Chapter Twenty-Two: The One With Live Television

"Gianni, I need you to get over here right now, and this isn't a joke. You have to meet me. There's no time." I stepped outside of the court, in desperate need for fresh air. I wanted time alone to chill, but I had to make this call to let him know.

I'm sure he'd want to be present for anything that would come next, and he'd probably regret not showing up here for everything that's already happened. That's how it works. When you're there, you wish you didn't have to be. When you're not, you wish you could've been. I wouldn't mind having someone that I felt was on my side during this though. The hardest part might've been over, but most of my emotions are an aftermath type of thing, and I had to keep myself in line somehow.

"Woah there, Shang. What's gotten into you? We haven't talked in like a week or so, - probably more - and now you're completely bombarding me. What happened?" He said on the other end of the line. Every ring that passed before he ended up picking up was another stab into my stomach, but I thought when he finally did I'd be relieved. I wasn't. He hasn't heard anything, and I guess I shouldn't expect him to if I haven't updated him, but I don't want to be the one to have to tell him any of it either. The thing is, there isn't anyone to.

"A crap ton has happened, Gianni. I'm outside of the court house right now, and the public is going crazy over the final ruling. You have to come down right now, or if you so badly want to know, you can probably turn on the news." I said this because I knew his story. He despised the channel after Mew passed, because that's how he found out about it. If he turned on the channel, either he remembered things that he didn't want to, or felt too much for people he didn't know, because he's been there. Pressing one button could make him an emotional wreck, and same with me, if I'm not lying.

"I'm not going to turn on the television for a channel that killed me two years ago and will again and again, Crish-." He stated, and I knew he was rolling his eyes though I couldn't see him. Counting to three voicelessly, yet with my fingers out as record, I waited for him to get the actual point of what I was saying. "Wait, why in the world would you be at the courthouse?"

"I think you have enough information to make an educated guess, Gianni, but if you do or you don't, just come down here. Seriously, I'm running low on patience. It's been a long day. This isn't something I should have to explain. If I really must, I'll do it when you get here. See you. Bye." I hung up before he had a chance to ask any additional questions.

All I could do to kill the time until he got his ass in gear and realize I needed him here, was sit on the front steps. People exiting the building looked down at me with these pitiful, sorrowful looks, and with how much taller I allowed them to be from down on the ground, I really did feel tiny. I don't know of a time I felt smaller, and feeling that way creeps up on me likely too much.

Seconds felt like minutes. Minutes like hours, and hours like days, and if time was relying on my measurement of it, half a year at minimum would've passed by now. I began to worry that my call didn't get to his head, and that he was laying on his bed sleeping off the matter or doing very male things that men like to do, but the reality is, he was just a girl when it came to getting dressed. Eventually, he pulled up into the parking lot, on a motorbike, which allowed me to skip peeking into a car window wondering if it was him, when we saw each other from the get-go.

"What's up?" Gianni asked, casually. He had pulled up to the curb where I had walked over to meet him, and he began taking off his helmet. His being showed just how oblivious he is about everything, because there wasn't any kind of concern on his face or his body, even considering the meet up place. If this was him being stupid, or a coping strategy he was already using that appeared as unaccepting until he knew everything, I hated it either way. I was relying on him to fill in the blanks on his own, but I did update him, maybe too directly.

"They found Camille's murderer. It's confirmed and everything. I came from the hearing, I heard it all." I told him. "It's Rachel. She paid her aunt to do it. They're both being imprisoned."

The part I was least looking forward to, his reaction, I focused on it, almost studying it - even inching in closer to understand it fully. Every feature of his face seemed to be involved. He'd blink too much, then not at all, furrow his eyebrows and relax them, pucker his lips, then curl them up, wrinkle his nose and let it still. I couldn't point to anything that it could mean. However much he tried to express himself without words, I needed him to speak to get what was going on inside.

"There must be some mistake." He said softly, right when I thought he wouldn't say a thing. His face relaxed into blankness, and he was shaking his head side to side. "As much as I've always hated Rachel she," Stopping his words because his voice cracked, he slapped his cheeks repeatedly like that would get rid of the emotions he was feeling. "Rachel was supposed to be on our side. She was. Wasn't she?"

