The Lost Diary of Rizal

Capítulo Tres (CHAPTER III)

CHAPTER III

Capítulo Tres

I yawned for the nth time. Ma'am Natividad is droning on and on about Rizal's family background. They were 11 Rizal siblings, I think. Rizal was the sixth amongst them. There were only two boys. He has brother, second to the oldest named Paciano who's ten years older than Jose Rizal. The rest were girls. I did not know he had a brother and sisters. Truth is, I don't really know much about him. Sure we studied his Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in high school, but we didn't study about him. And here I am in college with a subject of Rizal's Life and Works for my first year. I had no choice. There only this subject left in this time slot. You're supposed to be a third or fourth year student to take this, but no... I had to.

I grew up in a family of three. I have a brother and an elder sister. My brother is five years older than me and is now taking his Masters in Business. He finished taking Accountancy and passed the board exam last year. My parents were so proud. Next is my nearly perfect sister. She looks somewhat like me. She has dark wavy locks that falls to the small of her back, round brown eyes, a cute pointed nose from my father's genes and the perfect pinkish white porcelain skin. We're half Chinese, half Filipino. I have all that, except the height. She's five inches taller than me. That's five feet, ten inches while I'm only a five foot three. She's taking up Culinary Arts majoring in Baking and has been on TV doing some cooking shows with a well-known star. On her free time, she does some modeling. She's two years older than me. She started school early and skipped a few grade levels.

In the background, I could hear Ma'am Natividad synchronizing my thoughts with her discussions about how intelligent Rizal is since he skipped a few years himself. He was in Ateneo at the age of thirteen, I think. I'm not really listening.

As for me, I skipped nursery school but that was it. You can probably see the invisible force that's holding me down. I am destined to live in the shadows of my brother and sister. I can never be better than them. My passion is writing. That's why I took up journalism. But it raised a lot of brows at first. Some of our relatives thought I wanted to be like my sister who's involved in television programs. Not really. I just want to hone my writing skills. I don't even see myself working for any newspaper or magazines. I definitely don't see myself in TV.

What I really dream of is writing my own New York Times Best Selling Novel. That's the path to being poor. That's what my father said. He adored my brother and had a fatherly affection for my sister. My mother on the other hand is the obedient wife. She used to be this rallying evangelist. But when she met my dad, she said she would devote herself for her family and will always support my father. So whatever he says, she agrees to.

Just when Ma'am Natividad was proceeding to Rizal's mother and how she shaped Rizal to be who he is, the beautiful sound of the bell rang. I excitedly gathered my stuff, ready to bolt straight to my favorite class. Lunch and tutor with Leon. I was just about to exit the classroom when I felt someone pull my elbow. Annoyed, I turned around to see who it is.

"Val, wait."‖ Adele, my so called friend stopped me. I raised my brows at her and shrugged.

"Have you forgiven me yet?"‖ She asked sounding innocent and hurt. Yeah, right.

"Look, I'm really sorry about what happened before. It won't happen again." She adds when I didn't answer. She then draws me in for a hug. I felt weird but I hugged her in return anyway. I'm not the grudging type.

"I miss you. I miss the talks we always had." She tells me. She should have thought about it first before she tried using me. I caught sight of the time on the clock hanging above the blackboard. I shouldn't be wasting time here.