Youth's Worth

This is just a draft of a short story i've been working on for about a year now. i just recently dug it up and hopefully ill be able to finish it in the next few months. this is the first part of it. please comment on any mistakes you might catch or improvements you think i could make. ill post the rest if there's any activity on the thread.


Youth's Worth

In an effort to cheer her up, Stephanie’s best friends, Dianne and Emcee, decided to take her to a fortuneteller that lived by the Pasig River.

“They say that she’s not just a fortune teller,” Dianne said. “She’s a real” —her voice darkened— “Mangkukulam.”

That word was like a spider, landing on Stephanie’s arm, crawling up to her shoulder, creeping over the back of her neck, vanishing into the folds her blouse.

Emcee put her hand on Stephanie’s shoulder, leaning close, she spoke with her as if confiding a deadly secret: “They say she was born as part of a triplet. Her twin brother and twin sister came out of the womb deformed.”

“I’m scared.” Stephanie whined.

“Don’t be.” Dianne said, “She’s really nice.”

“She’s my textmate,” Emcee said, holding up her cellphone with a text message displayed on the screen: From: Pipay

“Are we going to take long?” Stephanie said, “my driver will be here in three hours, Mom will kill me if I’m not at the gate when he arrives”

“It’s only twenty minutes away from here if we take the MRT” Emcee said.

“I don’t want to take the MRT there” Dianne said “people are always stink there during noon and we’ll be packed in like sardines.”

“But I don’t have money to take a taxi,” Stephanie said frowning.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dianne said, “I’ll get the taxi.”

“Yey!” Emcee said, she hugged Dianne from behind, wrapping her arms around Dianne’s neck. “Love you, Dianne.”

The three of them were dressed in their school uniforms: white blouses with a school logo appliqué stitched on the right breast and grey and light-blue plaid skirts.

On the way up the street there was a tall meztiso boy, with his dark hair parted in the middle, leaning against the school gate. The boy smiled at the sight of Dianne. Whenever Dianne is around a boy the tune in her walk changes—it becomes more melodious, as if a saxophone suddenly begins to play and she starts walking to its music.

“Hey Dianne,” the boy said. “I wanted to see if you’d like to go play billiards with me at the mall.”

“No thanks” Dianne said, walking past the boy with her saxophone walk. “I’m headed somewhere with my friends.”

“Where to?” The boy pushed himself off the wall into a trot, then matched his pace to walk side by side with Dianne “Maybe I could give you a lift? I have my dad’s car with me.” The boy showed a set of keys in his palm.

Dianne didn’t answer. She looked across the street at a parked white taxi.

“Where are you guys going?” The boy repeated.

“It’s a secret,” Dianne winked at the boy. “I’ll see you later Daryl,” and she ran across the street, Emcee and Stephanie followed, the sound of their giggles trailing behind them.

Dianne got in on the shotgun seat of the taxi cab. Emcee and Stephanie got in the backseats.

“To Pasig Manong” Dianne addressed the driver.

“Why didn’t we just go with Daryl?” Stephanie said. “We coulda gotten a free ride.”

“Stephanie,” Dianne said in a lecturing tone, “nothing is ever free, especially when it comes to boys.”

“Daryl is cute and rich,” Emcee said. “How come you don’t like him Dianne? He has a nice car—“

“—his dad has a nice car.” Dianne interrupted.

“And,” Emcee continued “His phone is an 8810. Hasn’t he been courting you for two months now? You should make him your boyfriend Dianne!”

“Really?” Stephanie said “He’s a meztiso too. Dianne he’s perfect. I think you should answer him. Two months is long enough to keep a boy waiting.”

“Ha!” Dianne turned around in her seat to look at Stephanie. “And what about your guy? It’s been what? A year now he’s been courting you?”

“Greg?” Stephanie sighed. “He’s nice, but I just don’t like him. I feel so embarrassed every time he takes his phone out of his pocket. I mean it’s a Talk n’ Text! The thing uses double A batteries. It might be less embarrassing if he walked around with a cordless phone instead.”

