Kit Castille didn't want to be one of the girls who worshiped Matthew Rondillo in college. She doesn't want to be one of the girls in his little black book now. But she gave her heart to Matthew all those years ago. Driven by revenge, she's on a mis...
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Unlike my college buddy Hazel who spent the following year after college traveling and meeting boys, I joined the workforce two months after graduation. I had so much pent-up energy that I needed to throw myself into work.
I was single for a long time. I was bored. And I was fed up with Hazel's nonstop bullying that I finally agreed to meet one of her single guy friends for a blind date. His name was Tom and he was an architect.
Tom wasn't bad-looking. To be fair, he was quite an attractive guy with an impressive resume and an even more impressive first job at the top architectural firm in the Philippines. He came from a good family who lives in one of those exclusive addresses in Makati.
He drove a swanky bachelor's car. He dressed neatly and treated women politely. Tom was a catch. But for me, he was, well, plain vanilla. After all, I already have that hot architect friend.
Tristan is my closest guy friend from high school whose friendship came at a time when I didn't really want it. Unlike me, who spent most of her early school years stuck in a bubble of what I'd like to call a community (where everyone knows everyone else's parents and business) Christian school, Tristan was actually a transferee from one of the biggest and probably most exclusive school for boys in the city.
In freshman year, I've already developed this weird academic-slash-socialwhatever cloak that made all the other kids spare from their nasty, childish pranks. The cloak was a result of whatever influence I managed to develop when I graduated salutatorian in grade school. On top of that, my mother was also the president of the parents-teachers association and my parents had the school principal on their speed dial.
All the teachers knew me. All the new ones got into the program shortly after joining. I was driven to school every day in a private car. My yaya delivered my lunch meals every day because my parents didn't want me buying from the school cafeteria. All these persisted all the way till senior year.
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Photo by Scott Baraquel, Jr.
So, yes, I didn't get to experience all those pranks many American high school movies portrayed. Nope. I was a straight-A student. I was a nerd. And I looked like one, too. I had braces, glasses, big hair and dark skin at a time when all of these features could have robbed a young first year who needed self-esteem. And yes, these affected me. The cloak didn't come with self-esteem boosters that I spent the first two years of high school being ridiculed for how I looked. Just like Tristan.
