July 14, 2011
My Third year of High School… it had started really rough; not exactly how a normal student would do it – I had to help two of my closest friends escape from the clutches of their so-called "parents".
In the past school year, I had a bunch of friends: all classmates, of course. But the ones that I loved the most, I always hung out with. Some of those people stayed, but others just went into a different direction. When there were just about 6 of us - or, 8, if you'd count the 2 boys that tagged along when they could – we decided to name our little group. We called ourselves the ""Cliquerz". Namely, we were: Dianne, Eunice, Trisha, Shane, Sheri Anne and Mary Anne. The two boys: Ace and Vincent… or, whom we call Rosario, which was his last name. We all just enjoyed being together. We sometimes went to malls, went to snack bars, or got 'fish ball', 'turon', 'okoy', or 'siomai' together; we usually did these in the afternoon, after our dismissal time. And during our hang-out sessions, we would tell each other about how our lives were, our personal struggles, love life (if any) – to summarize, just about anything. But that was during our 2nd year of High School.
All of that changed over the summer. We had lost contact with each other. I knew we all sensed that we were all just 'slowly drifting apart'. Yet, when school came, we still met up. Same time, almost-always the same plays. We were inconsistent, but I was happy with how we were.
Everything was fine, until, one afternoon, when we were just sitting around, eating merienda, Sheri Anne and Mary Anne, the twins, mentioned to us that they were getting beat up by their parents. It was a while before we actually even talked about what to do about it. At first, it was a bit fine. Their parents weren't too hard on them, I thought. Then there came the scars. On their heads, the back of their necks, little hidden bruises. That alarmed me. I wanted to help them get out of that hellhole. Even if I had to drag them out of there, sue their parents and send them to jail. And, to think that their parents would hit them for such petty reasons like one of them having a boyfriend, one of them texting a boy, or, failing in a quiz, going out without a chaperone.
Just when I was thinking it couldn't get any worse, the twins unveiled to us one of their most well kept secrets. Their 'parents' actually adopted them from their 'real' parents. And apparently, even their 'real' parents knew that the adoptive parents were abusing the twins. Well, even though they did know, they couldn't do anything, because the twins' adoptive parents had power over their real parents; they were much richer and had so many connections to the police and other people in the government.
And despite knowing all that, us "Cliquerz", as their closest friends, aided them in their escape from their home that they themselves had called prison. Well, not just us, we had Mary Anne's boyfriend to help us as well. He was older, by that I mean way, way older, had a job, and had a mother that was a lawyer - if I remember correctly- that specialized in child abuse cases such as this. We called him "Kuya Nico". Also there to help was Sheri Anne's almost-boyfriend-that-we-all-didn't-like, nicknamed Whammy. I can't remember his real name. Kuya Nico devised a plan. We would, one school day afternoon, sneak the twins out of school and into a taxi going to his house. Whammy and Eunice would accompany the twins from the taxi to Kuya Nico's house, make sure they were transported safely, and me, my responsibility was to bring the bag of clothes the twins gave me the day before and bring it on that day, and the others, well, they had to lie to anyone that asked them if they knew where the twins were or if they'd seen them. Even to our teachers.
Before we knew it, that day had come. Everything had run smoothly. No one was suspicious of us at all. The guards at the school's gate didn't suspect a thing. Our teachers thought they were just absent, and didn't speculate as to why they weren't there. We acted all normal. We all belonged to different sections at that time, so it was no problem keeping it a secret. Only we knew.
No one was expecting what would happen when night fell. Every single one of us was receiving calls from numbers we didn't know and most of us didn't answer. I did. The one calling was Ate Lily, the twins' sister, or, more like the real daughter of their adoptive parents. She asked me so many questions: if I was with them, if I knew where they could possibly be, who I last saw them with, if I knew the addresses of my other friends, if maybe they were at my house. Their adoptive mother even spoke to me for a bit. Angrily asking almost the same things. Like she already knew I was part of what their 'daughters' were doing. After receiving that call, I immediately called Trisha, one of the group's members, as well. We were both so nervous the whole time and aching to know if the twins were fine at Kuya Nico's place, chatting about that one thing. Later that night, my parents woke me. They were trying to see who were outside our house; thinking they were robbers. They described the scene. There was a small group of people; all of them were men. Some were masculine, according to Dad, that's why he suspected them as robbers. I found out a few days later that those were policemen, with the twins' father, on our doorstep. Good thing my parents ignored them and they went away. My parents didn't know about my story.
When it was morning, I woke up, went to school. It was possible that the twins had already been caught, but still, no texts, no calls, and no updates on how they were. I just anticipated that they were fine. It was all I could really do. In the middle of one of my classes, my PE class, our school's Guidance Counselor suddenly called me; told me to go to her office because she needed to ask me a few questions. There started the longest walk ever… I was thinking about so many things at the same time. Are they going to suspend me once they find out I was part of the event? Will I get kicked out of school? Will this be on my permanent record? Are the twins' parents here? Are they going to talk to us? What should I say? Should I lie? These were just some of the questions that were floating around my head. Again, this nervous feeling attacks me. And I got a bit fidgety. I couldn't stand still.
When I got to the office, Ms. Garcia – that's the name of our Guidance Counselor –told me to sit down in the small room straight to the left. When I opened the door, I found my friends sitting there. I had interrupted their discussion that was probably about the twins. They greeted me quite solemnly, or greeted me without feeling. All of their faces were just blank. Or rather, their eyes were twinkling of worry and nervousness. I sat down and chatted with them. I tried my best not to cry, I didn't know why I was about to, but I fought the feeling. A little later, came Ms. Garcia.
She told us that the twins' parents had called the school, said their daughters were missing and had mentioned all our names to them, so that the school could maybe get answers out of us. Ms. Garcia had also mentioned to us that the twins' parents wanted to talk to us directly, but the school did not allow that because the parents might hurt us or threaten us in some way. She told us about not to get any close to them, because they might put us in danger. Don't say yes if they ask you if they can bring you someplace else rather than school or at home, or somewhere without our parents; they might abuse us, as well. After half an hour of Ms. Garcia's explaining and sort of story telling, she started asking us questions. Little by little, we told her what we knew. It took a while before we did. We had to stare at each other for a while and make facial expressions to one another to signal that it was time to tell the truth. We told her everything we knew, even the part that they were adopted, that they got hurt when they did wrong, that they were somewhere in Quezon City.
In the afternoon of that same day, the twins finally contacted us. They got caught, and only hours after our talk with the Guidance Counselor. Kuya Nico and Whammy were arrested, but set free later that evening. The twins were sent to another school, a school for Iglesia de Kristos, which is their family's religion.
At present, the twins are still my friends, but the Cliquerz aren't that close anymore. We do get to chat with each other on Facebook sometimes, or text each other. But after that event, our friendships just got left in the past. It was happy and fun at the time, but now, we're all just different. We've started to lead our lives apart. Making way for new friends, and new adventures. We'll always remember those days. Whenever I think about my 3rd year of High School, I'll be sure to remember my first quarter, the time I felt like a criminal.
THE END. Thanks for reading.