He needed to know. He needed to understand. He needed to reassure himself. That's because lately he sensed something was up among the three of them. He felt and knew there was something else going on, something that only happened when Remma came. Something unintelligible. Something he had yet to find out.

He understood that the three of them were just trying to cope up from the long time they had lost, and he knew they were just enjoying the time they had now. And whatever came in between, were just manifestations of their happiness of being together. But there was also something else that's unfolding along with it in the shadows. Though he forced himself to dismiss all his doubts and suspicion, his mind was dictating him, urging him to discover what his heart and soul needed to know and understand.



29th of May, the barrio fiesta. He was not supposed to go out of their house. He was supposed to be helping his family in preparing foods and the table for their visitors from other towns, relatives and friends alike, who would be flooding their small house by noon time, after the 10 o'clock mass.

He was supposed to be with his two cousins whom he hadn't seen since his second year in grade school. But when Donald went to him to borrow his boat, saying Remma insisted on going out to sea for some rowing for the third time this week, he offered to come along. Donald was vaguely reluctant, but Leandro felt it.

Remma was waiting down at the foot of the gradually elevated road near the shore and not faraway from where the boat was docked. They were descending halfway down the road when he remembered the oars. He forgot to bring it with them partly because he was in a hurry to go along with Donald, and partly because his mind was pre-occupied by a thought he couldn't clearly comprehend.



Remma was standing at the left shoulder of the gravel road, the side that ran along the shore. She was facing the row of boats anchored at the shoreline, idly watching the waves that were wildly rushing in for the high tide, the white crests colliding and splashing against each other and against the dark sand of the shore.

When Donald arrived and stood next to her, he said, "He's coming with us."

Remma looked away from him to her right, toward the far end of the road. She just stood there, occasionally brushing her hair that the strong wind had swept wildly over her face.

When he was certain that Remma wasn't talking, he asked, "What's going on, Rem?"

Silence.

"Rem---"

"There's something I need to tell you," Remma said after a while, loud enough to resist the blowing of the wind.

"Alright."

Remma turned her head and looked at him. "Lean wrote me a letter last January," she said with a blank expression.

"I know."

"He said he loves me," Remma continued.

"It's true," Donald looked away and darted his eyes to the rushing waves.

Remma looked ahead past the mangrove forest to the distant mountains beyond the sea. "Why didn't you write me?"

Donald didn't answer because, he realized, he didn't know the answer at all.

"It was your letter I so long to read. I kept sending you letters, but you stopped responding," her voice now sounded hurt and faltering.

Donald slowly looked at her. He looked down at the ground beneath his feet and then at the waves. His heart was pounding hard not because of something else but because of fear, his fear of something about to happen or come that he couldn't foresee. He could hear Remma's emotional turmoil, but not his own.

"Part of the reasons why I wanted to come back was to see you again," she continued. A pause. She was fighting over her own emotions, too. After a while she glanced at him, and stayed. "I love you, Don."

Flabbergasted, it took a while for him to comprehend. Donald shook his head as he closed his eyes. "No."

"I knew it since we were still in grade school."

Donald shook his head again, and then looked at her. "Oh, Remma, please. I've already told you how much he dreamed of this day to come. I don't want to hurt him."

"Hurt him?" she asked in disbelief, her voice filled with pain and anger. "What about me?"

"I can't betray him, Rem," he pressed, his voice heavy and harder to come out. "He loves you, so much."

Remma's emotion exploded. "But I don't love him! All I want to know is if you feel the same way to me. Make me feel what you really feel inside."

Remma moved closer to him and held him in the face with her both hands. "Look at me, Don," she said in a tender, passionate tone. "I love you."



Holding the oars with both of his hands, Leandro was walking round the bend when he saw Remma and Donald in the distance facing each other. He was about to continue walking when he saw Remma kissed his friend. His chest suddenly tightened, his face redden, his anger soared while his heart shattered and drowned.

When their lips parted, he swore Donald must have said something that caused Remma to step back, quivering as she walked away from him, sobbing and crying like the world had fallen and collapsed around her, and then dashed hysterically toward the sea and into a boat he didn't recognized. Fear crept swiftly all over him, and instinct told him to ran after her and save her from the lurking danger, waiting to devour the broken woman. The only woman he loved.

