“Good morning!” Hana greeted her friend, Hailey, as she put her bag down on top of her desk. “Did you do your homework?”

Hailey frowned. “I couldn’t. I swear, I wanted to, but my dad thought I was lying to avoid meeting his gold digger.”

“Well, it’s true. You don’t like homework. That sounds reasonable to me.” She took out a book from her bag. “By the way, how is she?”

“A total bi—”

“Morning!” shouted an annoying friend of theirs. It was a happy Logan who ran across the room to pinch Hana’s cheeks. “What you two talking about?” He sat down on the opposite desk.

Hana massaged her cheeks. “Why’d you pinch me so hard. My mouth’s gonna swell.”

He scowled at her. “So? It’s not as if you’re gonna use it on anyone. Ever.”

He and Hailey laughed, but Hailey stopped when she saw Hana raised a brow at them.

“Apologize,” demanded Hana to Logan. “Now.” She put her hands on her hips and leaned on one of her legs. “I am gonna use these lips on someone, and you’ll never get to know who.”

He stood up and was a head taller than her. “As if.” After his challenge, he sat back down.

Hana attempted to grab him by the collar, but their other friends, Seth and Jake, came to his rescue.

Logan high-fived Seth and Jake. “Right on time, bros!”

Seth was also Hailey’s boyfriend, and he went to sit on top of her desk after greeting everyone. He saw Hana’s unamused expression and knew immediately it was caused by Logan. “What did he do this time to you?”

“He pinched me.”

“Oh, stop whining,” said Logan, almost rolling his eyes.

Hana was about to grab him again, but the bell rang for class to start, and Logan ran to his seat.

Hana blew a raspberry as she sat down. She uttered under her breath. “I’ll get you, Logan. I will.”

*

It was lunchtime, and the group—Logan, Seth, Jake, and Hailey—had gotten together at their usual hang-out spot near the fountain.

“Where’s Hana?” Logan asked Hailey. “She’s skipping out on her job, huh? She promised she’ll make me lunch for the rest of the school year.”

Hailey handed him a plastic bag with a sandwich inside. “Here, yours.”

He took the bag, unwrapped it, and took a big bite of the sandwich. “She always makes a good one.”

“She went to see the nurse,” said Hailey. She sat down beside her boyfriend. “I overheard that her mouth swelled so big, she can’t possibly eat anything anymore.”

The boys stopped eating. Jake and Seth looked at Logan, pinning guilt on him for what he did earlier that morning, and Logan gulped.

Hailey continued. “She’ll be starving for days…and then she’ll succumb to death!”

“Death?” asked Seth.

“That’s what I heard.” Hailey wriggled her nose. “I took her to get her mouth checked, but when the nurse told her to stay, I knew it wasn’t a good thing.” She side-eyed Logan, and Seth and Jake gave Logan another look.

Logan, tired of all the accusatory expressions, got up and pat his clothes. “Fine. I’ll go check on her.” He stuttered, “I’ll—she’ll be fine.” He left his friends with haste.

And with worry.

*

Nurse Cooper looked away from the file cabinet to the door. “Hi, Logan.” She pointed to one of the beds where it had a sleeping Hana with her back facing the door. “She’s asleep. The pain got to her, so she’s sleeping through it.” She rolled a chair over to her and patted the cushion for him to sit. “What happened?”

He sat on the chair. “You know. Same old, same old.”

She nodded. “Yes, you bullying her, and she bullying you.” She had been bandaging the two friends, but she could never get mad them because they made her job worthwhile.

“Exactly,” said Logan. He then turned solemn. “But this time, I went too far.”

“How so?”

He puckered up. “She tells me to stop pinching her cheeks, but I do it because they’re meant to be pinched!” He took a deep breath. “I guess I won’t be doing it anymore if it hurts her that much.”

“That’s it?”

He nodded.

“I don’t think it’s a crime, but shouldn’t you say something to her?”

“Yes. I should apologize.”

She smiled and motioned for him to go to the sleeping Hana.

He got up and walked to the bed. There was a blanket covering Hana’s entire body. Only the hair at the crown of her head showed. He sighed and carefully tap her on the side. Something felt weird to him, so he did it again. “Hana?”

Something told him to check under the covers, and he did. He pulled down the blanket and saw two pillows instead.

Just then, two hands came from behind his head and pinched his cheeks.

“Gotcha!” shouted someone.

Logan looked behind him.

It was Hana. She puffed her cheeks and poked them to show him she was all right.

“Okay, kids,” said the Nurse. “I’ll be back. Now that I helped you, Hana, it’s your turn to keep watch here while I make some copies.” She grabbed a stack of documents by her computer and exited the room.

