Page 13 of Signal No. Us

Allan didn’t answer, because he didn’t have a good one, and Ver, mercifully, uncharacteristically, let it drop, reaching instead for the folder of wedding logistics that had apparently become a permanent fixture in this house, just like the porridge and the rosary beads were.

“Help us with the entourage list,” Ver said. “I need a best man who won’t choke up on the mic.”

“Robby, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Ver agreed. “You, groomsman. Hopefully you look good in a barong.”

“I look like a confused waiter in a barong.”

“We all do,” Ver said cheerfully.

Down in the yard, Robby had set up a length of rope between two coconut trees and was demonstrating something to a cluster of kids from the barangay: knot-tying. Allan realized after a second that it was the kind you’d use to lash down a roof before a storm. A dozen children watched with the rapt attention kids usually reserved for anything that involved rope, danger, or the possibility of being allowed to do it themselves.

“Baging mabagyo, sabi ng lolo ko,” Robby was telling the kids, nodding at a bank of clouds building lazy and gray over the water. “So we have to learn how to do this. Ganito,” he went on, looping the rope slowly with easy, practiced hands. “We don’t need to be big and strong to be able to do this. We just have to learn how to tie the knots properly. It doesn’t matter if we’re not big and strong, we can still survive the storm. We just need to do the right things, be prepared. Be brave.”

Allan, watching from the porch, felt that land somewhere it had no business landing.

“He does this every week,” Ver said, following his gaze. “Storm prep, but for kids. He says if they learn it young, they won’t be as scared once they’re older.” He paused. “You know, his job isn’t easy. He’s seen the houses that collapsed. The people who weren’t warned in time.”

“I didn’t know that,” Allan admitted. He hadn’t let himself know much of anything about Robby’s life for a decade; on principle, it had felt safer that way, cleaner, like leaving a wound untouched instead of risking it scarring wrong.

“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Ver said, not unkindly, and went back to his folder.

Later that afternoon, Jake showed up dragging a folding table, three broken easels, and a box of crayons that had clearly survived several previous school programs.

“Storm-drawing workshop,” he announced, setting up in the shade of the cinema’s crumbling awning. “For the grant. We need ‘community engagement documentation.’ I said, ‘Why don’t we just run a workshop, take some photos, and send them to the municipal hall?’ Efficient, right?”

“Everything you do is technically also a grant deliverable,” Allan said.

“That’s just my life now,” Jake said, unfazed. “Everything’s multi-purpose.”

The kids arrived in a loud, sticky wave, and within twenty minutes Allan found himself on the ground between two six-year-olds, helping one of them draw a house that was, structurally speaking, mostly roof.

“This is our house,” the girl explained solemnly. “The roof flew off during the storm. Then Tatay came back, got it again, and that was that.”

“That was that?” Allan asked.

“That was that,” she said, as if that settled it, and drew a small figure on the roof, arms out, mid-fall, laughing anyway.

Something about the casual, unbothered bravery of it, a whole disaster reduced to a shrug and a drawing of someone laughing on a flying roof, made Allan’s throat go tight in a way he hadn’t expected from an afternoon with crayons.

Robby crouched down beside him a while later, watching the girl add a dog to her drawing.

“This is basically what social workers do during relief ops,” he said quietly. “Is this what your job used to be like?”

“Something like this,” Allan said. “Except with less crayons and more incident reports.”

“Do you miss it?”

Allan considered the question longer than he meant to.

“I miss the part where I actually got to help,” he said finally. “I don’t miss the part where I had to justify on a spreadsheet why a family deserved assistance.”

Robby was quiet for a moment, watching the girl’s crayon move across the paper.

“I’ve been thinking about doing something,” he said. “Like this, but bigger. Documenting how kids understand storms, then using that to teach other barangays. I just need someone who knows how to draw and knows how to talk to kids.”

“Are you recruiting me again?”