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the memory drug

Sometimes it was a smile. Sometimes it was a reckless hand on her arm,

trapping her like a promise. He wore a guarded look on his face but on rare

occasions, his eyebrows would soften or his shoulders would pillow into a

vulnerability that no one else but her saw. It was the little things that got to her, that

made her look at the reticent transfer student longer than she should.

They came one after the other on the class list, and when their teachers would

be uninspired to divide them otherwise, theyd find themselves bunched

alphabetically in the same group. Noli Me Tangere for Filipino class. Ballroom

dancing for PE. He had a habit of waiting for everyone else to leave before rousing

himself. On two separate occasions, when practices ended at 8:30, late enough for

their small town, he rode the same tricycle and saw her home.

But she had college to think about, and the firm obligations eldest children

made to their parents.

She thought to herself, I hope that I wont fall in love with you.

They entered the same university, one of the biggest in the country. They were

two of three students from their regional high school, though she discovered later

that he wasnt on scholarship as she and Mary Juliet were. They huddled together

without meaning to, strangers to this loud and unforgiving city.

Her blockmates smelled it on her, the rice fields and the sun-toasted afternoons,

naivet like a perfume. They were not deliberately cruel, but they had branded her

different and shied away. She was younger and she felt younger. They talked of

British comedies not on cable TV and doughnut shops she had not heard of. She

faked her familiarity of things that even the professors assumed everyone knew,

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nodding in class and Googling them later in embarrassment. She hid away stories of

tending her grandmothers store while growing up, wanting someday to operate a

cash register. She doubted if some of her blockmates even had sari-sari stores in their

gated villages.

Her dialect had a word for people like her, a word she and her friends would

use in self-deprecating humor and good-natured teasing. Her cheeks now burned to

think of that word again.

Mary Juliet dropped out by the second term, unable to keep up with boarding

house rent and class projects and miscellaneous fees. She would have followed, too,

but for two things: an aunts extra room just five train stops from her university, and

the tall, quiet boy who treated her milk tea until she could order like the best of them.

When he spoke to her, he sounded like the home she missed. They found two

orgs to join. They left the student council because they didnt want to pick a political

party. They stayed longer with the behavioral science kids though neither of them

were majors and had no clue to what they were supposed to be doing. They staked

their claim on a bench that was occupied by an older group of engineering students

who didnt mind sharing. Together they practiced their new tongues and saved their

dialect for the impromptu get-togethers with old classmates from high school. They

did not need it. In their quiet glances and secret smiles, they spoke a language of theirown.

How much she wanted to lean her head against his shoulder, like the heroines

did in the movies, how much she wanted to let his hand tighten around her waist.

But this friendship between them was tenuous at best, web-thin and silverhair, and if

she messed this up, she might as well destroy the only safe harbor she knew in this

city.

Instead they could be patient. This was their story to tell.

She thought to herself, I hope that I wont fall in love with you.

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Her orgmates name was Mara. Mara with the quick smile and the loud laugh,

who always wondered about him. In her sophomore year, she joined an outreach

group and found new friends there. She had not told him about joining, and did she

just imagine the look of disappointment on his face?

But he volunteered when she asked him to, and held the little kids hands, and

offered to drive the org members to the inner city streets in his new second-hand car.

He came whenever she stretched out her hand, no questions asked.

Mara wanted to know why he didnt just join them.

She said she didnt know.

Mara wanted to know if he liked her.

She said she didnt know.

Mara wanted to know if she liked him.

She said she didnt (know).

He was there for her nine days out of ten, and on the tenth, she saw him

picking Mara up from the org room.

She watched him take Maras bag. His free hand fell to one side. Seconds later,

she watched Mara slip her hand in his.

He did not pull away.

There was a lump in her throat as she thought to herself, I hope that I wont fallin love with you.

Someone told her this was reckless behavior, but she didnt listen. Mara didnt

seem to mind that she hung around with them. Sometimes it was even Mara who

apologized when she intruded on a quiet moment between the two old friends.

Everyonefrom the orgs executive committee to the student activities VP to

the kids they visitedall thought Mara had found a good match. They cooed in

delight when he would pick Mara up, calling them happy and inseparable and all

these simple words that pierced and stung what was once the most resolute of hearts.

