Betting on courage, faith, and hope: A Bangkok diary

Putting the “blog” back in Blogger. (Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love not having to write an essay all the time.)

December 14, 2022

I woke up to news that j-hope would be attending the Golden Disc Awards in Bangkok and immediately my mind was racing, trying to decide if I had it in me to spend on airfare, a hotel, and a ticket to the show only a little over a month after my trip to Osaka. But it was ultimately a no-brainer—the opportunity was just too rare to pass up. The idea of Hoseok traveling again to Southeast Asia seemed to have become less and less likely in the last three years. My untouched holiday bonus would more than cover the expenses. And my ASEAN passport meant all I had to do would be to book a plane ticket and go. 

But most importantly: It was kind of all I ever wanted. 

By the day’s end, propelled by tunnel vision, I had everything settled—including a three-night stay at a decent-looking hotel that only cost me P4,300 total (and it’s a 20-minute walk from the stadium!) and a floor seat I bought off a Twitter mutual I knew I could trust. It felt great to have something to look forward to, and to have it be this: my first time in Thailand, first time traveling off the cuff and truly alone, first time attending an award show, first time in a stadium, first time seeing him.

January 6, 2023

I never usually worry about having internet access when I travel. In Japan they gave our tour group portable Wi-Fi devices, and every day I left mine at the hotel because it was too heavy and I liked being able to leave my phone alone and pay more attention to what was around me. In Singapore I would read a physical book on the MRT as I train-hopped and I would always have my plastic camera in hand. I was planning on approaching this Bangkok trip the same way—but then I realized that I would be needing data if I wanted to use Grab to get around. Which I very much did; it would be more straightforward than having to do the usual back-and-forth of a regular cab ride, and I didn’t have the time or brain capacity to study a whole new commute system.

So my first order of business was acquiring a tourist SIM with a pre-loaded data package to last my entire stay, which I easily accomplished before I even got to baggage claim. My Grab app switched seamlessly to the Thailand interface and allowed me to pay with my debit card. Within 5 minutes of exiting the airport I had booked a ride to my hotel, and I was very excited about the prospect of getting to go anywhere I wanted as a solo traveler without having to worry about getting lost or ripped off.

After a quick nap (I’d been up since 1 a.m. and got settled in the hotel at noon) I headed back out and crossed the first thing off my itinerary: a visit to Daddy and the Muscle Academy + Stickerland in Siam Square. The area reminded me of Taipei’s New York New York, bustling on a just-barely-darkening Friday, and there was a bakeshop nearby that seemed to specialize in holding cake decorating workshops. Daddy + Stickerland was even dreamier than I imagined, overwhelming in the best way with its turquoise exterior and cloudy-sky ceiling and adorable characters and rows and rows of work and merch by amazing young Thai artists. I heard “Forever 1” by SNSD and “Not Shy” by Itzy while I browsed, and I walked out of there with the cutest, handiest A6 weekly planner and a bunch of postcards to bring home for friends.

After walking around for a bit I had scallop aglio olio for dinner at the Siam Paragon food court and bought macarons from Ronnies—my favorites were the raspberry, blueberry yogurt, and truffle vanilla (As in black truffle! I’d never had it on a dessert before and the flavor was intense in the best way). On the way back to the hotel I stopped by the nearby 7-Eleven. One of my favorite things about visiting a new country is getting to experience their selection of fun little drinks, and in Bangkok I got to try Coke Starshine, a.k.a. Starlight. It was a deep pink in color, and it did somehow taste like the rainbow caramel popcorn you could buy off the street, a firework show with the base cola flavor we’ve always known serving as its night-sky backdrop. Perfect for the beginning of the year.

January 7 – D-Day

I didn’t get out of bed until 11 a.m. since I still had several hours before I had to be at the stadium. I ordered in for lunch, knowing that I didn’t want any bathroom breaks during the show but also that I needed sustenance and hydration since it wouldn’t be over until 10 p.m. A Filet-O-Fish (unheard of in Manila since the beginning of the pandemic, not even for lent) was the most convenient choice, along with some decent mozzarella sticks (yes, also from McDonald’s). I found tomato sauce packets in the takeout bag after I’d already finished them off, which was a major L on my part. 

Before long it was half past 3 and I was on the street about to enter the stadium grounds. The energy was infectious and very easy to get swept up in, even if you were alone. It was nice to feel young, to see people come together like this, to learn how they like to express themselves and their passions through their bags and merch and picture-perfect outfits. It was nice to put in the effort and be part of something special. 

The stadium itself wasn’t as overwhelming as I’d thought it would be, but that was probably because I was close to the stage. I bet it was different from the benches—and when they began flashing the live feed with a dynamic, aerial view of the stadium, I got a sense of how colossal such a space really is. 

The girl next to me was local; she had a Treasure lightstick and she gave me a little snack as soon as she sat down. It was a super sweet gesture, and I tried to return the favor by letting her borrow my shitty binoculars. I also vowed never to say anything bad about her favs again. 

Onstage the artists were finally being led out to the seating area. There was NewJeans, remarkably firecracker-esque in their red-and-white stage outfits like they just walked out of East High from High School Musical. And then came Le Sserafim and (G)I-DLE, then half of IVE, then Seventeen, whom I hadn’t seen since 2020’s Ode to You in Manila. I was struck all over again with the realization of how handsome Wonwoo is IRL—it’s that idea of “ang lakas ng dating” that has nothing to do with confidence and swagger but instead the person’s natural, innate ability to draw you in without even trying or knowing. I shifted in my seat and fidgeted with my binoculars, preparing for the moment Hoseok would show. 

He didn’t. 

Not for the first three hours, that is. And it was just the latest in a string of conundrums over the three weeks that had passed since they’d announced him as part of the lineup. First we learned on Naver that he wasn’t even performing—which was never clarified by GDA or by his company, despite fans’ repeated requests. Then it was the day before the show and he had yet to fly to the city, and we learned only later that afternoon that he would be flying in the morning of. I’d been in a tailspin all day, going crazy, wondering if I’d gone all the way to another country for pretty much nothing, and almost cried tears of relief when I learned he would attend, at least.

I was resolutely staying off Twitter through the show, wanting to avoid spoilers re: how he looked on the red carpet before I saw him with my own two eyes. Which was why it took me a day or two to find out that the reason he didn’t show until the final hour was because he’d been running late, stuck in traffic. (He’s just like me fr.) 

In the meantime, there was plenty else to be excited about. Park So-dam was an adorable host. The NewJeans performance was a great, really fun way to start it all off. I also enjoyed LSF, Younha, and (G)I-DLE’s stages, and the IVE girls were super cute as they accepted their awards. Stray Kids’ entrance with the jeep was awesome to witness in the moment, right there in the audience, and I loved getting to see Seventeen live again. I may not feel as strongly for them as I used to, but I will always respect and be impressed with the way they can command a stage—and I will always find their larger-than-life personalities funny and charming. The weather was also pleasant, cool and crisp, and I found myself glad that the event was held in the open air of the stadium. 

Jay Park was performing when the live feed flashed to the artist area, and that was when we finally saw him. It was a bit of a shock, to say the least. I’d been keeping an eye out for when they would bring him out to his seat, but somehow I ended up missing it. The screams—mine included—instantly crescendoed when we saw Hoseok’s face. 

He was seated during the performance, but Treasure were standing and losing it to Jay Park (:/) and they were blocking my view, so I was just like, 

So much for never badmouthing them again. 

Even from a few dozen feet away I could tell Hoseok was pretty tall, and plain pretty, period. It was surreal to look through my binoculars during different points of the show, knowing he would be right there, trying to make out his features, seeing him bright-eyed and magnetic as always. Being able to pinpoint his mannerisms and think, That’s him, all right. The little dances, the moment with the mic stand when he made the little surprised face and gently put the awards down to adjust it to his height, the sweet little purse-lipped smirk he did during a speech. 