The girls laughed.

“Why can’t a boy like Gino court me.” Stephanie turned to Emcee. “He’s always so romantic to you.”

“He is isn’t he?” A dreamy expression came over Emcee. “He sings and plays guitar for me every Valentines.”

“I’m so jealous!” Stephanie squealed, she poked Emcee’s side with her finger and they spent the rest of the ride tickling each other, while Dianne laughed at them.


Dianne guided the taxi driver past the slums of the Pasig river. They rode by the Pasig River’s blackened waters,

Flotsam and jetsam of wood and pieces of metal drifted along the current. Stephanie thought they might have been part of the crudely constructed structures that passed for people’s homes in this part of the city.

Stephanie stared out at the grim sight of that river. She had heard tales before that once, it had been beautiful. As they rode in their taxi, an old lady dressed a torn bestida throw a bucket full of trash right into the river. Every time she went by those polluted waters, she tried to imagine what it could have looked like before, yet every time she fails to do so.

Dianne pointed the taxi to continue through a gated subdivision where the crumbled houses of squatters ended and proper, rural houses began. They came upon a two story house. A white van parked in the garage.

They got out of the taxi, and Dianne turned around and reached into her blouse to get some folded bills tucked into the strap of her bra, handed a hundred-peso bill to the taxi driver. Keep the change.

A maid met them at the door and ushered them into the living room. The couch was made of Nara wood with woven rattan and seagrass for cushions. On the Nara table was a large brown clay pot empty and clean, as if it got washed through every morning. Engravings were carved going around its rims with symbols that looked like awkward T’s and X’s that might have been thought written with the unstable hand of a child, if weren’t they repeated around the pot, every awkward angle and unfamiliar curve written through in the same practiced manner.

As they sat down side by side on the couch Emcee pulled on a drawer on the lower part of the table. “Look at this.” Emcee said, revealing at least a dozen photo albums; some of them new, most of them so old that they looked like they might crumble if you tried to move them.

“So many celebrities have been to Pipay to get their fortunes taken, see?” Emcee pointed out some of the celebrities. Of the three of them, she was the motion picture expert. She loved watching films from the 80’s and still kept a betamax and a laserdisc player in her room to watch her classic movies.

On the first page of the album she held was a black and white photograph, its image dyed a dead-leaf brown by age. She pointed out a young, round faced Nora Aunor, standing with the elegant rigidness of queen. The lady standing next to her, Emcee pointed out, was Pipay. She was so thin that it looked as if there was an arrangement of bamboo sticks underneath her clothes instead of flesh and bones.

She had the haggard look of a servant girl. Nora Aunor played a dutiful smile on the camera; Pipay held an empty gaze at the camera.

Emcee turned the pages and more pictures of Pipay were revealed standing next to celebrities. These pictures varied from black and white, to color. Some were Polaroid pictures.

Stephanie recognized the more well known celebrities like Richard Guiterez, the brothers Anjo and Jomari Yllana. Emcee pointed out the stars of the past ages, older celebrities they weren’s as familiar with, like Charo Santos, and some directors, Mike De Leon and Lino Broka. Dianne pointed out a woman in the pictures vaguely familiar to Stephanie. She said that was Hilda Coronel, her favorite actress. In all these pictures Pipay, was present looking out at them with her starved grave face looking as if her mind wasn’t where her body was. In some pictures Pipay made a disconcerting effort to smile.

Pipay came out to meet them a few minutes later. Stephanie was astonished. Although the Pipay in the photographs and the Pipay introduced to had the same dark-ringed, protuberant eyes and dwarven, blunt nose; the one in front of her had a light, sanguine complexion that presented itself on her cheeks. Underneath this lady’s clothes were no bamboo sticks but bundled together fruit, although the fruit had gone prunish over the years.

Pipay greeted Emcee and Diane each with a beso-beso kissing the air next to their cheeks.

