(completed version)
Distances
I. OVERPASS
They loved having ice cream together. He noticed how it always made her smile after a busy day, so he made sure that they always bought ice cream before going home. She would always have the chocolate flavor with the large cone, and he would have whatever she was having. After eating the last bits of the wafer cones, he would buy her a bottle of water and she would say thank you with the most sincere smile.
They walk around campus for a while, looking for some place to sit while waiting for the night to settle in. However, even before the sky grew dark, she would always say that she needed to go home. He helps her carry some of her stuff, and she opens small talk as they start walking solemnly towards the jeepney terminal.
He would always wait until she was able to ride a jeep, and then he would watch her disappear before taking the overpass to the other side of the road. That was where he waited for the jeepney ride that would take him home.
II. THEATER ARTS
She looked at the mirror, took one deep breath and exhaled all her fears away. She observed herself – mascara, makeup, everything – and she felt beautiful, but it was odd. It was odd like how her father called her the night before and told him that the whole family was going to watch her perform. She had not talked to her family for months.
When the stage manager knocked on her door and told her that it was five minutes until Showtime, she remembered how her own father screamed that she had five minutes left to take whatever stuff she wanted before he would kick her out of the house. She spent those last five minutes weeping silently as her mother wrapped her arms around her, trying to tell her that father still loved her.
An applause shook the whole theater as her name was introduced to the crowd. She looked at herself once again – mascara, makeup, everything – and she put on her mask as she stepped into the spotlight of the stage.
III. CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
Nanay Mina just finished her cooking. As she served Noche Buena to her eagerly waiting family at the dinner table, she could not help but break a smile as the kids broke out in praises over the enticing smell of Christmas ham. Her husband earnestly smiled at her as he led the kids in a thanksgiving prayer, and she then poured them cups of freshly made steaming hot chocolate.
To the kids’ delight, their favorite Christmas movie was showing on TV. Nanay Mina told them that they should watch and stay in the room after the meal so that Santa would think they were good kids and would give them presents. The kids hurriedly ate their ham and keso de bola, and they went straight to their rooms. Outside, a group of kids started singing Christmas carols.
Nanay Mina decided to let them finish their song before handing them coins she had stashed particularly for these kids. The moment she walked out the front door to give them their pamasko, the little girl in the group started smiling so much that Nanay Mina grew uneasy. She quickly went inside the house without turning back, pretending not to hear the thank you’s that sounded like angels’ exaltations.
IV. DOWNPOUR
The rain battered heavily the top of the roofs and the cars as two street children tried to keep their carton box from collapsing. Dongie, the older one of the two, resorted to folding it up in hopes of drying it up at a later day, preferably one with the sun. Pichay, his sister, was trying to look for a corner where they could hide the box until the rain let up. Only the sound of the rain hitting land surfaces could be heard.
When they finished the chore of hiding their house in a dry corner, Dongie wanted to find a drier place to stay. He shouted at Pichay to race him towards the other side of the road where he knew of a waiting shed were passersby hardly waited, especially in this kind of weather. He heard Pichay shout something back at him, most likely an approval, and so he ran.
However, Pichay could not hear anything except the rain hitting all kinds of surfaces. Dongie appeared to be up to his games again, and he was shouting at her. She shouted something back about not wanting to play in the rain because it was scary, but it was too late because Dongie had already started to run towards the other side of the road. Pichay always thought that things moved slower in the rain because you could not run in the rain or else you would slip. This time, she just watched Dongie disappear through the small spaces between the cars.
V. OVERPASS
Ever since he bought his car and she started avoiding him, he had managed to learn a lot of things. The first was that fiction could only take him so far, and that is why there are cars. The second was that confessions are bad ideas, especially if it meant other people were going to get hurt. The third was that ice cream was really made for kids.
So when he was driving home past midnight and saw her crying, alone on that waiting shed, trying desperately to get a taxi, her hair disheveled and her dress mangled at places, her tears ruining her mascara the way the rain ruined the color of her clothes, he did not hesitate at all.
He stepped on the gas pedal.