Naturally, I found myself with a hand on his shoulder. It was useless to try comfort him, because I had nothing to give him that was reassuring or that would life him up, but I did feel what he felt, and I counted on that. "I thought so too," I admitted. There wasn't reason to lie of sugar coat anything. This is the way it is; what we are living through, and it'd be worthless to waste energy in pretending it's not.

A giggle, but a sad one was the most he could present. He could be attempting to fake his happiness, like he wasn't affected, but I think both him and I knew what it's meaning was. "I guess I know how to pick who to hate, don't I?" He joked, avoiding every crack in the sidewalk as he moved his feet around the nearby area.

"Speaking of knowing who to hate," I said, sitting back down on the stair and avoiding his eyes, that reminded me of my own hurt, by looking up at the sky. Unlike us, it was a pretty happy-looking day. The sun was out and it shined brightly above us, which was the evidence that life wasn't the movies.

In films, the weather always matched the feelings of the characters and it added to the emotion of the movie, but we're not made up people to carry some writer's stories. We're real, and sometimes that sucks, but sometimes there's way to make it better, which is the one option I had left.

"Because Rachel and her aunt got thrown in prison, I was asked by a an attending journalist or news reporter or something to answer some questions about Camille for a news channel, by the way." I threw it out there, without much of a proper introduction. He didn't know what to think of it, or where I was going with it, and I knew my tone of voice didn't give him the chance to get that. I elaborated before he could decide to slip out, or detest, in case he did catch onto something without me realizing. "But I think you should do it. I want her to be remembered in the best possible way, and I don't think I'm capable of recreating her one last time. You knew every side of her better and she was real with you. It's a position made for you, Gianni."

"Crishia. Is this what you called me here for? Listen to yourself. You're her sister, you know? What could you expect me to do that would be better than you?" He put both his hands up on my shoulders, and though it was an extra weight, it was the lightest I've ever felt with everything going on. That would've been awkward to admit, but it was the truth. "Besides, I hate every news channel that's ever existed. I couldn't let myself be on one. It's what ruined my life. Changed everything. It's how I heard about Camille passing. You know that."

"The channel didn't ruin your life. Reality did. That's how the world rotates. It spins backwards sometimes, and there's nothing we can do about it. It's too heavy to push forwards and make it change direction, but we did our best. You did your best." He hugged me midway, and it the warmest hug I've ever had in a long time that I had to absorb it before continuing. His close support felt like a life saver, that was the need to powering through. "Gianni. I do truly feel that if Mew had a choice, she'd want it to be you. I think you should do this for her."

"Okay, alright. I'll do it, Shang. On one condition."

"Yeah? What?"

"Come with me. Let's do it together."

- - - - - -

The lights of the "set" made everything hot, and the cameras pointing at us from every direction made it hotter. We were at the balcony of my house, but for what the situation was - it caused anxiousness. I've never been so uncomfortable in front of my own place.

Celebrities that live through concerts, interviews, and the general spotlight everyday of their lives, should I apologize? Because I do actually think I feel sorry that they have to do this so much that they're expected to get used to it, and I feel sorry that when I saw them, I automatically thought they were living such a divine life. I'm here once and it's as if I have to ask for permission to take a breath. Gianni being here made it better, but it was still too much to take in. Privacy - I longed for it.

"And we are back from commercial break, live with the Lobrigas story on ABS-CBN news." The news reporter, and the woman who invited me to be a guest on this channel in the first place, sat comfortably in this desert heat, a given, since she does this everyday, as she served her duty. "It's Meljoy Esperanza, the host for this evening, and we are here with the chilling experience of Camille Leslie Lobrigas' passing. We have her sister, Crishia Lobrigas here today, and sir, can you please introduce again, your connection to the victim?"

I exhaled when the camera shifted to put major focus on Gianni, instantly regretting using him as a sacrifice to get over my own nerves. Looking at him, he appeared humbly, but not wishing to leave as soon as possible, though on the inside of him, I had the feeling he did. "I'm Gianni Jules. A lot of people know me as Kade Gamoza and I was Camille's boyfriend before she passed."