“We brought our best friend, Stephanie.” Dianne said.

Pipay smiled at Stephanie. The dark bags of her eyes lifted and her dark lips flexed in a polite smile that was so filled with the grotesqueries of age that Stephanie feared what it would be like, should she scowl.

They took turns getting their fortunes told. Dianne went first, led to a room past the kitchen by Pipay. She came back thirty minutes later, and Emcee went through afterwards.

“What did she say to you?” Stephanie asked Dianne.

“She told me I’d be successful my business, that I’d make a lot of money.”

“Oh. That’s really good.”

After awhile Emcee got back, she was touching her thumb to her lip, as was her habit when she was full of thought. “She wants you in the other room.” She told Stephanie.

Stephanie wandered through the dim lit hallway past the kitchen unsure where to go.
“This way Iha,” A whisper came from behind her. It was Pipay standing on the doorway of a dark room. The sight of her, standing in front of a darkness you could not see beyond, startled Stephanie. She involuntarily she placed her hand on her heart.

“I’m sorry Iha, I didn’t mean to scare you. Come in, I will tell you your fortune.” Pipay backed away and walked further into the darkness. After a breath, Stephanie followed.

The only light in the room came from a candle, molten down to a stump, that stood in the middle of a small round table. An old air conditioner, planted low on the wall, rumbled in the corner of the room. There were three glass pained windows, all of them shut, behind crimson curtains.

Pipay sat down in one of the chairs, and gestured for Stephanie to take the other.

Stephanie had seen fortunetellers before in carnivals that would set up during Halloween in her hometown. Some had tarot cards they unfolded one by one on the table, others had crystal balls they never even looked into as they talked, rapidly throwing out facts at their customer. Just another piece of the show that went with the hired zombies and powdered ghosts that were paid by the hour.

Sitting there in that room, Pipay held her hand out to Stephanie, politeness and curiosity even more so, compelling Stephanie to oblige.

In the center of the table between them was a molten abomination of an old candle, in a lonely slump, its body covered in hardened droplets of various colors. Pipay struck a match and lit the candle. As it burned Stephanie could smell hints of lilac and roses and sampaguita in the threads of smoke. Like a cacophony of colors overlapping each other, resulting in a bleak picture, the scent conjured an image of an ashen flower in Stephanies mind.

“Where did you get that candle?” Stephanie said.

“I made it myself, from the bits of wax I collect from the graves of my family and friends. It sits here, and their souls accompany us. At their whim they may help me see a person’s future, or they shroud over my foresight so that I never learn certain things that must not be known.”

As their touch met, Pipay closed her eyes, and Stephanie watched her crinkle her brow in concentration. Then as if in that dark room, everything was illuminated for her, Pipay’s face relaxed, and what she saw, had saddened her.

“Your father is sick.” Pipay said.

“Yes.”

“He had a heart-attack. But only a mild one.”

Stephanie, looking down on her lap, nodded.

“I’ve seen that he should be fine, if he keeps taking his medicine.”

“My mother has been so on edge lately, because money has been tight for us. Then that had to happen. It’s been really hard on us.” Stephanie surprised herself with the sudden outpouring

“Ah. You have a brother too. I see a danger in his life. He has a full scholarship in college right now. No?”

“Yes.”

“If he joins, a fraternity, any fraternity, he will lose it. And he may lose even more than that.”

Stephanie sat pondering what she had been told when she saw an expression of delight come over Pipay’s face, as if she had found a gem lying on the floor.

“There is a boy that loves you. What is his name? He has pimples.”

“Who Greg?”

“Ah yes. Greg. He loves you very much. He’s the type of guy who will try to reach for stars to give them to you.” Pipay teased, smiling at the poetry in her speech. “I advise you not to treat him so cruelly. If the whole world turned its back on you, he would be one who would stay at your side.”

“When is your birthday Stephanie?”

“December second.”

