Notebook No. 3.
Property of Marisol Dimaculangan.
If found, please return to Room 212, Normal Hall.
Please don’t read the pages about my brother.
* * *
Marisol Dimaculangan, present.
*Monday.
Day 1 of the Clearance.*
I’m writing this on a bench in a corridor that shouldn’t exist.
I have decided to list every odd thing I see.
Lira says I don’t have to, but I’ve learned that when strange things happen, the people involved tend to forget the details by the next morning.
It happens a lot around Lira and Aris.
They say something, and an hour later, they act like it was said by somebody else.
I don’t forget.
I think that’s because I write everything down, so I’m going to write this down too.
Odd things so far:
The green door on the second floor of the Main Building.
I’ve walked past that wall about three hundred times.
I never saw a door.
The corridor behind the door is longer than the whole building.
I counted my steps.
Six hundred and twelve.
The Main Building is about ninety steps from front to back.
Please let the record show that I stayed calm and whispered “hala” only a few times.
There’s a ticket machine.
It prints tickets that say PROVISIONAL.
Lira’s says NOW SERVING: 1.
Mine doesn’t print at all.
I pressed the button twice.
It didn’t even buzz.
I wasn’t offended.
I’m used to machines.
The Counselor at Window One has a drawer of forms that were cried on.
She told Lira that.
I overheard from the bench, because the glass is thick but not that thick.
I think she was lying about the glass.
I don’t think she was lying about the drawer.
When we walked up to Window One, I said, “Good morning, ma’am,” in my nicest voice.
She smiled and said good morning to Lira.
She offered Lira a calamansi candy.
She looked straight past me, the way you look at a window when you’re checking the weather.
I’m fine with that.
It happens to me a lot.
* * *
Marisol Dimaculangan, present.
*Monday.
Later.*
I need to explain why I write my name at the top of every page.
I started doing it in the second grade.
Our teacher called the roll every morning, and for two weeks, she skipped my name.
She wasn’t being mean.
She just didn’t see my seat.
When I told her, she was horrified and apologized, and then she skipped me again the next day.
So I wrote “Marisol Dimaculangan, present” in the corner of my notebook, and I underlined it twice.
When I looked at it, I felt like I existed.
I still do it.
It’s a habit now.
Underline twice, like a stamp.
I told Lira about this once, and she looked at me for a long second and said, “I will always say your name.”
She said, “Then I’ll say it for a long time.”
I wrote that down too, on a page I’m not going to show anyone.
* * *
Marisol Dimaculangan, present.
*Tuesday.
Day 2.*
The line at Window Two was so long that the corridor started to hum.
Aris explained it, and I understood about half.
He said a place holds on to what people feel inside it, so a hundred years of patient people waiting made the corridor “patient.” The weird part is that I could feel it.
A calm settled over my shoulders like a warm towel.
I didn’t check my phone once.
I read a whole romance novel about a pirate and a lighthouse keeper.
They kissed on the beach, and I cried a little.
More odd things:
Lira counts her breaths when she’s nervous.
Four in, two hold, five out.
She does it without thinking.
Today, the whole line breathed with her.
I watched an old man fall in step.
I watched a girl against the wall unclench her fists.
Aris saw it too and told her to keep going, and his voice sounded strange, as if he’d found something he didn’t want to find.
Aris smiled at a notice board.
I saw it.
He read a sign about someone feeding an Acacia tree sweets for forty years, and the corner of his mouth went up like it had been pulled by a string.
He saw me looking and put his face back to normal.
I’m keeping that to myself.
Pia came by with a clipboard.
She said, “Morning, Council,” and I said “Morning, Pia!” and she nodded in my general direction without looking.
She talked to Aris and Lira for a minute.
She walked off.
I don’t think she knows my name.
It’s okay.
She looked sad, and I figure she doesn’t have the energy to remember everyone.
The old man with the crossword was nice.
He listened to the pirate book.
At the end, he asked if I was a new transferee too.
I said no, I’d been at PNU for over a year.
He said, “Oh! Of course. I’m so sorry.” And I said it was okay.
I’m writing this part carefully because I want to remember how it felt.
It felt like standing in a doorway while someone brushes past you.
* * *
Marisol Dimaculangan, present.
*Thursday.*
Window Two called Lira’s number.
The clerk was older than the Constitution.
She stamped the form without reading a word and told Lira “Patience noted.” Then she turned to me and said, “Next,” to nobody.
I wasn’t the next person.
I just stood there for a second, in case.
Lira noticed.
She reached back, took my hand, and said, “Sol, we’re done here. Come on.”
She said my name.
I think that’s why the clerk looked up.
She blinked, and she found me with her eyes, and her face went kind of puzzled, like she’d just seen a word she almost knew.
“Oh,” she said.
“Are you with the applicant?”
“I’m the witness,” I said.
“Hm,” said the clerk.
“Not yet.”
Then she went back to her stamps.
Not yet.
I underlined that three times.
Marisol Dimaculangan, present.
*Friday.
Day 5.*
The canteen kitchen is the best place in the Corridor.
Mang Tonyo looked at me the moment I walked in.
He didn’t glance past me.
He didn’t hesitate.
He said, “Marisol Dimaculangan. Tapsilog. Siomai on the side. Extra rice. Iced tea, less ice.” Then he said I’d ordered it every day since June.
I nearly cried into my tapsilog.
I want to write down that I’ve been ordering in that canteen since June, and the cashier has asked me what my name is every single morning.
Every morning.
Mang Tonyo is the only person on campus who has never asked.
I asked him later how he does it.
He said, “A cook remembers who he feeds.” Then he said, “And you eat like somebody who wants to be fed,” which I decided to take as a compliment.
Odd things at Window Three:
Lira finished a bowl of sinigang and told a story about her grandmother.
The stamp on her form was green.
She cried.
I cried.
The pork was wonderful.
Mang Tonyo made Aris a plate without asking.
Garlic rice, egg, tapa.
Aris looked at it like someone had put a ghost on a plate.
He took one bite.
He started to cry.
I’m not going to put his name next to the last line in the official notes.
This page is for me.
I’m only writing it so I don’t forget, and so I can be gentle later.
If somebody finds this notebook, I hope they read this part and decide to be kind.
Kalasag looked at the door where Aris left, and he didn’t growl.
I’ve seen that cat growl at a plastic bag.
He looked at the door like he was sorry.
* * *
Marisol Dimaculangan, present.
*Friday night.*
Lira told me what the Dean offered her.
She said they could wipe her memories and she’d wake up thinking she slept through a storm.
I asked where the wiped memories went.
She said the Dean told her, “They are kept.”
I got up and walked to the window and didn’t say anything for a while.
Then I told her something I’ve never told anyone.
I said I think they’ve tried to wipe me twice, once in second grade and once last year, and I think the machine didn’t work.
She asked how I knew.
I said I wrote it down.
She said, “You wrote down that they tried?”
I said, “Everything is written down.”
She hugged me.
We stayed like that for a long time.
I want to put this in the record: I’m afraid of something, and I haven’t named it yet.
It’s the feeling that a notebook can only keep a person in the world if the person who wrote in it stays alive.
I think about that at night.
But I also want to put this: I’m still here.
I’m in this room.
I have a roommate who says my name.
I’m going to bring snacks to every window.
Marisol Dimaculangan, present.
Marisol Dimaculangan, present.
(Underlined twice.)