Hana waved goodbye to the Nurse and then felt heavy hands around her neck.

Logan was hugging her, his head buried at the top of her shoulders.

She tapped his hand. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

She smiled. She knew he cared about her and was thankful. She turned around and hugged him back.

Their hug didn’t last long because he pulled away and with a straight face, he said, “ ‘cause I’d be worried if I had to take responsibility for you for life!” He scoffed. “Having you for a friend’s already a nightmare.”

She playfully hit him with a pillow, and a pillow fight ensued. “Who said you’re gonna have to marry me? Even if you were the last person on Earth, I wouldn’t even think of it!”

*

It was the end of the day of school, and the two girls were waiting outside their class for their friends.

“Babysitting? Again?” asked Hailey to Hana when Hana put her phone away after reading a text. “It’s always babysitting from her.”

“Well, I can’t help it,” said Hana. “They’re busy parents.”

“It’s their kids, not yours. Why must you waste your youth to watch someone else’s kids when it was them who wasted their youths to have those kids? They decided to reproduce so fast. They should’ve learned to plan how many kids they can watch and feed, not just pass it onto whoever.”

Someone hugged Hana from the back. It was Logan. “You girls ready?”

Behind him were Seth and Jake.

Hailey made a face and walked to her boyfriend’s side. “No, Hana can’t make it. She gotta babysit.”

“Again?” asked the boys, though, Logan’s and Jake’s had more of a pitch in contrast to the gentle and soft Seth.

Logan stopped hugging Hana and came to her side. “Which bundle this time?”

There were four groups of kids Hana had to watch, so to make things easier, the friends had a system to distinguish the kids by numbering them.

Hana laughed. She always found the system funny. “Yvonne’s.”

Her friends made faces. “Ahh, the four girls.”

The four girls were notorious because this group was the problematic one. They really liked Hana, so they’d do anything to make Hana sleepover, and that meant Hana would have to watch the kids for another day again.

The gang continued to talk as they headed out toward the exit of the school.

“The oldest is fourteen. She could watch her own siblings,” said Hailey. “And you’re only three years older than her, Hana. If your sister trusted you to watch her kids when you were twelve, she can so trust her daughter to do the same.”

“Actually, it was when she just turned twelve,” corrected Logan, proudly smirking. “Just a day after her twelfth birthday.”

Hana looked at him. “A week and a day.” She corrected him, causing his smirk to cease and him to roll his eyes at her. “I don’t mind. It’s just…” exhausting.

They reached the front of the school.

Hana waved goodbye to them and walked away. She heard pacing footsteps behind her, so she looked back.

It was Logan.

“Miss me already?”

Logan snickered. “Didn’t you know we never do?”

She rolled her eyes at his attempt to make her jealous. “That’s what you think.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He quickly gave up.

They looked at one another before saying one last goodbye for the day.

“Don’t work too hard, Virtual Mommy,” he said. It was softer and quieter.

She broke into a smile. “Sure, Virtual Friend.”

He glared at her. “I’m not a virtual friend. I’m a real friend.”

“Thanks, Logan.” It was from the bottom of her heart. “Thanks a lot.” And she walked away.

*

Logan arrived home after spending two hours with his friends after school. He inserted the key to the door but was surprised to have someone opened it from inside.

It was his older brother, Hugo. He told Logan to come inside and to go into the living room where their parents were waiting for them.

Logan found it to be a surprise that everyone was home. His parents were too busy with their jobs. His father was a biologist, so he lived at his lab. His mother’s a traveling blogger, blogging about everything during her travel. Hugo was away for school and work, only visiting whenever he could.

Logan entered the dead-quiet living room with tension in the air.

“Sit,” said his father, Mr. Hart.

Logan obeyed. He eyed his mother and saw her red eyes. He wondered if she had been crying. Maybe his parents decided to get a divorce.

“Logan,” began Mr. Hart. “I’ve always tolerated your young, hormonal attitude with your raging, teenage yearnings—or whatever you kids call it these days—”

“Flirting?” Logan intercepted, quite happily as if he took pride in what he did.

Mr. Hart looked at his youngest son with disgust and answered monotonously, “Yes.”

At this moment, Mrs. Hart started to sniffle quietly to herself.

“But now,” continued Mr. Hart, “I will not—”

A weird sound was heard adjacent from Logan’s side. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but it was loud enough for him to know that he didn’t mishear anything. “What was that? Did we get a cat?”

But the family couldn’t have a cat. Mrs. Hart was allergic to cats.