So many “littles,” but can you blame me? Look who we’re talking about, come on.

The show ended, the stadium emptied, and I found myself back out on the road, nursing an Est Cola can featuring a TinyTan j-hope (I made sure of it), which reminded me of the now-defunct Pop Cola as it cooled and fizzled down my parched throat. I began the walk back to the hotel, which wasn’t very scary even so late in the evening when so many other attendees were heading the way I was going. I was comforted, for once, to be in a crowd as it spilled onto the streets. 

Hoseok was already flying out of Bangkok by the time I got into my room. It had only been an hour or so since the show finished; I couldn’t even have daydreams of running into him in the city the next day. It must’ve been exhausting, having to take two six-hour flights in one day and having such a small window of time to accomplish a schedule by himself. I hope he had a good time, got enough rest, and wasn’t too hard on himself about the whole traffic situation.

My dinner was a 7-Eleven microwave meal of macaroni and chicken in tomato sauce and orange iced tea. I wanted to try some of the rice dishes, but I was wary of them being too spicy or creating a mess. I was apprehensive about the macaroni at first, but I liked it—there was, notably, no cheese on it at all, but the sauce was tangy and flavorful and stood well on its own, with just a hint of sweetness that my Filipino palate appreciated. I also tried the snack my seatmate gave me, which was a thin shortbread cookie with a white chocolate filling. 

I wasn’t all that tired, and I didn’t have restless energy, either. Rather this sensation of being sated had washed over me, and it left me feeling calm and light, like all was right in my life for the time being. Stillness. It wasn’t long before I turned in and fell asleep.

The view from my window in the new hotel room.

January 8

I checked out of my hotel a day early. I’d tried to book another room twice the night before and always chickened out when I got to the payment page, telling myself it would be too wasteful, but ultimately I decided I deserved it—the P1400 I’d already spent on my current room that wouldn’t be refunded, plus the P3000 I would pay for the new room, would be worth it if it meant I could have some peace of mind. The past two days had my OCD on overdrive; the room wasn’t as well kept as I had hoped. 

It had served its purpose, and I was grateful to be able to stay somewhere accessible to and from the stadium, but for my last night, I thought I could make the most of the trip as an extension of the holidays. 

I chose the Ramada Plaza by the riverside because it was a five-minute walk from Asiatique, the night market I wanted to go to, and the room promised a view of the water. Stepping into the lobby felt like instant relief—it seemed like a stay there was worth more than just twice what I’d paid at my previous hotel. The receptionist who checked me in saw my passport and began speaking to me in friendly, warm Tagalog; she seemed happy to interact with a fellow Filipino. The giddy feeling multiplied when I walked into my room. It was so much more spacious, so much more comfortable, so much more luxurious. And to top it all off, there was a bathtub. 

I’d been planning two more spots to check out on the last day: a bookstore called A Book with No Name that looked wonderful in pictures, and the night market I’d mentioned. Unfortunately the bookstore was a little too out of the way and it had gotten late, what with the transfer and check-in to another hotel. Instead I went to Iconsiam, a large mall and entertainment center with 10 or so floors boasting different immersive and elaborately designed areas. For lunch I had hamburg curry from Umaimon at the Takashimaya dining hall. The curry was a little too salty for my taste but the beef itself had a distinct flavor and texture I’d never had before. I never knew ground meat could be melt-in-your-mouth, and later when I passed by the cooler food court on an upper level, I regretted not being able to stay there, but I was happy with my choice of meal. 

Left: A retractable Snoopy pen I got at Iconsiam with ears that flipped up with the spring mechanism.

When I got back to the hotel I prepared a bath and used the Screamo bath bomb I bought from the Lush at Iconsiam (the only reason I went there, really). I’d wanted to get a bubble bar, but this one just called out to me—how could I resist it when it looked like Ghostface? As it fizzed in the water, the face briefly began to resemble a creepy wraith, and it smelled like cherries and almonds. 

At 9 p.m. I dragged myself out of my room to walk to Asiatique: The Riverfront. At first there didn’t seem to be much to see, but I probably lit up when I finally got to the end of it that faced the river. I loved it out there, where the wind was picking up and it carried the faint scent of freshwater. I lamented, as I often do, the lack of an accessible large body of water that I could visit near my home, just to sit by when I needed to read or walk along when I needed to think and breathe. I walked through the rest of the place, sampling street food and looking through the shops. 

I loved this upcycled vintage shop and its creepy-cute doll-like mannequins.

I got a tote bag with “Bangkok” in lowercase Courier New printed all over it (so chic for a mass-produced souvenir item!), and for my niece I bought an adorable elephant bucket hat. I walked back to the hotel to call it a day, already wistful over having to leave soon, making another 7-Eleven stop for a last hurrah of sorts: Milo ice cream, chocolate oat milk I’d fallen in love with, and chocolate-mint flavored Fisherman’s Friend (to this day I’m kicking myself over not thinking to get more than one). 

January 9 

My Grab driver to the airport was a girl about my age, and she was wearing a cute purple beaded flower mask chain. She plugged her phone into the aux, and I didn’t really mind the music until the second song came up and it was D.O’s “That’s Okay.” All of a sudden the drive away from Bangkok had become way more poignant. 

On the plane I was seated on row 12. It was an exit row, which gave me plenty of legroom. It was nice to get used to traveling again, although I’d never really done it all that often to begin with. It felt especially good to rely on myself more, not just financially (okay, that doesn’t feel as good) but also in terms of getting to exercise real independence in unfamiliar places. It’s never easy to find ways to get around and have everyday interactions when you have social anxiety, but I’m not going to let that stop me.

I wished I could visit more places, especially the rich cultural and historical sites and art hubs I’d been researching when I was preparing for the trip, but I figured I could save them for when I had more time to explore and learn more cost-efficient ways of getting around. Maybe then I wouldn’t be alone, too. It was an excuse, more like an incentive really, for me to come back, because I’d grown fond of what I’d seen and experienced of the city. (And there were so many more restaurants and cafes I wanted to try.)

When I got home I looked at my desk and saw the Daruma doll I had gotten as a parting gift back in Osaka. You could make a wish on the doll by drawing one of its blank eyes, and when the wish came true, you could fill in the other eye. I remembered, all too suddenly, that one of my wishes had been to see Hoseok. Hopefully within the next year, I’d supplied—I just never knew it would be this soon. Not only that, but I got to start off the year in a city I’d never been before. 

The experience hasn’t been perfect, don’t get me wrong. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less precious to me, or any less incredible. In the end everything still seemed to have fallen into place. It’s only made me more determined to see him perform, and soon. If this has already happened for me, suddenly very few things feel impossible. 

Crying in hotel rooms, and other occupational hazards

The night before I left for Jeju Island, I had dinner at the mall with my sister who was back in Manila for a few days. My niece was with us, as well as our cousin and a friend. I stopped by the supermarket first for things I would need on my trip: apple shampoo, toothpaste, cherry blossom-scented soap I’d always wanted to try, a plug adapter because the letter from the travel agency had suggested it.

We met up at Scout’s Honor after. I picked at my meatballs as we discussed our jobs and burnout and what we did on our days off, which we didn’t get to talk about very often. Our lives after college pulled us in irreversibly different directions, one of us even living and working in a city thousands of kilometers away. It made catching up a bit more difficult than before.

We had never had a grownup dinner where it was just us, without our parents. It felt for the first time like we were regular young adults having another night out, like I’d read about in novels and seen in the movies. I thought it was something I could get used to.

Dylan was two and just beginning to speak in full sentences. Idly I watched her play with the puzzles and blocks the restaurant put out for customers and my mind was already a little bit far away, imagining all the places I was about to see.

I tried not to think about the time. The mall was about to close. I still had to pack. My flight was early.

I told myself: I’ll just lose sleep.

The rest of it went without saying: So I can have this.

