We Are All Strange

Kaya’s soul nearly leaped out when she tripped on her sister’s pink bike that laid in the middle of the garden. The threat of keeling over gave a strong jolt to her reflexes and her entire body felt the tingles when the adrenaline came rushing through her limbs.

Kaya’s shoe thumped against the cobbled pathway, audible enough for her sister Queenie to turn her attention away from her paper chain dolls, which she had planted headfirst in the soil so that only their jagged legs poked out amongst their mother’s hibiscus.

When Queenie saw her até’s clumsy act, she immediately let out the heartiest fit of giggles. Anything her big sis did, even if it was only mildly entertaining, was magical to her, always prompting a laugh. In return, Kaya never failed to find her little sister’s hee-hawing delightful to hear.

But Kaya had to calm herself down. She couldn't afford to get distracted by anything that Saturday afternoon. Not by the bike or her sister—no one.

“Mom, what are you doing?” Kaya said, looking all flustered after sprinting up a flight of stairs. “You’re supposed to be leaving now.”

“Can’t a lady put on her lipstick first?” Ellen quipped to her eldest.

“What are you talking about? You always do that in the car.”

“Alright, relax. What time is it anyway?”

“It’s 1:53 pm,” Kaya groaned, “Which means that I’ll have company any moment now and you promised you’d be gone by then.”

“Mm—what’s that smell?”

“I ordered pizza for me and my friends, remember? Mom!”

“Right, right. Where’s your sister?”

“How should I know? I’m not her parole officer.”

“Seriously, where are you picking up all these things?”

“Mom, please!”

“Alright, I’m off. Geez.” The mother rolled her eyes as she turned quickly to her youngest, who was shyly waiting by the door frame. “Queenie, come kiss mommy goodbye.”

Kaya shook her head profusely. “What do you mean? Queenie cannot not go with you,” she stressed.

“She won’t be allowed to go in the cinema, your Aunt Fely picked an adult movie,” the mother reasoned. “Besides, it’ll only be for a couple of hours.”

“But—but she’s gonna ruin my meeting.”

“Meeting?” Ellen tried to hide her smile. “Don’t be silly, your baby sister knows how to behave if you ask her nicely. Won’t you, Q-kins?”

Queenie nodded, exposing her two missing front teeth.

“But—” Kaya whined, “she’s always weird around my friends.”

Instead of giving in, Ellen looked at her eldest straight in the eye. “Kaya, just a month ago you were telling me Gracie and company were mean to the janitor.”

“MOM—”

A faint car honk outside interrupted their discussion, which meant that Fely had arrived. Ellen hastened to gather her purse and head for the door. “You’re almost twelve now, Kaya—so remember the house rules. Call me for emergencies.”

Kaya was getting antsy. Her guests were supposed to arrive ten minutes ago.

“What if they canceled and didn’t tell me? Or maybe they lost my number.” She paced the living room, while Queenie sat on the stairs looking quizzically at her sister. This bugged Kaya even more. “Please, Queenie. Can you, for once, not be you right now? This is like an important, life-or-death situation,” she begged, but Queenie just kept staring.

The doorbell finally rang, and outside were three girls in their pastel-colored T-shirts, high ponytails, and upturned noses.

“Hi, Gracie, Daisy, Lana. Please come in,” Kaya grinned. “Sit. I’ll just get the beverage.”

One by one, the girls slumped on the soft leather as Queenie watched them in amusement from the fifth step of the stairs. Their hair all looked pretty and shiny, she thought, and perhaps that was why Kaya wanted to be friends with them.

Soon enough, Kaya came back to the living area and everyone began to devour the warm pizza. After a slice, one of the girls, Gracie, turned to the other, who was busy reaching for a possible second serving. “So Lana, you want to start?”

“Right.” Lana placed down her plate, looking longingly at her new slice. “Well, the reason we called for a pizza meeting at your place is because as you know you’ve been shortlisted in the ‘Search for the New Suprema.’ Your dance number at Ms. Alejandro’s class last week made me nominate you to the group.”

“Thank you—” Kaya smiled eagerly at Lana.

“But, you still need to go through a series of tests before we declare you officially a member,” Lana interjected. “As you already know, being a Suprema is not just having the talent. You must also have the attitude and stay-tus.”

Kaya nodded intently. She knew this well. Being a Suprema meant being in the most popular group as a froshie in high school. Not everyone could get in and only a few girls get nominated each year. Since it was Kaya’s first time, she wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass.

The leader of the pack, Gracie, went straight to the task. “Let me see your phone,” she coldly told Kaya.

Kaya handed her phone swiftly and Gracie’s nostrils flared. “Still rockin’ the Nokia 5110 model?” she asked.

“I’m getting a 3210 for my birthday. In three months,” answered Kaya.

“And what about your wardrobe?” Gracie sought.

“My closet is upstairs—we can check it.”

“Who’s that?” Gracie raised her eyebrow when she spotted Queenie gawking.

“Ignore her, that’s just my sister.”

“Why is she looking at me funny?”

“Queenie! Go be strange someplace else.”

Upstairs they went and checked her clothes. Kaya knew they were there to judge—the outfits, if they were hip enough and the brands, if they were pricey enough. They skimmed through all skirts and pants, and went through every drawer, and the three girls whispered among themselves while Kaya anxiously waited.

“We’re very close to making a decision,” Daisy finally commented. “But before we do, we still need to grade your sass and spice level.”

Sass and spice—also known as the pulling-a-prank test. Of course, Kaya had heard about this dreaded final stage from a number of nominees that dared but never made it through. She knew she needed to prepare for this especially.