“Ah.” Pipay said. “So is mine. I see that you have dreams of being rich Stephanie?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Ah. Yes, of course. I have seen that you will be happy and rich the last days of your life. And to get there, you will have to sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice what?”

“Your youth.” Pipay replied. “Your skin will be as old and wrinkled as mine is now.”
Stephanie looked puzzled.

“Let me show you. It won’t hurt you. I promise.” Pipay held out her hand again, and once again Stephanie gave her hand and her trust.”

“Let us pretend that we are both candles in the darkness. In being given the fire of life we are to burn slowly down, our wax melting down until the fire has no more wicker or wax to consume. But wax from one candle may be transferred to another. To make it last longer. If you know the secret to do so.”

The candle flickered and Stephanie saw her hand, her once dainty and delicate hand, turned aged, wrinkled, grotesque. Her skin appeared to have darkened and gone soggy, the same way bread transforms when dipped into a cup of hot coffee.

Not only that, she could feel the arthritic rust of age seep into the every joint of her hand.

Before she could draw breath to scream, the sight and sense of it was gone. And there was here hand again, restored to its youthful self.

“How did you do that?”

“It’s just a trick of the mind Iha. It is because the eyes always show what the mind wants to see.”

Pipay let go of Stephanies hand. Then wipes spittle from the side of her old, dry lips with the back of her hand.

“Would you give a piece of your life away to help those you love Stephanie?” Pipay asked.

Before Stephanie could even think of an answer Pipay interrupted her thoughts.

“Well.” She said. “I’m afraid our fortunetelling time is over. But please return, and tell your friends about me. I could use the business.”

Pipay licked her fingers and pinched the fire from the candle.

Stephanie met back up with Emcee and Dianne in the living room where they paid for their sessions with Pipay. Dianne and Emcee each counted out seven-hundred fifty pesos from their bags and handed it to Pipay. “We’ll pay for Stephanie’s too” Dianne said.


*

Coming home from school, as she was putting down her bag on her bed, Stephanie found herself staring at the image of her face reflected on the mirror attached to the back of her door. A morbid compulsion possessed her. He stepped closer to the mirror.

She had long, black hair she let stream across her forehead. Her cheeks had a plumpness that swelled over when she smiled, yet retained an elegant shape, like mangos ripe for the picking. Of late, because of stress from school and her father’s sickness, faint dark crescent lined the bottom of her eyes.

She placed the tips of her fingers on the corners of her eyes and pulled down. She saw the vision of her distorted face, and still she wasn’t satisfied.

What her fingers couldn’t stretch, her imagination did. Her hair drifted off her scalp, like so many leaves from a dead akasha tree. She tattooed spots of age on her face running down her neck, down her arms, and all over her body.

Her skin, now taut and fresh, turned wrinkled and sagged, leaving her face raked with age lines. Tiny dark spots corrupted her flawless skin. Her teeth fell to the floor, leaving her lips with a grandmother’s pucker. And for a moment she stared at the withered woman she would be should she continue down the river of life and time.

And then her phone rang.

Just by the time she could guess that it was Gino. And she was right.

She would usually play games of hide and seek with him on the phone since she was so reluctant to spend any of her credits talking to him

“What are you doing?” He asked.

Stephanie looked at herself in the mirror, her features of a young lady now restored. “Nothing. You?”

“Trying to figure out which classes I’m going to take. I started to miss you so I called.”

“Why didn’t you just text me?”

“I love the sound of your voice that’s why I called.”

She could hear him smiling.

“Maybe you should get back to picking your classes,” she said. “You won’t get a girl like me if you don’t end up successful.”

“Ah, it would be easy to pick what you want; my problem is I haven’t figured out what I want.” Greg said laughing. “What about you? What course will you take?”

“Accounting.”

“Really? I never figured you for the number cruncher type. Whenever we do math I feel like my head is filled with stones.”

“So do I.” Stephanie admitted.

“Then why do you want to take accounting?”

