Alicia didn’t know what started it, only when it did; the hair tie. Zack kept bringing her the wrong one, and today was the final straw. Colourless for everyday use, colourful for outings. How hard was that to understand? He wouldn’t need to if he simply stopped taking it for her, that busybody.
It was her hair tie. Leave it alone.
Zack thought otherwise, and found her ungrateful for his efforts of sparing her a cold lunch. Efforts she never asked for. Efforts that backfired, making her life unnecessarily difficult.
A cold lunch didn’t bother her though. Why couldn’t he understand that the colour mattered? Why couldn’t she find the words to explain why it mattered?
“Forget it, just take it yourself! Everytime I try to do something nice, you just hate it, for whatever funny reason you come up with that day!”
“I didn’t come up with those reasons on that day! I came up with it long before that! And I had my hair ties neatly arranged in my drawer when I was at home, but there’s no space to arrange it here because your clothes take up so much space!”
“Stop talking about your home, or my home! We are not there! It’s been one-or-two months already, stop bringing it up!”
“But I—Mmm!” She could say something, but why bother? He wouldn’t listen. Whatever!
Zack stormed out the room. He spent the night having supper with Dania and her friends. She spent the night watching them take off from the corridor railing. If they ate tacos, she would’ve joined with no hesitation.
From that day on, Zack no longer helped Alicia take her hair ties.
They couldn’t live at the motel forever. The manager will reach his last straw one day. They needed a plan B. But, Zack was uninterested in forming one. He trusted his friendships with the staff to stand the test of time. Plan B was all up to her.
Step one of Plan B was to get jobs outside the motel that paid more and demanded less from her body. She’d rather die than spend every night with crippling feet pain. Researching for jobs would’ve been easy if she had a phone to research with. Or, if Zack agreed to the idea and helped research for her.
Without it, all she could do was think until her head hurt.
She didn’t know when it started, but Zack kept his eyes glued to the phone whenever they went grocery shopping. Dania did too, calling her family from Indonesia.
Zack, meanwhile, oogled at art. He would find one that caught his fancy, then tug her arm hard enough to annoy her, and ask her to notice it; some artist jargon she didn’t understand or care about. Annoyed by her lack of enthusiasm (even though he started it), and showed it to Dania instead.
He was never annoyed with Dania’s reactions.
Whenever she consulted him on what groceries he’d prefer, she either had to repeat it until he heard her, or rephrase it until he answered anything besides, “Anything.”
Then, at checkout, she had to double-check the cart to weed out the random packs of sweet or bars of chocolate he tossed in behind her back, and troubled Dania to return it.
He insisted to keep the chocolate for her… She didn’t know what he meant to say by pointing to his gut. But she knew he did this nonsense all the time! Turning everything into some stupid guessing game instead of just talking!
Just say ‘period’, and no, she didn’t need chocolate for it! Why would she like that?
Just say ‘kiss’, and no, she did not want his mouth, where he eats, on her face. Why did couples do that?
Just say ‘talk more often’ and provide her a list of things to talk about instead of ‘socialise’, whatever that meant. And no, she did not want to do that with everyone in the motel. Why would anyone?
From that day on, she refused to talk to him whenever he was on his phone.
Dania was interested in Plan B, and offered the helping hand Zack refused to. She gave a brief and confusing explanation of the job selection process, from application to interview, and tasked her with something painfully adult: make a resume.
Though, the simplicity of it sparked suspicion. The list of all her achievements, work experience, and a self-summary took less than fifteen minutes to write out.
Surely, she was missing something, like her classmates who realised the question on the back page of their exam papers too late. But no, her list gained Dania’s approval. She helped Alicia digitize and store it on her phone.
Dania also offered her phone to let Alicia research. It rehydrated Alicia, and brought some colour back into the world. Things were no longer off. After she copied some taco recipes to paper, she got to job-hunting.
