In which Adriel explores her new home.

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I felt considerably better after I'd decorated my new room just the way I liked it. It was the one nearest the enclosed balcony, and it had a great view of the barrio down the hill. Mom, or somebody, had already put a flower-patterned rug on the shiny dark wooden floor, and hung up curtains in my favorite shades of melon and coral, so I just made my bed with the matching bedsheets and pillowcases that Mom gave me and arranged my things. As I was tacking up my collection of hard-to-find posters of my all-time favorite guys, Dad and Allain staggered in with my stereo component set and stand fan and plugged them both in. Ian looked in next and handed me my laptop, which I set up on the table by the window.

Things were getting quite OK, but I missed the city. Everything was much too quiet, even after I had turned on my stereo. The FM tuner was still tuned to - and faintly picking up - my favorite radio station. It made me feel absolutely homesick, so I switched to CD and filled the room with the sounds of Boyzone instead.

My window had huge shutters paned with thin pearly capiz shells, like those windows in old houses in the romantic movies. I went to it and looked outside. I could see part of the downhill path, and halfway down the hill another house, a small shack bright with flowers. I could make out its back door, most of its back yard, and a portion of vegetable garden beside the bamboo fence. As I watched, a small figure came out into the yard - a girl, slim and small, with long black hair flowing almost to her waist over the faded blue duster she wore. She began to winnow a basket of rice, the wide grains flying into the air and falling back into the flat bamboo-weave container with a soft crashing sound I thought I could faintly hear. I found myself thinking: if Ian saw this picture, what would he call it? Barrio Lass?

“Sis?” That was what Allain usually called me - he said it was more appropriate than “Love.” I turned to see him standing in the doorway.

“You wanna eat? Mom has croissants and iced tea waiting in the sala.”

I glanced once more at the distant girl, then followed Allain downstairs.

That first night, I slept soundly although as a rule I don't sleep well on my first night in a strange place. I guess I must've been really exhausted, for it was already ten o'clock when I woke up the next morning. Even then, it took me a few minutes to re-orient myself and recall where I was. Then I heard strange voices downstairs and realized we had guests. I whisked through my bed making then took a quick bath in the upstairs bathroom, thanking heaven Dad had gotten us a motorized water pump.

When I finally came downstairs and into the sala, Mom and Dad were talking to a man and a woman. Mom saw me and beckoned.

“And this is our only daughter, Ian's twin, Lovelove,” she said. “Love, these are your Aunt Susan and Uncle Steve, and your cousin Myra.” For the first time I noticed the girl sitting beside the window.

Myra was about my age, tall and slender with straight pageboy black hair and the kind of face that the writers must be thinking about when they say that a girl has a “pixie face.” She wore blue jeans, a plain white t-shirt, rubber flip-flops, and a peculiar expression when she looked at me, as though she didn't quite know what to make of what she saw. I wore a pink spaghetti-strap blouse with white denim shorts and my fluffy pink bedroom slippers, and I belatedly remembered that I had picked up Bubblegum on my way downstairs and was now clutching her like a security blanket. Sixteen going on six! Not good!

“Hi,” Myra said at last, politely. “Is Lovelove your real name?”

At last. A “hi.” Civilization!

“No, it's Adriel, actually. Mom just calls me Lovelove. Do you live near here?”

“Yes, down the hill. If you want, I can take you around this afternoon.”

“Please. So I can see more of this place.” And see for myself just how far away it is from civilization, I added silently. “You want to see my room?”

“Sure!”

By the time Myra and her parents went home, I was feeling a bit better. Myra and I liked some of the same things, like reading paperbacks and watching MTV (although cable TV hadn't reached as far as Silang yet, Myra managed to catch MTV Asia once in a while at a friend's house or a fast food restaurant in the Poblacion. We both adored the same bands and crushed on some of the same heartthrobs, although she preferred the Backstreet Boys’ Nick while I liked Boyzone’s Ronan, and I absolutely love Ricky in Gimik while she insists JM in TGIS is cuter.

“Now isn't that just like a girl, quick to change her mind!” Ian teased as we went in to lunch. I didn't answer. I was already busy envisioning the afternoon's activities. Perhaps Myra lived in that shack I could see from my bedroom window. Was that girl her sister or cousin? Why didn't I ask her earlier? Oh, well, I'd soon find out. Despite the absence of cable TV and the Internet, things were definitely perking up.

One thing I was thankful for: my cellphone still had a signal. After lunch, I got a phone call from Shy.

“Rye? That you?”

“No, it's Ian, speaking in falsetto,” I retorted. “Silly, of course it's me, who else could it be? How are you? How's things?”

