Beth

Feeling disappointed from Aunt Jessica’s gimmicks, Kaiser and I decide to return home. From the bus terminal, we ride another eight-hour trip back to the city. Before we bid goodbye, Kaiser tells me to call him as soon as I arrive home.

It is already four o'clock in the morning.

That’s the reason my parents sit in front of me in the living room. Their stares kill me, though I don’t care that much because of exhaustion. The two long hour trips seem enough to sleep a week, if possible. My eyes are droopy. My mind spaced out that my mom’s loud voice doesn’t affect me at all. My dad listens to her rants almost screaming as if she’s talking to someone a block away.

“What would other people tell me, Betelgeuse? That I allow my daughters to roam around the city at night with some guy?” She sputters. I release an exasperated sigh. Please, mom. Let me sleep. And we’ll talk about this later, okay?

I happen to look at my dad doesn’t say a word. Until he clears his throat and sits straight. “Cassandra, let’s let her sleep first. It’s clear she isn’t in the mood to talk about this,” he said, surprising me.

Somehow he reads my mind although I didn’t say anything at all. Mom wants to rebut, but he shakes his head. “She has already enough on her plate. She’s a graduating student and we know she’s working on a complicated project. Why can’t we trust her? Can we, Betelgeuse?” I nod and show a faint smile. Even smile is a hard work in my current state.

When he interrupts mom, I am relieved and somewhat happy. I cluck mentally, somehow rolling my eyes, hoping she didn’t see it. “Sleep now, Beth and we’ll talk about this later by dinner. Cassandra and Jana should join us, too,” he says.

“But dad—” Jana wants to say something but dad interrupted her, as well as mom.

“That’s final.” He stands with a serious look on his face, leaving mom jaw-dropped. Seeing him in a stoic expression is rare. And seeing that now makes mom a puppy, following him to the kitchen.

Dad seems a cheerful, caring, and relax house husband. But whenever we experience difficulties like this, he doesn’t fail to man up. If he isn’t around, I wouldn’t imagine how chaotic this house be.

When Jana and I left alone in the living room, she taps my leg and asks. “What the hell are you doing, Beth?”

I blink, trying to gather myself up amid my sleepiness. “I visited Kaiser’s aunt in San Nicholas.”

She clucks loud as if she feels surprised why I ended up traveling sixteen hours back and forth in one whole night. “But why?” She stands from her seat and sits beside me, crossing her arms.

I look away to avoid her eye contact and face down. “For my Philosophy, Jana.” Before I continue my explanation, I look at her, as if showing her my deepest sincerity with my endeavors. “You know, I’m not as smart as you. If you’re in my shoes, you wouldn’t care that much because you already have high grades in the other subjects. But how about me? I keep working so hard trying to get a passing grade. And now, my only hope is this to graduate, Jana. To graduate. My diploma is at stake here. So, I need to get an A grade at least for this subject or else I’ll face hell with mom for disappointing her more.”

Miracles seem to exist as Jana didn’t interrupt me while telling her my side of the story. She presses her lips. She looks, as if she realizes the difficulties I am going through to achieve my goal. Compared to her brilliance, this is nothing.

“Tell me about your story,” she asks me.

I shake my head without hesitation. “I can’t tell you now. But, there’s one thing I want to ask from you, Jana.”

“What?” I sigh and take a deep breathe in again, preparing my mind while looking at her and holding her hand.

“Help me with mom. I’m done with her rants and constant criticisms. I don’t care if she likes you more than me. Just…” I pause, trying to stop my tears from falling down my eyes, and press my lips, keeping myself calm to continue. “…Just help me out, okay? Tell her, I’m doing okay, whatever. Revert her attention to you so she wouldn’t care about me anymore. You’re smart. You know what I mean.”

For real, I’m so done with mom’s annoying habits. She thinks she’s more capable than my dad, more intelligent than Jana, and definitely, not a dumb student like me. ‘I wonder why I gave birth to a stupid woman like her,’ I heard her telling one of the neighbor one time. That hurt me. A lot. Though they tell me, ‘Hey, Beth, you’re beautiful,’ she stops them and tells them, ‘But dim-witted.’ And laughs.

When I close my door and sprawl on the soft mattress of my bed, I place my face on the sheets. My eyes land at the book placed on the small table beside the lampshade. I sigh and punch and kick the bed, screaming with my mouth covered. Later, I fall asleep… fast. 

I lay on the bed after dinner. I want to be alone. Even if Kaiser calls tonight for a meetup, I wish to stay inside my bedroom—the only place I experience solitude. I want to cry and scream my lungs out. It’s been a week of struggle.

After all the countless search for the perfect inmate and interviews, I am exhausted. It isn’t because of much work to finish but an emotional drain.

Why would they commit such a crime?

Why Mr. Dizon wants us to meet prisoners as the final project before the last term?

