The din of the teevee blares in the background as I fumble, noises and colors eating up the silence. I glide a hand around the couch, searching for my phone as arms wrap around me. Two weeks ago, we were almost outed at school and thought the world was going to end.

All details aside, things ended up surprisingly well, and this afterglow of relief bubbles us in, this air of calm undercut by a thought piercing the back of my mind. Our Social Studies project. A sense of uneasy apathy flows as my other hand switches the channel, flipping back on to the news.

More of the same. People blocking roads and raising signs, chanting for a change back to the status quo. Across the crowds and the blurred headlines, violence makes itself known by spreading from mob to mob, crossing streets and lines like a worm gnawing through their heads.

This is the place I live in. This is the place we’ve got. Checking up on how the outside is doing makes me too anxious to even leave. Not checking gives my imagination free license to make me feel even worse. I watch as siblings, parents and friends all live their lives as I force mine on hold, years frozen and stunted between a bedroom and a school.

With a sigh, I switch back to the shows we were streaming. Animations and tropes, in a foreign language screaming.

I bury myself deeper inside her, the only place I ever feel safe.

She reciprocates and runs her hand across my hair, as I relish our privacy in this bubble of warmth my apartment’s become. No one’s gonna bother us and we’re not going anywhere. All instinctive, fuzzy pretense of “us” being platonic left by the door and locked out. A concrete bubble that nothing, nothing but our thoughts, can pierce.

Her mother’s in Makati and won’t be back until evening. Traffic’s been hell recently, especially with all the detours made to avoid all the drama. Rallies. Assemblies. Snippets and reports of it dot our periphery. Always a scroll away on our phones, a channel away on our screens.

If the teevee were off and things went completely silent, the sirens outside would ring out a soft persistent, blanket of noise.

I idle on my phone and open up my profile. The teevee plays to an empty audience, and we let it run. Anything to block out the outdoor noises. Anything to waste time.

A flick of the wrist, my fingers keyed in. An infinite scroll of interests and friends reflecting a self more real online than anything I could ever be off. Cute girls who like cute girls, and other niche interests that most of my offline encounters would scoff at me for ever liking. In the safety of my isolation, a pang of loneliness strikes me. Of otherness, of not fitting in.

Flicked aside, another picture comes into view. A friend kissing his boyfriend in a dark convention room. There’re people behind them, someone’s foot just barely intruding between them and the frame. A million other people, and all the photo shows is them. I showed the photo to Lamía and she giggled.

“God, guess we’ll have to one-up them, huh?”

I smirked, sharing a glance with her that condensed an entire conversation into a look. I raised my eyebrows, the corner of her mouth hitched up. Next convention, we’d find a way to surprise them with something even gayer.

I stand to get a snack, and my mind wanders. An idea, one of many, germinates and takes root as my thoughts turn barren. Conventions, crowds, threats. Paranoia suffocates any hope I have of carrying a full smile back to the sofa, where I’ve brought back blue lemonade and some chips. The outside is terrifying, and nothing can pierce the concrete. Sirens may ring outside, but here we ring a different alarm all our own. A glance at the clock shows that it’s past noon. We’ll have to stop our “date” and work on our project soon.

I check the news for the twentieth time today. Calls for revisionism are still being made, and the furor shows no signs of stopping. We want our native people recognized. A culture all our own, a place to fit in. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten all that and much, much more, becoming a country that can be finally said to be truly independent.

Not an “Insular area”, not an “Unincorporated Territory”, but a country, plain and simple. Calendar days belie the way people stretch moments in time, freezing them in place for as long as they wish. Nothing’s happening and everything will hit when tomorrow arrives, whenever it arrives.

I swipe through the photos of people congealing into masses and wonder if I can recognize any of the faces there. Maybe I’ll see friends or family in the crowds. Being tied up by the police, being a nuisance on the streets.

I’m sympathetic to their pain, but frankly I just don’t get it. I don’t want to get it, getting it runs the risk of being sympathetic.

