Page 16 of Signal No. Us

CHAPTER 7

The San Andres public library had not, as far as Allan could tell, acquired a single new book since 2009. The same water-stained copies of Noli Me Tangere lined the same warped shelves. The same ceiling fan turned at the same funereal pace. Even the smell was the same: old paper, chalk dust, and the same must of a building that flooded a little every rainy season and had simply learned to live with it.

Robby was already there when Allan arrived, sitting at the same corner table they used to claim as teenagers, back when the library had been less about books and more about being the one place in town where nobody’s mother could walk in unannounced.

He stood when he saw Allan, which felt, somehow, more nerve-wracking than if he’d stayed seated.

“Hi,” Robby said.

“Hi,” Allan said back, and sat down across from him before either of them could decide this was a terrible idea and leave.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. The fan turned. In some corner of the stacks, a librarian who had also not changed since 2009 coughed once and went back to ignoring them, same as always.

“I rehearsed this in my head all night,” Robby admitted finally, laughing a little, humorless. “And then I forgot everything.”

“Starting with ‘sorry’ usually works,” Allan said, and it came out gentler than he meant it to, an offering rather than an attack.

Robby nodded, and his shoulders dropped, like he’d been given permission to stop performing composure.

“Sorry,” he said. “I mean it. Not just to get this over with, not just to end the conversation. You know, that night, right? In the locker room.”

“I know,” Allan said quietly. He’d never once, in ten years, forgotten it.

“You had a notebook back then,” Robby said. “Your sketchbook. It fell out of your bag at the lockers while we were changing after practice.” He stopped, jaw working. “You’d written something about me. A drawing too. Miggy saw it and read it out loud. In front of the whole team.”

Ten years ago.

The locker room after Friday practice smelled like every locker room in every movie about boys who peaked in high school: rubber, sweat, and Axe body spray applied like a dare. Allan had ducked in only to grab his brother’s forgotten gym bag, in and out, thirty seconds, tops.

His own bag caught on the bench as he turned. The zipper had been broken for a week. He knew that. He still hadn’t fixed it.

The sketchbook hit the tile with a sound too small for what it was about to cost him.

“Oh, what’s this?” Miggy said, already crouching, already too fast for Allan to lunge past three other guys and get there first.

“Miggy, give it back⁠—”

“Relax, ano ba.” Miggy flipped it open with the offhand cruelty of someone who had never once in his life had anything to hide. A page fell open on its own, like the book had chosen the worst possible moment to cooperate: a careful, unmistakable drawing, a boy mid-laugh, varsity jacket slung over one shoulder, and underneath it, in handwriting Allan would spend the next decade wishing he’d never let exist on paper: R. — the way he laughs when he thinks no one’s watching. I don’t know what to do with how much I notice him.

The room didn’t go quiet. It got louder, the particular loudness of boys who’d just found something to be loud about.

“Oh my God,” someone said. “Oh my God, Robby⁠—”

Robby was three lockers down, half into his shirt, and Allan watched—would keep watching, replaying it at 2 a.m. for the next ten years—the exact second Robby’s face processed what was happening. The flicker of something real. Fear, maybe, or recognition, or just seventeen years of not knowing what a varsity captain was allowed to feel in front of his whole team.

And then Robby laughed.

Not loud, not even really cruel. Just enough. Just enough to close the distance between himself and the rest of the room, just enough to make sure nobody looked at him next.

“Read it again,” someone said, delighted, and Miggy did, doing the voice, doing the “notice him” like it was the funniest thing that had ever happened in that building, and Allan stood there in the doorway with his brother’s forgotten gym bag still in his hand, waiting for Robby to do literally anything else, and Robby didn’t.

Allan didn’t remember walking out. He remembered the concrete outside tilting a little, and the exact, humiliating clarity of understanding, all at once, that he’d have to sit next to these people in homeroom on Monday, and the one after that, and the one after that, for an entire year, and that the boy he’d written that page about had just decided, in under four seconds, exactly where Allan ranked against being laughed at.

He didn’t go back for the sketchbook. Someone left it on the bleachers that night, rain-damaged, half its pages fused together. He threw the whole thing out without opening it again.

Three days after graduation, he was on a bus to Manila.

Back at the library table, Robby’s voice had gone rough in a way Allan had never once heard from him, not even now, not even close.