My story for my CREWLIT class :) Hope you like it!

Now You Don’t

“You can almost never tell them apart!” says my little brother, Miguelito. He holds up two pairs of handcuffs, one from the toy store and one that he took from my dad’s old duty belt. My dad had a lot of pairs kept in his old police bag. After losing his job at the barangay police station, it seemed like he wouldn’t be using them anymore, especially since he seems to enjoy spending time with cards and his friends lately. When Miguelito and I were younger, we found a box of old VHS tapes in our grandfather’s room. The only one that seemed to be working on the Betamax was the one titled, The Grim Game, a film that starred the well-known actor and escapist, Harry Houdini. There was a scene in the film where Houdini freed himself from a ball and chains from his ankles while trapped in a jail cell. The fact that this was done even before our grandfather was born, without any special effects or the use of computers like in all the films they are showing today, made Houdini our ultimate hero. He could escape anything! We were soon obsessed with the magician’s greatest feats and even tried to make our own. We would start small, from shoelaces tied around our wrists to being locked inside our mother’s closet with nothing but the key lost in the dark and our arms wrapped in duck tape. The obsession didn’t last too long for me, but Miguelito continued to worship Houdini. He enjoys performing new acts that he hoped that no one has ever accomplished yet. He would show me his latest ones, and he was so good at them that I always found myself in a stump when I never figured how he was able to pull them off. “A magician never reveals his secrets, kuya,” he would say. Most of the time, he would stay in the terrace to sketch more new strategies. He was of course not like most boys who’d play with their plastic guns or action figures. But in special cases like today, Miguelito stepped into the local toy store for something more important. He was planning on handcuffing his wrists together and slipping his feet through a metal ring that’s stuck halfway through heavy cement block in the stream right behind our barangay. The key was to be thrown in as well, and Miguelito would have to look for it in under three minutes before running out of air. “I’ll have to practice with these plastic ones first. They’re quite easy to get out off. All I have to do is pretend they’re actually locked while I practice looking for the key,” he says. I take a look at the false pair of handcuffs which had a little key hooked on it. It had the kind of lock that those cheap diaries have, like the ones that my sister used to buy when she was my age. Mika would write all her secrets in them but it seemed useless since the locks were easy to pick. Besides the stories she had about her disgusting crushes for the boys in her school, her diary soon became boring, full of whines and complaints, which soon were said aloud more than being written down.

“How much did they cost?” I ask my brother.

“Twenty pesos,” he says, “I really wanted to get the stronger ones but they were too expensive for me.” It wasn’t because we were poor or anything. I mean, our family always managed. Our parents would always forget to give us allowances. Our mother worked as a teacher in the local college near my high school and she received a fair salary. Even when my father lost his job, no one really worried about feeding all three of us since mom could handle it. Even when she didn’t need to, mom would stay late in school for extra work. Sometimes it was better that she wasn’t home, since she and Mika would always get into a lot of arguments. Since Mika wasn’t getting any allowance, she decided to work after school and saved up every piso. Then suddenly one day, Mika decided to leave. She took the first plane out to New York and left nothing but her room in a mess with empty cabinets. My parents didn’t really do anything about it, Miguelito keeps asking me to send her an e-mail to come home. She almost never replies and never visits during the holidays, only an electronic greeting card or two. I’m still confused to why she did it though, to study or to work? Well whatever it was, she was gone.

“Just wait and see, kuya,” says my brother, “I’ll be just like Houdini. Better than him!”

I would probably be called stupid to let Miguelito do something so dangerous, but he was a very smart kid. He knew when he was going too far and seemed to know what was going on around him. But despite his lack of being a normal nine-year old boy, he sure acts like one.

Miguelito had eyes for Kristina ever since she moved into the house across ours two years ago. She went to his school, was placed in the same class and went to the same church as we did. I’d usually see her water the bushes in her front yard whenever I arrived home, and also on the days when it rained. I never understood what was about this girl that pushed my brother into practicing this act for weeks now.

I usually come home three hours after I’m dismissed. Though I tell my parents that it’s because of some extra credit work in school, it’s really because I go to the computer shop with my friends just so I don’t catch dad screaming on the phone wondering where my mom is. Miguelito barely knows what’s going on in the house and it’s because he spends more time practicing his act down by the stream right after he comes home from school. My dad comes home past dinnertime, only an hour after mom does because she says that she has papers to grade and other things she has to do. She says it’s already the earliest time when she could go home even with the help of her teaching assistant. My dad comes home drunk almost every night with either empty or full pockets, and would always pass out on the couch when he was too tired to get up. I try my best to wake up early every morning to clean up my dad’s mess before Miguelito sees it. He was hoping on convincing our dad into magic, since he already had the cards for it.

