Excerpt: Weird and Lovely

Nan was ready to accept her fate.

Thoughts would definitely come creeping in and haunting her. They would follow her every move, nag her, and tell her to keep her lights on at night. They would make her stop in the middle of her prayers and tell her that maybe, just maybe, there were a few doors that had been opened, and she was back to being psychic again.

This kind of thought, Nan decided, was not going to last long. She was probably caught up in the lack of closure, in the hope that her grandmother would appear and actually hug her granddaughter goodbye. This kind of thought also made Nan cry, and she headed to the adoration chapel once again, there to sob and pray her way through twenty minutes of chilling wind. Her hair rose, her body waited for a soul to hug her, and her imagination, now alive, was waiting for something to send it hurtling into hyperactive mode.

Nan, the rational side, at least, wanted to wash off the sadness; so rational Nan, tears now wiped away and face washed to remove the tracks of her grief, decided to make another push. She walked off to the university Union and bought a vanilla milkshake. It was another way to get herself fat, of course, but it was also comforting; Nan needed comfort, so she sipped on the milkshake, half-chewed on it, and smiled to herself. She even murmured something in her head, something to the tune of, “We’ll have a party, Mama and Papa, when I graduate.”

It was refreshing to not be afraid, so Nan, now convinced of her rationality, returned to her dormitory, the way she always did every day. She crossed the street, sipped on her milkshake, and welcomed the hardening pour of rain. She decided not to open her umbrella and instead savor the raindrops. She was wearing a raincoat, besides, and she could go home and change. She would walk slowly, sip her milkshake, smile at the autumn leaves crunching beneath her feet and the trees above her crowning her with golden red, muted light. She would wish that her grandparents could see where she was now. The nice thing about the rain was that she could still cry a little, and it wouldn’t matter.

Nan was back to her routine, save for the nagging thoughts. She sipped her milkshake as she entered the residence hall, got on an elevator, and reached her floor. She accepted her fate as a girl whose imagination just would not give in as she took her keys out, opened her door, and turned on the light in her room. She knew that she was truly psychic when she saw that two people were waiting for her: two elderly people, one in a traditional barong Tagalog made of pineapple hemp; the other in a long nightgown that reached to her knees.

That was when Nan choked on her milkshake and spurted it out through her nose.

And dear reader, this is where our story truly begins.