Fireflies

55

Angie

I've always believed that misery was a lens foretold by the weak, unable to reach the surface due to the drowning waters making one vulnerable.

But as I continue to stir the broth on the stove, I couldn't deny that maybe people couldn't really swim their way out of that misery because there was no single solution, only a fading light to guide one out to the surface, no formula to feeling okay.

It mattered differently to other people and no one is molded the same way as anyone else, there was always a different factor, a person, an event, a choice that makes them different.

As Claire left minutes ago, I couldn't fathom the guilt of not being able to stay true to a friend. The steam off the broth was clouding the air but I couldn't move, couldn't afford to look away from the truth that as much as I had wanted to fix the things I cannot control, I also had been one of the reasons why things got out of hand.

Claire never knows.

If we went back to all the events of how things continued to change, maybe then I wouldn't be so hesitant to reveal to Claire what I have always been withholding.

The day we left Vancouver, I could barely patch things up with the feeling of separation from the people I have known all my life. They stood there at the airport, as I prepared to leave with my brother, and they each gave me a hug of farewell.

First Mrs. Lee, then Jaemin, Beth, and then Mark. We were such a small yet unforgettable circle and I still couldn't believe I had to leave them behind.

But what I was most afraid of was not the leaving, it was the way Mark had bags under his eyes.

In the first few months before I had to leave to be with my grandparents again, Johnny was set for college. He was thriving in excitement, a lively and bold fellow about to spread his wings. But I was still so engrossed with the fact that Mark rarely smiled. He never had the guts to tell me what was wrong but I could feel it—he was slipping away.

Beth once told me that Mark had been staying up late, lying on the rough-tiled roofs before the break of dawn wearing a hoodie and a face so unreadable whenever she studied late into the night.

He was such a happy guy. But longing was not for him. Grief didn't let him free. Not when she was like his other half, a part of him he will never be able to take back.

Melody Lee, age eight, once a cheerful voice of the Lee household, but now a name forbidden to be spoken about whenever Mark was around.

He despised the fact that he couldn't bring to forgive himself. Mark blamed himself because he had been there before she was gone, before she was taken away.

I could still remember his words clearly, the moment when we were spending our time at the theater preparing for our last year in high school.

By then, Johnny was already away so it was only Jaemin and I who looked after Mark because Beth was too busy trying to work around, so much responsibility at age 18.

"It should have been me. If only I got there a little early. If only I wasn't caught up scribbling words in that damned wisteria tree," as he said these words, I could almost see the forming tears in his eyes.

I didn't know how to change his mind, because no matter how much I told him that it wasn't his fault, he would always look back on the minutes he spared that delayed his time.

At first it was okay, it really was. Mark would fool around with us, crack lousy jokes because that's how he always was. But now, when Melody was abducted, he would mumble and force a small smile, but it was never the same.

I always thought that therapy would help and and that in a few months, he would get better. But he didn't. He got worse.

He refused to value himself, to stay alive. But we didn't know that he was horrified of going through every day without Melody. I didn't know how bad it was for him. I never realized.

I'm the summer, I would always find him sprawled under the wisteria tree near the neighborhood and then when he wasn't there, he was going to places sticking up papers on the lampposts.

"You're still looking for her?" I would ask him whenever he returned.

"I won't stop," he would reply to me. "I will find her."

"But Mark, even the police couldn't find her. How are we supposed to fi–"

It was the first time he yelled at me. "What? Do you expect me to give up? My family refuses to mention her name but I will not forget her, it is I who has to find her."

Who could ever defeat his resolve? It was the only thing making him get up in the morning.

When I was bounded to leave, it had been exactly seven months when Melody was kidnapped. And even after those months, Mark still tried to find her.

"Promise me you'll come visit us before summer ends," I told Mark then, hoping that he would still live up to the one who never broke promises.

"I promise."

He did visit. His family did rent that house for a little while. And he did write under the wisteria tree near our new neighborhood in Bukidnon. But I don't know why he left his memento under that tree. I also do not know how he came to save Claire.

The one thing I know is that fate brought them together, maybe some event happened I have no knowledge about.

She's a mess.

And he's the same.

As for me, I do not know. I have my own problems that I cannot seem to speak much about.

It's too close to me, too hurtful.

While I just continue to flutter away from them, away from Jaemin—further from his heart.