The Charmer

1

Mondays at Our Lady of Sorrows High School were a drag. School started at 8AM, with a 7:15AM flag ceremony and a 20-minute homeroom period before the first class. Usually, when the national anthem played, you just needed to stop whatever it was you were doing, stand straight, keep still and face the flag.

But on Mondays, the students at OLSHS had to line up in the open field, by grade and section, for anthem. You couldn't be late, because after anthem came the inspections. Mr. Razon, the hard-ass discipline officer, would walk up and down the lines of students and assign demerits for offenses. At the start of the school year, they had been issued a school diary with the rules taking up half the book, but it was pretty easy to remember the appearance-related offenses. For boys, it was usually having hair that fell past the eyebrows or brushed the ears and collar. They weren't allowed to have earrings, or unnaturally colored hair. Girls' skirts had to be three inches below the knee, but if the fabric fell to your ankles, out came the tailor's shears.

The girls in Trini's line fixed this by rolling the waists of their skirts up so that the hems hit the mid shin. They stashed their hoop earrings, extra studs and rings inside their pockets—excessive accessorizing was also an offense.

"I can't take it out yet," wailed Lisa, rubbing the second piercing on her ear. "It'll close up."

"Just push your hair forward," said Jean, from the next line. Jean was student council president and part of the cheer team, with Lisa. Trini knew they'd all gotten ear piercings that weekend—it was all they had talked about the previous Friday at P.E.

Trini sighed. Her own earrings, one on each lobe, were demure gold-plated studs, her hair its natural brown-black color and secured by a brown plastic headband, her skirt ruler-perfect. 'Rulebook Trini,' her classmates called her, or 'National Bookstore,' because she was always well-supplied with pad paper in the required one-whole, one-half and one-fourth cuts, and was fine sharing her stash with others. Trini liked to follow the rules, like cooperating, liked being prepared, and most of all, liked flying under the radar so all her classmates and teachers thought her nice and pleasant and didn't look too close to see that maybe she wasn't 100% okay. But then again, who was?

The class advisers gathered at the head of the lines. "Please stand for the national anthem of the Philippines," announced Mrs. Cruz, the principal.

Trini put her hand to her heart and mumbled along to the song.

Something moved in her periphery. She glanced to her right, to the boys' line of section St. Mary. There was a slight ruffle of movement, as if someone had slipped between two boys already in line.

A head popped out and smiled at her.

She looked forward so fast her neck cricked. It figured. That smile could only belong to one boy.

When God handed out devastating smiles, Jim Paita had to have been at the very front of the crowd. He used that cheeky, charming smile to get the guards—who were supposed to stop latecomers and round them up by the discipline office—to let him sneak into the flag ceremony. He smiled at the cafeteria ladies, who favored him with a little bit more rice and extra sauce in his orders. He smiled at his teachers, who always allowed him to pass his projects late.

Not that Trini was watching him. It was just...well, it was hard to look away, when Jim was around. He was like a magnet. Or a star, in the sense that objects of mass revolved in its orbit. In a crowd of boys yelling and shoving and laughing at each other in the basketball court, your eyes would always be drawn to him. There was just something about the way he moved—graceful, but quick; the way his hair swooped perfectly away from his face; the way his eyes disappeared when he laughed.