I tap my foot against the white sterile floor. ‘Crap,’ I think to myself, ‘I’m gonna be late.’ More and more students come beeping through the turnstiles and elevator lines just keep getting longer and longer. I spot a friend.
“Tsong!” he turns and smiles, acknowlegding me from a distance.
As he walks towards me, he says, “Late na tayo.” like it’s a form of greeting or some sort. He takes a place behind me in the line. I nod at his statement and glance at the bright red digits on the wall clock ahead of us. 2:48. Our class started three minutes ago.
I shrug and gesture to the elevator lines helplessly. “Lintik na elevators, eh.”
He frowns and furrows his eyebrows, “Siguro maiintindihan naman ni ma’am.” We pause as the elevator’s indicator ticks down to 2nd floor then Mezzanine.
“Malapit na,” I comment, rather unecessarily.
Just then a girl comes running through the mass of people. She reaches our line just in time to make it into the elevator. The first thing I notice about her is her heavy looking bag. It’s a sling/messenger type of bag. Actually, it looked like a huge beach bag. It had comic book characters on it. Particularly, Marvel and DC comics. I had seen the backpack version of that in the mall. As I thought about which mall, I was shoved by my friend.
“Dude, tara na.” He jerked his head in the direction of the elevator line, which was steadily getting shorter as people piled themselves in the elevator. I got in, my friend followed suit and the girl was able to squeeze herself in as well. In that moment, I realized that the girl is tiny, as opposed to her large bag. I wonder how her body can carry it. There’s probably some strange physics equation involved. Which I would think about had my thoughts not been interrupted by the elevator’s ‘ding!’ Instead, I watch the number on the wall rise slowly. The usual quiet of the elevator was being disrupted by a loud, upbeat rock song playing from someone’s headphones. I shake my head and think to myself, ‘a tactic to wake themselves up and to annoy everyone around them.‘ Out of the corner of my eye, I see the girl pull her earphones out of her ears, seemingly to check if her iPod was playing loudly. When she realized that it was, she sheepishly glanced around and dug in her large bag. Soon, the elevator was back to being quiet. I cracked a smile. Most people don’t give a damn.
As more and more people got off the elevator, she was moving closer and closer to me. Unknowingly, I was inching back further. She was standing so close that I could identify the characters on her bag clearly. I looked the floor numbers, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. 10th floor. I held my breath.
11th. As the elevator dinged itself open, I was about to say, “Excuse me.” to the girl when she shuffled her way out. We got down on the same floor.My friend said something about the elevator voice being funny, but I wasn’t really listening. I was watching the girl.
She was in a hurry – that much I could tell from the long strides she was taking. Or she be a really fast walker. Either way – she was heading in the same direction we were. Suddenly, she ducked into room 1115. I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t understand why I was so paranoid. I checked my watch. She wasn’t that late if her class started at 2:45. Ten minutes held up by elevator lines isn’t that bad. I hoped my professor thought the same way. I sighed as I walked into room 1114. My professor had already started the lecture. I took the seat beside my friend, just as my professor demanded an explanation for our tardiness. I shrugged, letting my friend explain. I sit back in my chair and nod to a classmate beside me. “Tanginang elevators, eh?”
The guy chuckles and pats me on the back. “Ganyan talaga.”
Thus starts another boring Wednesday at Benilde.