Shy giggled.

“Well, I loaded up my phone, just in case,” she said. “They all send their regards and wish you were here. We were at Shakey's the other day. Jenna, can you believe it, asked the waiter if pepperoni was macaroni with pepper in it. Then she followed it up by asking how they made garlic into bread. I was quite sorry for the waiter by the time we finished. The poor guy looked like he was about to collapse.”

“I believe it!” I began to laugh. Jenna is the clown of the group and specializes in asking silly and naïve questions. Gosh, I really missed them all!

“So. How's life?” Shy asked.

“Well…” I answered. “Apart from the fact that there's no Internet or cable TV and no aircon and there's a lot of dust and it's hot and it's too quiet and you're not here and my only consolation is that there's running water and electricity and at least I have a radio and CDs and a computer and my cellphone- it's just tolerable. Barely. I'm surprised at what I can live through- I must be tougher than I think!”

“Poor kid,” she said sympathetically.

“Oh, and, Shy, how's Bryan?”

“Oh. Bryan. He's OK.”

“Alexsyl Shelley Barrios, are you hiding something from me?”

“Me? Oh, no, Rye. Bryan's fine. He was acting much as usual when I saw him at Shakey's.” Translated, he was flirting with every pretty girl in sight. Bryan was born to flirt. So what was new?

We exchanged a few quips about how Bryan never changed, and the usual things we thought sounded cool, like “It's not how many girls he has, it's who he comes back to in the end,” and then dismissed the subject of Bryan. Then we chatted some more until Shy complained that her phone was already blinking “low battery.” She assured me she'd call again or text me, and I assured her I'd do the same, and we said goodbye. Then Ian looked in to say Myra had arrived and was I ready to go? I tucked my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and ran downstairs.

To my surprise, we walked right past the shack without stopping by.

“My, whose house is that?” I asked.

“Oh, that's the Flores house,” she said off-handedly.

“Do they have a daughter?” I asked quickly, sensing she wanted to get off the topic. “I saw a girl there yesterday. Small, slim, long hair?”

“That would be Ciara. She's fifteen, the youngest. Her older sister Celia has got short hair.”

“Why, how many of them are there?”

Myra slanted me a look out of the corner of her eye. I didn't like it.

“There's three kids. Mike- he's eighteen- the oldest, then Celia, she's sixteen, our age, then Ciara. They keep to themselves mostly. They're weird. Nobody likes them much.”

“Weird..?” I frowned in puzzlement.

“As in weirdos. Mike's never spoken a civil word to anyone that I know of, in the last four years since his father died. Celia is uncommonly quiet and mostly keeps to herself. And Ciara… well, she's really beautiful, but she's also very proud and snooty. They never mingle. They don't have any friends at all.” She slanted me another look. I resisted the urge to poke the corner of her eye. “Their father's dead, and well, some people say their mother's- crazy.”

“Crazy?”

“What's with you, you keep repeating what I say!” Myra twirled a finger in a circle around her temple to illustrate. “Yeah, you know, crazy, loony, nutty. Others say she's, like, a witch or something.”

“A witch!” I screeched. “Do people still really believe in that nowadays?”

“Yeah, a witch, a white lady, whatever.” Myra should've been laughing, but she was totally serious! Like, I thought white ladies were supposed to be ghosts, not alive or human or whatever. First time I ever heard of a white lady who was still alive! I had to choke back a laugh. I mean, my gosh! My friends would bust their sides laughing before they began lecturing on the scientific method.

“Well, a lot of people have met her wandering down the road in the middle of the night,” Myra said almost defensively. “She doesn't answer to any greetings. She just walks straight ahead as if she doesn't see you, and then sometimes she'd just disappear suddenly!”

“We are getting morbid,” I changed the topic. We were almost to the junction between our lane and the main barangay road, so I asked, “Where's your house, by the way?”

“Here.” Myra stopped by the gate of a small cinder-block cottage with bamboo-grill windows, a nipa-thatched roof, a funny little stovepipe chimney, and lots of hanging plants. “You wanna come in for a sec?”

The sun was hot, so I quickly accepted the invitation. Inside the little house, it was fresh and cool and dim. Aunt Susan brought us Cokes and crackers, and Myra and I sat on the bamboo settee and talked and pored over her pictures and song mags and other stuff. Then she took me down into the barrio and introduced me around. I received some casual glances, some scornful, who-the-hell-is-she glances, some assessing ones, some double takes, a lot of envious looks, and quite a few admiring ones. Some of Myra's friends were not around, so she said she'd introduce us the next day.

