A Summer to Forget
By Mona, age 16, Philippines
It all started when the whole senior class went on a trip to the island of Boracay, a popular tourist destination here in the Philippines. Boracay is this amazing island with pure white sand beaches, high class hotels, and only the best restaurants by the shore. It's kind of like the Carribean, only smaller. We went there recently to celebrate our graduation and to have fun with our batchmates. My friends and I were swimming, strolling the white sands, getting henna tattoos, and doing all the fun stuff there is to do there. The problem started during our last night on the island. We were all out having fun, drinking (but only sips), talking, laughing, and enjoying the "I will surely miss the fun times we had" moments with our friends.
It was nearly 3:00 in the morning and we still didn't go back to our hotel because we knew our teacher chaperones would all be asleep, so we decided to stay out late. We had this one batchmate who was surely drunk. She ran to us and told us, "There's this big nightclub on the other side of the beach." She said most of our batchmates were there and we should go too. So we rushed to that place and it was so cool. We could hear the music from a mile away and we could see half naked guys dancing around with only board shorts and girls with their cute mini-dresses and bikinis carrying beer and other drinks. The lights were everywhere - it was amazing! If you were wearing white you'd surely glow in the dark because of the neon lights. The inside was all covered in sand which made the place more "beach-y". It was so packed inside that you began to sweat right away.
We were in the middle of dancing the night away when we saw these two guys on the dance floor, let's just say, inappropriately touching one of my friends. My other guy friend and I quickly pulled her off the dance floor. She then rushed to her boyfriend who was resting on the side of the dance floor. Her boyfriend asked her what was wrong, and she said that she was harassed by two of the men on the dance floor. We rushed out of the club so that we wouldn't cause a scene.
We were outside by the sea trying to calm her down while people were staring at us because my friend was crying so loudly. Her boyfriend then asked us if we knew who the two guys were, and so we described them. He then quickly rushed back inside the club. My friends and I were so worried that we called out to our other batchmates to stop him. They brought him back to us, half carrying him because he was so mad at those two guys that he wanted to hit them. We knew that if he had made a scene inside the club the manager would call the local police and they would awaken our teacher chaperones who didn't know that we were still out on the beach.
So we were sitting there on the beach at nearly 4:00 am, still listening to the cries of our friend who was now trying to stop her boyfriend from going back to the club. We wore tired faces as we decided to go back to the hotel. They were all tired, but I wasn't. Since we were going to wake up at 6:00 am I decided not to sleep. I was just sitting there thinking of all the fun I'd had earlier that evening, a memory that could never have been replaced by anything else. Imagine, being on an island with no parents and no rules, with the closest, most important people in your life that you will probably never see again since we're all going our separate ways to college, and so on. That memory was crushed by those two guys who tried to sexually harass my friend. This was supposed to be a summer to remember. Now I only see it as a summer to forget.