✈

The first song I heard on the street when I arrived in the city, tinny but unmistakable on the loudspeakers of the underground shopping complex beneath Chilsung-ro, was “Spring Day.” At this point, I had probably listened to it hundreds of times in ardent anticipation of the trip, letting it occupy my headspace as I pictured canola blooms and clear crisp weather. A common, meaningless occurrence, hearing a very popular song by a very popular South Korean group in South Korea, but I was always a romantic, and it was obviously fate.

It was my first time traveling alone and I was fretting about it for weeks. My editor had texted asking if I would be free to go to Jeju Island for a story, and my calendar was blissfully blank. I had just gotten my passport renewed — it was exciting to finally get to go somewhere new with it.

I didn’t receive any information and I wasn’t actually sure it was happening until the day before the flight, when the travel agency sent me an email with my plane ticket and the itinerary for the tour. I’d never been on a press trip. I was used to taking my time in a new city until it became like a second home during month-long stays with my diplomat aunt. But now I only had four days and three nights. A change of pace, to say the least.  

I spent that first night trying to get used to my hotel room. I went on my private Twitter account for close friends and wrote about it: i have this whole room to myself (perfect for crying!) and i know i’m gonna miss it like hell already. Patch replied: do they have a tub? cause u really deserve a tub. They didn’t, but it was easily the nicest thing anyone has said to me anyway.  

I went to bed, awkwardly messing up the pristine sheets on one side as I got under the covers. I read a story on my phone, brightness turned low. Something about a writer who travels to a different country for work and falls in love, and it makes him happy, but he’s also sad, because he’s sad all the time. Something I kept coming back to because I found comfort in its muted melancholy.

It was 2 a.m. before I knew it. I had to be up in four hours. I left the story unfinished, watched my lock screen fade to black, and closed my eyes.

✈

I couldn’t fathom trying to muster the energy and commitment to hike three hundred steps up the Seongsan Ilchulbong Peak, so I ducked out of the tour group when nobody was looking and went across the fields to look at the sea instead.

I walked along the streets first, took in the people selling tangerines on the roadside and tried to pluck up the courage to enter a coffee shop or McDonald’s. But I was afraid of seeming like such a tourist, much too aware of being by myself and of the language barrier, so I ended up at the nearby 7-Eleven. I went to the counter with a bottle of pear-flavored Sprite and felt myself uncoil somewhat from being so tightly wound when I managed to avoid messing up “감사합니다.”

I sat at the hexagonal wooden table outside and stared at the brick wall opposite me with a sign that said 해녀민박 — Haenyeo Bed and Breakfast — above it. There was an image of a Jeju woman diver (the haenyeo in question) on the bottom left, standing regal and proud in her diving gear.

It was beginning to rain.

I walked out to the edge of the field that overlooked the water, the wind whipping around me, and tried to memorize everything I could see. There was the peak to my left, looking like the opposite of ephemeral where it stood starkly framed by the morning sun. There was the surrounding town, so familiar already that my heart ached a little at the thought of leaving, at the thought that my time with it had begun to run out before I even stepped off the bus because we were never meant to stay in one place for too long. And then there was the off-kilter shape of the sea. From where I stood, it didn’t look all that different from the bleak, empty skies.

There was a protective barrier on the edge which was barely up to my thigh. The thought entered my head, unbidden as it always was: It would be so easy to jump. My fingers twitched with an impulse to walk up to it and peer at the pale grey depths waiting below. I shook it off and braced myself against the chill, huddling tighter in my leather jacket as I headed for cover from the rain though I didn’t really mind it.

At the airport waiting to fly back home I would listen to “Waiting for My Sun to Shine” by The Maine, and the lyrics would remind me of this moment, somehow already in the past.

And it wouldn’t occur to me until three months later how not normal that was. To be in another country, someplace I’d never been, looking out into something beautiful and only thinking what a nice place it would be to die.  

Earlier that month, Anna Borges had published an essay on The Outline titled “I am not always very attached to being alive,” comparing constant, reflexive suicidal ideation to living in the ocean. In it, she discussed the “nebulous gray space between fleeting thought and attempt,” where there’s a passivity and indifference to the feeling of wanting to die, more background noise than anything.

One of the songs I kept listening to on repeat those days was “Dark Water” by JR JR, its chorus a devastating suggestion that maybe you were always drowning, and you just now realize that you were. So you could say I understood it a little too well, that resignation and recognition that it was just another side effect of mental illness, just another part of who I’d become. Not always an emergency — sometimes the act of it was mundane and ordinary, like washing your hands or crossing the street.

Borges further wrote about learning to tread these unpredictable waters, of trying to keep your head above the surface and stay afloat. Some floatation devices, she said, were like driftwood, “shallow motivators, hardly anchors to life, but sometimes you just need something that will get you through the month. Or the week. Or the night.” Others were life preservers, more sturdy and long-term, helping you swim towards some semblance of a future.

This is something I’ve been doing for longer than I care to admit. My relationship with my own future has become precarious and complicated. An anonymous message I got on Tumblr when I was 17 asked what it was that I did when I felt like dying or when everything got to be too much, and I answered that I sought something to look forward to, that I would regret missing, no matter how shallow (pesto pasta, a new movie) or far-fetched (visiting New York, meeting a celebrity crush).  

An excerpt from one of the last entries I posted on Dayre before I left it for good:

I honestly can’t imagine how there could possibly be anything more, anything left for me, even if I somehow reach a stable plane of existence and become a functional human being.

There are flashes, sometimes: A published novel. A pet cat. Watching my niece grow up. A studio apartment with big windows and enough space for all my books for once.

“The ocean is nice sometimes,” Borges concluded somewhere near the end of her essay. I must have been thinking the same thing as we left the Seongsan Peninsula. Not just bodies of water, but also the state of being suspended. Whether you’re desperately holding on, or letting yourself be washed away. Despite that brief lapse into the unmentionable, I felt more like myself than I had in a while. No longer so concerned with being a tourist, struck instead by a sudden sense of belonging. I always did think to myself that if I had to settle somewhere, it would be a quaint seaside town.

Out there on the field, I spotted a group of haenyeo bobbing up and out of the water, fresh catches in tow. I had read about them once in a magazine: how they were known for their independence and power, some of them well into their 80s, making an honest living diving for fish. And now here they were, right in front of me. Our tour guide had mentioned that we might see them if we were really lucky.

The friends I had made in the tour group were wistful, lamenting what a shame it was that they had missed the haenyeo. I listened to them as I leaned against the window, and made no move to tell them what I had seen. Some magical moments you just had to keep to yourself.

✈

I was moving on autopilot, spending the day trips sightseeing and being friendly with my companions who had no idea how depressed I was. I smiled for pictures and kept up with pleasant conversation. I passed the banchan as we had a meal and laughed along. At night I would go back to my hotel room, drained and boneless, and just fend off the cold and the sudden loneliness while I began sobbing in the dark for no reason.

I was running out of layers.

I wouldn’t be able to stop picturing it for months: the room, every light turned off, no air conditioning because it was spring and the cold slipped in through the closed windows and chilled the hardwood beneath my bare feet. Shadows and lights from passing cars crawled across the bed and onto the ceiling, and I’d lie awake at unguarded hours shrinking under the blankets and quietly wailing.

✈

So far, the days in Jeju had been glacial and unforgiving, the last impressions of winter overstaying their welcome. It was like the weather was my mood ring, the skies coloring the city a palette of blues and greys, the rain seeping through to my skin as though I needed a reminder of how gloomy it was inside.

But everything was different on the fourth day, when I hauled my once-again-full suitcase out onto the street and turned my face up to the kind of morning I’d been hoping for. Our bus pulled away from the hotel for the last time and I watched the scenery change out the window, saying goodbye to all of it the only way I knew how.