When we finally headed back up the hill to our house, it was late afternoon. I wanted to dawdle as we passed the Flores gate, but Myra hurried me on. I did catch a glimpse of a boy shooting baskets in a makeshift court in the back yard. He wore black basketball shorts with yellow piping and was otherwise bare to the waist, his back towards us, but he was grace personified as he parried, faked, jumped and dunked all by himself.

“That's Mike,” Myra commented as we went past. I had already guessed as much. She added, “Stay away from him if you don't want your head bitten off.”

“Is he really that bad, then?”

“Girl, no one tangles with Joan Michael Flores. He doesn't care what he says to you, even if you are a girl. He can really hurt!”

And that closed the subject of Mike Flores.

When Myra arrived the next afternoon, I was playing Red Alert on the computer and listening to a Robbie Williams CD at the same time. I figured that if MTV wasn't to be had, the sounds were the next best thing. Besides, Robbie was my absolute favorite guy.

“Hey,” said Myra, bouncing in the front door. “Aunt Arianna's in the garden and she said you were here and I was just to go on in.”

“Oh, hi, Myra.”

“What's that? Oh… computer. You wanna drop that and go on down to the barrio?” She leaned against the computer table. “I met Buddy at the co-op store this morning and told him about you. He said he's looking forward to meeting you.”

“Buddy? Who's he? Your boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend? Hardly! He's a good friend of mine, and he's just about the drop-dead-cutest guy in Bagong Silang!”

That made me raise my eyebrows. Just ask the gang, my aesthetic taste is notorious: what might be beautiful to some might not even be passable to me!

“Aw, come on…” I said, conjuring up a picture of Bryan. I didn't think my Bryan because I was getting unsure about using the possessive… I'd been gone two days and he'd never even texted me. Given that Bryan is a notoriously poor correspondent, but still, I was his girlfriend! I resolved that if this Buddy was about as one-fourth as cute as Bryan he'd be lucky. Bryan was the Prince of MSU High School, the Campus Crush, with his chiseled good looks, expressive dark eyes and thick shiny straight hair, with his cool taste in clothes; Bryan who could charm anyone he set his mind to; Bryan who was once approached by a talent scout who wanted him to model for an ad (he declined, of course).

Fifteen minutes later, I was thinking that this Buddy was lucky. Very, very lucky indeed!

“Lovelove, this is Buddy. Buddy, Lovelove,” said Myra.

“Hi.” He looked at me, smiled into my eyes, shook my hand, and seemed reluctant to release it. “Lovelove,” he said musingly. “It fits you.” Oh, he knew the moves, all right!

Myra was right. Buddy, like Bryan, was one of those people who commanded attention just by being there. Somehow he was so good-looking I was too stunned to be allergic to what he said. He had an intense gaze, a perfect nose, rosy, kissable lips, and a smile to die for. His intense eyes, however, were a light golden brown, a strange - and potent - combination for someone with such warmly tanned skin. All I could do was smile back rather dazedly. I guess it really doesn't matter what the place, there will always be a cute guy anywhere. So much for you, Bryan.

“I think Buddy liked you,” Myra told me excitedly when we were finally headed back uphill to our house. “It's a compliment, actually. He says he only likes pretty girls.”

“Then he's a bit of a snob, don't you think?”

“Maybe, but since he's nice to everyone, pretty or not, we can't really complain, can we?” She slanted yet another of those funny looks my way. “But sincerely, Love, you are pretty!” She smiled suddenly. “That ought to make even disagreeable Mike stand up and take notice!”

“I'm not sure I like the sound of that,” I quipped, and we both laughed.

Oh, well. Ian is my twin, and he's a cute guy, and lots of girls have crushes on him, too, and we do look a bit alike, so maybe Myra wasn't exaggerating. Ian and I have the same thick wavy dark hair, almond-shaped eyes with long thick lashes, quick-to-smile mouth, and olive skin. At first glance, people would know we were brother and sister. But Ian is thin and wiry, with classic features, all planes and angles, and he keeps his hair cropped short. When he smiles, his eyes crinkle beautifully. On the other hand, when I smile I dimple up. That's because I'm a bit on the chubby side (Allain and Ian tactfully call it “curvy,” but as they are both my brothers and they are both on the thin side and desperately want to put more meat on their bones, I have my doubts about this description). Anyway. My features are rounder and more pert than Ian's , and I wear my hair long, almost to my waist. Oh, well. Maybe I shouldn't forget- I'm the one who hooked the elusive Bryan.