“Because that’s what my dad wants.”

“Oh. But shouldn’t you be the one who picks what course you want to take. It’s your life isn’t it? It’s your future.”

“Well, he’s the one paying for the tuition fees. He says that being an accountant was a stable and admirable job. And crunching numbers didn’t require a lot of thinking.”

“Yea, you wouldn’t want any thinking wrinkles on your pretty face would you?”

“Ugh,” Stephanie said. She got tired from hearing Greg’s attempts at compliments.

“I have to go Greg, my mother wants me to do something,” She lied.

“Hey wait up—I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me— we could see a movie, or something.”

“What? I don’t know Greg, I’ll think about it okay. I have to go.”

Stephanie hung up the phone, and again faced herself in the mirror. There was a curiosity still un-sated within her. For a moment the desire to distort her face again flickered inside her.

But it was enough. What she had seen had frightened her.

*

Stephanie walked the house in an indecisive haze, trying to figure out what she wanted to do. Then she remembered Pipay, picked up her cellphone and made a text message. Shld I go out with Greg?

Really nice job. I think you have a natural talent for writing dialogue, which is complemented by the amount of dialogue you include in stories you write -- it comes off very realistic and makes the story a lot more imaginable. My only critique would be maybe the ending could be a bit stronger, i.e. showing and not telling? Besides that, very cool!

oh well thats not the ending. thats just the end of part 1. there are still a good bit of the story left to tell :) ill get to work on it soon as i can thx for commenting yo.

Any updates on this?

"Just by the time she could guess that it was Gino. And she was right."

Seems from later text that you meant Greg not Gino?

For some reason I had seen this before but didn't feel like reading it. Now that I've read it, I liked it. :)

ah yea i was name switching during the drafts. i guess one slipped by xD. off to work on the story then.

okay i think this is readable. Pt 2 now. pt 3 will probably take awhile for me to complete xD

*

For their date that weekend, Stephanie wore a black dress with floral designs punctured on the sleeves she was comfortable in. She wore her hair down and natural: the way Greg said he liked it.

Greg picked her up in the late afternoon from her house in a white Volkswagen beetle. Though she made a conscious effort against it, the engine’s old rumble embarrassed her that when the got to the mall parking lot, she all but ran away from the car, trying her best to be disassociated with it.

“It was my parents first car,” Greg explained, when Stephanie first caught sight of his car. “It took third place in a car show before you know. My dad jokes that it could still me and wife’s first car, whoever she might be.”

Stephanie rolled her eyes at the notion.

They first went to the food court, to the Burger King. Stephanie, too demure to eat a hamburger in front of Greg, only nibbled at onion rings and sipped her soda.

Stephanie pointed to the Greg’s birthmark, a dark mole on left forearm. “It looks like a heart,” Stephanie said, “not a cartoon one, but a real one.”

“When I was little I used to go around saying that it was a fly that my aunt swatted into my skin, and it’s been embedded there ever since.”

Stephanie had to laugh. “You have a pretty imagination.” She said.

*

“Well, here we are.” Greg said.

“Here we are where?”

“The place I’m taking you to.”

“She said I’d discover new things if I went out with you.”

“Who said?”

“My fortuneteller.”

“Ah, you seemed like the superstitious type.”

They stood in an alley illuminated with urban twilight. Ahead of them were a line of well dressed, perfumed people. The women dressed in variations of the same tight, black tube dress. The men all wearing dark slacks, and dress-shirts.

“I just need to make a phone call,” Greg said reaching into his pocket. “The bouncer here is my brother’s room-mate. He said he’d let us through if I give him a call.”

“Wait!” Stephanie said, before Greg could pull out his Talk n’ Text phone. “Um, here, use my phone instead. The signal is better”

“It’s alright, I wouldn’t want to use up your credits.”

Greg took out his Talk n’ Text phone and made a call. Stephanie looked around to make sure that no one she knew was around to see them there standing in the street. She fidgeted in her dress.

