I have this female cousin who just turned 10. She lives in a subdivision of another province 1 hour ride away from ours but she and her older brother is currently residing in our house for the meantime due to summer education matters. Basically, their parent’s favor was to let them stay over at my uncle’s house just beside ours. It was more spacious. So spacious that you barely see any live human being gallivanting around and even if there was, they’d be heading next door—to our house. It’s not a haunted house but a typical house of a rich family, pretty chic but dull and yeah, spacious. Unfortunately due to the lucid and irritating excuses of an average businessman, they decided to stay here in our simple yet cozy place where unlike the other house, is full of people.

They’re nice siblings. They know how to wash their own dishes and help my yaya with household chores. Her brother was like a 11-year old version of my brother, creative and gay. She was nothing like me, but she’s got some likeable attitude sometimes. They’re both taking advance classes at a review center nearby. Each Thursday my uncle picks them up and by Sunday afternoon they return.

Anyway, so I was talking about this little girl. We don’t get along well. We don’t fight but a thin sheet of awkwardness hanged itself between us. We spoke different dialects of Bicol (Me, Legazpeno and she Sorsoganon, if that’s what you call the spoken word of Legazpi and Sorsogon) but we’re both Filipinos so practically we understand each other. We have different interests and never did a thought of playing with her occur to me. We’re just plainly different. I was quite a regular ate, silent and mature and she was a regular child with a weird point of view: She thinks she’s not her father’s daughter.

I don’t understand why sometimes children despite the almost-perfect life, want some drama? When I was her age I only poured my heart out in a stupid and uncalled for emotional breakdown and got myself a short term psychogenic fugue just because I got my crush’s notebook only to see a girl’s name written for like ten times or more. Yeah I nearly died for getting heart broken for the first time. I also remember telling the DSWD speaker during one of our elementary fieldtrips that my mother tied me and a huge scandal broke out. That story of course with some bitchy teachers’ additional and exaggerated stories had my mom called for at the principal’s office when in the first place I only meant a tourniquet test for Dengue. I absolutely had no idea about it at that time and if I were to evaluate that attitude of mine eight years before, I’d say that was indeed ludicrous. As I continued to ridicule and curse my childhood nonsense, I got into thinking that somehow despite how idiotic crying over a boy and telling the world that my mom tied me was, at least the fact that people cry when they’re hurt and a naïve description of a diagnostic procedure was a bit sensible.

So then, what the hell is this kid’s basis for inventing a terribly cruel and baseless story? Even in her facebook account, she uses her mother’s maiden name. Maybe it’s because she’s the only girl among her brothers. Oh please she can’t be that stupid. But what do I know? I wasn’t there to observe her milestones and to jot down whatever happened that made her think that way. Could it be? No way.

Even so, despite the possibility of her not inventing anything in the first place, I know her dad is a good father. My uncle has been my substitute father each time my real dad went to work abroad. He has been a stroke survivor and although he’s partially incapable, I am a witness of how hard he tries to help with everything each time they visit. I just hope she sees whether whoever the sperm donor or the man she grew up with has been a real father to her. And I hope she learns to appreciate her dad more than create a depressing story to get attention.