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Q. SO HOW DID YOU GUYS BECOME CLOSER?






IVY



Hmm. Well, it helped that Istarted seeing a lot more of him, almost as if Miguel was making up for his negligence of the past month. He and his sister became part of our moving crew, which included Giselle, Jeff, Trey and Trey's cousin-by-marriage who owned asmall truck. It was a race against time, given that we only had a few days before registration for first semester began. The hours blurred into one mad shopping spree as Sharm, Erwin and I raced around Cubao, SM, the residences of friends and Divisoria purchasing or begging for things to furnish our new home with. The other half we spent lugging things around and arranging them around the apartment; having guy pals came in handy when it came to the lugging around part.



Around mid-afternoon the first day, Miguel knocked on our door and politely inquired if there was anything he could do to help. I'm not sure what he was thinking then, but since we were up to our elbows in boxes and shopping bags of stuff, we took his offer seriously. When we discovered that the boy was adept at assembling furniture and could attach a shelf or a full-length mirror to a wall better than Sharm, Erwin or I could, his position as our moving-in tech-support was cemented. Young as he was, Migs wasn't in Engineering for nothing. Later, Reese came bursting in, still in her school uniform and whining about how it was so unfair that grade school students had to go back to school a full week before college students did. We hid our grins when Miguel forbade her from helping out until she finished her homework and sent her back to the house, although judging from her scowl I doubt Reese shared our sentiments. Migs could be one scary big brother when he wanted to be.



The next day went pretty much the same way. The three of us went shopping in the morning, came home shortly after lunch, then started setting up. Our friends, Miguel included, arrived to help out, especially when it came to carrying up the old Santillan family refrigerator and the washing machine and the other heavy stuff. Then Reese dropped by for a visit-after finishing her homework, of course-and we had a snack consisting of Coke and anything else Sharm and I could scrape together.



By then, we'd accepted our adoption as Reese's new pets, and I suspected that half the time she was there to try and trip me up into admitting I was Shoujo Shine's image model. I made sure to act the opposite of how the Shoujo Shine Girl was supposed to be, which wasn't hard since all I had to do was be myself, but the girl was unfazed. She handled our smoking, cussing, crude jokes and teasing insults with such blas