Stealthily and steadily, nightfall crept in. Everything was silent and all was well in the world, so it seemed. Her long, thin fingers quietly traced the walls of her room, still unsure if the bolt of her bedroom door was truly locked.
Waiting for slumber to claim her, Alice decided to retire to her bed. Just one day more, and a week would have already passed.
The bed felt damp and warm. A pungent odor, its source she couldn't identify, filled the whole area. The electric fan was working slower than usual and might be overused already as it has been running nonstop.
Scattered across the floor were blood-stained tissue papers, used and unused clothes that were also smeared with blood, her assignments and art materials, and the like. Alice lay flat on her tummy, with her head turned to the wall on her right and her thin arms stretched on each side.
Her eyes lingered on the sky blue walls.
She remembered painting her bedroom when she was ten years old. Her mother was all for independence, and painting seemed like an interesting game to her. Even her stepfather, Tatang Benny, supported the idea. The day after, they were already buying materials for their home project.
"Odorless na lang, madam. May bata, 'di ba?"
"How much?"
"Two thousand, but I can lower it to one seven for you."
"Do you like pink, anak?" Inay finally asked her.
Alice pointed to the 16-liter can of paint in the corner, and when they all checked what color it was, her parents and the store owner had skeptic looks on their faces.
Alice turned to her mother, who was engaged in a silent chat with Tatang Benny. The two would steal glances at her all throughout the conversation.
Inay bent down on one knee. Gently tilting Alice's chin up, she said, "Anak, dear, this is navy blue. You can't have your room this dark, okay?"
She knew. The cans of paint in the store had a small, colored circle on the label to show what shade was inside. Alice saw that it was a darker kind of blue, and that was how she liked it. Chicken Little was her all-time favorite movie, and the idea of having a piece of the sky in her room seemed beautiful.
After twenty minutes or so of picking, they went home with two rollers, three kinds of brushes and two cans of odorless, sky blue Boysen paint. Tatang Benny said it was okay, that the walls in her room would still be like the sky, that they could even draw a sun somewhere so it would be like the afternoon sky.
"Besides, anak, it's just right that you don't get what you want everytime, do you understand? Tang'na! 'Di pwedeng malaspag," he laughed.
Inay quickly elbowed Tatang's ribs, perhaps to shut him up.
Truth be told, all that mattered to her back then was that she'd have something new to tell her classmates once she goes back to school after the summer vacation.
Her classmates wouldn't possibly be interested in a story about how the sound of plates and glasses crashing every night on the kitchen floor frightened her, or how anger dampened her vision and made her want to barge in her parents' fight, or even about the frustration she would feel the morning after everytime Inay would say her skin was black and blue all over because she tripped on the stairs. No. . . Alice would rather bore her classmates with her endless stories about how Mr. Cuddly brews the best jasmine tea in the entire world and how Chester the cat would jump on her study table and then mess up her afternoon tea parties. Painting her room, she thought, would be an interesting addition to her lame stories.
