Prologue: The One With Two Year Old Memories

The human life span, according to science, is about 70 years; 80, if a person is especially strong and healthy. Sometimes there's those certain people that even pass that up, enough that when you're alone with them in a room you can't help but feel partly afraid that they'll drop dead and you won't know what to do about it, but no matter what age it is that someone might breathe their last breath, there's one thing among every single one of them that's always the same.

"Back in my day" is a common phrase that younger people nearly define the older generations, almost to the point we use it as a joke, but rarely have many actually taken the time to register in their heads what that really means. Right there, is the proof that as many 365s as a person might live through, time slips away in what feels like the snap of a finger, and there's no way to get it back.

That's what I find unfair. People nearing their 100s will say that time just flew from them - that the stress of their high school exams and the elementary pranks all happened just yesterday, and that's the thing. If the population considers a century to be too little, than how much worse is it if an innocent, free-spirited, and insanely shy girl died at 15? Only 15 years old? How does the world allow that injustice to happen?

I thought that the memories I'd have with my sister would be ones like the time she screamed when a cockroach got onto the jeepney we were in, heading to the city for groceries, which made everyone else scream or throw their feet up onto the seats, until we saw it fly off. The time she got chased by this huge crowd of birds at the park corner when I was feeding them bread, and the time she lost her commute allowance and she got yelled at for three days straight by our parents because it was so rare she'd slip up without an alibi. I thought I'd be able to tease her about that forever.

And it's not that I can't do that in my heart. I'll remember each and every one of those until my own life span is diminished to nothing, but the thing is every time I remember those, it's lead to the same thing; what came to be her ending.

On the day I thought that the worst worry I could have is how bad my forearms hurt from carrying so many bags from the store because I refused more than one trip, or how difficult it would be to organize every single one in the fridge so my mom would be proud enough of me, but when I got home to flashing lights, loud nosy neighbors, and yellow police tape on perimeter of our property, I got that feeling that that thought wasn't the case.

I wish it stayed only a feeling, and not a reality.

Like it was yesterday, I can still see the paramedics rush Mew's -as most people called her - fragile, pale body from inside our sari-sari store, up on a stretcher and into an ambulance. Like it was yesterday, I can still see the monitor flat line while I prayed that somehow that machine wasn't connected to her, but anyone else - selfish, I know. Like it was yesterday, I can still see "Camille Leslie Lobrigas" be pronounced dead by an overdose; a claim that she had taken her own life, cutting it much too soon.

But it wasn't yesterday. It was September 23rd, 2020 - two years ago - and she's only had the chance to live since March of 2005.

Back then, my parents made sure to keep me in my seat, and when I say that, I mean that they wouldn't let me fight for what I knew was true: Mew didn't commit suicide. She was murdered, and that criminal is running the streets until today. They would say that we have to "keep in our place" about the matter and that investigators were trained for their jobs so they were more likely to be right, and when I replied that I had to find the actual honesty in this, I was tied back down to the house like a prisoner.

And that's stupid. That was trusting the peaceful neighborhood that had its secrets and chaos before trusting that they knew the kind of person Mew was, who is their own child. I mean, how could you trust a crowd of superficial people who only let you see what they want you to see and not the daughter that was such a dream kid that sometimes it made me mad? Yes, that fricking perfect?

What the officers came up with are theories. They know Mew for work. I know her because we're blood and we've spent almost every single one of our days together. They're doing this for the money and I wanted to fight for her out of love, care, and compassion - because I know what is true and how she would've wished things turned out to be. I know that better than anyone.

She would never commit suicide. We had plans, goals, things we wished for in the future - and she convinced me to stop dreaming so deeply of going abroad because she wanted me to be part of her life where I was already so sincerely happy and she was right about that, but what really made it clear is that Mew had a one of a kind situation. She was so terrified of taking pills, so much that we had to find alternate ways of treating her pain, like the sprained ankle or her occasional migraines. If she ever did try taking her own life - if I have to fathom that she'd want to die - it wouldn't be by the overdose of pain killers. That's impossible.

I was expecting I'd stay tied down as I have been for the last two years, but the longer I'd overhear my mom accidentally call Mew's name along with mine when it was time for lunch, see my dad put even a pencil in her room back into the exact position it was before she died if he mistakenly tampered with it so it's be how she left it, and how going out always brought them a memory of her no matter how basic, I couldn't sit tight for another minute.

I knew this wasn't the truth, and somewhere in them, I was nearly certain they knew that too. They knew their own daughter. They knew what kind of person she was. They knew she wouldn't leave us just like that. That she'd be here one day and gone the next, and in such a peculiar way? What would trigger something so opposite of her?

Yeah, the sun might come out just the same as it used to. It'll rain during the rainy season as it does, and the earth will continue right on spinning as it did from the start. The stars still twinkle just as brightly, the waves crash against the shore, and the moon comes out when it's expected to every night, but none of it feels the same.

The little things I was so easily able to appreciate that made my life kinda - well, glow, it's as if I can't anymore even if I forced myself, just because the person I appreciated it with isn't around.

I need Mew to live the life I've always known, but I can't have that now. There's no way. The least I can do is stand up in her behalf. Isn't that what's right? Holding it in is what's wrong, no?

I have to make things the most right that they can be, because there's too many things that aren't.

But where am I supposed to start?