Chapter One: The Boyfriend

Pinakabagong kabanata

• One Step   Chapter One: The Boyfriend

  As a teenager, I was picky. I would never choose something that lacked quality. I chose clothes with expensive tags and piled them up neatly in my closet, with the width of the folds always uniform and parallel to each other. I chose my notebooks with smooth, white pages and made sure their lines were regular and not skewed as a result of some factory defect. I would never choose to ride a bus that looked old and had no air-conditoner. And every time I went out, I always made myself look presentable. As if I had a mom taking care of me.My family wasn't rich, though. To keep things according to my taste, I had to work for it. The allowance my mother sent every month only covered my basic needs, food, and other school stuff. I could get the things I wanted in the expense of food. During breaks at school, I mostly hid away in the library so I could save up. And I thought I was too fat, anyway.I had a tendency to get anxious if things around me weren'

• One Step   Before Everything Else—A Prologue or Something

  I loved to plan. Whoever said that the only constant thing in this world was change had it completely right. At one moment, a leaf would unfold. Slowly, it would grow bigger and bigger until it reached the peak of its growth. Then its color would start to change as its edges would start to crumple, silently losing its strength and vibrance. In the end, it would wither, completely losing its life. That's how life would normally change. Following a linear path. Expected. Certain.But not all the time.There were changes that would come in different sizes, big and small, and in unexpected moments. These changes, like those in scientific experiments, might have low probabality indices that we'd tend to ignore them at the very beginning of the experimenent, only to catch us completely off guard when they blew up in our faces.Those changes...I hated. So I planned. I mapped out my life like that of a leaf. In linear, expected, and certain