Run (On Hold)

Chapter 1 - Best friends

1. Bestfriends

The sky was a beautiful cloudless blue, and the sun was making an alluring view of the trees that were surrounding the mini forest of this lovely small town of Liberty, Philippines. Today was warm, and it was always like that. Philippines is a tropical country where there were only two seasons: The dry and wet ones, and that fact made me jealous about experiencing some snow when I was a child, because I haven't even seen a snow falling off the sky.

Until now.

You know, the only things that could fall from the sky here were water, dead animals, pieces of crashing planes, parachute of a very bad-lucked air diver (of course the latter part would include his ragged body), ashes whenever there's a volcanic eruption (Philippines is located at the Pacific ring of fire wherein most of the volcanoes in the world can be found, by the way) and the heavenly stuffs like comets.

There was also the rain catastrophe. Philippines is the most typhoon-visited country in the world, averaging at about twenty one a year, said a report on TV last week. And last year we just had the worst typhoon for the past five decades. Lucky us, the area affected was far from our home. It hit the capital City of Manila and left several billions worth of damage to properties there.

But the jealousy was long gone as I grew up, when finally I learned to appreciate the beauty this place could offer. Of course, with the help of someone.

Here, at least, the temperature wasn't on the extremes like on the other countries (although according to a book of world records, Manila, Philippines is the third hottest inhabitable place on Earth). Whenever its summer here, the temperature will peak at a very manageable level, wouldn't go higher than a hundred. I think that was far cooler than the blistering heat the countries with four seasons were experiencing. Just enough to make you sweat and desperate for a glass of iced coffee - which was my favorite, by the way.

And whenever it's winter, we don't get the usual puffs on our breath as we spoke. We didn't even have to wear blankets or gloves or scarves - trust me when I say you'll just find yourself being laughed at if you do that! The coolness of winter here is just enough to make you cover yourself with a nice, thin quilt during your sleep at night.

And today, it was one of those typical summer days in the country. Today was second of March, only three weeks before the end of our junior year. And I'm so looking forward to-

"Mr. Bradford!" bellowed a big voice.

I turned in surprise.

The first that I saw were the faces of my classmates - Jed Carter's mean looking and Elmer Brown's oval in particular - all turned on me as if I've objected Prince William and Duchess Catherine's royal wedding. And then I caught sight of the big, balding man in front, whose face was purple and lips were trembling from obvious anger.

"REPEAT WHAT I SAID!" He roared in a voice so loud I couldn't believe at first to have come from his mouth. Although his mouth was huge and all, the voice was so scary it's hard to believe it was from a human.

It was like all the blood from my face drained as I regained the reality: I was on our classroom at Liberty high, Mr. Walker, our Trigonometry teacher, was teaching and I should be listening no matter how I hated the subject he's teaching, not staring at the trees and bragging how beautiful our country was. And now he asked me to recite something I haven't heard.

Oh no.

"R-repeat s-sir?" I struggled to gain coherence; my heart was pounding fast. "o-okay."

Immediately, I scanned the whole class for some assistance. If only eyes can display texts, surely, mine would have large, blinking HELP! on them.