One of the men waiting in line caught notice of Greg’s phone and elbowed his friend to direct attention to it. The two men, obnoxiously smiling at Greg, talked loudly with each other. “Our maid has that same exact phone he has.” One of them said. And the other let out a hyena laugh.

Stephanie shrank into herself.

“Hey, I’m here.” Greg said to his phone, pretending not to have heard the comment. “Where are you man?”

Over the sea of young skin and meticulously arranged hair in front of them a stubby muscular hand was raised up, “Oi, Greg!” the bouncer called.

*

The scent of privilege inside the club was intoxicating to Stephanie. Walking down the club’s hall felt like stepping down into the gullet of a great concrete beast, its teeth made out of glass; its innards lined with velvet.

That Greg had connections to get into a club like this impressed Stephanie despite herself.

“Nice place isn’t it?” Greg said. “It’s the biggest club in the country.” Although he yelled next to her ear, Stephanie could barely hear him over the thrumming music.

“Let’s dance.”
*

The dance floor was reamed with neon lights, above them light strobed as if a rainbow had gone insane, and with each person the light touched, a madness was shared and passed through each person. Moments passed in alternating color as people danced; the crowd of moving bodies vivid in color in one, and the next each person turned into a roil in a sea of shadows, their motions varying from wild flailing to graceful motions calculated to induce lust. And being around all this Stephanie let the thrumming music take over the beat of her heart. She wrapped her arms around Greg, and she felt his hands caressing her waist as they swayed with the rainbows and shadows.

In this cacophony of light, Stephanie noticed a girl’s figure sitting by the couches, the shadow silhouette of her face, showing a Cleopatra nose.

Around the figure were a collection of ladies that unsettled Stephanie. There were about a dozen of them, all of such varied ages that it was odd to see them together, for what could each of them possibly say to one another? There was an awkward undertone between each of the ladies that showed each of them just happened to be in the same place as the other. The positioning of their bodies set at angles set to radiate allure, as opposed to other groups in the club that were knotted in exclusive circles.

There was a man there dressed in a burgundy dress shirt, who appeared to mediate between the women and a group of men. He would occasionally flap a limp wrist at whoever he was talking to.

“You okay?” Greg yelled. And Stephanie noticed that she had stopped dancing.

“Yea, give me a second I just have to go to the ladies room real quick okay?”

Stephanie squeezed between the dancing shadows, trying to get better sight of the dark figure with the Cleopatra nose. She entered a state of uncertainty in the realities of that place. In a place where her senses were relentlessly assaulted, she grew weary that her own eyes might betray her. And yet the closer she got, the more the tricks of darkness and light eased, and she found that the figure was exactly who she thought it would be.

Dianne had a man’s arm draped over her shoulders. The man with Dianne whispered into her ear and both of them got up, leading her by the hand away from the party. Dianne allowed herself to be towed, and the pair of them vanished into the crowd.

Having lost sight of them Stephanie turned her head this way and that, and when that failed she got up and started to push and squeeze her way through the crowd, looking for any trace of Dianne. Just as despair began to creep into her heart, she felt a girl’s supple and soft body bump against her.

The strobing lights showed Dianne, her friend, to be there in front of her, yet only by the moments the light flashed. The girl standing in front of her was made mostly of shadow. Diane wore a blue dress that made her look elegant, yet provocative. Being so close a friend, Stephanie largely knew the contents of Diane’s closet, and it disconcerted her that she had never seen this dress Diane was wearing before.

“Excuse me,” She heard Dianne’s voice, shrill against the beat of the music.

As if all the time they’d spent together had been forgotten, they passed each other in the delusioned light like strangers. Time seems to stretch to a stricken heart and for the moment they parted, Stephanie had time to question if their friendship had been, at all, real.

The man with Dianne still held her hand and, taking no notice of Stephanie, continued to lead Dianne out of the club. Stephanie watched, unbelieving, as her friend was taken away and engulfed in shadows.