Suddenly Myra clutched at my arm. Up ahead at the bend of the lane, Allain and Ian were standing in front of the Flores gate. Both of them wore their basketball outfits and Ian had a ball tucked under one arm. When we came up to them we found them watching Mike playing alone. Once again I had to admit I admired his moves. And as he turned and faced us I also had to admire his looks. Here was another drop-dead-cute guy! He had the sort of physique my brothers would kill to have- lean, sleek, strong, firm but not over-muscled. He was about as tall as Allain, who's five-eleven. He also had skin I would kill to have, the fair kind that toasts to a very light, sunshiny gold, just enough to tone down the white, then refuses to sunburn or darken beyond that. His features, oddly enough, looked foreign, coming close to that attractive, square-jawed sort of beauty that made Brad Pitt famous. He had sleek hair, almost black but not quite, very dark brown with golden highlights, parted down the middle in a style not unlike Nick Carter's trademark. And he had very expressive eyes, heavily lashed, meant for laughter, only he wasn't smiling at all, he was scowling darkly. A cynical angel. It was not a cheering thought.

“Hi,” said Allain. “We were just admiring your game.”

Mike twirled his basketball on a forefinger as he approached us. His head was thrown back and he looked at us down his nose, through narrowed, insulting eyes. It was as if he was saying, “So? You've looked your fill, now back off!”

“You new around here?” he asked flatly.

“Yes, we just moved here,” said Allain with admirable cool, as if Mike had asked a normal question in a normal tone. “My name is Allain de los Santos,” my brother went on. “These are my brother Adrian and my sister Adriel, and our cousin, Myra de Dios. And you are…?”

Mike's mouth tightened.

“My name is Joan Michael Flores,” he said almost defiantly. He looked us over with the light of battle in his eyes. He summed Ian and Allain up in one glance, moved to Myra, then looked at me, his gaze flickering for an instant before it turned cold and scornful, and finally returned to and zeroed in on Myra. “Hello, Myra,” he said. “You don't often deign to honor us with a visit, cousin dear.” The last two words were deliberately emphasized.

Myra stared coolly back at him.

“Believe me, I don't think of it,” she leveled back.

Mike was about to answer when we heard the faint sound of breaking glass from somewhere inside the house, and moments later a girl appeared in the doorway and called to him, “Mike, come quick!”

I thought immediately that this girl must be Celia, for she had short, straight hair. She was petite and pretty, with fair skin, a heart-shaped face, and chinky dark eyes like a China doll. Allain's eyes immediately lit up at the sight of her. I suppressed the urge to elbow him in the ribs. He has been compared to Leonardo di Caprio and Marvin Agustin, and he has impeccable taste when it comes to crushes, so it is a great mystery why he always gets “basted” when he goes courting!

Michael had tossed the ball to the ground and hurried to the house without a backward glance. Brother and sister disappeared into the gloomy interior. I saw Michael nudge the door closed with his foot, but before it swung shut I heard another girl's voice saying, “No, Nanay, I'll do it, you'll just cut yourself on the glass. Mike, help…”

I exchanged glances with Ian.

“Let's go,” said my twin. He and Allain continued on down to the barrio, and Myra and I went on up to our house.

“My,” I said softly as we walked. “Is Michael really your cousin?”

Myra snorted.

“Yes, unfortunately,” she said. “His father, Uncle Martin, was Mama's cousin, just as your father is Papa's. He and I are second cousins, just like you and I are.”

That evening I sat in the enclosed balcony, on the padded seat, leaning against the iron grilles, and looked down on the countryside. The lights of Myra's house shone through the trees down near the barrio. I looked to the left and saw the dim lamplight flickering from the doorway and beneath the eaves of the Flores shack. They didn't even have electricity like the rest of us, yet they looked and acted as proud as some rich kids I knew of back in the city. I wondered why Myra seemed to dislike them so much. Was it because they were so proud even when they lacked what the rest of us took for granted? Or was there another, deeper, reason?

The door of the shack, ajar before, opened wider. A figure stood silhouetted in the dim light- tall, with Nick Carter hair. Michael. He leaned against the door post and his shoulders rose and fell as if he heaved a sigh. His head moved, as if he looked up and knew I was watching, although I knew he couldn't see me. He gradually slumped against the door post as if he was very tired, until it almost seemed as if he and the house were propping each other up. Another figure appeared and moved to his side - small, with short hair. Celia. She placed her hand on his shoulder and turned her face up to look at him. He reached to pat her hand and looked down at her, and both of them stood there like that for a long time.

Finally, I went back to my room. As I reached through the curtains to close the windows against the cool night air, they were still there, probably talking, their profiles turned to me. I slid to the floor until I lay on the rug beside my component set, thinking, “So Mr. Nasty has a soft side to him after all…”