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Things didnt change between them, not at first. She thought it was going to be

easy to bury her growing uncertainties under the polish of friendship. He asked her to

accompany him while he waited for Maras last class to end. He sought her out when

he found out Mara expected a present to mark their first month together. But as the

days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, she began to realize that they

were drifting apart. Soon he stopped asking for her help. He stopped bringing her

along when he visited Mara at home. When he and Mara went off by themselves,

she wore her martyrdom like a battle scar. She wished that she had never left home.

She began to call home more often. What was it about his loss at her side that

made her more homesick now than she had been as a freshman? She felt weightless,

needing a tether to make sure that grades and duty and decency and all the things

that used to matter still did.

She thought he was hers. She thought that they had claimed each other in a

mutual way that didnt need speaking, a rite of teenage passage that called on

proximity and habit and familiarity. And love, despite her best intentions. She

thought that the advent of Mara was nothing to be afraid of, a mere sub-plot in a

story that had their ending all mapped out. She wondered if he would still come to

her if she just stretched out her hand, if she asked for a do-over.

But they were still friends, old friends, the kind of friends who could askquestions and not be offended when answered with lies. He caught up with her at the

org bench. They sat shoulder to shoulder.

He wanted to talk. His hand was on her arm.

(People will talk.)

He wanted to talk about Mara.

(People will talk.)

He wanted to talk about them.

(Not here. People will talk.)

But she could feel her resolve weakening.

She followed him to the gravel parking lot. She tried not to think of their org

mates. Of Mara. When their lips met, she finally remembered, I hope that I wont

fall in love with you, but it was already five years too late.

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Some things were easy to forget. She forgot her blockmates last names; she

forgot the org mates who deliberately ignored her when she passed by the bench. She

forgot the names of the kids they would visit at the shelters.

She remembered the wrong things.

She remembered touching the sharp creases between his brows.

She remembered how different her name sounded when he said it.

She remembered how pale Mara looked weeks after the break-up.

She remembered how betrayed he looked when she said they were wrong.

She remembered the night, how humid it was, what his reply had been.

One of these things mattered.

She signed up for a networking gig two months shy of her college graduation.

Mary Juliet looked different now, all poised and city-slick. She did not smell of rice

fields. Mary Juliet was a woman on a mission.It seemed that everyone was trying it now, if Mary Juliet was to be believed.

She could be a Brand Builder, a trussed-up name for a job she had wanted since her

sari-sari days, but had abandoned for dreams and opportunities the university said

was hers to take. Mary Juliet said it was the best route for a fresh grad, a way to earn

money on the side while she transitioned from student to employee.

She wanted to know what the product was.

Mary Juliet took out a bottle of herbal supplements.

She wanted to know what it did.

Mary Juliet took out a pamphlet.

She wanted to know if it was safe to take.

Mary Juliet said she didnt have to be just a Brand Builder. If she signed up

now, she could enter the programs third batch and be a Lifestyle Builder. She could

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She was in another airport in another city, her bottles neatly tucked into her

check-in luggage. She was coming home or leaving. With this life on the road, it had

grown difficult for her to distinguish one from the other.

Not three steps from her crouched a man inspecting a broken luggage wheel. A

part of her recognized his back before he even turned to face her. Rice fields and

afternoons. Milk tea and train stations. Heartbreaks and what came after.

The word was out of her mouth before she could restrain it. Hello.

His eyebrows were furrowed. They were furrowed the very first morning that

their eyes had met across a small classroom. It was hot and the sun was in his face.

You remind me of someone, he said now. A girl I once knew.

What could this moment have been like, if she had chosen differently? Would

she wear the blank look he was wearing now? Would her heart tug and strain for

what might have been? Would it have been easier to remove every trace of him, a life

scrubbed clean, and start anew?

She shook her head. I just have that kind of face.

He straightened up and fell into step beside her. Something tells me youre on

your way home.

Love was in the letting go, and maybe some day, she would tell him the whole

story.

The Memory Drugis a short story from author Chris Mariano. To get more updates, visit her blog at

ficsation.blogspot.com or follow her on www.facebook.com/ChrisMarianoAuthorPage.

Chris Mariano 2014.