Here came the reason why this was an adult responsibility. What did any of this mean? She read so much, yet understood so little. Supposedly, they described the company, the job, and employee perks. It meant nothing to her.
She didn’t understand why Zack never came to her bed. Even when she didn’t go over, he wouldn’t take the initiative to come over. Was going over a job unique to her, the girlfriend?
Also, he kept requesting to touch her. To feel her hair, to hug her in random times throughout the day, and to hold her hand for as long as humanly possible; the exchanging of sweat didn’t phase him. Yet, she never requested a single touch from him. Was requesting touch a job unique to him, the boyfriend?
When the totals were tallied, the job of a girlfriend outweighed the boyfriend’s. She had to tolerate his sweaty palms, his obtuse body, and his smell 24/7. While he got have a laugh with everyone and visit the art exhibitions of his dreams.
He got to talk about art all he wanted, yet she hadn’t shared one word about tacos or autism or anything. Not fair.
She tried tipping the scales. “Do you like tacos?”
“I guess? It tastes okay.”
She quoted him, “But tacos are important.”
“How?”
Forget it.
“Do you play Cyber-Strikers?”
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“Ew, no. That game is just a rip-off of another game! I tried it once… It’s so unbalanced, and so buggy.”
“Mmm! I want you to be interested in what I’m interested in! And you should, because that is your job as a boyfriend! It’s not fair!”
“Huh? What’s not fair? That I don’t like some trashy rip-off game?”
Forget it. God, she missed Kat… and Minty… and oddly, her classmates that never spoke to her. At least they all played Cyber-Strikers.
If he didn’t want to come over, neither did she.
From that day on, she stopped watching him sketch at night.
It took Dania until now to notice the discord. She pulled her aside one day, asking for details. Alicia shared everything, and by the end, she found herself dying to punch something, or someone.
Dania calmed her down with a few deep breaths before she offered her two cents: This was normal. It happened after the end of the honeymoon period. Now came the real test of the relationship.
But she had told him about the hair ties multiple times; Zack didn’t listen. He didn’t understand why the colour mattered, and she couldn’t explain it.
“Why doesn’t he think the colour matters?”
“Because he—I don’t know.”
“Ask.”
Right after they clocked off, she pulled Zack into their room and turned on the standing fan. After their complaints about the ceiling fan, the staff brought that in as a substitute.
“We need to talk. Why don’t you understand the colour of my hair ties matter?” She asked.
He took a moment to adjust before explaining that it was merely the colour. The hair tie worked the same regardless of it. She mentioned the off feeling, only explaining how bad it was, rather than what it was.
“Fine. Sorry. Then how come you don’t get why art is important?” He retorted.
Art was just pretty pictures to her, which pleased the eye as much as snacked pleased the mouth. What more was there to it? Zack was on the verge of combusting. He went on another rant, but this time, she understood; art to him was what tacos were to her. Guilt ensued. She promised to pay greater attention to his art, but it exhausted her.
“I’m tired from doing all these things to be a good girlfriend. And you don’t do as much work as I do! It’s not fair!” She followed.
He disagreed. He bent over backwards to be a good boyfriend. Prioritizing her emotions over his, throwing every gesture of romance on the wall to see what stuck, and trying to lift her out of depression.
Oh. She didn’t know that. Also, what emotions?
He refused to share, because it only made things worse. This was antithetical to communicating. Alicia insisted on an answer.
“Fine! Just… I don’t know… Maybe I also miss my mom sometimes.” He mumbled, “But I shouldn’t, obviously.”
Oh. She didn’t know that.
An idea came to her. One so outlandish, so far-fetched that any sane person would discard it. But she couldn’t. “What if we communicated with… them.”
He laughed. Of course he’d shut it down without thought.
“This is why I didn’t wanna bring it up! It makes us wanna go home and abandon all logic! Because oh… it’s my mom! I love her so much!” He mocked in a sing-soing voice.
“I do!”
“Well she doesn’t!”
