Chapter 20
“Um. Pa?”
“Just a few more minutes, Superstar,” he says, squeezing his arms around me.
Ever since Pa could hold physical objects again, he’s been hugging me nonstop.
I didn’t want to sleep last night because I had this fear that I wouldn’t get to hug Pa anymore in the morning.
Thankfully, the sun rose and Pa’s hugs still stayed.
I just wish I were better at multitasking since it gets tricky when I need my hands for other things too.
Since Pa still doesn’t let go, I use my hip to bump the elevator button for the basement floor. I don’t remember the last time I visited our condo’s storage area. It must’ve been around the same time I gave up piano.
His eyes and his same dorky smile light up his face when he sees his old keyboard.
“You kept it?” he asks.
“Thought you’d want to try playing again.”
Pa’s old keyboard takes up most of the storage space with Ma’s boxes stacked around it.
Achi was the one who suggested moving things to storage.
She gave some excuse about how clutter was bad feng shui, but we both know she was doing it for Ma’s benefit.
Ma cried every time she saw something in the condo that reminded her of Pa.
He takes a seat on the bench and pats the space next to him. “How about a jam session?”
Pa and I always played the piano together—I would be on the right playing the high notes and he would be on the left playing the low notes.
“I wanna hear your solo first,” I say. He hesitates but doesn’t try to convince me to join him. I wonder if Pa already sensed that I don’t play anymore. Maybe a gifted piano player could detect when a person abandons the instrument.
He shuts his eyes as he runs his fingers along the keys. “It’s like gaining my superpowers again.”
“Technically, your invisibility is wearing off, so it’s more like you’re losing your superpowers.”
Pa responds by stretching his arms and cracking his knuckles. “Ready to be amazed?” He rolls his shoulders, takes a deep breath, then plays the most exaggerated rendition of “Chopsticks.”
I laugh when Pa restarts punching the same keys and singing made-up lyrics to the “Chopsticks” notes.
“This is how I proposed to your mother.”
I turn to Pa to make sure he’s serious. “By playing ‘Chopsticks’?”
“Your mother said yes,” he reminds me.
“But you could’ve at least picked a more romantic song.”
Pa chuckles and sighs. “We were so young then, but I already knew I wanted to marry Beth,” he shares. “She was worried that we weren’t ready, that we were so far from reaching our dreams.
“Then I played her a song.” His fingers start a softer, quieter melody.
“That’s the way I got your mom to relax—by playing her favorite music.
We would be sitting next to each other by the piano like this, and she’d tell me about her dreams of owning her own bakery,” he says with a smile.
“I told her that after we got married, I’d help her put up bakeries around the country.
“I told her that no matter what happened to us, I’d make the dreams of my family come true. Protect her from the things she worries about.”
The piano falls silent after he breathes out that last line.
“Sorry I didn’t get to do that for you, Superstar,” he says, his eyes lingering on the keys. “Wish I could tell your sister that too.” His head is bowed, his shoulders drop lower like there’s another force weighing on his back.
“Pa, you don’t have to—”
But he cuts me off, swiftly changing the subject. I almost tell him that my head feels dizzy every time he takes a detour in our conversations.
“Did you save what I kept inside the bench?” Pa motions for me to stand and props open the lid. He takes out a binder tucked below piles of sheet music and songbooks.
He smiles when he peeks inside. “They’re still here.”
It’s a stack of envelopes, cards, and papers tied together by a rubber band.
Pa tells me to check the first one on top and it’s a birthday card that has yellow and pink stamps covering every inch of the page.
I remember working on a joint birthday card for Pa with Achi and arguing with her that she hogged all the space with her yellow stamps (so I naturally retaliated with my pink stamps).
“Are these all from us?” I ask, scanning the stack.
“Kept everything you girls gave me.”
He literally did. There’s a paper butterfly folded inside that I made for Pa when I had an “origami” phase.
“You made me promise to keep this in case the butterfly would come to life.”
Another memorable fight in the ongoing Nika vs Jackie saga: my sister freaking out when I folded her quiz papers into hearts. She got even more pissed when I said I’d fold her a bigger heart so she wouldn’t get mad at me all the time.
“I still have the vision board your sister made in high school.”
Oh god. How can I forget about Achi’s vision board.
She took that assignment so seriously that it hijacked our whole bedroom.
Everywhere I turned, there were magazine cutouts, colored paper, photo albums. And the few times I would complain about the mess, Achi would always say that I was disrupting her “vision.”
Despite multiple previous attempts, this is the first time I’m actually seeing what’s inside this famous vision board notebook.
It opens to a pop-up map where you can drag a cutout Jackie in a plane to different parts of the globe. No wonder my sister was salutatorian. She was so extra with every single assignment.
When I grow up, I want to travel to every continent and learn more about how other people in other cultures live their lives. My dream is to get a PhD and see the world.
“Did your achi get to go to Australia yet?” Pa asks. “She told me that would be her first stop.”
My sister has never mentioned anything about traveling. Her college friends invited her to go to Boracay after their graduation and she stayed behind because “What will I learn if I go to the beach?”
It’s why it didn’t make sense when I saw her suddenly apply to schools in freaking Florida.
“Maybe Achi’s dreams changed when she got older,” I tell Pa.
I keep exploring more sections of her notebook when Pa tells me to go to the last page.
Maybe my sister figured out how to add a 3D installation of Florida.
Wait. Why am I in the notebook?
On one of the last few spreads, there’s a collage of pictures from my childhood performances. She decorated the area around the collage with stars and music notes too. My sister even saved the ticket stubs to my shows and laminated them so the print hasn’t faded one bit.
At the bottom, Achi wrote: My little sister is my favorite person to watch perform. She’s probably going to be a superstar someday.
I try to wipe my eyes on my sleeve, but Pa already notices. His thumb brushes my cheek when a tear slides down my face. “I thought she hated it when you called me Superstar.”
“Why?” he asks. “She called you Superstar first.”
But didn’t my sister find my singing annoying? During our car rides to school growing up, Achi always said that no one asked to hear me sing when Pa and I had jam sessions.
While I’m still getting choked up on Achi’s vision, Pa asks if I can do him a favor.
“I was thinking about writing letters to Beth and Jackie. Would you leave my notes with them?” he asks. “There are things I want to tell them before … I go.”
It’s like the blood in my body goes cold at the thought.
“Maybe you don’t have to go.”
He’s already shaking his head. “Those aren’t the rules.”
Every time I try reasoning with him, pointing out that we’ve been breaking all his “rules,” he still doesn’t budge. If Pa can walk on the ground, if his hands can play the piano, then surely it’s a sign that he’s coming alive—that he can stay here longer than the forty days.
When he asks me again if I can deliver his letters, an idea dawns on me.
“What if you can talk to Ma and Achi?” I ask.
I keep talking before he has time to argue. “Ma almost saw you during the soiree! If we continue re-creating your memories from high school, maybe Ma can see you for real.
“What if Achi could see you too? Pa, maybe this is your chance to get to talk to them again, do a proper goodbye.”
For the first time, Pa doesn’t change the subject. He actually looks like he’s considering what I said when I see the slight glimmer in his eyes. He takes a deep breath and asks, “So what memory do we do next?”
I go over my ideas, asking for more details from Pa’s high school memories. Every time he shows any doubt, I remind him about the possibility of Achi and Ma seeing him.
I don’t mention that I’m still holding on to the hope that this is the way Pa could stay for good.