Donald frantically called out for her and ran after her, but fear and confusion crippled his soul and slowed his body. Leaving the oars behind, Leandro was running faster than he could muster and jumped into the air and landed on the water. Donald was shouting and telling her to come back and stop what she was doing, but she had already boarded the boat, and rowed it furiously and wildly toward the open sea. As panic and fear wrapped around him, Donald dashed along the shore looking for a boat with an oar. The waves were bigger than those in the days before, and she was a woman not born to row a boat.

"WHAT"S GOING ON?" Leandro screamed with fear and confusion, demanding answers from his friend.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Donald unfocused, shouted back, as he continued looking for an oar from the other docked outrigger boats. "THE OAR. WHERE ARE THE OARS? YOU GOT THEM? HURRY!"

Leandro realized he had thrown it away. Focused and determined to go after her, he helped his friend looking for an oar from the other boats. When he found one he quickly jumped into a boat and maneuvered it as fast as he could toward the open sea and after her.

Donald was running after him, the seawater loudly and wildly shooting everywhere with his every thump. "HEY, WAIT UP! WAIT UP! WAAAIT!"



She was fifteen or twenty meters away from Leandro, her boat arcing up and down the waves. When her shoulders and arms started to get numb, she stopped rowing and instead sat there crying loud. She heard Leandro calling out her name, urging her to come back. She stood and turned around to face him.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" she screamed, her voice faltered and her throat began to sore. The boat swayed furiously under her weight and, when a series of bigger waves slapped the left side frame of the boat, she lost her balance. Her left foot caught the fishing nets lying on the boat floor, and trailed her as she plunged into the water.

Leandro's eyes opened wide in horror.



That night, when the plaza was packed with anticipating audience and screaming fans, when Cesar Montano climbed up the stage and caused so much excitement and pandemonium, when people where pushing forward and each other, the three of them where stuck in the four white walls of the community hospital in the nearby town.

Inside, Remma was stable but asleep. A doctor was there as well as her parents. Outside, under the big, old mango tree, the two of them faced each other in silence. Leandro was leaning against the tree trunk, while Donald was leaning against the concrete perimeter fence of the hospital. Leandro's mind was spinning like a tropical storm, while Donald's was drifted somewhere else, in a place where he felt like crawling down a dark pit into a sea of red, fiery lava. But the volcano inside him was threatening to spit him out with all its might.

"You owe me an explanation," Leandro broke the eerie silence.

Nothing. Donald just stood there, calculating everything, weighing his every move and words.

"TALK TO ME, DAMN IT!"

In the darkness, Donald looked at him. He couldn't see in his friend's face the anger, but he could feel it in the still air. He looked away.

"She told me about your last letter," he began, but it required his strength to let the words out.

Silence.

"And I told her that it's true, what you've told her."

Silence.

"She said---" he paused. It was so much harder that he thought. Oh, how he'd wished he could just disappear and be somewhere else.

"Tell me," firm and heavy, Leandro's voice was dark and menacing.

"She said she don't love you," Donald close his eyes. He didn't want to talk anymore.

It took a while for the words to settle in. And it took a while for Leandro to speak another word.

"That's not what she said," he said, trapping his mind from such poison.

Donald said nothing.

"Tell me."

"I'm so sorry, Lean."

This caused Leandro's turbulent emotion to break into a perfect storm. "DON'T YOU EVER FEEL SORRY FOR ME! DON'T YOU EVER FEEL SORRY! YOU'RE LYING!"

"I never lied to you."

"Then why she's acting like that? WHY SHE WAS RUNNING AWAY LIKE THAT? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?"

Donald told him, and then hold his breath.

Leandro dashed so fast toward him that he was startled and, before he could evade, Leandro punched him in the face and wrapped his arms around him and knocked him down.

"BUT I DON'T LOVE HER, OKAY! I DON'T LOVE HER! STOP IT!" Donald was screaming at the top of his voice, needing to be heard, needing to be understood, needing his friend to believe him.

But they kept struggling; Leandro kept punching him. But he didn't resist, he didn't fight back. He never wanted to, so he just raised both his arms in total surrender. His friend cursed him with hateful and painful words, but he said nothing back. He swallowed everything Leandro had said to him.

After a while Leandro left with anger still clouding his face, leaving him lying there, feeling the pain crawled all over his body. Physical pain, and something much deeper.




The photograph used in this entry is from Petervanallen's Flickr page. Click here to go to his webpage. Thanks!