The Jupiter Effect by Katrina Tuvera

Author:Katrina Tuvera [Tuvera, katrina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789712729010
Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9

GABY had become the one people liked confiding in, complaining about their parents or boyfriends—a sister-confessor of sorts. As far as she knew, she didn’t deliberately invite her friends’ confidence but when it came, and it often did, she listened patiently and well, never feeling the need to reciprocate by confessing to them, in return, her own and private troubles.

For the truth was she had none. Gaby was, generally, happy with her life.

She was happy with her family, even with Kiko who recently had been growing more silent, sulky. Happy with her grades which were not bad, but could be better were she willing to take more time off from her friendships. She was happy even on her own, daydreaming of Anton, of the life she wanted to live in years to come.

She fantasized about being an art curator, working in a museum in London, a city that fascinated her from the Mills and Boon and Agatha Christie mysteries she liked to read. Sometimes she thought she might become a painter. She kept a sketchpad at home filled with drawings of landscapes and windmills copied from the Time-Life Modern Art Series. It did show signs of a meticulous, though not particularly inspired, talent.

Still she was often surprised to hear what others who didn’t know her very well said about her. Eileen once told her a boy’s remark, that he found Gaby pleasant and unaffected—“without airs,” was the phrase he had used. Another time, she overheard Ria laughingly say to another girl as Gaby approached them in the canteen, “Oh, don’t worry ’bout Gabs, she won’t bite your head off.” It gave her the uneasy feeling that people watched her, measured her. Finally accepted her, with a half-hearted shrug, almost as if they had expected not to like her at all.

She wondered what Nilo Benigno could possibly know about her, what she had done, how she had acted, to provoke his interest. Two days after sending his letter (she did not reply) Nilo sent his friend Alex to arrange a meeting between him and Gaby. Alex, too, was someone Gaby had never spoken to, though she recognized the tall boy with whom Ria was once infatuated.

“Tonight?” Alex asked in the hall outside Gaby’s classroom. “Nilo says after classes, in the quadrangle.”

“I’m not sure,” she replied honestly. “What does he want anyway?”

Alex scratched his head. “Meet him so you’ll find out.”

“I’ll think about it.” Gaby entered the classroom, scanning it quickly, searching for Anton.

Even before Kiko graduated from the CCC, politics had pervaded the school’s administration. The once idealistic president was forced to resign by stockholders who felt Reverend Castille’s original vision, to establish a learning institution “built upon and primarily devoted to Christian values,” was being neglected. Ironically, at the same time the new administration introduced a stronger “Christian program”—which included daily Bible lessons and a week of Christian counseling—many CCC students discovered the thrill of fraternities and frat “rumbles,” of drugs and alcohol. The situation had already turned for the

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