me first. I wasn’t obsessed. This I wanted to be clear. I was just, really drawn to his lovely face, that when he stopped to acknowledge me, I forgot everything that I was supposed to be doing—like running away from him.
“Hi Queen. Didn’t know you go to libraries,” he said, using his impossibly masculine voice. He said it so casually that I had no reason not to reply.
He was eighteen years old, a year older than almost everyone in the junior class, because he had to stop a year, establishing himself in the world of celebrities—interviews here and there—before going back to school.
“You don’t know me, then,” I answered, giving him my most charming smile—the one that the boys in my year level, or even higher, would surely die to get a glimpse of.
“I sure know you,” he said, and then gave me a wink.
I wasn’t sure if it really was a wink or he just blinked. Otherwise, it made my heart soar.
“Anyway, are you free Saturday night? The boys are saying Martin is throwing a party. First time. So I don’t want to miss it.”
By this time, a lot of girls were already looking our way. My heart was beating fast, like any minute I wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure anymore and I would just burst out.
“Sure. Just give me directions,” I managed to say. I couldn’t say I didn’t enjoy being approximately 10 inches away from him, so screw my heart.
He looked thoughtful for a while. Then, he said, ever so casually, “I can pick you up at your house, if you want.”
Normally, majority of the students my age didn’t have a license, let alone a car—what wasn’t normal though was guys like Noah asking me to go to a party—but Noah has his, a student license, and a car. That was understandable though, because he was already eighteen. He was also a toy car collector. His favorite was a ’67 Camaro Hot Wheels given to him by his late grandfather. This bit of news was courtesy of a magazine I read before.
“That’s so nice of you, thanks, but I’m fine on my own,” I said with a smile. Honestly, I was tempted to say sure, no problem, but I also knew when it was time to stop. If only students were allowed to carry weapons, I was so sure I was already dead meat by then.
Noah looked disappointed, but he was quick to change it into a look of relief. Talk about pride. Then, he was smiling, again. “I’m really hoping you’d say no. Okay, see you Saturday, then.”
That was a relief, seriously. I could finally breathe.
He gave me the directions I needed. He entered the library, gave me a salute—one thing that he liked giving to almost everyone. Before I knew it, I started walking, too, but not to the direction of the library. I was walking away from it. And the last thought I had, was how nice Noah’s eyes were. It was light brown, the color of honey.
The next day, Ms. Minchin asked for our homework. Thank heavens she didn’t call us one by one. Or else, I would have been too embarrassed to do nothing more than just stare at the trees outside through the open windows.
“You are impossible,” Molly said sharply with a hand on her hips the minute Ms. Minchin left the classroom.
I quickly remembered Chelsea’s exact same words ringing in my ears.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She just rolled her eyes at me in return. Then I realized. Right. Of course Molly knew I didn’t do my homework, so she came to give me the scolding.
“I tried, okay?” I decided to say.
“Well, try harder,” she replied, shaking her head like my mom would. Sincerely, I couldn’t understand how Molly could do it. Be a beetch, and study like a dork, I mean.