The form arrived before the sun did, and it came with opinions.
I woke at five-forty to find a thick cream envelope balanced on my chest.
Nobody had knocked.
The door was locked, the window was latched, and Kalasag lay on the pillow beside my head with the smug, sleepy face of a cat who had personally supervised the delivery.
The envelope’s flap was sealed with a dab of green wax.
A neat crest sat in the lower corner, and under it, in tiny letters, two initials.
D.M.
“Sol,” I whispered.
“Sol, I have homework.”
“Mm. Not allowed. Too early.” Her blanket rose and fell in the dark.
“File a complaint with the aircon.”
I slid a thumbnail under the wax.
The seal popped with a small, polite click, and out slid a stack of paper so thick that it should not have fit inside the envelope.
I counted pages by feel.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, and at twenty-six my hands stopped and I simply held the pile on my knees.
The top sheet bore a heading in clean black type.
*SPECIAL ENROLLMENT CLEARANCE FORM (SECF-7)*
For the use of provisional Archivists only.
Please print legibly.
Please do not lie.
“Please do not lie,” I read aloud.
“Why does the form say that?”
“Because the form is thorough,” said Sol’s voice, much closer than before.
I yelped.
Sol had risen from her bed without a sound and now stood at my shoulder in a faded yellow T-shirt that said BATANGAS: LAND OF GOOD COFFEE, with her hair sticking out in four directions.
She was holding her sticker-covered notebook in one hand.
Her eyes were fully open and sharp as pins.
“How long have you been awake?” I asked.
“Since you started breathing like a person opening an exam.” She plucked the top page out of my fingers.
“Is this what I think it is? Because you have been walking around for two days with a face like someone carrying a secret in her teeth.”
“It is a school form.”
“It is a school form with a wax seal.”
“A very formal school form.”
“Lira.” Sol set the page down and looked me in the eye.
“I have heard you muttering numbers in your sleep. I have watched a cat do a crime in front of the Dean of this university, if rumors are true. I saw you stand in the middle of the quad on Monday looking at the Main Building like it had grown teeth. I have been very patient.” She tilted her head.
“I would like to read the fine print.”
I thought about the Dean’s gaze, and the rows of drawers, and the words no one will remember.
I thought about what Lola Pacita would say about hiding a thing from a friend who had carried my bag for two hours.
“Okay,” I said.
Sol’s smile broke across her face like sunrise.
“But if it starts to sound ridiculous,” I added, “you must promise to keep reading.”
“Lira,” said Sol, settling cross-legged on the floor with the pages across her knees.
“I live for ridiculous.”
* * *
By the third page, she had stopped smiling and started wheezing.
“Section One,” she read, in her best courtroom voice.
“The Applicant acknowledges that the Philippine Normal University Board of Memory (‘the Board’) shall hereafter be referred to as ‘the Board,’ and that this definition is intentionally circular.”
“Intentionally?”
“It says so right here. Footnote three.”
“There is a footnote?”
“There are forty-one footnotes.” She flipped a page.
“Section Two. The Applicant agrees to remain calm in the presence of Hollows, Hounds, and the Registrar. Section Three. The Applicant agrees not to be eaten except as provided in Annex C.”
“What is in Annex C?”
“I do not wish to find out.” She turned another page, eyes widening.
“Section Four. Tuition is payable in Footnotes. A list of acceptable Footnotes is attached. Please do not offer your mother’s face, it has been done. Lira! They put a note about mothers’ faces in the tuition clause!”
I flinched.
The room dimmed, and Aris’s blurred kitchen hovered behind my eyes like a window I had looked through once.
Sol caught my expression and her voice dropped.
“This one is not funny,” she said quietly.
“It is a little funny.”
“A little.” She cleared her throat.
“Section Five. The Applicant accepts that the Board does not guarantee refunds, resurrections, or sleep.”
“Sleep?”
“There is a whole subsection. Five-C. ‘In the event of a nightly Dead Zone, the Applicant waives all claims to the standard eight hours.'” Sol pressed her lips together and began to shake.
I lost it.
I laughed so hard that Kalasag lifted his head and glared at us both.
Sol dropped the page and put her forehead on the floor, wheezing.
We lay on the cold tiles together at six o’clock in the morning, shaking with helpless laughter, while a gray cat watched us from the pillow like an elder who had seen all of this before.
When I finally sat up, my eyes were wet.
A tight band around my ribs had loosened for the first time in days.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“For reading it.”
“That was the least I could do.” Sol wiped her face with her sleeve and picked the pages up again, more gently now.
“Keep going?”
“Please.”
* * *
Page twenty-four held a map.
It had been drawn in black ink on cream paper, a neat floor plan of the Main Building’s second floor.
I recognized the staircase and the long corridor of lecture rooms.
At the far end, wedged between a restroom and a janitor’s closet, a small unlabeled rectangle had been shaded in red.
Underneath it ran a single line in a looping, careful hand.
The Clearance Corridor opens daily between six and eleven in the morning.
Applicants must complete seven signatures in order.
Each signature carries a small price.
“A small price,” Sol repeated.
“How small?”
I turned the page.
