Story of a Girl

Making Up Her Mind

“Love perseveres; it’s men who change.” Paulo Coelho

 

“Mail!” somebody called out from the gate. “Lara!”

Lara dropped the rag she was using to clean the windows, ran one hand through her dishevelled hair and ran out. Her mother was already outside, holding out a large manila envelope to her.

Shin had gotten this sudden idea that they should just write “real” letters to each other, hence they were exchanging letters through the post now.

It has been two years since Shin’s last visit. Lara had already graduated from college; she had gotten a job—but did not find it as fulfilling as she thought—and so resigned from it and finally had passed the board exam for teachers. Shin, on the other hand, was currently taking up a nursing course while working part-time; he was also in the process of picking up the pieces after his parents became estranged with one another. Right now, he was focusing on taking care of his rebellious younger sister.

They were twenty-one now and both had gone through a lot. One cannot say that their relationship have been smooth either. Shin sometimes got too preoccupied or just plain lazy to write. Lara, meanwhile, had her own bouts of shortcomings—usually spurred by guilt whenever Alex acts up.

“Lara, I’m going to tell you something,” Eugene confided into her once.

Lara frowned. Eugene looked tense; that was not a good sign.

“Well, go on.”

Eugene twisted her hands uncomfortably. “W-ell...”

“Spit it out Eugene,” she said impatiently. “No need to prolong the agony; I know its bad news, so you better get it out.”

“Okay, okay...no need to snap. Geez, you can really scare people with that temper of yours.”

“Sorry.” She apologized ruefully.

“Well, anyway, it’s Alex.” Eugene noted Lara’s I-knew-it-look. “She knows your password in your email account, right?”

A tight knot began to form in Lara’s stomach. “I-I gave it to her once because I requested her to open a document there. She gave me hers too as well....”

Eugene drew a sharp breath. “The thing is, she read your emails to Shin and that, well made her feel depressed because according to her own words, it felt like a betrayal.”

Lara wanted to laugh out loud at the sheer irony of it all. Betrayal? Alex wanted to talk about betrayal? How about the fact that Alex went through her email without her knowledge? Wasn’t that betrayal?

“Hey, Lara...say something naman...” Eugene’s worried voice sounded far away. Lara pulled herself together and tried to focus on Eugene.

“Shin and I aren’t even an item, Eugene.” She managed to say. “Do you know how difficult it has been for us to keep holding back for her sake? Because we didn’t want her to get hurt, so all we could manage was this stupidly pathetic friendship. Where is the betrayal there? Wasn’t her action more fitting to be labelled as a betrayal?”

“I know she is wrong, but I couldn’t tell her so because she might think everyone’s ganging up on her.” Eugene said.

Lara stopped writing Shin for a while after that. She created another email account and changed the password for her other online accounts.

“Don’t send any more emails to my old account, I’ll be using this one from now on.” She wrote to Shin.

He, as expected, was curious and had asked why; but Lara had deemed it best if she wouldn’t tell the real reason for this sudden change. No matter how hurtful Alex’s action had been, Lara couldn’t get out of the old habit of protecting her. She knows Shin’s fiery temper would flare up and he is likely to do something stupid if he will know what Alex had done.