After my sister graduated from high school, she and I spent the whole of April in the province, like we had always done during summer break.

I’d been helping Grandma in her ice candy and halo-halo business while Sis had always been in her room, probably finishing the pile of books she had brought with her. Last summer she was busy reviewing for the college entrance exams, so I guess she was making up for it.

It wasn’t that I was eavesdropping or anything, but I just noticed that she was always talking on her phone (our parents bought her a new one as a graduation gift) whenever I passed by her room, or during bedtime when all was quiet except for hers.

She must’ve been talking to her friends, I thought as I tried to sleep. It gets dark easily in the province because people here are accustomed to sleep early. It was too quiet, unlike in the city where I could hear the occasional yells of night vendors selling balut (fertilized duck egg), neighbors belting out songs in videoke (karaoke), cars and tricycles passing by, and dogs barking.

I find my sister lucky for getting to spend time talking to whoever she wanted to. While here I was, missing Yana terribly.

I managed to message Yana a few times before this, and the last thing I got from her was that her family was going to the province as well. She previously mentioned that she might not be able to use her phone for a while because of the town’s poor cell signal.

And so here I was, wondering when she would message me again.

We went back to the city before May ends to spend the rest of the break preparing for school. For the first time, I didn’t dread the summer coming to an end; in fact, I was quite excited for June.

I woke up early today because it was Yana’s birthday. I wanted to greet her early—well, actually I thought of waiting until midnight (last night) to greet her but I didn’t want to sound too eager so I decided to do it in the morning instead. I didn’t expect it would take me almost half an hour to make a message, and sending it to her would make me nervous.

When she replied, I asked how her day was and then she told me she had just posted photos on her social media. There was this website that was getting popular in school and my classmates were always talking about it before summer. I heard you could “find friends”, “show your interests”, and “share photos” with your friends. The mere idea of getting involved in that kind of activity had never appealed to me, considering that I didn’t really have a lot of friends to begin with. So I refused to create an account.

Up until now.

That afternoon, I finally brought myself to create an account on the privacy-invading platform, curious about the pictures Yana had posted. She’s my friend, of course I’d be interested to see how her day went, I reasoned out, as I typed her name on the search bar. I added her as a ‘friend’ (which was ridiculous because she already is my friend), which she accepted in an instant. It didn’t take long for me to find the recent post she made.

I could see that she had a simple celebration at home. I read in the caption that it was her friends who prepared the surprise for her, with the help of her family to keep it a secret. There were pictures of Yana with her mom and her brothers who resemble her a lot.

I looked at the photos with the said friends, who were probably from her old school as I couldn’t recognize any of them.

I smiled just by seeing her smile, and she absolutely looked pretty in her white dress, although a bit different with make-up on. Personally, I thought she could do without it. She was already pretty on her own.

I was quickly scanning the photos, only pausing to look at the ones with Yana, when I came across this photo of her with a guy, obviously looking ecstatic beside her.

He just looked like an average friend but my curiosity got the best of me so I started to check the comments. And to my dismay, they were full of hearts!

Their friends seemed to be enthusiastic about it that they kept on commenting on the photo. I browsed the rest of the photos but nothing stood out as much as that one with the guy.

I looked at it again, longer this time, and it gave me the feeling that I’d already seen him before, I just couldn’t remember it.

Ah, but it didn’t matter at all, for all I cared about was Yana. What I couldn’t place, though, was this strange feeling that started to bother me.

Even though I’ve always loved seeing her smile, the thought that it was probably because of that guy had given me this unexplainable weight deep in my chest.