When I try to recall it now, I don’t think about the activities we did together or the places we went. Instead I think of the scent of pine and saltwater, the miyeokguk and tangerine juice at breakfast, the greenhouses that reminded me of Burning. Silly, seemingly fleeting details, like using a public bathroom encased in two-way mirrors at Jeju Glass Castle or buying a cactus pen as a souvenir because I found it cheap and cute and discovering months later that BTS’ Namjoon had one exactly like it.

I think about that weird, unmoored feeling of being part of a tour group as a solo traveler and meeting all kinds of people, and how nice it could be to just go along with it and let things happen.

I’d brought my favorite plastic film camera with me to remember it all by. And while I don’t particularly enjoy having my picture taken, the friends I had made insisted on documenting every little stop of our tour. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t turn down their offers to take my photo among the canola fields or next to some mascot at a theme park, leaving me with an album that allows me to say, over and over again, “I was here.”

But the definitive snapshot that I’ve kept in my mind is this: the sun out and bright as the skies bled blue between evergreen trees, radiating warmth and welcomeness all around. A perfect day made even better with a summer latte — smooth, sweet iced coffee topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. A last-chance glimpse at what Jeju really looked like in the spring.

✈

Four months later I was in Singapore, exhausted after having gotten up at 5 a.m., almost missing a 10 a.m. flight, and heading straight to the indoor flea market event I’d volunteered to cover in Marina Bay Sands, which lasted until 7 p.m.

I met up with my sister for dinner at NY Night Market, worried that we would have nothing to talk about — we’re both quiet people, and we’ve never been all that close or actually spent any time alone together. We both ordered pasta and shared a plate of ranch cheese fries. I asked her about work and she asked about my day. We moved on to other things, and it didn’t feel like small talk.

(“I cried watching Hello, Love, Goodbye because I could relate to it,” she said. “Did it remind you of your previous relationships?” I joked. But she clarified, “No, their lives as OFWs, being apart from their families,” and then I definitely wasn’t joking around anymore.)

The rest was comfortable silence. I hadn’t considered it, maybe forgotten it because she’d been away for three years, but we’d always been able to do our own thing and still count as company. It takes a lot of trust and familiarity to be with someone and not feel the need to fill the quiet.

Unlike Jeju, I knew Singapore like the back of my hand. I lived there for a month when I was 18 and returned a couple of times, and it was an easy city to get to know regardless. It’s taught me independence from the first time I went out alone and found my own way around a foreign country as a teenager. (To meet the bassist of my then-favorite band, but that’s a story for another long-winded essay.)

I had a free day before I had to fly back home, and I was going to spend it revisiting a few of my favorite places and taking pictures. I got an MRT pass that gave me unlimited rides for a day and read Normal People by Sally Rooney, bought at Kinokuniya first thing that morning, on the train or whenever I stopped and sat somewhere.

I started at Somerset Station and slowly made my way through the loose route I had in mind, though I didn’t really venture that far: Dhoby Ghaut, Bencoolen, Clarke Quay, Tiong Bahru. I considered visiting my old apartment block in Queenstown but thought better of it because it wasn’t worth the long walk in the dry heat — if I had, I would’ve seen that the teal and lavender facade I’d adored was gone, replaced with a drab all-over white and the barest orange creamsicle accents.

The main item on my agenda was the art installation BooksActually was hosting at the theater development space Centre 42, which I learned about in their newsletter. Called “The World’s Loneliest Bookstore,” it had a vividly imagined post-apocalyptic concept where a freak solar flare leaves only 4,169 people alive in the whole world, and the one remaining person in Singapore has scavenged paintings and books and set up the last bookstore on earth as she attempts to reach anybody else who could possibly be out there.

The installation itself was just as detailed: a shelf stood lined with eggs, cereal, matches, and odd knick-knacks, an old radio hummed with throwback pop and static, and the woman from the story sat behind a counter, content with her solitude. Visitors could buy secondhand books and pick up printed paraphernalia with poetry. My favorite was the table with dozens of house keys bearing handwritten addresses. You could choose one to take with you, and I decided on one emblazoned with the word LUCKY.

At 1 a.m. I left my hotel room and walked along an eerily vacant Orchard Road to clear my head. (Nevermind that I had another early flight in a few hours.) I went to the basement 24-hour Japanese grocery, walking listlessly through the aisles past other twenty-somethings who obviously didn’t value their sleep. I didn’t have a lot of room in my suitcase, so all I bought were a couple of instant noodles I wanted to try: the Pokemon seafood ramen with tiny Pikachus in the form of fish cakes, and this insanely good salt and lemon yakisoba.

This late-night walk crosses my mind whenever I hear “Better Now” by Disco Hue, one of my favorite bands from Singapore. But at the time I must have been listening to “Song Request” — pretending I were one of those people in its music video, lonely but sufficed in a darkened city.

✈

I sometimes think about what it would’ve been like if I hadn’t gotten into BTS right before I went to Jeju. If any of it would have meant half as much.

Everything was so new. It’s embarrassing to think about now, but it was wonderful timing to be right there as I experienced those first few weeks of obsessing over a recently acquired interest I already felt very deeply for. It was the same rush you got from a school crush: that hyper-awareness of proximity, of standing in place and knowing they’d been there once, too — no longer as hyperbolic, but every bit as fervent. They followed me around; I saw them everywhere without really looking.

I can’t listen to “Spring Day” without being reminded of everything, the song and the memories inseparable, forever linked.

And because I only grew to love them even more as the months passed, they made a significant impact on my other trips too.

I never would’ve made fast friends with another underpaid and overworked Manila writer at the Singapore event who had a Koya keychain and said she liked the Hoseok sticker on my camera. I ran into her outside a train station the next day while having my little adventure but hid behind my book because I didn’t know how to say hi. We shared a ride to the airport for our flight home, and I would’ve liked to, but we didn’t keep in touch.

 

 

I never would’ve made a “delulu” joke that “What if we’re going to the same country?” one month later when I flew out to Singapore again for another story and BTS also happened to be flying somewhere that same morning, only to find out on Bon Voyage that we actually were at Changi Airport at the exact same time, not very far from each other at all. The hyper-awareness of proximity was belated this time, and it’s not like I ran into them, but it’s still a fun and endlessly frustrating story to tell. No one on Archive of Our Own could’ve written it better.

I never would’ve recognized “Mikrokosmos” as it played in the candy-scented lobby of Hello Kitty Island. (Map of the Soul: Persona had just come out and I wasn’t over the novelty of it just yet.) Never would’ve listened to the very same song on the plane back to Manila as I looked out the window at the night sky, crying all I wanted because it was a charter flight and I had the entire row to myself.

The fog and lights in Jeju made it hard to see the stars, but here they were bigger and brighter and there were more of them than I had ever seen in my life.

✈

I’ve been very fortunate to have had jobs that took me places. Writing the article itself was always strange because I had to stick to the relevant details, the half-hearted observations that went towards my word count: The Teddy Bear Museum draws crowds of keen Princess Hours fans. The indoor flea market has a section dedicated to Instagrammable food like milk in cookie cups and White Rabbit soft serve. The elevators at Legoland Hotel play “Everything Is AWESOME!!!” by Tegan and Sara feat. The Lonely Island all day under disco lights.

I had to omit such a big part of the experience — namely, my depression and how it affected the way I perceived and internalized what was going on around me. All that time to myself that was a relief, but could also be alienating. The unease of trying to enjoy myself when I’d grown unaccustomed to it. The detachment that seemed to manifest physically as the slow sensation of being hollowed out. The constant notion that I never thought I’d (still) be here.

Everything was precious and important, and everything was pointless and temporary.

In that story I keep reading, the protagonist imagines writing about the things that actually mattered to him on his sojourn — the raw, haunting, personal traces that exposed too much. In the end, his final piece held nothing about wounds and scars, or an inconsequential grocery store, or the person he’d fallen in love with. But the idea of what he called “becoming a part of a place instead of simply walking through it” remained.