Our first meeting was flashing back into my head. From the very start, we struggled to believe each other. If someone had told me that one day we'd be on live TV together and that I'd be relying on him for support, I would've laughed, but here we are, living proof that time changes things.

"I see. I'm extremely sorry for your loss, Mister Gamoza." The reporter sympathized, in the typical impersonal way that people do. "Wrapping this up with more direct questions if you don't mind, we are hearing that the case was closed two years ago as a suicide, but as of this morning was officially proven to be a murder," She watched for our nods as if they served as approval for her to go on. "As people who were close to the late Lobrigas, did you doubt from the start that it was a suicide?"

"Absolutely, Madam. It's impossible for her to have committed suicide." Gianni answered with conviction, and from his side, I encouraged him to continue with that type of attitude with a smile of my own; a more genuine one than what I've been recently able to pull off.

"Camille was the kind that had so much to live for in the present and the future, because she didn't wait until something big happened to be able to enjoy something. She was happy when the sun was shining, when it started to rain, and though she never had the opportunity to feel snow with her own hands, she was happy knowing that somewhere in the world the winter season was arriving. What I mean by this is, she found contentment in the little things, and could be wild and free, calm and reserved, and everything in between. She didn't live for anyone except herself, and it's for herself that she had goals for the future, to spend time with her sister, and to spend time with me. We had a bucket list planned."

"And," I cut in, but there was a lull for a second because I shocked myself to start talking in front of what I know is quite the crowd of people. "It's not just about those things either. Gianni is surely right, that is exactly the kind of girl she was, but the feeling too, that we had, as people who know her. It's just there. I think out of love you can sense what someone has went through. You just know, even if there's no physical evidence to prove it. It's inside of us. It's like a power of a superhero."

"I'm very glad that you believed in your instinct, especially because its said to have contributed to finding the truth. How exactly did you go about finding that 'truth'?

"Oh, that was all Crishia." Gianni laughed, peeking over to find the expression on my face when he did answer the reporter's question.

I gently hit him, before staring back at the lady. "That's not true. We did fight a lot because we were terrible at believing each other, but it's actually while he argued with me that he was spilling evidence. It's like he set down a puzzle with the pieces in barely the wrong places and all I had to do was rearrange it. Minor tweaks."

"So it was a team effort, and you're both humble. You met and helped each other out in your own ways, and beat the odds." The woman smiled, looking quickly down at her notes. "Well, we're running low on time, but to end this interview, what do you think Camille would've said as advice to the community that would help people? Just so her words get out there."

"There are three important pieces of human life. First, is he kind. Second, be kind, and third, be kind." I chose to say.

Gianni pondered on it for a bit extra. "There's no reward in life without risk." He added on, his words the last piece of our segment. With it, the cameras cut, and we were granted a big weight set off of our shoulders. As we stood up, and headed further outside to let out the visitors, the workers thanked us for being part of their program.

I was certain that was the end of it; that I could finally allow myself to collapse, that is, until confusion was back onto Gianni's face, as he stared out into the street. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, except a tourist couple walking by, but they didn't continue heading off until we couldn't see them anymore. They stopped, and headed nearer to us. "Gianni?" They said together. The woman went on, and the man allowed her to continue speaking by herself, "we've been looking for you. We've lived up in Talibon for a while, and couldn't ever get ahold of you, until we saw you on the news all grown up-."

"Mom? Dad?" Gianni exclaimed, his eyes wide open. Mine might've been opened wider than his when he said just two words. The woman he called his mom stopped talking because of his intrusion, noticing me, and introduced herself as Audrey Jules, and the man as her husband, Gianni Jules. He, who must be his father, took her slight stop as a chance to speak to his child, as he obviously came here for.

"I know this is a lot son, but come with us, can you? On vacation to the States. I promise, you can come back to the parents who better raised you whenever you want, and I'll understand. Please let your mom and I spend time with you, Junior."