Nice to (Re)Meet You

4 | freefall into now

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4

freefall into now

WHEN I SAW who was in front of my door, all traces of Pio disappeared from my mind.

In the span of a second, my mind was transported back to high school—film reels from ten years ago played in a montage.

A girl, who'd just immigrated from the Philippines, took her first step into her new high school in the US. She felt like years-old yarn wound into a shaking ball then, threads loose and frayed. She was bilingual, so she knew she could speak their language fluently—but fitting in isn't as simple as that.

Fitting in involves knowing their culture firsthand, not from movie screens and articles on the internet. Fitting in requires a built-in blueprint of how their minds work, something you can only fully achieve through immersion. Even in the littlest of things, like how do they greet their teachers? What are their boundaries with friends?

How do you make friends with people from a different world?

The girl was born and raised in a different culture, and though American influence was present in her home country—potent vestiges of the former's colonization of the latter—it was still a different culture, its own unique thing, the one she called home.

She was leaving her home behind, although it still followed her—in the way she walked, the way she talked, even the way she looked at people.

How was she going to mold herself and be part of this new culture?

The girl didn't have the answers to everything, but she knew observation was a well-tried technique that worked everywhere. Yes, she was going to take a deep breath, march into the school grounds with her chin held high . . . and swiftly fade into the shadows, eyes observing everything and everyone.

But she didn't think someone would be observing her.

Sure, she expected the stares. That was only natural. In fact, she was quite lucky with the school she was assigned to—it wasn't perfect, but majority of the people, students and teachers alike, were decent and welcoming. She'd get the occasional jibes from . . . troublemakers, but they were reprimanded, and for the first time since she landed in the country, she thought that this could actually work.

Until her eyes landed on him.

He was seated in the back row, right next to the windows, the afternoon sun casting him in a soft, golden glow. She remembered it clearly, her first thought of him: he looked like an angel. Her classmates back home swooned at the thought of a macho guy treating them well, but this girl, on the other hand, liked pretty.

And this boy was pretty.

He looked like a real-life Prince Charming, almost. His sable hair looked soft to the touch, wavy locks falling over his eyes. His jawline had started to look sharp, in a way that complimented the rest of his features, like a defined outline instead of something jarring. He had a Cupid's bow, which she found herself getting jealous over—she'd gotten teased about the lack of depth in her philtrum before.

He looked like someone she'd see back home, the prettiest of them all.

She thought she was safe, watching him from the other end of the classroom. There were several students in between them, after all, and she tried to be as discreet as she could be—but like a cat alerted of an intruder's presence, his head snapped up from the book he was reading, and he turned to her.