I didn’t keep a journal that year. I came to remember my travels in pieces: stray notes on my phone and scraps of paper, an untitled Spotify playlist labeled only with emojis (a daisy, a cactus, and an orange), bad film photography, tweets I wrote in the moment, tweets I wrote when I began to miss it. I wrote this to unravel the rest of it, the ugly parts I couldn’t put in print.

Depression has this way of making every surreal, beautiful, monumental thing that happens to you feel like it’s something you’ve held on long enough to see. I count it all up. I hold it for safekeeping. Each one becomes so much more poignant, and lands with much more weight, especially after almost a year of not being able to leave home. As though something up there must have known that I couldn’t afford to waste any more time or throw any more of my life away.

I cut my hair short right before I went to Jeju. I haven’t had a haircut since. It’s strange to note that fragments of that version of me are still here. I always came home feeling like I’d lived through something, like I wasn’t the same. Some of it hurts like anything, but when I look back on it now, there’s only nothing but fondness.

I’ve lived through so many things already. It’s not so bad, I know now, to live through this. 

When you call my name

 I'm somewhere in here.

South Korean boy band GOT7 performed the final leg of their Keep Spinning World Tour to a sold-out crowd of thousands at the Mall of Asia Arena.

This is a version of an article previously published in the Supreme section of The Philippine Star.

If you’re a particularly passionate consumer of music and you live in the Philippines, “Come to Manila!” is more than just a plea to the artists you love; it’s more like a battle cry. And for a good while, fans of K-Pop superstars GOT7 have been waiting for them to make good on their promise to return to the country.

After a couple of previous fanmeets and a three-year absence, GOT7 finally made their way back to Manila for their first full concert at the Mall of Asia Arena on Oct. 26 — made even more special by the fact that it’s the culmination of their Keep Spinning World Tour, taking place just one week before they’re set to release their new EP “Call My Name” with the single You Calling My Name.

The energy in the city hit a peak as soon as the seven members — JB, Mark, Jackson, Jinyoung, Youngjae, Bambam, and Yugyeom — arrived, with Jackson causing quite a stir when he was spotted buying a shaving razor at a local department store the night before the sold-out show.

The concert kicked off not long after the sun had set, opening with a VCR that had attendees swooning before GOT7 took the stage and performed their most recent single, the sultry and buoyant Eclipse, followed by Out and Never Ever.

A performance of Skyway then led to the solo and unit stages, beginning with resident songwriters and producers JB and Youngjae crooning Ride and Gravity respectively. The rap line a.k.a. the AmeriThaiKong unit, comprising LA-born Mark, Bangkok-bred Bambam, and Hong Kong native Jackson, then performed God Has Returned and Mañana. Finally, there was a battle of moves between main dancer Yugyeom, and Jinyoung who retorted, “I’m a dancer, too!”

They kept the flow of energy going with some choice B-sides including a remix of Stop Stop It produced by Bambam, 1°, I Am Me, Come On, Page and more, plus their irrefutably iconic single Just Right. They got a little somber and dreamy with Thank You before ramping things up again with Teenager.

“It’s been a while,” Jackson said between songs. “GOT7 is back!” Bambam asked fans to scream “hell yeah” back at him, and was pleased to find that the audience held a good amount of male voices shouting along.

When people began chanting “Walang uuwi!” and they had the words translated, they didn’t hesitate to keep repeating it as well. “Our next song is Walang Uuwi,” JB quipped in a perfect show of his signature deadpan, and Jackson didn’t even wait a beat before mimicking a bass drop, singing the two words, and breaking into a funny little dance.

More songs came next, including a trio of retroactively recognizable title tracks: Lullaby, Hard Carry, and Miracle.

Close to the encore, it was GOT7’s turn to be moved and dumbfounded when a surprise event planned by fans was put into motion, with a video message and singalong relaying the fans’ love and support for them in the three-year wait for their return. Mark, infamous for his low threshold of tears, was visibly touched as he took a moment just crying onstage while being comforted by his members.

In the speeches that followed, each member apologized for the long wait, gave a heartfelt thank-you to everyone in the crowd, and promised that they’ll be back more often. Jackson marveled at the show of passion, while Bambam assured the crowd that there would no longer be any need to fly out to other countries just to see them, that they’ll make sure to fly right to Manila instead.

Youngjae in particular made everybody laugh when he said that the sentiments reminded him of his adorable dog Coco, whom he co-parents with Mark, and how she would always wait for him to come back and it makes him sad he can’t see her more often.

They ultimately closed the show with some classics and guaranteed grooves: Fly, Girls Girls Girls, Shopping Mall, and Before the Full Moon Rises.

The stages were dynamic, with screens and setups that made it seem like you were stepping into another world. Their dancing was fluid and alive, their voices carrying across louder than ever. It was three hours spent exchanging so much energy and fervor and love — literally, in the latter’s case, if the heartfelt and prolonged back-and-forth of “Saranghae!” between the fans and the members was anything to go by.

Even as the other six had left the stage, Youngjae stayed behind, drinking it all in and seemingly not wanting the night to end just yet. Still, he had to come down eventually, and so did everybody else. The cheering rang clear and the lightsticks remained lit for just a few minutes longer. And as they took their final bows and waves their final goodbyes — until the next concert, that is — the only thing left to do was just to keep spinning.

Seen it all but I’ve seen nothing yet

The gate was open.

That was the first thing I noticed when we got to the campsite. The gate was unlocked, and beyond it the waters were relatively calm, rolling onto shore in quiet bursts of bubbles and spray. I felt a familiar twitch in my fingers—it was instinct. Want. I wanted to get out there.

A few weeks ago, I never would have guessed that I would find myself on the coast of Batangas, gone camping for a PE class. I never would have guessed that I would find myself anywhere.

I hadn’t been to the beach in thirteen years.

The sun beat down on my back, filtering through the palm trees, as I shook off the twitch and snapped back to attention. I had waited approximately 117,000 hours for a chance to be near the beach again. A few more wouldn’t hurt.

I had a mountain to climb. Quite literally, in fact.

It was my first attempt at such an activity, and who am I kidding? Very likely my last. I spent the entirety of it clinging onto the rocks for dear life and unleashing an entire arsenal of creative, completely unwholesome expletives I didn’t even know I’d been storing in the back of my mind.

On the way up, a boy from my group took it upon himself to help me find my footing. I’d never spoken to him before, never even met him. (We kept missing each other in class.) I didn’t see his face the whole time, just reached for his hand—which he kept holding out to me despite rule number one, Save yourself first—and listened as he told me, “You can do it!” over and over.

I didn’t find out until much later that he was very, very cute. And I was absolutely mortified, for obvious reasons.

I took a shower as soon as we made the (even more life-threatening) descent and got back to the campsite, ditching my muddied running shoes for flip-flops. Everyone had plunked themselves down on the grass, downing their water bottles and taking deep breaths. Did that just really happen? It wasn’t even sundown.

But my mind was already elsewhere. I dusted myself off, and despite my pained limbs and distorted sense of self, I stepped around the backpacks and sleeping bags and made my way over to the gate.

I stepped out, already feeling lighter at the thought of being able to steal some alone time, slow and careful as though any sudden movements might make the beach disappear. But it stayed right where it was, where it’s always been and will be for all time, even when I took a bigger step and felt the lightness become a rapid giddiness.

The pier stretched before me, at its end an open structure with a straw roof and some beach chairs. And beyond, only the sea and the clouds. God, I’d forgotten that, too, the vastness of it. How it feels like it just goes on forever, and how blue it is, and how clear. I looked down and saw a school of fish, gathered together in a small patch of the endlessness.

I took it all in: the lush mountains, the boats painted in outrageous colors that reminded me of classic sorbetes carts, the flags, the shacks, the houses. The specks of people dotting the surface of the water, bobbing along, the sun glinting off their skin.