Today on a Friday morning, Miguelito wakes up early, despite the fact his school gave a day off for a conference they’re holding for the parents. Our mom left earlier to attend it so that my brother’s school won’t find a reason to call the house. My dad slept in as usual before heading out with his cards again.

“Today’s the day, kuya!” my brother exclaims. He’s planning on inviting Kristina over and bringing her to the stream to show off his latest feat. “I’m nervous,” he says, “Will you be there to watch me later?”

“I’ll try to make it, Migs,” I say, “If I get to finish my extra credit work early today.”

There’s a knock on the door, and Miguelito runs to open it. It’s not Kristina, but a man in business clothes, only without the tie and coat.

“Is your mother home?” he asks.

“Sorry, sir. But she left for a conference,” I say, “And she’ll probably go straight to work after, so she won’t be back till later.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be home sooner,” he said with a smile.

He hands me the envelope, and heads straight to his car. After he drives off, I turn to stick the envelope on the refrigerator with a magnet. There was another knock on the door, and this time it was Kristina. When she caught sight of me, she froze in her steps. I went to greet her with a handshake, but as she returned it, she bowed her head and didn’t say a word. I went over to my brother and whispered in his ear, “Good luck!” and headed out the door.

It was already past dinnertime, the traffic was terrible. I was in a jeepney for almost three hours before reaching my barangay area. As I was walking only three streets away from my house, I was shocked to find a man with his body faced down on the road in the direction away from my house with pieces of paper around him. As I ran closer, I recognized him to be my own father, surrounded by his cards. I place his right arm around my shoulder and I struggle to carry him all the way home. From a distance, I could see Miguelito sitting on the sidewalk in front of our house, with his arms hugging his knees and his chin resting on them. When he sees us, he stares for a moment, shocked to see our dad unconscious. He moves toward us and places dad’s left arm around his shoulder and helps carry him as well.

As we laid our dad on the couch, Miguelito sits on the lounge chair, staring at the unconscious man. “How did it go with Kristina?” I ask, breaking the silence.

“I didn’t get to show her my trick,” he replies, still staring at dad. “You weren’t here.”

“I told you I’d try to be back in time,” I say, “you could’ve started without me.”

“I didn’t get to show her my trick…” he says again, “because she realized you weren’t coming back.” I stare at him for a moment. His eyes weren’t blinking and I could barely hear him breathe.

“She waited for you,” he says. His eyes were still affixed on our unconscious father, who was snoring softly on the couch. Then I notice that the envelope on the refrigerator was gone. I walk to my parents’ room and find it messy, with one cabinet empty. I walk back to the living room to find Miguelito in the same position.

“Where’s mom?” I ask.

“She waited for you,” he says again. I stood in front of my brother to break his gaze.

“Where’s mom, Miguelito?”

He closes his eyes. “Gone.”

It was morning already. I walk to the living room and find my dad still sleeping on the couch. I enter Miguelito’s room to find it empty. I hear someone knocking on the door. It was our barangay captain and a street guard with him.

“Paolo,” he starts, “You must come with us. It’s your brother.” I ride the barangay shuttle with them, and they start telling me what happened. The shuttle arrives by the stream and I jump off before it stops. I run towards the crowd by the bank. I push through them and spot my brother’s body rested on a stretcher. I fall to my knees and sob for my brother’s death. I motion to hug his cold and wet body. People knew my brother’s hobby. They started making their own assumptions. “He must had a hard time searching for the keys, he didn’t get to breathe for air in time.” My brother handcuffed his wrists and his ankles on the metal ring of the cement block. Miguelito must have taken them from my father’s old police bag while we were asleep. He still had the pair on his wrists. They had already broken the ones around his ankles. As people were starting to pull me away, I struggle to look at my brother one last time. His face was very pale and he seemed shorter now. I look at his wrists. The false handcuffs. I refused the barangay captain’s offer of dropping me home on the shuttle. I decided to walk so I could look at the houses on my way to my street. They were all quiet, like no one lived in them. When I reach my house, I stop for a moment to think on how I could break the news to my dad: on how Miguelito became better than Houdini.