The Boy Without A Name

Passage - 1

Wednesday

My eyes snap awake at my mother yelling at me to get up. I groaned internally as she retreated back downstairs and left me alone to enjoy what I consider as a five-minute nap but managed to waste fifteen minutes of my morning. I adjust my eyes to the light when I finally decided I had given myself an adequate amount of energy to help me get through the day. I felt like the undead zombies that haunt my dreams as I left the comfort of my bed. I knew I shouldn't be late for today. It is my Division Journalism Training today and I shouldn't let my adviser think I wasn't coming but I probably will be considering the time and all.

When I had finally arrived at school after my unpleasant morning, I found out I did arrive late and I was hungry too. Ugh. I should've seriously eaten that McDonald's burger and fries which are my parents' sorry excuse for a breakfast type of meal. But then again who has the appetite for that at 4 in the morning?

As usual, we had English for first period and I was listening partly but I doubt any of that was getting into my head. But, of course it didn't really matter that much as I already had headstart in all my English lessons since my dad has trained me pretty excellently in our own home and after all, my obsession over books wasn't worth nothing.

When the time came for us to leave, the class was left in the care of the class officers as we got into our school's transportation vehicle and drove away to the venue of our Division Training.

You see, my fellow 14 journalists and I, trained under our class adviser/school paper adviser, competed in the Division Young Writer's Contest where in 3 of us were hailed as victors. Which, trust me, is quite an impressive achievement for our school since it is the division level and we competed against 98 public and private schools having only trained under one person without any experience before, which is the leverage our rival schools had against us.

I was in the Editorial Writing Category which I think they consider the hardest and in which, they expect the most. My fellow victors were in the Feature Writing and Sports News-writing Category.

We soon arrived at the venue, and registered our names according to our rank. My adviser personally escorted us to our rooms and it was extremely dull in there without our speaker. When the said speaker arrived, he lectured us on the entire concept of the category until about 12:00 PM. It was boring really but quite helpful in a way and since I was sleep-deprived, it took everything in me not to fall asleep. He soon gave us a topic but not long after he dismissed us to have our break until 1 PM as he also was hungry for lunch. Some of my fellow editorial writers were already leaving the classroom since they were finished with the first topic and had already handed their papers in, I was still rewriting mine quickly and after about ten minutes I was finished and handed it in.

I scanned the school for my schoolmates. I found one of them and she said they were already done with their break so I asked her where the Sports News-writing training was being held and then she left me. Alone. I walked down the path that led to the Journalism building, halfway through though, I found the person I was looking for which was our Sports writer. I urged him to come with me to the cafeteria to find our adviser and he did reluctantly. I did find my adviser there and so I sat next to her and her friend who was also a teacher. I ate my lunch and minutes later a boy about my age and grade level sat on the seat my classmate left which was right next to me. His teacher, I presume, was sat next to him and they ate their lunch.

I admit, I barely glanced at the lad so I had no idea whatsoever why my mind was filled with him at the time. The stranger thing is, I never questioned why I was thinking about him when I didn't even know him! It felt so normal really.

Soon enough though, I had to leave the cafeteria and my thoughts were replaced with my ongoing training. Honestly, no matter how much I'll ever like someone they can never manage to have my order of priorities rearranged.

When my teacher and I retreated to the classroom after our speaker read our work he critiqued us one by one. While he was reading the work of the Filipino Editorial writers he then said he was impressed at how remarkable the work of one the English writers were so even though I had no confidence whatsoever in my capabilities concerning writing I still had my fingers crossed and silently hoped he meant me.

Shocking thing is, he did mean me! He asked who "Reed" is, and I raised my hand stunned. He thought what I had written was so good it was like it was written by someone much older. I cringed however when he decided to read my work to the students and advisers present. I also understood that although I did not see the girl who sat behind me who ranked first's reaction to know if she was shooting me daggers with her eyes, she must've have been. If she wasn't, I applaud her for that. The speaker also said her work was good and not to brag, but if you had been there you would know he praised me so much more and he was extremely more impressed.

Soon, 3 PM came upon us and we were dismissed for the day. The other journalists, our teacher and I were fetched by the school driver and then we headed back to school.

Other events occurred at school before my mom and I headed home. I told my parents about my day at the training and I had no more thoughts of the boy whose name I did not know but for some reason I kinda longed for him. I think.