My body ached. The sound of the waves felt like the constant pulsing in my ears multiplied by a thousand. I had just survived reaching unfathomable heights, pulling myself up using my own two hands. (And, okay, clutching a reasonably attractive someone else’s for support.) I felt monumental and overwhelmed, and therefore alive.

I sat on a beach chair and caught my breath. It had been so long and I had been so young the last time that it felt like a first, somehow. My body no longer knew what saltwater felt like, or real waves, unpredictable, ones that weren’t fabricated in a giant pool.

The cell signal was strongest out there, which was funny to me. I sent a quick text to my parents to let them know I was okay. Then I made a Spotify playlist with every “sea” song off the top of my head: “Plastic Sea” by Minks, “The Sea” by Swim Deep, “Sea of Love” as covered by Cat Power, and a curveball, “Those Wild Woods” by Johnny Gallagher, because of a chorus that goes:

My feet in the sand 
Locked up by the land 
Believe I just might leave 
If I could

And to start it off, “A Beautiful Sea” from the Sing Street soundtrack.

It left me reeling, that happy-sad song whirling in my ears, the sight of an actual beautiful sea before me, with no one else around. It was cold and it smelled like the ocean.

I went down to the beach, took off my flip-flops, rolled up my leggings, and walked out to the surf. I sank my toes into the sand, felt it shift beneath me to support my weight. It was rocky and it hurt a little, but I didn’t care. I was waiting for the spray to hit. And it did, the waves came crashing, washing over my feet.

It reminds me now of Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara, how it said the waves always seem to sound like they’re reciting Begin afresh, afresh, afresh from the Philip Larkin poem “The Trees.”

But right then my only thought was: I want the sea to swallow me whole.

That night it rained, sudden and unrelenting. It was a storm, really. The safest place for us to stay was the shack that held the showers, so we found ourselves huddled on the slightly flooded tiles, telling stories and singing silly songs. Immediately it was clear that our tents would not be habitable—luckily I had thought to chuck my stuff into the giant plastic bags I’d brought for the exact purpose of protecting them from rain—and soon our professors were ushering us into the large, fancy rest house they were staying in. When I think about it now, it makes me feel warm: dozens of students, piled on top of each other on every available surface in a way that was more cozy than claustrophobic, finally sheltered and dry. Someone brought out a guitar and started another singalong, others were playing card games and maybe truth or dare. 

I was on the floor next to Andrea. She had noticed my wrists at dinner, and I had gone still. We’d met a couple of years before taking an Art Studies class and had even gone to a spoken word show together for a group project, and by a stroke of fate we were groupmates again for this class. But still—we barely knew each other, and I didn’t know how to respond to having her know me like this. Vulnerable, raw. 

But then she said, “It’s okay. Me, too.”

And that was a lot. It was so important to be seen and understood like that, when I didn’t even have a diagnosis and when it felt like I was being gaslit into thinking I was just making everything up, that there was nothing wrong with me. 

We talked the whole night. 

I don’t think Andrea and I have spoken since the class ended, which is a shame. But I’ll always be grateful to her for sharing her own stories with me and for helping me make sense of myself when nothing else ever did. 

The next day the skies were clear and pristine, like the night before hadn’t even happened. I was glad, because the water activities were the last thing on our schedule before we had to go home to the city.

It was surprisingly easy for me to fall back into old habits, like collecting shells and sitting at the very edge of the shore, crushing sand with my fists and letting the waves wash over my legs.

I had been planning to do my own thing, but my camping buddies convinced me to go on a banana boat ride with them. That thing was surprisingly fast—just enough to be a rush, thrilling, so you’d be on the edge of fearing for your life. The wind was in my face. I’d never been that far out in the water before.

We decided we wanted to flip the boat over at the end. The driver made the turn and gave us the signal. I let go at the very last second, before everything went upside-down.

We all went underwater. In those few seconds of complete suspension before my life vest propelled me back to the surface, I thought about Althea and Oliver by Cristina Moracho, that last line about how jumping into the ocean hurt, but also felt good.

Soon enough we were saying goodbye—some of us for good. I pretended I wasn’t standing around waiting to talk to the boy who had helped me, but in the back of my mind, I knew. I mean, if he was always going out of his way to say hello and check up on me, even at the gas station on the drive back, or on the banana boat where he sat in front of me and we made nice perfectly pleasant small talk, the least I could do was say goodbye.

I can see it on a dumb souvenir shirt: I climbed a mountain and all I got was this lousy schoolgirl crush. 

We fist-bumped. I said it was nice to meet him, because I wanted to be as obvious as humanly possible. He said my name. He’s always saying my name. I don’t know how he knows my name, I never told him. And just like that, we’d all gone our separate ways.

Years from now I’ll say we shared a life-or-death experience, and then we never saw each other again. But at the time I hoped I was wrong about the second part.

Looking back it feels surreal. I was miles from home with only near-strangers for company, and I had to pretend I wasn’t in the middle of my worst depressive period yet. The physical and social exertion was draining.

But I learned so much, about mountains, about the ocean, and about myself. I learned that human beings can be nice, more decent than I give them credit for most days. And if people I just met can show me kindness, then maybe I can afford to be a little kinder to myself as well.

On the beach I walked out, all the way into the water, and didn’t stop until it reached up to my chin. I looked ahead at the horizon, tried to make out anything, the farthest my eyes could see. It was all sky, and water, and light. I floated on my back, closed my eyes, the glare of the sun dazzling even through my eyelids. I tasted the salt and kept my palms up.

The waves came. They carried me, threatened to pull me under and anchored me at the same time. I was lighter than air.

The sea was finally swallowing me whole.

nobody really says “rewind” anymore

I pull him along and refuse to dwell on the feel of his hand back in mine. He follows, lets me lead him across hallways and up and down staircases. He isn’t pulling away.

We’re looking for someplace private because there are matters we need to discuss—at least, that’s what I’ve told him. In a small-town school where everybody knows who you are and what your deal is, this kind of solace and discretion is difficult to come by. The hour we have free for our lunch break is going and going, but I keep walking, intent on getting something done before it’s gone.

We stop in front of a door. It leads to the janitor’s closet.

Reed shrugs, brows furrowed, a question. I shrug back. He takes the lead, pulls me into the cramped space. The door thuds and clicks behind us as it closes, and it feels like a finality.

We pause in the darkness for a few moments before it occurs to either of us to look for the light switch.

“Better,” he declares, when he finds it and we can see each other again in the flickering glare.

“Yeah,” I say. I watch him watch me, his expression curious and expectant, and my first instinct is to turn the lights back out. I feel transparent, inside out, the mess and the complexities of my inner workings very suddenly exposed. And yet, the strangest of things, I don’t feel like abandoning what I’ve set out to do.

This morning I woke up and I was seventeen again. As in: The last six years never happened. As in: I was back in high school, and I was somebody completely different. As in: The plot of that TV show Hindsight. As in: When I got to school, disoriented and begrudging, there he was, right where I’d left him, exactly as I knew him. Reed Arias.

He had no idea.

It was jarring, finding Reed at my locker, talking too fast about some mundanity or other that I hadn’t thought about in who knows how long. The English assignment on Animal Farm. Quadratic functions. How much sleep he lost over an art project. “I’ve missed you,” I wanted to say, although I hadn’t even admitted it to myself, but then he was already going on about some IMs we apparently exchanged last night, and why had I disappeared on him?

I didn’t need reminding, but here it was anyway, concrete proof of something that had begun to seem like it had never taken place at all. A lost-and-found sense of normal, and anything but.

My world had been full of him at this age. Reed would never get it, could never fathom that by our early twenties we would each be pretending the other didn’t exist. And that it was just this thing that happened, like the pages of your favorite books yellowing or milk going bad. The kind of thing you didn’t notice until it was too late.