The outside’s fucked anyway. It wants to barge in but the inside won’t let it. Her voice pierces my daze, trailing with her drawl as she lies down, her head on my lap, looking straight to the ceiling.

“babe.”

“hmm?”

She reaches out her hand, sliding it across my face like a limp fish.

“I’m bored. What do you wanna do?”

I run my hand across her head, fingers stroking her hair. My mind runs blank.

“eeh-, honestly, I’ve got nothing.”

she rolls, pressing her face into my stomach and lets out a groan of listlessness, using me as her pillow before leaning out of the couch and stretching.

“God. Well, nothing’s entertaining right now. We might as well get our assignment over with.”

“The thing’s due tomorrow and it’s past noon. Might as well.”

We booted the computer and got to work. Three questions we have to report on Monday, all of them open-ended, meaning that acing it involves not writing what you think is right, but what the teachers wanted to hear.

Naturally, our first instinct was to look up the answers online.

We picked professional-looking sources to show our work and project fake dedication, tackling the questions with the mindset of an underpaid, sleep-deprived 24 year old.

In light of recent events about the Philippine secession from the States, Would You Kindly answer these questions in the form of an essay.

1. What is/are the cause(s) of the Philippine-American split?

2. What are other historical examples of attempts at Filipino independence?

3. Should the Philippines become an independent nation, or remain a territory of the United States? Why?

Use no less than 10 sentences, double-spaced, Times New Roman.

History. I stand to grab the textbook as she picks out links online. I hate this subject. Ever since textbooks became deregulated, a year that appears in any number of books could have completely different events. Either the great world war happened in 1923 or 1932. Either we are a strategic location, benevolently assimilated into America or not. Either we were a rebellious, tempestuous tribe with witchcraft and rampant homosexuality or we were not.

I like learning things, really, I do. I just hate how elitist and how grand these projections purport to be, rarely compromising, never looking back. I groaned out.

“Oh my God, this is going to be a drag to research.” I typed down the essay, my fingers vomiting out words to ease myself into typing. “Well, at least we already know the general strokes, right?” She leafed through the book, marking page after page with post-its to patchwork into a report custom-made for a grade. “mmhmm!”

#24, Bella Butler #28, Lamía Calambre

Twenty minutes passed as we sorted out an introduction. A brief historical overview of colonialism and invasion, where we rearrange the facts to build up our narrative.

Calls for independence have existed since midway the Philippines’, when Calambre Arellano mutinied from the Viceroyalty of New Spain, claiming autonomy over “The Viceroyalty of The Spanish East Indies”, afterwards being promptly executed with his influence being scrubbed clean, leading to the archipelago being called “La Islas Filipinas”.

My phone rings. I check it and am immediately tempted to procrastinate, letting our time melt away. I hand my phone to her and she keeps it out of reach, understanding without a word.

The most notable incidence of insurgency was the Propaganda Movement of the late nineteenth century, which came to a head when General Emilio Aguinaldo brought things to a boiling point in 1901, causing heavy casualties for both his guerilla army and the American troops sent to capture him, sparking the Philippine Civil War. While the initial calls for reform were admirable, espousing equity and equal ease of access for government services and basic necessities, militant fringe groups splintered from the original movement that spawned in 1880, eventually undermining the movement.

Some sources say Aguinaldo had nothing to do with the Propagandists. Our book says that he was in cahoots, so that’s what gets put in.

Typing in the next passage, Lamía pierces through the hazed silence.

“Hey, isn’t it weird that our history books say different things? Like, my cousins in the US say that over there, history is just one, stable thing.”

“Huh. Must be easier for them, then.” I typed in the next sentence, practically copying it from the book wholesale.

The Philippines has always yearned to be autonomous and self-governing. This can be seen from the very beginning of its days under American governance, where President William McKinley opted for a more lenient method of “Benevolent Assimilation” to help adapt the natives into American life, turning us into a Commonwealth, as opposed to a pure colony.