Page 18 of Signal No. Us

It wasn’t a fix, Allan knew better than to expect a decade to dissolve over one conversation, however honest. But it was, for the first time since he’d fallen through that bathroom door four days ago, a real beginning instead of a rerun.

The library, before all of that, had also been the good kind of secret.

Back corner, third shelf from the wall, close enough to the outlet that they could get away with a contraband DVD player balanced on a plastic chair. Robby had smuggled the disc in his gym bag like it was evidence. Got 2 Believe. Pirated, scratched, freezing every eleven minutes exactly.

“Don’t tell your mom,” Robby had whispered, sixteen and delighted with himself. “She’ll make me watch a documentary instead.”

They’d split one pair of earphones, pausing at every footstep in the hall like it was a police raid. On the tiny screen, Claudine and Rico fell in love in soft focus. In the corner, two boys laughed at the same lines and very carefully didn’t discuss why their shoulders staying pressed together felt like the more interesting movie.

Allan had spent that whole afternoon quietly torturing himself, cataloging every inch of space between his shoulder and Robby’s like it was evidence in a case he never planned to file. He wanted, badly, to ask what any of it meant, if it meant anything, if Robby’s pulse was doing the same humiliating thing his own was. He never asked. Neither of them ever said the word crush out loud, not once, not that whole year, and Allan had told himself that not naming a thing was the same as being safe from it.

Allan had written that whole afternoon into his sketchbook that night. It was, he’d realize a decade too late, the first page in a very long pattern.

Cora, predictably, knew something had shifted the second he walked back into the house.

“Where’s Robby?” she asked, not looking up from the seedlings she was repotting on the porch, which was her version of casual.

“How did you even know⁠—”

“The whole barangay knows,” she said, at ease, patting soil around a tomato seedling with the same precision she’d once used to grade essay exams. “I have one thing to say, and listen carefully, because I’m only saying it once.” She finally looked up. “You and Robby, only do it because you want to, not because he’s here, not because you’re used to him, not because you liked him then. And yes, I knew, even then.”

“Ma.”

“That’s all I’ll say,” she cut him off, going back to her seedlings. “Now, help me here. This pot’s heavy.”

Allan knelt beside her on the porch, hands in the dirt, and thought, not for the first time since coming home, that his mother had a talent for saying the exact right thing and then immediately pretending she hadn’t said anything at all.

CHAPTER 8

Robby’s house sat at the far edge of the barangay, past the chapel, close enough to the shoreline that Allan could hear the surf from the gate.

“I didn’t even know where you lived,” Allan admitted, following him up a short concrete path lined with potted calamansi trees. “Until literally today. Ten years, and I didn’t even have this basic information.”

“You never asked,” Robby said, though there was no accusation in it.

“You could have volunteered it.”

“You’re here now.”

The house was small and well-kept, its galvanized roof patched in three different shades of gray that told their own quiet history of storms survived. A woman’s photograph sat on a shelf near the door, flowers fresh in a small glass beside it, the kind of upkeep that meant someone visited that shelf every single day without fail.

“My Nanay,” Robby said, following Allan’s gaze. “She died five years ago. A storm. A tree fell and hit the house while she was sleeping. I was working in another town at the time, two hours away. I didn’t make it in time.”

“Robby, I’m so sorry, I didn’t⁠—”

“I know,” Robby said, before Allan could spiral into apology. “I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me either. I’m telling you because I want you to know why this is my job.”

He sat on the porch step, and after a beat, Allan sat beside him, close enough that their knees touched.

“When I was a kid,” Robby went on, “some kind of disaster volunteer group passed through here before it was even called DRRM, just a warning, just the radio. No map. No plan for who leaves, who stays. We ran that night, Nanay, Tatay, me, in the dark, with no idea where was safe. We were lucky we made it. A lot of people didn’t.” He looked out at the sea, calm now, undisturbed, giving no hint of what it could become. “Then, years later, Nanay. Even after we’d learned, even with a better warning system, even with everything, a storm still took her. Because not everything can be stopped by a plan. Sometimes it’s just the wrong time, the wrong place.”

“You built your whole career around not letting that happen to anyone else.”

“I tried,” Robby said. “I can’t say I’m always successful. There are still houses that get destroyed, people I don’t reach in time. But it’s better than when there was no plan at all.”

“It’s not just me, though,” Robby added, like he could hear the question before Allan asked it. “The committee, the captain, the engineer, the tanods. I just happen to be the one who shows up first and stays till the report’s done.”

“And your dad?”