Kaya asked who their least liked girls in school were. Without skipping a beat, Lana yelled the names: Brenda and Macy—both two years above them. Kaya whipped out the school yearbook and looked for their phone numbers. She dialed one on the landline, and brought out her cellphone and dialed the other number on it. She was calling both simultaneously. There was one ring, and then another. One picked up and the other followed less than a second after.

Hello?

Hello?

Hello?

Yes?

Who’s this?

What?

Who’s this?

Who is this?

You called me.

No, you called this number.

Are you on drugs?

What?

STUPID!

GO TO HELL!

It was like watching a lunatic argue with the many voices in their head. The girls burst out laughing as soon as the innocent victims hung up. Daisy believed one of them sounded like Brenda while the other could’ve been Macy’s father. Everyone kept on laughing, except Gracie, and she held the final verdict.

Gracie thought Kaya probably rehearsed the calls, which Kaya vehemently denied. Still, Gracie wasn’t convinced—she looked out the window and saw the perfect opportunity.

As all girls viewed the neighbor’s bungalow from Kaya’s bedroom, Gracie immediately recognized that it was the residence of the infamous “town freak”—and the freak was pacing on her back porch.

She was a woman, who Kaya thought looked much older than her mother. Many, many years older. Whispers swirled that she used to be famous.

One day, she just stopped going outside and began wearing a large trench coat every day, even when it was 36 degrees. Gracie’s parents had secret theories as to what was “wrong” with the woman. What was underneath all the thick fabric? Not knowing made Kaya extremely nervous.

For her re-test, Gracie dared Kaya to grab the book that the freak had left at the table in her backyard.

Kaya told her she couldn’t do that—it was stealing and she’d definitely get caught.

Gracie insisted that she should trust her. Supremas should trust each other.

Aware that she could get into so much trouble, Kaya was near tears. It was hard to swallow, but she wanted to be in the group so badly and was one test away from getting in.

What if she got caught?

From the metal fence surrounding the bungalow, Kaya squeezed herself in and got behind the bushes of the neighbor’s backyard. She noticed that the freak was not around. In fact, no one was outside—just a few cats loitering about the overgrown grass.

Finally, Kaya saw the table on the porch, and on top was the book. She just needed to crouch low enough not to be seen by the woman on her plan for escape.

By creeping slowly, Kaya eventually got closer. Only, she heard something that grew louder by the second. It felt close. A voice, or a chorus—she must leave now.

From the bedroom window, a look of great concern was plastered on Queenie’s face as she watched her big sister grab the book and slither out. “Use your wings, Ate Kaya! Use your wings!” She flapped her arms and screamed, but her voice trembled, still too tender for her sister to hear.

But Kaya made it out. Clutching the worn-out paperback, she raced off toward the opposite gate, encountering the neighbor’s one-eyed cat, which hissed and tried to scratch her.

When she finally made it back to the house, the Supremas had just finished off all the pizza. They jadedly looked up at Kaya, who was sweating and panting after going through all that trouble for them.

Kaya tossed the book to Gracie, and Gracie congratulated her for officially becoming part of the group. Lana and Daisy clapped their hands—now it was time to leave.

Kaya then asked what she was going to do with the book. “I don’t care. Put it in your cabinet beside your fashionable overalls,” laughed Gracie as she and the two marched out the door.

Kaya plopped down on the couch, still out of breath, irritated. Yes, she was relieved that the meeting was over, but a hollowness had filled her chest.

Come Monday, when she finally showed up at school, she would be recognized as a Suprema by everyone, even the teachers—and this should thrill Kaya.

Unfortunately, one look at a distraught Queenie and Kaya was immediately reminded of what she had to do to make it in the group: trespass and steal.

Glaring down at her little sister, she made Queenie promise not to tell anyone, especially their mom and dad. Except that Queenie’s mind was already elsewhere—at their neighbor’s house, to be precise.

It was too quiet come bedtime, though the eight-year-old swore she had been hearing faint sounds.

That same night, Queenie would escape from the window that had a mango tree standing next to it. She would dangle her tiny arms on the branches and swing down, landing by the bushes next to their mom’s hibiscus. She would run to the house next door and squeeze her narrow torso in the gap in the metal fence. She would retrace her sister’s steps and crawl on all fours so no one would see her.

Except that the porch would no longer have the table where the book had lain that afternoon. It would be replaced by a rocking chair, where the woman in a trench coat sat patiently, alone under a dim lamp, waiting for her book’s inevitable return.

And Queenie—dear, Queenie—feeling guilty of her big sister’s deed, would cradle the book in her arms and be inches from the “freak.” Finally, she could see what was hiding under the oversized clothing.

When the woman shifted in her chair like she was about to convulse, out rose two huge bumps that grew and wobbled from her chest. They kept growing until they formed a neck and a full hair on top.

They were human heads! Queenie counted: there were three all in all, sharing a single body, looking exactly alike.

The heads all turned to Queenie, asking her to read to them because their eyesight was poor.

“You can read it—we even think you’ll love the story. It's been our favorite since we were kids,” they exclaimed.

Queenie’s eyelids fluttered. She wasn’t being shooed away for being weird. “You want to be my friend, even though I’m strange—I’m me?” Queenie asked softly.

The three flashed their collective smirk at the little girl. “You are strange. So are we,” one said. “And really, we’re all strange in our own ways, and we search for those we can be strange freely with.”

Queenie smiled back at the three sisters. She thought of her Ate Kaya, who had been accepted by her new friends, and that was okay. Kaya just wanted to belong, just as she did.

Queenie let out a small, hearty giggle, remembering her sister’s curious antics that day—tripping on the pink bike, her stubborn fussing, and silly prank calls—as she opened the book to Chapter One.∎