Page 35 of Chasing Mr. Prefect

I thought if I had the guts to pick fights and make her feel bad, I should have enough guts to own up to it and say I was sorry. When I was younger, I always thought being tough to the point of being nasty was being brave but I was wrong. It took more guts to admit to my own shortcomings.

It hit me like a full bucket of ice to the head—the realization that the hard part was not making the mistakes. The much scarier bit was when you finally had to take accountability for it.

I was not able to apologize during breakfast, though, as I could not even muster the strength to look at any of my family’s faces. I nearly even ran Liana over when I tried to get to the cereal cabinet. I had said a small, probably inaudible “Sorry” and it was not the kind I needed to give her.

So here I was, in my last class of the day, overthinking that instead. I had barely kept myself present in all of today’s activities and the thought of having to represent the club in a sponsorship meeting was giving me anxiety. I told myself to take it one hour at a time.

That resolve nearly disappeared when I saw Professor Villafranca’s annoyed face when he entered the classroom. Everyone hushed, all eyes on the stack of blue books he had been holding.

“Afternoon, kids,” he said, eyes roving around the classroom and relishing the scared looks on our faces.

“Exam results are out. Our highest scorer, surprisingly, is Miss Exconde.” He walked towards me with my blue book and set it gently on my desk. “I liked your insight on question four. If you could keep it up, you might just get a 1.25.”

I managed to exhale at last. Written in red on my blue book was ‘92.5%.’

“Second place is Mr. Valiente, who is…not here,” our professor continued, staring at the seat beside me like he just noticed it was empty. “Can you give this to him, please?” he said, and I just nodded. Professor Villafranca handed me Cholo’s blue book and then he handed the rest of the blue books to the person in front of Cholo’s chair. “Anyway. You all did well, I’m just surprised with the two topnotchers that I felt the need to make this whole deal out of it. Mr. Santos, please distribute the rest.”

I heard a collective sigh of relief. I stared at Cholo’s blue book, which said ‘91%.’

Gosh. The universe probably just turned on a different axis. I beat Cholo in BA 161 and I would not have to keep from swearing for a week.

Thank you, universe!

Cholo Valiente

5:30 p.m. @ Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Pls arrive early if you can.

Cholo’s textcame just as I was leaving the BA 161 classroom. I stared at my phone screen again, wondering what to say.

Ok. Are you in the area? Because strangers. I can’t I can’t I CANNOT! PLS HELP.

What?I sounded silly. I highlighted the entire selection and deleted it.

Ok. BTW, I have your 161 result. You lost our bet, BLEH

Wait! Did I want him to hate me more?I deleted the whole thing again, took a deep breath, and typed in a proper, civilized response.

Ok. I’ll be there at 5. I have all the materials ready but feel free to send anything else you want me to bring up.

SENT.

I jumped into the first jeepney to Katipunan and paid my fare, sighing. No one-upping or teasing was going to happen just yet. Sure, Cholo needed to be called out on his earlier bullying days but besides that, we had been getting along. Winning the bet was such a relief as I had started to miss his company. The constant nagging over academics, teasing, even his incessant fanboying over Era of Maidens. I missed him, in general, but I would rather shave all the hair on my head before I admitted to any of that.

I made it to the coffee shop at 5 p.m. as promised and I had thirty minutes to spare. Thank goodness for that because Summer would never let me hear the end of it had I been late, and Cholo would have one more reason not to talk to me anymore.

I quickly ordered and secured a seat in the corner, which had just been vacated by a group of students from our neighboring school, Randall. I laid out my laptop, the printed materials, and sipped my iced Americano. My palms were sweaty and they stuck on the sponsorship printouts when I tried to align them.

I spent a good chunk of that half-hour wait telling myself that it was going to be okay as I was not going to completely wing it.

“Hi, are you Lavinia from Dresden Marketing Club?”

I looked up to see a familiar face. Miss Co was staring at me in the face with a polite smile, a high ponytail, and no glasses. Weird. Was she wearing contacts?

I stood up, about to ask her if this was her idea of a joke, when I realized that my favorite teacher did not have a mole on the tip of her nose.

“Hi, yes,” I said, trying to regain my composure and extending my hand to shake hers. “Lavinia Exconde from Team Ephemere.”

“Mikayla Co, Assistant Brand Manager from Exonerate,” she said, shaking my hand. Her expression did not give anything away.