SOMEBODY TO LOVE

By M.G. Lockheart

PROLOGUE

May 29, 2009

Dylan

The day had been anything but good. Everything felt like a blur for Dylan Mendoza. His life was turned upside down when his family broke the news that they would be leaving their small town in Naga City, Albay after his father’s business folded due to the 2008 recession that almost bankrupted them. He wanted to stay in Albay because he had been born and raised there. Everyone he had known for his fourteen years were there.

Now, he was in completely new territory—Manila, a place he had never imagined stepping foot into.

Upon arriving after a long bus ride, he didn’t understand what the fuss was about. Everyone in Albay wanted to go to Manila because they said all the opportunities were there, but seeing the street children begging and the people scurrying to get into the long lines for the LRT and MRT left a sour taste in his mouth. This is it? Dylan thought to himself as he and his parents tried and failed to hail a cab on Taft Avenue to get to their new house in Pine Hill. He looked at his parents, Ella and Lucas. Both of them looked frazzled.

Dylan knew his parents were also unfamiliar with Manila. The only time they had ever been there was when they visited friends for a farewell party fifteen years ago in 1994, and his mom had been very pregnant with him at the time.

“Mom, Dad, are you guys okay?” he asked, slumping on the dingy waiting shed benches, feeling his worn-out jeans getting soaked in the rain—the first for an otherwise hot year in the Philippines.

Ella looked at her son, her folding umbrella almost hitting a motorcycle rider as it zoomed by the sidewalk. “We’re fine, sweetie. We’re trying to get a cab, but since it’s rush hour, it’s pretty hard to do so.”

Dylan looked down, letting out a deep, tired breath. He clutched his flip phone in his hands, hoping his friends back home would send him a text or even call him to ask where he was, but he had not heard anything from anyone yet. He flipped it open to check for the nth time—still nothing.

After wrestling with occupied cabs for more than an hour, his parents finally hailed an empty one to take them to their new house in Pine Hill. As the cab driver helped them load their stuff into the trunk, Dylan couldn’t help but feel sad about starting over again.

New school, new classmates, new teachers, new neighbors… new people to please, and a new home to adjust to. Everything he dreaded on the bus ride to Manila was becoming extremely real.

As the car door closed, he and his mother were cramped in the back seat while his father gave instructions to the driver about which road to take. Dylan looked out of the wet car window. Everything in Manila seemed vastly different from Naga. The high-rise buildings, the strings of fast-food chains, and the numerous malls all over the metropolis did not entice him. He wanted to go back to his old life, but it seemed like a far stretch now.

He closed his eyes, willing the sadness away.

“Are you okay, my love?” Ella gently asked.

Dylan slowly opened his eyes and looked at his mom. He shrugged, not knowing how to respond. “I know it was a whirlwind for you when we told you we were moving, but we just…had to. You know the situation we’re in, right?”

Dylan nodded. A situation I never asked for, he wanted to say but didn’t because he knew it would hurt his father to hear that after all that had happened. His father lost his business and most of their family’s money because he trusted someone who betrayed him and ran away with almost all their savings. He wanted to be mad at his father for putting their family in this position, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so.

“I know this will be tough for you. Starting at a new school in your junior year and trying to make new friends, but I know you’ll get through this. You’re a tough cookie.”

You’re a tough cookie. That’s what she always said whenever Dylan was experiencing something he didn’t like. Back in kindergarten, he used to love hearing his mom say that about him, but as he grew into adolescence, he started to detest it.

EJ

On that same Saturday afternoon, Eric James Medina—his friends and family called him EJ—was busy solving a mathematical equation he had been blankly staring at for the last twenty minutes. This was supposed to be easy, so why couldn’t he solve it? If his parents saw him struggling with such a thing, he would never hear the end of it from his father. He could practically recite what his father would say: This is such a simple equation. Why can’t you solve it within a minute? If Elliott were the one solving this, I’m sure he’d do it well under thirty seconds.

He still couldn’t believe that the entire two-month summer break he’d rather spend with his friends had become the summer he had to review for a university entrance examination he’d take a year and a half from now. His friends always teased him whenever he told them he couldn’t hang out because he needed to review for his UPCAT.

That’s like a year and a half from now, EJ. C’mon live a little!  His friends would say. But his parents were adamant that he gets into the same university they attended twenty years ago. Ever since they had children, they had been obsessing over their sons excelling in every academic way.

At first, he loved studying because it made his parents happy whenever they were on stage with EJ during recognition day, but as he grew up, he noticed his parents breathing down his neck on every occasion, always comparing him to his older brother, Elliott, who was now in his final year in medical school. Back then, he used to idolize his brother, but now that he was fourteen, everything had changed. Every time he saw his brother, all he could feel was bitterness because Elliott was always so perfect in their parent’s eyes while EJ was nothing more than a shell of what they wanted him to be.

Elliott had been valedictorian in high school—even in his junior year, he was already in the running for it a year before graduation. EJ, on the other hand, stands fifth in the overall ranking. His parents were adamant he should knock off all other four students and be class valedictorian, but he knew that was impossible. Not with the extracurricular activities they were forcing him to do, like running for senior class president next year.

The mere thought of pulling all-nighters to study and plan campaign materials and platforms was already draining him to the core. Can’t I just be free to be who I am? This is what he always asked himself whenever he faced the mirror. Sometimes he felt like he was living his life the way his parents wanted and not how he wanted to. Granted, he was a minor, but still. A little taste of freedom would be nice.

Giving up on the equation, he closed his notebook and scooted his chair away from his study desk. A deep yawn escaped his lips. This summer had been the most boring one he had ever had. He looked out the window. The streets were wet with the first hint of summer rain that everyone in the city had been praying for after the hot, almost oven-like temperatures everyone had endured during March, April, and May.

Sometimes, I wish I was born to a different family...a different loving family.