The same sound was heard again but this time, it was louder and clearer.

It was like a faint sound of some sort. Very gentle. And soft. Like newborn.

Out of the blue, Mrs. Hart broke into a loud cry as she buried her face into her hands.

Logan looked at his family for further instructions but when none was given, he gathered enough courage to search for the source of the sound. He headed to the direction of the sound and came to the guest room. In the center of the room and on the floor was a basket with an infant wrapped with blankets. He gasped, fell to his butt, and crawled with haste on his knees back to the living room.

“A-a baby!” he said, pointing to the hallway.

No one flinched at his words.

“I’m serious!” He was flustered, looking back and forth between both directions with confusion and fear. “Why—whose?” A realization came to his mind, and he stood up and walked to his mom. “Mom… You were…pregnant?”

Mrs. Hart wailed even louder, making Logan confused on what to see that response as.

Mr. Hart turned his head to face Logan. “It’s your child.”

Logan processed his father’s confession. “What? My-my baby?”

*

Hana’s cell phone had been ringing irritably for the past two hours—nonstop. She finally decided to answer her phone. With a sleepy voice, she said into her phone, “Hello?”

“Don’t hello me right now!” It was Logan. He sounded terrified as if he was held at gunpoint. “You’re still sleeping? Wake up, it’s morning!”

Because of his shouting, she pulled her cell away from her ears. She also saw the time, and it was almost three in the morning. Angry that her stupid friend had disturbed her beauty sleep, which she couldn’t get because the kids didn’t fall asleep as planned, she hung up and ignored him. She also put her phone to vibrate mode.

After pulling the covers over her head, her phone vibrated again. After ignoring it many times, she sat up. “What is it?” she hissed through the phone. “I’m tired! We have school tomorrow.”

“You have school, but I have a baby!”

*

“What took you so long?” Logan walked to Hana with angry footsteps. He gave a lifeless Hana an already cooled coffee drink that he had brought while waiting. “I told you to get here within twenty minutes, not forty-five!” He had told her to meet up with him at the subway station in the middle of the night. He led her to where his stuff was.

She saw his luggage and raised a brow. “What’s going on? You mentioned something, but I wasn’t fully awake then.”

“Oh, after seeing this, you will be.” He pulled up something from beside the bench. It was a medium-size, brown basket with blankets stuffed inside it. “Come and be awaken.”

She frowned at his sarcasm and hovered her head over the basket.

There was an infant wrapped warmly inside the basket.

She slowly looked back at him. She pointed back and forth between the baby and him, trying to find out their relationship.

“No need for that,” he said. “I did that too many times before I was kicked out.”

“Kicked out?” she gasped.

He nodded and handed her a letter he had tucked away in his pocket.

“I can read it?”

He nodded.

She took the letter, opened it, and read it out loud. “To Logan. You might not remember me, but I remember you—us. Very clearly. As if what we had in the past happened yesterday. This took me a lot of courage to do, to write, and to confess. As you can see…this child is yours.” She gasped louder this time, covered her mouth, and glared at her friend. “You knocked her up?”

He stood up and covered her mouth.

Since it was in the middle of the night, no one was present with them.

She moved his hand away. “I thought you were a jerk, and I am correct.”

He sighed and crouched down. He ruffled his hair. “It can’t be my kid.”

She pulled him up. “How can you say that? You must take responsibility for your actions!”

He pulled back in anger. “But it’s really not mine!”

They stood still in silence.

After calming down, he said, “Because…I…never did it.”

No one laughed. No one said anything. It was just too much. Too much especially because the honest confession came from Logan, who was getting redder every second.

He continued. “Someone dropped off the baby at our doorstep after a ring-and-run. My brother opened the door, read the letter, and at the same time, my parents were home to attend my dad’s annual convention, so there was this big ruckus about who I had slept with, and it led to me getting kicked out by the people who don’t even come home.”

Hana put the paper away and walked to her friend. “You guys didn’t discuss it? I thought your father is the ‘discussing’ type, and mine’s the ‘over-analyzing’ type. Since when did they switch roles?”

He let out a sarcastic air of laugh. “Oh, they did the discussing while I had to answer their questions. Who is the mother, when and how this happened, and admit that it is my child.” He grabbed his head and hissed again, “But it’s not my child!”

“I know,” Hana said calmly.

He scowled at her. “I think it’s time we put our joking aside. My real baby will be cuter than that one.”

She shook her head. “Not that. I know it’s not your child because I know you. You know my secrets, and I know yours.” She crouched down beside him and hugged him. “You know me, and I know you.”