“PAL Flight 789 leaves Davao City at 7:35 AM,” said Auntie Havannah. “That’s in four hours.”
“Better to be early than late,” I said. Papa would have been that early for a flight.
My aunt clutched the tickets. Seven for myself, Shay, Andrei, Janice, Carl, Carlotta, and even Reggie. She wasn’t letting them go. Maybe I missed the point of her statement.
“Are you sure Reggie is going?” she asked.
I wasn’t, but I was holding on to some hope that he would. I hadn’t seen him all morning. It would be his last chance to come with us. After that, I wasn’t sure when or how he could return to Manila. If he even wanted to.
“This is the best way, believe it or not,” Auntie Havannah continued, seemingly eager to stray from the awkward conversation. “They’re going to be looking for EV planes and boats. Ever since our last intrusions.”
“You’re sure about that?”
She shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”
It seemed contradictory given the immense risk we were taking returning to Manila, but I knew what she was getting at. Even in the face of extreme stupidity, we still had to watch out for ourselves.
I knew what I was doing wasn’t smart, but honestly, this was not a time for being smart. It was about being quick. The albularyo’s words had sent me on a war path. Probably intentionally. It was probably a trap, but unlike most, I knew it would spring.
I took the tickets. “Good luck out here,” I said. “I’ll come back when it’s all over.”
Her gaze flicked away for a moment. I wish I had known what that gesture meant back then. “I hope you do, Jayson.”
----------------------------------------
There is something to be said of a place you keep returning to but can never leave. It is less like an itch that nags at you constantly, less like a foul odor, and more like a recurring nightmare or, on the other hand, a pleasant dream you keep drifting into. The line that separates dreams and nightmares is extremely thin.
Francisco Bangoy International Airport thrummed with a chaos I would soon see in earnest in Manila. I hadn’t been around this many people, even in Davao City at night. There were plenty of tourists here, with wide-brimmed hats, sun dresses, and the latest versions of selfie drones fluttering around them as if they were even interesting.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Auntie Havannah’s instructions were clear: spread out in the airport, wait in different areas, and gather at the departure gate as if you’re complete strangers. This wasn’t the first time we had pretended to be others, but in a sea of random faces, it felt the loneliest.
I found Janice browsing a gift shop of books I knew she had no interest in. Shay probably would have loved the titles—harlequin romance and spy thrillers. Contemporary literary fiction. From a glance, I could tell the Giants had already adapted all these.
I had to resist speaking to her for fear of blowing our cover, but I couldn’t. There was still so much I needed to know.
I approached, turning my back to her and browsing the opposite shelf of adapted literary junk. “Whatever happened to the house, anyway?” I asked.
Janice took a moment to realize it was me talking. “I took care of all that, don’t worry. Everything’s in a storage container.”
“You’re a genius.”
“Nah. Just meticulous. Pure genius doesn’t exist.”
“You have the key?”
A few seconds later, something clicked on the ground at Janice’s feet. She didn’t reach down to pick it up, so I did and found a single key with a plastic keychain holding a piece of paper that said, simply, A2A.
I opened one of the books and pretended I was reading to myself. “Auntie Havannah said we won’t get a chance to say our goodbyes once we reach NAIA.”
“It’s never really goodbye, is it? We always come together in the end.”
“Somehow I wish that were so, but Manila keeps evolving. Even now, surveillance capture drones litter the place. Our faces will be splotched over everything.
“But if we keep a low profile,” Janice said, “those faces won’t mean much. The key isn’t to avoid attention, but to make our attention irrelevant.”
I smiled. “You’re going to have to take the lead on that one.”
“Already working on it.”
We stood there, pretending to be engrossed in the books we were reading. I used the silence to examine one passage in the story I was holding.
And they came as wind and left the same, unchanged, unfettered, and again to dust.
Shit. I didn’t intend to pick up poetry. I turned the page, fleeing from the passage as much as my intrusive, morbid thoughts.
“It’s like when we left Mother’s the first time,” Janice whispered, “only we’re doing this on our terms.”
“The city will be ours.” It seemed the fitting response. I felt it, too. “This time, things will be different. Maybe we will never leave. If we do, it won’t be a retreat.”
I turned to see Janice’s mouth hanging open, words escaping it that she did not voice. She closed it and settled for an “Alright. Just take care of yourself.”
I placed the book in the gift shop and left my sister there. When I turned back, she was gone, and someone else stood where she was. He held a duffel bag in one arm, his ticket in the other.
Reggie’s nod said everything. Don’t mess it up for us this time.