Harold was frozen. He felt frozen. It was so cold as if the icy wind found itself under his skin. Too shocked to budge or move his lips, he looked at Ru who was dusting off her blouse.
She had an angelic face but she wore a devil's smile. "Hihi. Can you imagine the things I can do to you? You frozen like that, you can't even mutter a sound, let alone scream for help." She chuckled.
Harold realized he wasn't scared. Not anymore, not after how the day made him tired, inside and out. Still, he could not rebut her so she went on babbling.
"Here are the rules, Harold, listen well."
*********
"Tiriring! Tiriring!"
"Oh shut up!" Harold shifted in his bed and covered both of his ears.
"Tiriring! Tiriring! I'm not stopping until you get that butt off the bed and start preparing for school."
Ru jarred him with her foot.
"Fuck off. I'm not going anywhere."
Then she did her thing again.
He peered through drowsy eyes. And what he saw were pebbles. And a railway that crawled on the ground where he also was lying. A railway in the middle of nowhere!
No more warm comfy bed. All he felt under him were rocks and sand. No more quiet. The ground began to tremble. The beginning of a train's honking loomed from afar.
A train. Shit!
He rolled over and prepped himself up on two arms. There it was. A slithering machine. It was coming for him. And it was not planning on stopping.
Shit! Shit! Shit! He hurriedly got up and began to run out of the way, only to suddenly fall off. He hit the hard floor facefirst. He was back in his room.
"What the fuck was that?" He screamed at her, getting to his feet, his forehead hurting not by a little.
"I told you rule 1 didn't I? Obey everything I say because no matter what, I'll make sure that you do." She smirked.
His uniform was at the bottom of the drawer, covered by things he also didn't need. He fumbled around and wondered, did he misplace it?
'Where is it?'
"Looking for something?" In her hand were his clothes, impressively ironed and neat like they were fresh from the laundry shop. The smell of the fabric conditioner reminded him greatly of his mother. She always took care of the laundry.
"Is this an illusion too?"
"Save the thanks Harold Vasquez," she said, shoving them to his chest.
Lazily, he showered. He just let the water rain down on his body. He was still half-asleep, and even as he went back to his room, his senses shut off his surroundings. That was why as he stripped off his towel, it was a moment too late that he noticed something was moving in his periphery. Ru sat near the door, fiddling with her curly tresses.
"Fuck!" He yelled so loud that even the neighbor should have heard. His hands could not have reached more quickly for the towel. "Why are you here?" He asked, helplessly.
She regarded him, eyes listless and fingers playing with her hair, totally unembarassed. "Duh, I've been here the whole time, remember?"
"This is my room, out!" He dragged her by the hand. "Out! Don't come inside my room ever again!" He slammed the door close on her face. His head was about to burst. Why was he even going to school now?
He had donned his uniform. His bag was in his hand. But he found that he could not move any farther.
Harold never really intended to quit school, as a matter of fact. He could not even recall exactly when it started. All he could remember was the feeling of having everything spiraling out of his control and he figured he needed some fresh air.
A break from everyone - he hoped for that. He began to take school lightly, arriving late, skipping classes. Simply small things. He thought there's no way they could ever hurt his studies. He had an excuse. The perfect excuse. Then he started to retire home early. Then he took a day off. Then the next, two days was barely enough rest. Then suddenly he was behind on everything.
It was akin to riding a train. He knew where it was headed and yet he zoomed right through. Now everything's barreling at a momentum he could not stop.
It had been over two weeks now since he came to school.
All his friends, all his teachers, what were they gonna say? They'd just look at him with pity. No one would reprimand him. They'd say they understood. They'd tell him to take his time.
But he was tired of all that. He was tired.
There was no halting this train for him. With his mind made up, he dropped his bag but the second he did so, he began dropping too!
"NOOOO!"
The pull of gravity was real. The sick feeling in his stomach was real. The wind brushing past his face was real. And the earth a thousand feet beneath him... Everything seemed like he had never felt before.
The wind roared in his ears as he himself screamed back.
He fell.
And he kept falling.
And
all
there
was
to
catch
him
was
a
solid
unforgiving
ground.
As the earth rushed up to meet Harold, he found himself lying on the cold floor of his room, sweat beading and out of breath.
No words could come out of his lips. Somewhere along the fall, he had lost his voice.
A pair of bare feet shuffled toward him.
"And that Harold is free fall," she said in her innocent tone, playful yet deceivingly innocent.
***************
"I hate this uniform, it's so plain and boring," Ru complained. She chose to wore the girl's uniform, to blend in, she reasoned.
"Can't you just turn invisible? You're a goddess."
There was no doubting it now. She was either a goddess or a demon. Either way, she truly possessed powers that could mess up even the sanest person. And it's all that mattered - that and her undue interest in Harold.
In the street where people walked by, she twirled around, the unreservedly short skirts fluttering up. "That wouldn't be fun now, is it?" She giggled.
Nothing about today was fun for Harold. He almost got run over by a train and almost splattered on the ground like a bug crushed flat. Now he was almost at the school gate and he had met a few familiar eyes.
He got lost in the sea of people. Among them he was indistinguishable. It gave him relief.
He had reached his homeroom when he noticed that Ru was gone. She could be flirting with a schoolboy for all he knew.
As he entered, he steeled his mind to ignore their stares but he couldn't help it.
"Harold," a lad named Philip called, "It's so nice to see you."
"Are you okay?" Christin run up to him.
"How's your mother? I hope she's doing fine."
"Don't worry. Your mother's going to be alright. My uncle said his workmate entered into such a coma too..."
Christin said, "I'm just glad you're back."
And to all of these, all his answer was a smile. "Man, I've got a lot of catching up to do," he said, scratching the back of his head.
They crowded around Harold, spoke to him, consoled him, tapped his back. Christin even embraced him. It was warm and it was what he needed. So he couldn't help feeling mad at himself for being mad at them for caring about him.
It was a continuous loop of unresolvable feelings, like a mobius strip. He could not seem to untangle it.
There was this one girl in the room. By the scornful look in her eyes, she was not all that happy to see him. And Harold knew the reason why.
Her name was Sunshine and she came to meet him at lunchtime that very day. She had this stiff brisk walk that was uncharacteristic of women and a ponytail that rarely got untied. And in her hand was a book which she gently placed on the table as she sat opposite him.
For a moment, she only stared him in the eye. She had dark beady eyes that seemed to burn right through his facade to uncover the truth behind. Then slowly, she pushed the book towards him.
She said, "Thank you, but I don't need this."
He swallowed what food was in his mouth but held off on the drink for a second and instead answered, "No, that's not mine."
A grin crept to her lips. "Don't take me for a fool, Harold, please." Then in a whisper so that nobody could overhear, "But why leave it in my bag the day before you disappear for two weeks? Tell me, were you going to kill yourself?"