Participation

I wasn't a bad person. Every now and then I just needed to be reminded that I could have something everyone wanted. This time, without the fear of having my heart broken when taken away from me because I didn't care. And I didn't mean Geo. I meant that chance to have access around the campus and be with a campus heartthrob while I was at it.

After going around some more to take pictures, I headed back to my dorm room to put my things down and take a rest. Geo wanted to meet me at Friendship Bridge in an hour so we could go to dinner together, but I wasn't exactly in the mood to be around anyone. I needed to concentrate on coming up with a game plan. No matter that Geo was assigned to assist, the project was still no easy task and the burden was still on me.

At fifteen minutes past seven, he called me on my phone. I didn't answer it. A few seconds later, my phone began to ring again. Still him. Still didn't answer.

"I'm not here," I whispered to myself, mocking him like he'd hear it. Though, I found it hard to concentrate on mapping out my ideas, with my eyes fluttering from my notebook to my phone. On his third attempt, I swiped my phone and answered with a really tight voice.

"You're fifteen minutes late. I'm dying here," he replied, ignoring the bad mood.

"I thought your athlete instincts would have told you to go on without me by now."

"My gentleman instincts told me otherwise. The same instincts that told me a lady like you doesn't back out on her word."

Damn! I didn't answer.

He just laughed at that. "Come on, Lady Zoey. Your buddy's waiting. And I could sense rain coming, you know, so we have to get back really soon." He paused, waiting for me to speak, but I was actually thinking of an excuse. "Waiting." He paused. "Still waiting." I didn't speak. "Still here."

"I have things to do."

"So do I, because I am part of that. But here I am, waiting for you, because we agreed on it." He continued like in a whisper, "It's going to rain."

I gripped my phone tight and looked out the window. The crowd was slowly thinning because it was almost vacation. Those whom I expected to stay in school were those who had to take summer classes, those who were hard core fans of athletes, the committees on the sports fest, and the BRIS Athletics Club. The BRATS.

Since BRIS was an international school, it ran around the policy that classes started in August. Summer vacation actually meant rainy season vacation, and the sky was really announcing it. The sky was filled with thick clouds, true enough that it would rain soon.

"Fine. Gimme fifteen minutes."

"Make it five. I'm dying here." And there was a click.

* * * *

At dinner with the swimming team, I sat beside Geo because he was the only guy I was comfortable to sit beside with.

We went to Shūsoku Suru, this Japanese restaurant across BRIS. It wasn't just the traditional Japanese place where everyone only got to sit on the floor with their shoes off. It had regular seats and tables, as well. And since I wasn't that comfortable to sit Japanese style with these guys, I chose one of the tables at the spot farthest from the door. Teenagers had the habit of looking around as soon as they entered a dining place. I didn't want us to be the first they laid eyes on.

"It's so weird you're here." Hans propped his elbows on the table, clasped his hands together under his chin and stared at me. Hans was a pure Filipino, but to me he looked like a Chinese-Filipino, with his eyes smiling as he did.

"Because I am so not a cheerleader?"

Geo was first to laugh, amused at what bitterness I knew he'd mistake my annoyance for. "Yes, that undying cliché of athletes, having cheerleader girlfriends."

That was the only time Hans and the others laughed. "Because I've seen you around and you don't participate in anything."

"I participate in activities," I defended, my voice a pitch higher than usual.

"Yeah, you're there," Hans cut in, bored. "But you're not there, exactly. You don't mingle. You don't participate, participate. You know what I mean?"

Geo had his eyes fixed on his sake now, as if in deep thought. "Yeah, she is quite detached from the world, isn't she?"

I almost snapped my neck, turning to him. Who gave him the right to talk about me that way? "Excuse me? I participate in activities the way I enjoy participating. You don't hear me complaining why you don't take pictures of your own events."

"Touché. But you are detached from the world. Admit it."

I glared at Geo. He didn't know me well to pass on that kind of judgment. Although, yes, I would have to admit that I was quite detached from the world – their world – for some time now, endlessly blaming and cursing Scott and Matt for that.

He smirked. "Zoey, you take things seriously. There's nothing wrong with what I said. It's a general observation. Everyone notices."

"Are we gonna talk about me?" I cleared my throat, hoping that as I spoke a little louder, they'd hear the displeasure in it. I wanted everyone to answer so I faced them. And perhaps that wasn't exactly a very good idea because they all said, hell yeah.

Greg, the Filipino-American swimmer from senior year, and apparently the team's captain, laughed. "You are quite the mystery to most of us."

I was a twin. It was inevitable.

"Zach is an all-out guy. What you see is what you get." Geo leaned back on his seat and propped his elbow on the backrest of my chair. I sat immediately at attention, which he didn't seem to notice, because his elbow remained comfortably resting there. "But you, you are that side of the Anderson world that nobody knows anything about."

"There's nothing to know," I insisted. If at all, they would probably find anything about me too boring. Not all people were inclined to photography. Appreciating good photos, perhaps, but that's what gave rise to fashion magazines and all those commercialized stuff.

Geo smiled and shrugged his shoulders, leaning toward the table again as he took a sip of water. "To see is to believe." If that wasn't charming enough, he winked.

Beyond that, the subject shifted from me to swimming – something I literally prayed for, while we waited for our food to arrive.

I ate my ramen in silence, just listening to their banters, and kept my opinions to myself. Not that I had a lot. I had only a few and they weren't exactly those I could put to strong argument, since I knew so little about swimming. So focusing on my ramen seemed to be a very good idea to hide how socially awkward I tended to be.

Geo ordered a large platter of sushi. There were nine of us at the table; eight had athlete appetites. But that wasn't the whole reason I hadn't had any share since the order arrived. I was sitting on one end of the table and the platter was placed right in the middle, where male arms dashed from different directions, giving an image of a more civilized boodle fight. I didn't want my tiny hands crushed between those. More so, I didn't want to stand up and reach for my share. It would only entail I leaned over.

So I was really grateful when Geo took a few pieces for me. "Here," he said, placing each piece on a Japanese saucer for my convenience and setting it down in front of me.

I smiled at him in response, to which he returned a brighter smile. That was the last interaction we had at the table before the guys called it a night. Geo insisted that we stayed behind as soon as they had left, and we moved to a smaller table for a chat.

At the back of my head lingered the things we could talk about, things Matt and Jazz said might be similar between us. But looking at him now, sitting comfortably in front of me, none of those seemed to make any sense. I couldn't quite put my tongue into voicing anything out. So I said we should formulate a game plan, instead.

"Sure, Captain!" he teased, his grin wider than it was when the guys were with us.

I rolled my eyes at him. But then, just being there with him gave me a sense of familiarity, like I had known him for a long time now. So I smiled.