The Charmer

6

There was something wrong with Jim, she just couldn't put her finger on it. He was quiet on the walk home and spent the last 10 minutes on the floor of her sala, flopped on top of a throw pillow and bouncing an old tennis ball on his palm. Trini had brought out the Coke and Tortillos that they'd gotten from the corner sari-sari store as well as her math textbook, but he stayed put on his spot. Not wanting to disturb him, she sat on the floor, where she could better work on the low coffee table.

She was engrossed in a word problem when an angry sigh came out of him. She stopped what she was doing.

He had his eyes trained on the ceiling, furiously tracking the rise and fall of the tennis ball.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He sighed again. "Now you ask me."

"I just did," she confirmed.

"You didn't ask while we were walking, and you've been so busy with homework it's like I'm not even here."

"You were fine at lunch," she said, trying to make sense of his mood. He'd been playful, stopping by her table in the 10 minutes that their lunch breaks overlapped, restless and giddy and singing a made-up song, and wouldn't stop until she'd sung the 'la la la' part when he passed her the imaginary mic.

That light aura was gone. "Yeah, and then something happened after lunch."

"...Okay?"

He sat up. The expression on his face was hurt, but there was something about the purity of that hurt that reminded her of a small child on the verge of tears.

"Do you want to tell me what?" she asked, gentler.

His eyes shone, his chin trembled. "I fucked up the surprise quiz in chem."

Their chemistry teacher liked to sometimes start new lessons by giving surprise quizzes about concepts they'd studied a few weeks back, and not everyone always remembered their previous lessons. Getting a low score on them was sort of expected. But Jim seemed to be taking it roughly.

"I scored a zero. A zero." He hung his head between his shoulders. "How could I have forgotten so quickly? I'm such a dumb fuck."

"Hey." She scooted closer to him to pat his back. "You're not. Don't say that."

"Everyone was laughing." The heartbreak in his voice made her ache.

"They're assholes," she said, sounding and feeling angry.

"They're my friends."

"It doesn't mean they can't be assholes."

"They probably didn't mean it." He tried to grin, but it was a twisted, mean thing on his lips.

"Maybe, but it still hurt you."

"They think I just smile and laugh through it all," he said bitterly. "They think things come easy for me, so it's also easy for them to make fun of me when it falls apart. Right? It's not like I made an effort, so then what's the harm?"

Something clicked for her, something essential about him that she had been trying to piece together.

"You work very hard, and you're very hard on yourself. Not everyone sees it." She said this slowly, like she was testing the waters, seeing if her conclusion was correct.

He finally looked up. The expression in his face hovered between surprise and recognition. It was like the face of someone who'd heard their true name being called, for the first time.

"It's hard, being the middle kid, sometimes, you know?" he said softly. "My kuya is just naturally good at everything he does; he's on the honor roll in college, he's on the UAAP track and field team. Then my little brother, he's 10, he's, like—a ray of sunshine, I guess. He just naturally makes everyone around him feel good."

"You're like that, too," she said under her breath.

"It's not like my parents compare me to them, not at all. It's just...I want to be good, too, but I know I'm not."

"You're good, Jim, you're so good," she said. "And you don't stop trying. You're a perfectionist. That's why you wanted us to work on Fili, I know it now."

The mean grin on his lips turned into grudging acceptance. "I wasn't trying to piggyback a good grade on you. I really wasn't."

"I know," she laughed, because she did, recalling the last few weeks of them working on the project together, and how hard he pushed himself; how could she make him see that he didn't even need to tell her this? "Don't think I didn't see you before, shooting hoops when everyone had finished practice, or dancing in the audi when you were the last one there."

"You watched me?" He looked like he was perking up.

She blushed and scooted an inch further. "Yeah," she mumbled, looking away.

Jim put his face near hers until she met his eyes. The silly expression on his face made her laugh, which finally put a real smile on his lips.

"I watched you too," he said quietly.

She could feel her ears burn up.

"Always."

"Jim..."

"You like to sit by yourself, apart from others. Even when you're with Leo and Char, you don't always join in. It's like you're happy just to watch them talk."

"Not happy. Not exactly," she said softly.

He dropped his head and moved closer so that she could meet his gaze.

"That time I told you I stayed home," she started. His face was too much, too close, too beautiful and distracting, so she looked at the rug. "When I was 14, I found out that...well, that we were Dad's second family. His other wife and kids came to our house, made a big fuss. They dragged Mom and me out so they could yell at us."

Something soft pressed against her forearm. She looked down; his warm hand had clasped it.

"It...well, it made sense. Why he was never around for Christmas and New Year. Why I only saw him on Thursdays to Saturdays. He would tell his other wife that he had to go on weekly provincial sales calls, but he was actually going home to us. But still. The shock of finding out, and being publicly humiliated like that..."

She looked up at him. He was listening intently.

"Whenever Mom and I would go out, I could tell the neighbors were talking about us. They would say things around Mom, stuff like...things that aren't nice. One day someone at school said the same thing to me, and the next day some guys were trying to flip my skirt up, and they wouldn't stop even when I was crying. The principal just said that boys would be boys."

His grip on her forearm tightened.

"I couldn't go to school after that, or even go outside. I would get a fever. I would vomit. I was literally making myself sick. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me, physically, but that I was maybe...traumatized." Suddenly she felt embarrassed. "I'm not crazy, okay? I don't like talking about it because then everyone will think I'm..." She twirled her finger around her ear.

He shook his head. "Not me."

"Mom had enough of everyone gossiping about her, so we moved. We kind of bounced around a bit. It was okay, for me. I didn't want to go to school. Mom got me the home study things from DECS, and then I passed the year-end test so that I could finish third year. But Mom said I needed to get back into the swing of things, I needed to get used to school again before I could start college. So we moved here, near a small school where I wouldn't be overwhelmed, and we got this apartment so I could literally run home if I was having a hard time."

It had been the first time she talked about it. Last year—the lost year. It felt draining. She was quiet for a long while, and Jim didn't say anything, too.

Then his hand brushed down her forearm, and he wrapped her fingers in his.

"It's why I'm quiet, why I didn't want to be noticed, I guess," she said.

"But I noticed you."

"Yes. And it's somehow the best thing that's ever happened to me," she admitted, in a whisper.

Jim's face lit up, in the way that only he could manage—pure and beautiful and sweet—and then he pulled her into a hug.