I was fifteen when I first learned that silence could be louder than words.
It was the second year of high school, and I had just transferred to a private school in Quezon City. The campus was smaller than what I was used to, but the voices were bigger, louder, sharper. My hair was tied in a tight braid—something my mom insisted made me look "presentable." I wore my uniform crisp and proper, my shoes polished to a fault. From the outside, I must've looked like someone who had it all together.
But I was falling apart inside.
Filipino wasn't my first language. Spanish and English flowed freely from my tongue, but Tagalog always felt like a riddle I didn't know how to solve. I could understand it well enough—context, tone, facial expressions—but when I opened my mouth, everything sounded wrong. Too formal. Too stiff. Too foreign.
The first day, a group of girls giggled when I mispronounced basura during class recitation. "Ano daw?" one of them whispered a little too loud, like she wanted me to hear. I pretended I didn't, but my ears burned.
By lunch, I was sitting alone under the old acacia tree near the back fence of the school, nibbling the edge of my sandwich. That's when he came.
"You're in 2-A, right?" the boy said, sitting on the grass a few inches from me. He didn't wait for an answer. Just sat there, like we'd been friends forever.
I blinked. "Yes... I mean, yeah."
"I saw what happened in Filipino class," he said, plucking a grass blade and twirling it between his fingers. "Those girls are idiots."
I chuckled, surprised. "I think I was worse than an idiot. I said 'basurá' like it was a Spanish word."
"You made trash sound fancy," he teased, grinning.
That was how I met EJ—Elijah John Rivera.
He wasn't flashy. Not the cool kid. Not the loud one. He had a quiet way of existing, like he didn't need the world's approval to be okay. He offered me a piece of his chicken nuggets that day, and in return, I gave him my trust. Over time, he would become my safe place—the person I could run to after a long, draining day filled with my mom's criticisms and impossible expectations.
And then... there was Anthony.
He transferred in the middle of the semester. Tall, with soft eyes and a crooked smile that made all the girls straighten their backs and rehearse their laughs. I noticed him before I was ready to. The way he fiddled with his pen when he was nervous. The way he bit his lip when trying to understand our Math teacher's scribbles. The way he looked at the world like it held something beautiful just waiting to be found.
And from the moment I saw him, I knew I was doomed.
He was my first real crush. The kind that settles in the bones and refuses to leave, even when it hurts. I never spoke to him much—only the occasional "good morning" or group project formality. But I wrote his name in the margins of my notebooks and imagined him calling mine.
EJ knew. Of course, he knew.
"You like him," he said one afternoon after I'd been caught staring too long across the library table.
"I don't," I lied.
He raised an eyebrow. "You literally just whispered 'he looks like poetry' under your breath."
My face turned red. "Shut up."
But he didn't. He laughed instead—deep, hearty, and full of something I couldn't place yet.
What I didn't realize then was that EJ was already in love with me.
He never said it, not in words. But he was there every time I cried after my mom told me I was 'lazy' or 'a waste of potential.' He was the first to defend me when a girl from 3-A pushed me in the hallway. He once told his girlfriend off—publicly—after she mocked my accent.
"She doesn't get to talk about you like that," he said, jaw tight, voice shaking. "I won't let her."
And that was the beginning of the end for them. He broke up with her not long after.
I was too scared to ask why. Deep down, I knew. And I wasn't ready to face it.
Back then, I believed love was a luxury I couldn't afford. My mom made it clear: boyfriends were distractions. Distractions were failures. And failures had no place in our home.
So I buried my feelings for Anthony. And I ignored the ache in EJ's gaze every time I mentioned his name.
Sometimes, I wonder if that's where the damage started—not from heartbreak, but from the love I never allowed myself to have.
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