She covers her eyes when the eerie music starts to play.
Come on. Anyone can predict that a ghost is about to show up.
The door mysteriously creaks open, the girl slowly turns around, and a picture frame with her dead ex crashes to the floor. When she picks it up, his expression changes from smiling to glaring. It’ssoobvious that…
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Kayla yells out when a corpse appears, and the school bell rings to signal the next period.
I quickly hit pause on Achi’s computer before more dead bodies appear on-screen and Kayla passes out. “Achi has office hours next period. She’s going to kill me if she finds out I sneaked in here again.”
While we’re busy covering up evidence, Kayla quizzes me on the whole history of the movie. “True or false.Pagpagwas one of Kathryn’s first film projects. It is also one of the highest grossing Filipino horror films in history.”
This is how Kayla fangirls over things—she gives true-or-false quizzes.
“Could the first sentence be true and the second be false?” I clarify. “Or am I supposed to give one answer for both statements?”
She quizzes me more while I make sure all the evaluation papers are filed neatly in the folder I found them in.
“Later on, Kathryn’s character doesn’t pagpag, so another ghost named Roman ends up haunting her and her family. But the big twist is—it’s Roman’s wife who’s behind the whole thing! She made a deal with the devil so she can bring her dead husband back to life.”
Kayla suddenly yelps when the office window flies open.
“Relax, it’s the wind,” I tell her, and shut it closed. “Maybewe should stick to the romance movies instead of the horror ones.”
“You really don’t find any of that ghost stuff scary?”
I shrug. “It’s all fake.”
“Still. That doesn’t stop your mind from wondering about possibilities.”
“Guess my mind works differently.”
Before Kayla can grill me with more questions, I ask her to make sure the projector is off and the screen is rolled up.
I’m not sure if I can ever tell anyone the real reason why ghosts don’t really scare me. If you’ve been wishing for so long that your dead dad can come back, it kind of cancels out the horror factor. But I know better now. When someone’s gone, they’re gone—no matter how much you wish things were different.
It’s a fact that my family has been trying to tell me about Pa for years.
The walk from the senior high building to the school gate takes about fifteen minutes, which means I have fifteen minutes to rant more about Dr. Derrick before I meet my sister.
“You know I heard from Auntie Baby that Dr. Derrick took a break from dental school? How do we even know he got his license? Based on his record, he doesn’t sound so professional.”
Kayla shakes her head and walks by my side. “Unprofessional.”
“Do you know his mom calls him every day? That’s a huge sign he’s a mama’s boy.”
“Such a mama’s boy.”
“Then all those years he kept visiting the bakery, checking in on Ma… I’m pretty sure he was already plotting onhow to brainwash her into falling for him,” I say. “Sobrang abangers.”
Kayla takes a moment to respond. “Yeah… Such a banger.”
I pause. “You don’t know what abangers means, do you?”
“Of course I do.” She pauses and says, “It’s someone who… bangs a lot.”
“Ew, no.” I quickly try to shake away that mental picture. “Someone who’s abangers is someone who waits for their crush to be single so they can make a move. They’re people who pretend to be your friend, but in reality, they’re just getting close to you because they’re interested in you romantically.”