We had science lab first period. He made attempts to distract me from five tables away instead of helping his partner with the water cycle experiment we were supposed to be doing. Whenever I’d look over, he’d already be looking back, his features both soft and certain. His fingers brushed my elbow lightly when he passed me on his way to rinse a graduated cylinder. Soon I will simply evaporate, he sang at one point, my favorite line from a song we both loved, and I knew it was only for me.

In English class he passed me a note. (Impressive, considering he sat on the last row and I sat on the second.) On it he’d written only three words, with no regard for capitalization or punctuation.

boxer deserved better

I flinched as soon as I unfolded it, staring down at a piece of paper I hadn’t looked at in years, lost to one of the overstuffed journals of my youth. I had cut it up and painted over it with watercolor, and here it was again, pure white and whole.

I read it over and over for a long time. Eventually it hit me: I knew what this day was and what it meant for him and me.

At the end of the day Reed would sit with me at the front steps and tell me he’d be going away for the summer, to stay with his grandparents in Portland. He would start to speak again, but my ride home would arrive and I’d be in a hurry, cutting him off with an apology thrown over my shoulder before he could get the words out. “Tell me later!” I would yell from the car window. He would never try again.

This summer he wouldn’t write or reply to my messages. When he came back nothing would be the same. In a few years he would corner me at a party and confess, drunkenly, that he had been about to say how he really felt about me. He would proceed to pass out against the bathroom tile, his spiel lost to his alcohol-induced stupor. I would never hear the rest.

I wouldn’t have seen him since, and I’d be left wondering how it could have gone differently for the rest of my life.

By the end of third period I’d decided it was time for me to find out.

Few things made sense about my situation, and I still didn’t know how I got myself stuck in the past, but I was starting to think that perhaps this wasn’t some random, if slightly unreal, occurrence. Maybe there was some sort of purpose to it.

When the bell rang I booked it out of my seat and accosted Reed by the doorway of his art class. I’d spent the entirety of history class obsessing over the note and what I should do. I’d been through all this—I was done with the mind games and the second-guessing. I was done fucking around.

“We need to talk,” I said. There was a slight panic in my voice that I swallowed down. “I need to tell you something,” I added, more steadily and evenly.

If he thought I was being weird, he didn’t let on. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Which brings us full circle to where we left off: Us, hiding in a dimly-lit closet, surrounded by drying mops and industrial bottles of citrus-scented disinfectant.

Reed takes a packet of cherry-flavored Airheads out of his pocket and starts chewing. “Grace?” he prods.

I busy myself by fiddling with the hem of my skirt. It would be best, I know, to just rip the band-aid off, to come right out and say it. Thing is, I’ve changed a lot in the six years that came and went and disappeared, but I’m still not as put-together and sure of myself as I’d like to be.

I have to be careful, and I have to do this right. I need more time.

I start by telling (some of) the truth. “I didn’t really have anything urgent to say.” I force it out before I raise my eyes to meet his.

Reed’s expression goes slack. “You must have brought us here for a reason,” he says.

He’s trying to understand—he wants to understand—so I try my best to give him a coherent explanation. “I think I just wanted a real conversation,” I say. “It seems to me like it’s been so long since we’ve been able to just sit down and talk.”

“What are you talking about? We talk every day.”

“This is different. Out there,” I say, motioning to the juvenile madness that’s without a doubt happening around us, “it’s too much. We’re always swamped. I feel like I have no idea what’s really been going on with you lately.”

I’m talking from memory. He was on the swim team and he volunteered at the library. I was associate editor of the school paper, and had Literary Society meetings on Thursdays. Between all of that and our classes, we barely had a moment to ourselves. It’s cathartic, getting it all out in the open. I thought I was improvising, but I realize that I’m not pulling it out of nowhere—I carried it around with me all those years ago. I just never got around to saying it out loud.

I was afraid my feelings were unfounded, that I was being irrational.

“Bear with me,” I plead. “I don’t know how to make you understand this, because I don’t even think I understand it fully myself.”

Reed doesn’t say anything, just listens.

“We always talk about all these things—books and movies—and I love that we agree on them for the most part.” At this he smiles slightly, tentatively, and somehow I can tell he remembers that argument we had once over Perfect Blue. “But I guess it bothers me that I can’t see them from your point of view, and that you can’t see them from mine. Not really.”

“I want to talk about the future,” I go on, and for a second I’ve forgotten that I’ve already lived it. I almost laugh out loud at the thought. “Not ours, although there’s that too, but what you imagine it’ll be like. I want to talk about the last thing that scared you and the last thing that made you feel alive. I want to know if there’s an overlap between these things. I want to hear the things you won’t tell just anybody.”

I move back against the door to create more space between us. It’s futile, of course; there’s hardly any more room in the closet. In a quieter voice, I say, “I wanted to get you alone.”

He studies me for a minute. The longer this goes on, the more certain I become that I’ve blown it.

Maybe I’ve read it wrong all this time. Reed was never in love with me all along. None of what I just said is making sense to him. And I don’t blame him for not getting it, but I wish he’d take a hint.

Then again, I am the one who’s doing the verbal equivalent of walking in circles.

When Reed finally speaks, his voice is even and measured. “Funny you should talk about an overlap,” he says. “Because the last thing that scared me and the last thing that made me feel alive are basically the same thing.”

I ask him what he means.

“It was two things, actually.” He ticks them off with his fingers. “The fervency in your voice when you said you had something important to tell me, and your grip on my arm as we ran across the corridors looking for this place.”

“That scared you?”

“I thought you might have had bad news,” he explains. “But I also had this feeling that it was another thing entirely.” His eyes move over my own quickly, then he looks away. “I mean, I hoped.”

“And was it?”

“Was it what?”

I hesitate. Then, “Did it go the way you hoped?”

Instead of answering the question, Reed says, “For the record, Grace, I’d like to know these kinds of things about you, too.”

I let it sit. I say nothing and suck in a breath when he wordlessly strips off his navy sweater and rummages in his backpack. Shoulders, arms, chest, stomach, back, and all. It’s a sudden, casual show of skin that shouldn’t be new to us, but is now making my insides feel like they’re slowly, slowly igniting all over.

I draw my breath back out when he’s finished changing into one of his swim team shirts. “Practice later,” he says, by way of explanation.

Go, Tridents.

Later I nudge Reed’s knee with my shoe. “Tell me something else.”

“About myself?”

“About anything at all.”

“Okay,” he says, and he has to think for a second. “Ernest Hemingway had four wives in his lifetime. Did you know that?” I shake my head. I didn’t. He continues, “The first was Elizabeth Hadley Richardson—she was called Hadley.

“He wrote that he knew he was going to marry her when they met. They lived in Paris. They traveled the world, but their best days were their simplest. Hemingway would write during the day and come home to her and their little boy at night. They were young and in love, and for a while, it was enough.”

He tells me how she learned to become more strong-willed and welcoming of chance. How she lost a suitcase filled with her husband’s manuscripts, and how he was utterly heartbroken. How she never quite fit in with his more glamorous friends from the legendary group of writers known as the Lost Generation. How she read The Sun Also Rises as it was being written and became upset when she didn’t see a shred of herself in it, as though her existence in Hemingway’s life had stopped mattering.

And it’s in this moment, as I listen to him ramble on, that I feel an intense rush of affection for him. There’s something else; I’ve never felt anything like it, and I never will again, I’m sure, but a certain resolve just explodes in my chest. It evolves into a fearlessness, and then into an overwhelming want. It builds and it builds.

It has been building for as long as I’ve ever known.

“Hemingway married three more times,” he’s saying, “but it was never quite the way it had been with Hadley. Later in his life, his memories of her would be poignant, wistful.”

The loss of him plays out in my mind, scenes from another life blurring together like a fever dream. I see us at that party. We had locked ourselves in the bathroom upstairs and despite myself I had suppressed a smile when Reed nearly fell into the tub. He had said, I was going to tell you.

“He wished he could have died,” he tells me now, “before he could love anyone else.”

I cross the minuscule line of demarcation between us and kiss him.

