After reading “Fairest” on pages 68-106, I can understand how Meredith felt empty inside when she saw that her mother was only using her for her benefit. When she received the news that the show she was in was canceled, she felt a great sadness that she would no longer be on television, and she didn’t know how she would ever focus on school again. When Talusan’s mother also received the news, she did everything she could to get her daughter on another show, but Meredith had had enough and told her mother that she wanted to live with her grandmother because she was not a real mother, and confronted her for the first time. She was free and went back to her grandmother, started studying in one of the best schools, made new friends, and could feel the feeling of love towards her friend Samuel. After long years, Nanay Coro dies (Meredith’s grandmother), no one could identify that child from before because now she had become a woman. At the funeral, one of her old friends tells her, “It’s amazing you’ve become a woman. We didn’t even know you were gay.” Meanwhile, inside she thought, “I felt disappointed over how I hid so well that even my most intimate friends didn’t know me. I was still sure Samuel did though, regardless of what he said”. Sometimes we must hide who we are, just as Meredith did, if she had not hidden it, she would surely think she was going to lose the only friends she had, but still, Samuel did have an inkling of Talusan’s true self but he never told her anything and pretended not to know anything and continued their best friends friendship. The great feeling she felt was so great that she didn’t want to leave for America without kissing him or holding his hand, but she had to show control because if she lost her sanity for a moment, it was as if she knew, that she would also lose a good friend in the blink of an eye. It was an impossible love, she let it go even though she hurt, but for me, she felt happy when she could smell one of her T-shirts for the first time. Finally, when Talusan first came to America, her thoughts on what America was like betrayed her as she saw the sad reality of a country she considered wonderful. Everything was different from Filipina.