That was the summer that Sky kissed me: a summer of mixtapes, last full shows, and hand-delivered postcards. Sky’s writing was so small that she could—and did—fit such things as minute-by-minute accounts of a Holy Week provincial morning, the first chapter of a never-finished novel, or a hundred made-up commandments, into a single rectangular side.
Living in the limbo between barely-met thesis deadlines and uncertain employment, we would all meet up on campus, under Diliman trees, out of habit and convenience. Diego would bring his Volkswagen Combi, and we would drive around, arguing and laughing and trying to beat Diego to the punchlines of his own horrible jokes, and failing.
Thank God the Combi didn’t have a stereo, or we would have killed each other trying to play what we wanted. Myla was into show tunes that summer, clinging to her college-long fling with musical theater while headed for a career in banking. Emil was into acoustic indie, “the sound of two soft voices blended in perfection.” Ron-ron would have insisted on hip-hop, and worse, he would have insisted on rapping along; Jay-Z or Common sound fine on their own, but with Ron2 shadowing their rhymes, their style would have been irrevocably cramped.
Sky and I had been rediscovering the ’80s. I had just made her a mixtape that was all Smiths songs on one side and all The Cure on the other. She was in the process, she told me, of playing it to death.
Diego would have thrown us all out and cranked up his heavy metal. He was all for vulgar displays of power.
The postcards were Sky’s idea. We would exchange them at the beginning of these barkada sojourns, and if the others thought it strange or sappy, they never commented to that effect. It was funny how we managed to fill the cards up despite all our hours on the phone. I would write stream-of-consciousness crap, future scenarios involving dream jobs, quotes from short stories.
We parked the Combi under the stars one time, when Emil, our resident amateur astronomer, insisted that it would be a good night for wishes. We lay down on some spread-out blankets and counted falling stars while sipping on vodka concoctions disguised in fruit juice containers. At some point while Ron and Myla were trading lines from “Rent” and Emil and Diego were discussing starting a new Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Sky and I huddled on the roof of the Combi and she and I sang Just Like Heaven together—really softly, because we both suck at singing—and then she looked at me and kissed me.
Memory is an odd thing. I wish I could remember every detail of those days and nights. The postcards are an ever-regenerating surprise: the times I come across them—usually years apart—while once again attempting organization, they tell me of things I barely remember but gladly relive.
I don’t see any of the old gang these days, though none of them are dead. We were never as close as we were that summer, before or since. I think Diego got married. I think Myla and Emil have kids, though not with each other. Our fishball afternoons and late-night talks and early morning staggers home have blended into one vaguely fond memory. Aside from that, and the postcards and the mixtapes and the kiss, I wonder what I’ve lost.
Sky gave me a mixtape before she left for Australia, never (though we didn’t know it at the time) to return. It had Mirrorball, Talk to Me Like the Sea, and We Walk the Same Line on it: Everything but the Girl.