I have never spent a summer in the university except this year. My stay in the dorm had been extended due to my unfinished exams and never-ending term papers. Just as I was hauling all my things out last April, I bumped into a sophomore carrying a travel bag into Yakal and he asked me Ate, ngayon ka pa lang uuwi?

The question struck a chord, not only because he called ate, a name I was never called by at home, but because the question made me realize that although I was moving out, I was not coming home anytime soon.

I stayed in the university up until May 4 and I lived with the Cabreras in Area 2 in Minnette’s  old boarding house. I had encountered problems with finding a roof over my head as I have been moving from one place to another this summer. First, Yakal, then the rustic boarding house with five snobbish cats, and this coming school year, the new apartment in V. Luna.

Moving had been difficult because I didn’t know where I would stay after the dorm and then after the boarding house. I felt like one of those gypsies in a 1970s movie, a nomad, independent, free yet vulnerable. Moving felt like closing a chapter in my life and starting a new one. And I felt I needed it.

I don’t want to stay in Yakal anymore because it reminds me of the atrocities I suffered from my former roommate: the sleepless nights I had because of her noise, the brr brr brr of her printer at three in the morning, the exams I failed because of it, our silent little wars and my quiet, angry tolerance for her and her insensitivity. I would like to forget everything.

Michael is not in Yakal anymore so I have no more reason to stay there. Except maybe for the fact that it’s only a five-minute walk away from my college and that most of my orgmates stay there. But even so, my desire to be far and away from the place that had seen so much of me and heard so much of my cries is much much greater than my urge to stay. I thank Yakal for having me these past three years, but I would like to move on now.

Being with the Cabreras had been good. They were nice people, and although the room where I stayed was made for five girls, only two of us stayed there this summer. Me and Michelle, my tall and beautiful roommate who is as shy as a mouse, but who can talk all night about ghosts and college and French movies. We have this ritual of watching TV every night that even when I am bagged down by my writing’s deadlines, I still take time to pause and watch Maligno with her. She is asleep all morning, out most of the afternoons and goes home every weekend, so I had the room all to myself for most of the summer.

But I was out most of the time as well. With JC and Ailene, I got absorbed in our business plan. It was originally for the Lee Kwan Yew Competition, then we got invited to join the one sponsored by the Junior Chamber International as well. We were working on the plan almost everyday and we went around offices in the Department of Agriculture, Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Agrarian Reform, PCARRD and even UP Los Banos. I learned that a tree planted in an ecosystem with clean air is most likely to grow a paler truck and branch than a tree near smoke-filled EDSA. I learned that DBP grants loans on a 10-14.75% interest rate. I learned that JC is not an EEE stereotypical geek after all and that he is just as crazy for parties as the people in BA. I learned that Ailene is not only good with numbers, but that she is also a good and kind friend. These two, Ailene and JC, had been my companions for the past three weeks of my life, and I miss them.

We worked for the business plan so hard that to me, it didn’t feel like we were in it for the competition anymore. To me, it has become part of my system that I didn’t need to remind myself what it was for and why we were there in the first place. Of course, I still want us to win, but the experience of working with them and having them as friends had been a prize in itself.

Most days before I work, I eat lunch with Michael and Rhyan at the Beach House. Those were one of the highlights of my days, where I get to talk about mundane stuff, screwed-up philosophies and boys without being judged as a nice-looking girl in her Sunday dress filled with bad, immoral thoughts. Because believe me, among the three of us, I was the most angelic. Hahaha!

Speaking of boys, there is this particular one whom I had been seeing and calling and texting for the past two weeks. He is someone I knew from my NSPC days, someone I used to bicker with, but someone with whom I used to talk to about anything on my mind over the computer. Why is he back in my life? And what were they for? All those words and dreams and questions on faith, that dinner in the cozy Italian restaurant in Eastwood, the dates he planned, the dates I turned down, the many glances at my cellphone, those farewells—sad, loving, matter-of-fact, angry—those arrangements and dates and times and furtive calls. What was the point of them all?

I don’t know, just as I don’t know if we will win the competition or not. But as I type this, I am contemplating, with a dazed smile of a startled dreamer on my face perhaps.  I am home now. And I am buoyed up by optimism again. I would like to go on forever but Mom is calling me in for dinner. Maybe we’ll have crabs.