A table of offices spread across the next sheet, seven rows, each with a number and a title and a neat blank beside it.
Window 1: Guidance.
Window 2: Records.
Window 3: Cafeteria.
Window 4: Cashier.
Window 5: Registrar.
Window 6: Dean’s Pleasure.
Window 7: Witness.
“Seven windows,” said Sol.
“Seven signatures. Seven prices.”
“It says the signatures must be earned.” I scanned the rows.
“Window One only asks for honesty. Window Three says to bring an appetite.”
“Window Seven says to bring a witness.”
We looked at each other.
“I am not volunteering,” Sol said lightly.
“I did not ask.”
“I am only saying that someone ought to write it down.” She picked up her notebook and held it against her chest.
“Someone with good handwriting and an excellent memory for the order of things, and I only happen to know a person.”
I pressed my lips together.
Something warm swelled behind my sternum.
“Sol,” I said, “this might be dangerous.”
“Everything on this campus is dangerous. The siomai, the staircase, the aircon.” She grinned, and I saw her hands tremble slightly against the cover of the notebook.
“I will bring snacks.”
* * *
Aris was waiting at the foot of the Main Building steps at a quarter to seven, holding two paper cups.
He looked as though he had slept, which on him was the equivalent of other people looking ten years younger.
The scar on his side had vanished under a clean gray hoodie.
He wore the same worn canvas bag across one shoulder.
When he saw us approaching, he took in Sol and the stack of pages in my arms, and the corner of his mouth lifted.
“Dimaculangan,” he said.
“Valeriano,” said Sol, with a curtsy, and I realized she had not blinked once.
“You read the fine print.”
“Every footnote.”
“Then you know what you are walking into.”
“I know a lot more than I did yesterday.” She crossed her arms.
“I would like to see this Corridor, and I would like to understand why a clearance form has a clause about my mother’s face.”
Aris winced.
“The clause was written by someone with a bleak sense of humor,” he said.
“The Board does not sign it. It only stamps it.” This story is hosted at g.com.
“Does it ever read it?”
“Regrettably, yes.”
He handed me one of the cups.
It was black coffee, sweet, with a thick layer of cream, and it burned my fingers pleasantly.
I took a sip and tasted caramel and cinnamon, my favorite order from the canteen, and my heart gave an odd, quick hop.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“You ordered it twice last week. I notice things.” He looked away.
“Drink it.”
I drank it.
“Rules,” Aris said, turning toward the doors.
“One, you do not lie to the Corridor. It checks. Two, you do not lose your temper at a window, because the window will not lose its own. Three, you stay where I can see you. This is a school, but a school has more ways of hurting a person than a battlefield. Understood?”
“Understood,” I said.
“Dimaculangan?”
“I will do my best, boss.”
“Do not call me boss.”
“Sir.”
“Do not call me sir.”
“Senior Aris,” Sol said sweetly.
He gave up.
We climbed the steps.
* * *
The second floor looked ordinary at seven in the morning.
Light came through the long windows in clean gold bars.
A few early professors passed us with mugs and satchels, nodding politely to Aris and looking through me.
A cleaner rolled a bucket along the floor.
At the end of the hall, a bulletin board advertised a Writers’ Guild meeting and a lost umbrella.
We stopped between the restroom and the janitor’s closet.
There was a door.
I could not say how I had missed it before.
It was a plain green door with a brass handle and a small enamel plaque, the paint chipped around the edges.
The plaque held a single word, in the same careful hand as the map.
*CLEARANCE.*
“Nobody notices it,” Aris murmured, “until they have a form.”
“Does anyone else see it?” Sol asked.
“Only people who are holding an envelope.”
I glanced down.
The envelope was still tucked under my arm, and the green wax seal glowed faintly, like a lamp in a window.
Kalasag, who had followed us up the stairs without a sound, sat down in front of the door and stared at it with the weary air of an old soldier returning to a bad posting.
“Ready?” said Aris.
“No,” I said.
“But I am going.”
I put my hand on the handle.
The brass was warm, as if someone had just let go of it.
The door swung inward.
A long corridor stretched out in front of us, far longer than the building could possibly hold.
Soft yellow bulbs hung from a high ceiling, buzzing quietly.
Linoleum shone in the lamplight.
Along the walls, in two straight lines, a row of windows with frosted glass panes ran on and on into a haze, each one numbered in brass.
A small red machine stood beside the doorframe.
A sign above it said PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER.
I pulled a ticket.
The paper was cream and soft.
A single line of type appeared on it as I watched, fading in like ink soaking into a page.
PROVISIONAL.
NOW SERVING: 1.
Far down the corridor, a bell dinged.
A frosted pane lit up from behind, and a voice drifted back to us, patient and tired and kind, like a nurse reading from a clipboard.
“Next.”
I took a breath.
Beside me, Sol opened her notebook and wrote the date at the top of a fresh page.
I looked at the first line of the form in my hand, the line I had skimmed an hour ago and forgotten.
The Applicant agrees to answer one question truthfully.
Then I walked down the corridor, with a cat at my heels and two friends at my back, toward the light of Window One.