Chapter 12
If I end up in hell, I’m pretty sure they’d punish me by hiring people like my sister to wake me up.
“Why? Whyyyyyyyyyy?!” I groan and cling to my pillow when Achi tugs away my blanket again at the butt crack of dawn.
“After yesterday, did you seriously think I was going to trust you to make it to school on your own?”
The mention of yesterday suddenly snaps me awake.
Holy shit. Where’s Pa?!
… Was that whole day with him a dream? But everything was so vivid, though … Is that what happens after years of sleep deprivation—dreams start feeling more real?
“And look at this!” Achi points at the part of the floor still coated in baby powder. “Do you expect someone to magically appear to clean this up?!”
Wait. If there’s powder on the floor, then that must mean …
I spin around the bed, frantically looking for any signs of him.
There’s nothing when I check my closet, under my bed, my desk. “What are you looking for?” Achi asks. “Your missing potential?”
I’m about to tell her to help me find Pa when I remember I’m the only one who can see him.
But maybe Pa’s ghost went through some reverse metamorphosis overnight.
So I ask, “Did you see a butterfly this morning?”
“While I was watching the rainbows and unicorns?”
I say that I’m being serious and she cocks her head to the side. “You’re really looking for a butterfly?”
“It’s … for chemistry class.”
“What do butterflies have to do with chemistry?”
“Weren’t you the one who wants me to do well in school?!”
Achi grumbles while she checks the window blinds. “What does this insect look like?”
“A butterfly,” I say, and double-check the closets again. “It kinda looks like…”
Once I open Achi’s drawer, a hand suddenly reaches through the wall.
“Pa!” I exclaim when his body appears back in the room.
“The butterfly looks like Pa?” Achi gets up from checking under the beds.
“Sorry, I thought you’d still be asleep by the time I came back…”
Pa is trying to explain, but Achi’s busy talking over him about some dumb school stuff.
“With or without the butterfly, you’re going to clean this room and show up to class. I’m going to kill you if you don’t graduate.” Achi opens my closet and hurls my school uniform at me. “Be ready to go in five minutes.”
Achi leaves the bedroom and I get to fully focus on today’s itinerary with Pa.
I’m suggesting a day trip to Tagaytay when Pa asks, “Why did Jackie say you weren’t going to graduate?”
“Just some attendance thing.” I brush it off. “Ooh, you know, we could also go to La Union. I’ve never driven that far, but since I was able to handle EDSA—”
“You’re going to school,” he cuts me off.
“Pa, there’s no way I’m going to leave you.”
“Then we’ll go to class together.”
“Sure.” I roll my eyes. “Everyone who comes back to life wants to go back to high school.”
Pa agrees and takes my sarcasm way too seriously. “The best moments of my life happened in Saint Agnes. Bringing you and Jackie to your first day of school, all those fun parent-teacher conferences.”
I’m trying to dissuade Pa when Achi opens the door again without knocking.
“Let’s go!” she barks.
Pa follows her and looks at me over his shoulder. “You heard your sister. Let’s go!”
Mornings at Saint Agnes are always the worst kind of chaos.
Before classes start and we can enter our classrooms, all the high school students swarm to find a space to sit in the gym that realistically only has space for half our population.
By seven AM, you get lost in the sea of girls wearing the same plaid uniform.
Well, on this particular morning, it’s a sea of girls in the Saint Agnes uniforms and a ghost father floating among them.
“We could be halfway to the beach by now,” I say with my earphones plugged in. After getting weird glances from looking like I’m talking to myself, I start pretending I’m on a phone call whenever I speak to Pa.
Pa spreads out his arms across the crowded gym. “And miss out on all this fun?”
The girl seated next to Pa shouts out that she got her period and asks if anyone has an extra napkin. Pa instinctively ducks when surrounding students in the gym start tossing menstrual products to the girl in need.
“It’s like when Batman turns on the Bat-Signal,” he says in awe. “Your mom got her period during prom night, too, and five different girls offered to help.”
For the past seventeen years, I never really heard much of my parents’ love story.
Pa used to joke that he was “hard to resist,” and Ma seems like she’s allergic to the past these days.
My mind suddenly goes back to the prom pictures of my parents in their yearbook.
“You never told me you and Ma started dating in high school.”
“Didn’t I?”
I shake my head. “You only said that she stole your heart.”
“See?” Pa says, like that covered the whole story. “I told you.”
“You left out all the details, Pa.”
“It all feels so long ago now…” He takes a deep breath and chuckles. “But being here makes me remember. Hard to get talaga ang mama mo. Your grandparents were strict, so I had to court her for a long time. You can tell how much a fisherman wants a fish based on how far he’s willing to swim.”
I pause, trying to follow his proverb. “… So Ma was your fish?”
He nods. “My whole allowance, I spent it all buying the siopaos Beth would sell outside the school gate. I would buy her siopaos, then give them back to her as a gift,” he reminisces, and smiles. “I even asked your ma to prom during our Battle of the Bands. Played our favorite Mariah song.
“I was so happy when she was allowed to go to prom.” He takes a moment and gazes around the gym. “The dance was right here.”
Pa’s story gets interrupted when the Saint Agnes bell rings through the gym. Everyone rises to their feet and heads toward the classrooms. While I would rather stay here and catch up with Pa, he’s already asking where we should go for our first class.
“This looks different,” he says when I lead him to the other side of campus.
“It’s the new senior high building,” I explain. “I think they started construction right after Achi graduated.”
As I merge with the rest of the class through the entrance, I somehow lose Pa in the crowd. When I look back, he’s hovering and stuck outside. He attempts to walk in again and his body keeps bouncing back.
I quickly backpedal and pat the doorframe in case there’s another way to get in. “You were able to enter the other buildings just fine.”
“Maybe the new buildings have some secret ghost repellent.”
Hold on. Is that it?
Pa is able to walk through walls and enter places like the condo, the Saint Agnes gym, and Martha Toyota. The spots he struggled with have been the new airport terminal, the new mall, the new Saint Agnes building—places he had never been to before.
The few students left around us start sprinting when the second morning bell rings.
“Superstar, you’re going to be late.”
“What about you?”
His eyes smile at me from the other side of the door. “I’ll be fine,” he insists. “I can roam around, rest back home. If you need me, you can leave a message at the ghost office.” He chuckles. “Gets? It sounds like post office!”
My feet still don’t budge no matter how many jokes Pa tells me. Nothing he says can distract me from the very real possibility that he might disappear when I leave him.
“Don’t worry too much,” Pa says, as if reading my mind. “Malay mo, Nika. I’ll be staying longer than you think.”
…
Did he say he was staying?
Could that happen?
Could Pa actually stay?