Reed freezes, but he doesn’t break the kiss. And then, gently, he pulls me by the collar so that I’m straddling him.

His hands stray. They move down my skirt, tracing the shape of my thighs, but just when I’m about to ask him what he’s doing, I realize he’s fixing it to give me my modesty. (Even though modesty is kind of the last thing I want, right now, with him.) When he’s done he places his palms flat on the ground, on either side of him. With one hand, I grab at his sleeve to steady myself.

He kisses differently than he moves. I think of him underwater, slick with concentration, bullet-fast, graceful and precise. Or when he’s shelving at the library, serious and methodical, his arms straining with the weight of the thick volumes. Or the way he drives, no-fuss and no-nonsense, his grip tight on the wheel and his gaze straight ahead even as he warns me not to spill my soda anywhere and sings with me to the Cars tape that’s been in his cassette deck forever.

His lips are slow, deliberate, languid against mine. Clumsy, almost, and searching.

I put my fingers in his hair. He sighs into my mouth.

I pull away.

“You taste really sweet,” I say, stupidly. It feels weird on my tongue; I don’t quite have a handle on my words—or my breathing, or anything else, for that matter—yet.

“It’s the Airheads,” Reed says, sounding just as breathless.

I nod. Then I kiss him again, or he kisses me.

This time I take both of his hands and pull them toward me. He’s a quick study, trailing my back before settling firmly on my hips, his fingers ghosting the patch of exposed skin between my skirt and the part of my top that’s ridden up.

I keep my hands clasped gently around his neck. His lips brush against my own one last time, lingering on my bottom lip, then he pulls back. “Look at you,” he says, and he presses his forehead to mine.

This yanks me back to earth, and briefly I wonder if it would be obvious on me, what we’ve been doing. The thought is more amusing than it is mortifying, and I start to laugh.

“What?” His eyes are wide, like he’s afraid he’s ruined everything.

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s funny, this.”

And Reed gets it, because he starts laughing, too. Neither of us have moved an inch; he’s still pinned beneath me like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Before long, we’ve stopped laughing, stopped making any sound, stopped smiling altogether.

My hand is still cupped around his neck. Softly, and unhurried, he turns his head and kisses the inside of my wrist. He says my name. He leans in. His voice is faint, and it is the loveliest thing. “I want to—”

Light, hitting us a tad too abruptly, cutting into his words.

Mrs. Fredericks, the custodian, stands in the doorway. “I never lock this,” she’s muttering to herself. “These kids—” On cue, her eyes land on me, then on him, then on the compromising position we’ve got ourselves in.

Suddenly the obviousness isn’t so funny.

We spring apart. I jump off of Reed, straightening my top and pretending to dust my skirt off. He gets to his feet after me. In my haste, I knock over a pair of mops, which promptly tumble, quite loudly, onto the floor at our feet. Reed winces as he runs a hand through his hair to fix it, and in the sharpness of sunlight I can see just how disheveled I’ve made it. When he’s done I feel the slightest itch to mess it up all over again.

I open my mouth to explain, but then the bell goes off, signaling the end of lunch. The three of us keep silent and avoid eye contact as the ringing stretches on for what seems like eternity.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Mrs. Fredericks says as soon as it’s over. She’s usually so genial, but today she huffs and waves dismissively when we make a move to pick up the fallen mops. “Just go.”

“We were just—”

“Go on,” she repeats, her voice still raised, but not unkind. “Before I get you sent to the principal’s office, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Reed says, as he lifts his backpack off the ground and slings it over one shoulder. His movements are all fluidity and briskness once more. “Thank you.”

“We’re sorry!” I add as we leave.

Reed is handing me my knapsack, then he’s taking me by the hand and we’re flinging ourselves across hallways and staircases like we did earlier. I remember how he followed behind me without so much as a word, holding on like it was for dear life so we wouldn’t be separated. Unguarded and open. Patient when he had every reason not to be. Almost as if he had all the time in the world for me.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve never felt more alive,” Reed tells me, when we’re alone again.

“That scared the shit out of me!” I sputter at the same time.

We have a good laugh over this.

“Grace?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s something different about you,” he says after a while. “I hadn’t noticed.”

He asks me to meet him in the library after school. I say yes.

I find him in the periodicals section, arranging back issues of National Geographic dating as far back as the fifties. He’s back in the sweater—it’s always so cold here—and he appears to have ditched his contacts for the horn-rimmed glasses I always loved. When he sees me he leans against the shelf and gives me that tentative half-smile. “Hi,” he says.

My legs are wobbly and my arms are shivering, but I don’t think it’s the AC. “Hi.”

“I’m leaving for the summer,” he begins.

The first time around, I had asked where he was off to. I had complained about wasting away in town. Instead of “I’ll miss you,” I had said, “I think I’ll survive without you.”

Today I don’t do any of that.

Today, I say the only thing that really matters.

“I love you,” I tell him.

It hangs in the air between us. Reed removes his glasses, wipes them on his sweater, and puts them back on, like the routine will somehow help him make sense of things. But he and I both know it won’t, so I make things easy for him.

“I didn’t want there to be any confusion,” I say. “In case what happened this afternoon wasn’t enough of an indication.”

“Right.” He says it with mock-seriousness, but there’s nothing timid or unsure about the way he’s grinning now. “Of course. It’s important to clarify these things.”

When Reed doesn’t say anything more, I throw my hands up in pretend exasperation. “That’s it?” I demand. “Come on, Reed. Help me out here.”

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. Something honest.”

“What,” and he tugs at his hair like he does when he’s embarrassed, “like the fact that you beat me to it? That I was planning out this whole stupid speech in my head and you managed to say it all for me in the simplest, most obvious way? That I think the world—and probably the rest of the Milky Way, and all the other galaxies—of you?” He slumps and slides down the shelf until he’s on the floor looking up at me. “I do.”

I plant myself next to him and put my head on his shoulder. “Was that the speech?”

“No.”

“Good. Who confesses their love and makes anguished declarations in a library?”

“You did. Like just now.”

I raise my head to look him in the eye. “Yours was better.”

His eyes are on my mouth. I take in the very little space once again surrounding us and feel my cheeks go hot. He moves closer still, like he’s going to kiss me, but then he stops as soon as our noses touch.

“Just so you know,” he says in my ear, hushed and low, “I’m not about to engage in displays of affection with you, public or otherwise, when I’m on duty at the library.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to.” I don’t mean for it to come out snippy, but it does. I’m actually disappointed.

“But,” Reed continues, ignoring me, “I’m off in ten minutes. And I get to lock up.”

He pulls the keys from his pocket and waves them in my face. I roll my eyes, but I make a mental note to text my mom that I’ll be home a little late.

Just a little.

Despite his new self-imposed rule, Reed sneaks a quick peck on my forehead. “So, I have a question,” he says when he pulls away.

“Yeah? What is it?”

He stands to get back to work on the magazines and extends a hand to help me up. “You got me curious when you were talking about us in the closet,” he says. “What do you think the future will be like?”

I start arranging some of the National Geographics myself. I pick up a copy from 1995 with Jane Goodall on the cover and put it where it belongs.

There’s the smallest part of me that aches to share all of it with him, and not just the part where we drifted. How I left college with a degree in American literature and wound up working at a thrift store in another town, putting off sending out applications for the jobs I actually wanted because I was secretly afraid of my life moving so fast that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. How, last I heard, he was in Portland, or was it Taipei, or was it Geneva, teaching little kids to swim or maybe writing a novel or maybe getting married. How hoverboards and self-lacing sneakers became a reality, but not quite in the way we thought they would. How a lot of things, really, didn’t go quite the way we thought they would.

But I don’t tell him any of it.

The library lights dimming around us, we tidy up the last of the magazines and find ourselves once again on the floor. I settle in close next to him. Neither of us is going anywhere just yet.

“Let’s find out together,” I say.