What’s the point of knowing their hideous motives? What about their sufferers seek justice they deserve… for a long, long time?

What about Alexandra Montenegro? Why Aunt Jessica refused to give us details of her life and her imprisonment? Especially her death sentence. I know it’s hard to talk about a friend who lost her life because of the past grievous mistakes, but it’s been twenty years. Isn’t she able to move on yet?

I sigh, as I place my arm on my forehead while I face the ceiling for a moment. A minute later, I turn my head seeing the book on the small table. I extend my arm reaching it.

When I hold it in my hands, I re-read the title of the book and appreciate the effort of the design. Well, they use a pink color matching the brush strokes along each line of the title. My favorite color.

Although I know there’s nothing interesting inside the pages, I open the book. I try reading the foreword to the table of contents to the first chapter. Each page has Alexandra’s scribbles and strokes. It's messy, as if she presses her red pen on the line by accident. I flip and flip and flip through the next pages.

But there was nothing but a boring topic. “Why would Alexandra read such a boring book?” I sigh again and roll my eyes out of habit. When I turn my body facing the book in my hand, I whisper. “The Guy Who Took My Locket: How To Experience Limitless Miracles of Forgiveness. Written by L. Mendiola.”

The title itself sounds weird. The main title and its sub doesn’t coincide at all. I press my lips thinking if I—a not-so-into-book-reading—should read the book or not. I flip to the first chapter and decide to read its contents. With high hopes of getting a clue.

What else could I do? Aunt Jessica didn’t give us something except this. The more I notice the scribbles, my mind dashes off to something. My eyebrow raises, as I see the patterns of the red lines, dots, periods, and circles along the paragraphs.

“They’re codes. Damn, why didn’t I notice them earlier?” Chapter 1. The first step to forgiveness: Acknowledge your dark past (even the darkest ones).

Within the paragraphs, there are a series of underlines along each line. These lines divide the words like iambic parameter in our English literature. From how the sentences look, they look as if William Shakespeare played around.

While looking at the codes, I sit in front of my study desk and turn on the lamp. I drag it different angle trying to figure out the pattern Alexandra wants me to uncover. I cluck.

“… Life is too short not to experience the paradise you deserve. The land of milk and honey you craved for a very long time. Simply because of the countless number of times you have committed sins in the past. It’s time to forgive yourself and let go of these negative emotional items of baggage. Move on.”

I K N O W Y O U W A N

LIFEI STOOS HORTN OTTOE XPERI ENCET HEPAR ADISE YOUDE SERVE THELA

T T O K N O W A B O U

ANDOF MILKA NDHON EYYOU CRAVE DTHEL ONGTI MESIM PLYBE CAUSE OFTHE

T M E B U T I T W O N T

COUNT LESSN UMBER OFTIM ESYOU HAVEC OMMIT TEDSI NSINT HEPAS TITST IMETO

B E E A S Y

FORGI VEYOU RSELF ANDLE TGOOF THESEN EGATI VEEMO TIONAL BAGGA GESMO

What is she trying to tell me? Come on, Beth. You can figure this out. My eyes fix at the bold letters within each word. My hand grabs my phone searching for the coding system that matches Alexandra’s.

“Got it,” I whisper, smiling when I find the exact method she used in the paragraph. I take a piece of paper and copy the words she underlined, dividing the letters by five. I did exactly how the bold letter looks when she tried to overlap the letter did with a dent permanent marker.

“I know you want to know about me. But it won’t be easy,” I whisper reading her hidden message. She knew from the very beginning someone wants to know her story. A sudden shiver in my spine gushes as soon as I apprehend the clues. It feels like I could hear her voice through the page.

When I decode the paragraph, my eyes skim through the next set until the ones towards the end of the chapter.

“… I knew someone, who I could say an epitome of a bottomless forgiveness. My brother, Giovanni. I knew him as a warm and loving person. Sometimes, a cold-hearted, ruthless authoritarian. I couldn’t understand his personality. Like the phases of the moon, he seemed bipolar. Varied unpredictable mood swings.”

I T W I L L B E F U N

MYBRO THERG IOVAN NIIKN EWHIM ASAWA RMAND LOVIN GPERS ONSOM ETIME

“It will be fun,” I raise my face a bit to the wall with my news articles about the latest crimes pinned on my bulletin board.

When I read her message from the book, my mind seem to tell me this isn’t for a hobby anymore. My chest feels tight and my gut feels uneasy, given the kind of work Alexandra puts me into.

Did Aunt Jessica know about this? Is she her accomplice? If yes, what for?

She can tell Kaiser and me everything she knows about the infamous night slayer. But why Alexandra has to deal with codes to reveal her message?

What makes it odd is the name Giovanni encircled in the paragraph. “Giovanni.” I heard it somewhere. It sounds familiar. But where?

I scratch my head with my fingers and grunt, leaning against the back of my chair.