He was wrong. Serena loved her. She loved Serena. It was just the two of them in this world, that’s how it worked; no matter how many worlds stood between them.
A paperclip was always attracted to a magnet, and Alicia will forever be Serena’s paper clip. They will forever attract, as per the laws of physics.
So how could Serena beat her as hard as she loved her? How could a daughter make sense of this?
She couldn’t wait for Zack to be convinced any longer. “I think I’m going home.”
Alicia zipped her luggage bag open. There were three reasons she knew this was the right choice. One, she wanted to give Serena a second chance. Two, she hadn’t apologised for stealing nine hundred dollars from her. Three, the laws of physics.
Zack stood in the way of the closet, “This is why I don’t want to talk about it! This is what happens when we communicate!” It was his turn to convince: he offered to draw her again.
Again? He had never did that before. Alicia chalked it up to a verbal error, and remained unconvinced. “I need to get my clothes. Move.”
“What about us?” He held her hand. His didn’t feel warm anymore. The fire went out.
If she went home, she’d likely get her phone back, or a new phone altogether. They could call.
“We won’t last if we go long distance!”
“It’s only two hours away by MRT.”
He hugged her, and reminded her of the horror again, and again, and again. The memories squeezed the life out of her head. “Look, I’ve been there before. I know how you feel. You think oh, she’s your Mom! She loves you! If you just talk to her, and tell her how she’s hurting you, she will stop! Right? WRONG! It’s a lie! If they can bear to beat you, they will never feel bad for beating you. If you go home… the caning will never end. Never.”
Zack removed his shirt and pointed to his back. Faint red lines all across it, “Look! Look at it! One stroke every single day! Some of them haven’t even healed yet!” He turned around, “Don’t end up like me. He placed a hand over his heart, and the tears rolled.
It was the first time he saw Zack cry.
“Alicia. I love you.”
“What?” It made her cry.
He hugged her again. Tighter. “You saved my life!”
“What do you mean?”
“Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone else?”
“Okay…” Where was this going?
“Um… firstly, trigger warning, ha-ha…” His laughter was like broken glass, “I… uh… before my mom got me to become your tutor, I—um…”
Every fibre of him started trembling; an earthquake incarnate. He trembled so much he couldn’t speak. The next minute were just filler words as he tried and failed to compose himself several times,
“I tried to kill myself.”
What could Alicia say to that?
“And I… helped you?” She asked.
“I saw you with your friend, and the two of you—I just couldn’t let someone as cheerful as you end up like me. So I just thought… I’ll just stay here for a while… see if your Mom actually sucks… and if she is, help you stay happy with my escape plan.”
“What plan?”
He took out a second sketchbook from his closet. This wasn’t filled with sketches, but bulletpoints and diagrams. “I have been planning this since Sec 1 You gave me the guts to finally pull it off. And it’s not perfect, I’m not that smart, but… We’re doing fine here. Better than I ever expected, in fact! You knowing Dania made everything a lot easier.”
She still shook her head, Serena didn’t beat her half as hard as that. Serena didn’t even have a cane. It was a mistake.
Zack shut that down too. He claimed Serena did it on purpose to force obedience, respect, and gratitude onto her. It was impossible to cane a child by accident.
“You don’t understand…” She pulled the suitcase to her.
“No, you don’t understand!” He shoved it away.
She pulled it back, he pulled it away. The tug-of-war went on until Zack took a more drastic measure. He towered over her, and repelled her to the wall.
His eyes went black. “I’m doing this for your own good! I’m protecting you, you idiot! Stop being so stubborn!” He raised a hand.
Not again. She blocked her face with every part of her body as winter froze over, but nothing happened. Through her hands, she saw Zack put his hand down. It took a moment before she felt safe to do the same.
“Was that on purpose?” She asked, shaking a little.
“No.” He mumbled, and brought her luggage to her. She resumed packing. He didn’t stop her.
This was new, and weird, and painful.