Actually Super by Adi Alsaid

Author:Adi Alsaid [Alsaid, Adi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Isabel follows Gareth and his buddies to Manila.

She hadn’t spent much time there before heading to Palawan, she reasons, and it’s the best place to catch a flight to Sydney, which she starts looking for as soon as Rick responds to Gareth’s email about having a friend who wants to meet him.

“Do me a favor,” Chío says on the phone. “Take a picture of Gareth’s passport when he’s not looking and send it to me.”

“I’m not doing that,” Isabel says. “I will ask him nicely for a picture of his passport, because he’s a good person and he’ll understand.”

There’s a pause on the call, then Sam says, “I still vote for doing it in secret. Seems a little more fun.”

“I promise you that when we’re in Mexico, we can heist something. But I’m not gonna make Gareth the focal point of one.”

“Because you two are smushing faces?” Chío teases.

“Ew,” both Isabel and Sam say.

“Also,” Sam adds, “taking a passport photo is hardly a heist. If we’re going to be doing anything like that in Mexico, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page for what qualifies as one.”

Isabel is finally feeling exactly how she was supposed to throughout this trip. She’s enjoying exploring Manila, its sprawling expanse, its food. The malls, even, don’t seem like vacuous shrines to capitalism. They are social hubs, they are places to watch the curious lives of human beings on display. Funny how much easier it is to see things that way when her thoughts don’t interfere.

At night she either works the desk at the hostel—it’s come to feel like a certain home, how similar these places are, how similar are the guests that show up—or hangs out with Gareth, sometimes with his friends too. They gather around a laptop in the hostel’s common area and watch a movie while gulping convenience store beers, or they venture out to a dive bar.

Isabel’s even doing well financially. She has learned how to make her money last. It’s an easy balance of self-control and the desire to keep doing this. The boys seem ready to go back home for Christmas in a few weeks, but she is nowhere near ready to stop. Especially with her first real encounter on the horizon.

Australia will deplete her bank account at a much faster rate than Asia has, so she keeps teaching English online, even though the only things on her mind are Supers, and, admittedly, Gareth.

On the day that Gareth and his friends planned to go to Cebu, Isabel finds a $150 one-way fare to Sydney for three weeks later. The boys had invited her to come along, but she decides she’s going to get to know Manila, and save her money. Gareth watches as she fills in her passport information to buy the ticket. His friends are packed and ready to go, casting impatient glances his way.

“Go,” Isabel says. “I’ll have time to see you before I leave.”

“No,” Gareth says. “That’s not what I’m thinking.

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