[ Jon is nice. She's even pretty sure Jon is safe. He reminds her a little of Philip - the CDF medic who'd stiffly toured them around Dalhay.
She slips into talking about that day, her voice soft and shaky as her fingers curl around the hem of her shirt and the old ache in her chest for lost friends makes her shoulders slump.
Maite could have made it. But the tiles had been slippery. ]
We were stuck at school [ she remembers how the teachers had herded them all in the classrooms on the second floor, ] it was raining. Seasonal monsoons.
[ There's a hitch in her voice just then: ] I always liked it when it rained because that meant I could wear sweaters.
[ It's an echo in her ears and at the fringes of her vision: the flashes of lightning, the sound of thunder like a gunshot. She'd been sitting by the window overlooking the field. The school head groundskeeper - Manong Bernie had wandered over by the benches with one of those small nets he used to take fish out from the prestinely maintained freshwater aquariums. ]
They told us that the second graders' classrooms were flooded. They were lower than any other part of the school, built close to the gates.
[ She shuts her eyes. ] I don't know why no one thought to wonder why the fish were all fleeing for higher ground.
no subject
She slips into talking about that day, her voice soft and shaky as her fingers curl around the hem of her shirt and the old ache in her chest for lost friends makes her shoulders slump.
Maite could have made it. But the tiles had been slippery. ]
We were stuck at school [ she remembers how the teachers had herded them all in the classrooms on the second floor, ] it was raining. Seasonal monsoons.
[ There's a hitch in her voice just then: ] I always liked it when it rained because that meant I could wear sweaters.
[ It's an echo in her ears and at the fringes of her vision: the flashes of lightning, the sound of thunder like a gunshot. She'd been sitting by the window overlooking the field. The school head groundskeeper - Manong Bernie had wandered over by the benches with one of those small nets he used to take fish out from the prestinely maintained freshwater aquariums. ]
They told us that the second graders' classrooms were flooded. They were lower than any other part of the school, built close to the gates.
[ She shuts her eyes. ] I don't know why no one thought to wonder why the fish were all fleeing for higher ground.