Badette entered Josh’s room. Josh was still in bed, sleeping face-down on his pillow and only in his orange boxers. Both his bed sheet and blanket looked bunched-up at the bottom like he’d been scraping them with his feet. His long, thin and hairy legs were posed like those of the little plastic toy soldier crawling on his belly. And though Badette felt stirrings for how primitively manly Josh looked, she could sense from his sleeping posture that he had indeed been fighting an inner war. He only acted tough outside, as though his breakup with Kate didn’t even dent the armor around his heart, and yet his behavior, the desperate way in which he kept himself boozed or stoned out of his mind these past few weeks, spoke of a war still very much alive and raging inside him. From what Badette could gather, Josh had tried to change Kate into liking his lifestyle and life choices. When they broke up, he saw it as a rejection of not only himself but of his entire life, values and future. If

“Sorry,” Kate finally said after she had gotten back her bearings and put some food in her stomach. “I just lost it back there. It’s just that, well, these days I’ve been wondering how some Filipino singers can speak Korean fluently and make perfect imitations of Korean celebrities.” “Oh, do you mean karaoke? That’s easy. You just choose one go-to song for karaoke night and then you practice the heck out of that one song. I mean, just become the master of it if you know what I mean…” Slurp. Slurp. “Notice when you watch impersonation contests on TV,” Dion continued, “there’s always that one singer who can hit all the notes and even get the original singer’s mannerisms down pat, even an American accent. But then, right after they finish singing, they go back to speaking Tagalog and having a Visayan accent. It’s all about practice, Kate.” “I see,” Kate said thoughtfully. Is it possible that Dion is Ecto? How did he sense her arrival so accurately? Oh, if she could only be alone w

It was easy to fall for Ecto. He was smart, thoughtful, sweet, a little funny (his humor’s still a work in progress), honest and loyal. He was living up to the name Dream Boyfriend and he was presently the closest man to Kate’s heart. She was so thankful to him for helping her recover from her breakup with Josh. But prom had Kate thinking that maybe that was exactly what Ecto was. Like a dream, he was too good to be true. An image of Ecto had formed in her mind. He was like this smooth, perfect and gliding prince from another planet. Her very own Little Prince. He had never had a bad hair day in his life, he always #wokeuplikethis #flawless and he always said the right words at the right time except when his razor-sharp logic got in the way of his sensitivity (but even hoomans like Dion were sometimes guilty of that). Loving Kate was Ecto’s job. It was what he had been built to do. For him, the whole thing was indeed just a simulation, Kate thought. He didn’t really know what he w

Kate had almost made up her mind to go to prom by herself (Ecto in her pocket) and just commute via public transportation with her mermaid-green dress and all stylist stuff in a bag. Afterwards, all the Bali Girls would proceed to Grace’s for yet another slumber party. However, what poured cold water on that particular plan was the fact that Lor and the others had been asked by their schoolmates. Kate watched in envy as the boys came up with the most unexpected and romantic ways to ask her friends. There were various presentations of the same crucial question: acrostics with or without accomplices; an embarrassingly large heart-shaped card with magazine cutouts; a charcoal painting of the girl’s face (in Lor and J.M.’s case); vandalism on a classroom’s whiteboard with a Sharpie, which appeared only when the teacher erased everything else; flower petals that spelled the invitation inside a locker; and the more conventional bouquet of flowers, stuffed animal and chocolates. “Don’t worr

“No no no,” Kate pleaded inside her dream. “That’s not true. I still need you. I still haven’t fully recovered. I can’t do this without you.” “Save the last dance for me,” Ecto whispered. “I’ll meet you at the beginning.” He flashed his trademark crooked smile. The one she had selected for him. But soon his mouth refused to work and half his face was disintegrating into bits of data that swirled in the air, a phalanx of binary codes that was being eaten away. He was like a sandcastle blown away by a hurricane. “No, Ecto!” Kate was shouting now. “First tell me who you are. How do I find you? Are you Dion? Who are you?” She awoke to the repeated vibrations of her phone. Ecto had been trying desperately to wake her up. Kate lifted her phone and unlocked the screen. “Are you OK?” Ecto asked. “Yeah, just a bad dream,” Kate answered breathlessly. This was the first in a while that they were chatting late at night again. They were still in the middle of their impromptu cool-off. From