The Charmer

7

The high school building of Our Lady of Sorrows was supposed to have a fourth floor, but it had never been finished, just a blank expanse of concrete bordered by a chest-high wall. There was a stairwell that led up there, with planks of plywood blocking the entrance. But it was the last few weeks of school and no one seemed particularly interested in enforcing the 'no loitering in the abandoned fourth floor' rule. The seniors were in some sort of end-of-the-schoolyear limbo between final exams and graduation day, and even the most power-trippy of teachers were feeling senti around them.

It was a gorgeous Friday afternoon, breezy and lazy that only the days leading up to summer could be. A few people were scattered on the fourth floor. Glenn and his metal-head friends sequestered a spot hear the stairwell, where they gathered in a circle with their guitar and a pack of playing cards, a large and furious game of Pusoy Dos in session against some of the girls from the cheer team. The senior officers from CAT lounged against the wall that bordered the neighboring house, quietly swiping mangoes from the huge tree whose branches leaned over school property. A few girls were having an attack of nostalgia and were playing elementary garter games, shrieking through ten-twenty.

Jim and Trini chose a spot near the edge of the roof, where they could watch graduation practice on the basketball court below. They leaned on their elbows on the wall and peered through leaves, shaded and partially hidden from view by the branches of an ipil-ipil tree. The class valedictorian was practicing his speech to an empty sea of chairs below, the seniors having been given a free period.

"I can't believe the year is almost over," he said.

"Yeah," she answered, with a sigh that wanted to say so much more. That she wished Jim had walked her home in June, that maybe they would have had more months to enjoy together, that if she had been braver, more open, less afraid, maybe she would have seen him seeing her sooner.

"I still wish you went to grad ball with me."

"Not this again," she chuckled, checking her hip against his, which he answered with another hip check. She tried to play it casual, but it had been another regret. She'd dearly wanted to go to the graduation ball with him, but there was something daunting about it. "Just the thought of sitting there, in the table with your friends, and trying to find something to say, and thinking of people looking at me, and judging my clothes—" she rose on tiptoes and crashed her chin on her hands. "It's hopeless."

They'd talked about this before, of course; and Jim said nothing, just smiled in her periphery, smug because he knew she'd regretted the decision she'd made months before, ticking "No, my child will not attend" in the reply slip meant for her mother.

"If I did go..." she said slowly. "You remember the picture I showed you, from YM?"

He nodded. "The pink tutu and the white shirt with the heart on it."

"And pink DMs," she smiled.

"You would have looked so cool."

"I know."

He laughed and bumped his hip against her, but he didn't move away this time, just inched closer, so that she could hear him breathe and smell the Cool Water that lingered on his school polo and watch the breeze lift his hair (longer now that Mr. Razon gave up on inspection).

"I got my acceptance letter," he said quietly.

"Me too," she replied.

He put his arm around her and rubbed between her shoulder blades, because he knew that this was freaking her out a bit too.

"I wouldn't have gotten in if you hadn't helped me with Fili," he said, his face so close to hers she could see the space where the cream of his cheeks turned into pink lips.

"Are you kidding? You rocked that." She shut her eyes tightly in secondhand embarrassment, wondering what had possessed her to go with his plan—a dance interpretation of El Filibusterismo, which she narrated (and sung along to, that was where his weird cafeteria song was leading) and he performed. Mr. Iligan was wowed. He praised them for giving him "something remarkable and unexpected," and gave them a perfect grade.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked, when she opened her eyes.

"That this is like a dream," she answered. "And it's also sad, because we lived it, and our present is becoming the past, and I don't get to experience any of this all over again."

"Experience what?"

"Being with you," she said softly.

His hand was still between her shoulder blades, warm and soft as it flowed slowly from her nape down to the center of her back.

She pulled something out of her pocket. "For you."

His eyes lit up with genuine delight. "My mix tape! Finally."

"Yeah, well, it took me a long time to make sure it was perfect."

"Does this have that song that I liked, from that movie with the guy with the radio?"

She showed him the cassette liner, her handwriting listing out each song on side A and B. "In Your Eyes, by Peter Gabriel. The first song."

He read out the titles. "Head Over Feet, Alanis Morrisette. Into Your Arms, The Lemonheads. Glycerine, Bush."

"Just listen to it later." She blushed. It seemed as though he was finding something intimate about her through the songs that she'd chosen, which was kind of the point and why it had taken forever to put together, but it didn't mean that she could stand watching him learn it in front of her.

"I have something for you too," he said. "My English seatwork."

"Oh wow, I'm so honored."

He reached out his free hand and flicked her nose. "It's a poem, okay? They asked us to write one." He suddenly stilled and pulled out a folded piece of paper from his chest pocket. "It's about you."

He looked at the lines, his cheeks flushing as he read them. He opened his mouth, and at the last moment handed the paper to her.

"You read it," he said, redder than ever.

She took the paper and read, feeling her heart grow larger and larger with every verse until she was sure she would burst.

You called to me, and I became your flower.

The line brought a tear to her eye.

She carefully refolded the paper and placed it in her chest pocket, where it could nestle as close as possible to her heart, where his words had already made a home and lived. She looked up at him, and he saw her.

There was nothing else that needed to be said. They knew what they had meant, deeper than the surface poem or a collection of songs, a current that ran into the unknowable corners inside them, the shadows that they had pulled at and shaped into these beautiful things.

He moved closer to her, close enough so that, if she wanted to, she could count every eyelash that grew from his marshmallow lids. She inhaled, wanting to breathe him in, all of him, and the act of breathing brought him even closer, because now his lips were on hers. Soft, like petals, sweet, like honey. She called him and he had come, her flower. She opened her mouth and drank him in.

It was like a spell, their kiss, and when they moved apart, everything and nothing stayed the same. He looked a little shaken, a little astonished, as he breathed slowly and grasped her hands.

"We still have summer," he said.

"We do," she answered, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.