The morning sun in San Miguel was a stubborn guest it poured through every crack of the bamboo walls, crawling over the thin blanket that covered twelve-year-old Emil Santos. His eyes, almond-shaped and gentle, fluttered open as he listened to the roosters. He always liked mornings. Mornings were full of promises.
Emil swung his legs off the cot, careful not to wake his mother who was still asleep beside him. He reached for the notebook on the small wooden shelf a notebook whose pages were already bursting with doodles of flags, maps, and little stick figures standing at podiums. On the cover, written in blocky, uneven letters, were the words:
"PRESIDENT EMIL."
He smiled at it the way other boys smiled at toy robots or basketball shoes.
Every day before school, he practiced speeches in front of the cracked mirror nailed to the wall.
"My fellow citizens…" he began, standing straighter than his short frame usually allowed. His voice was slow, deliberate, but it carried a strange warmth, the kind that made people lean in to listen.
In his mind, he was already on stage, wearing a crisp suit, waving to a sea of smiling faces. But the dream always ended the same way interrupted by someone telling him to stop playing make-believe.
That morning, the interruption came from outside.
"Hey, Emil!" A group of boys were laughing near the corner store. They were his classmates. He could hear them even from inside the hut. "You think you can be president? You have Down syndrome!"
The words sliced through him. He'd heard them before different, slow, not normal. They stuck to him like mud that wouldn't wash away.
Emil froze. Part of him wanted to run outside and tell them they were wrong, that he could be smart and brave and everything a leader should be. But instead, he turned back to the mirror, his small hands gripping the edge of the table. His reflection stared back at him, lips trembling.
His mother stirred and noticed his face. "Son, don't listen to what others say," she said softly, touching his shoulder. "What matters is that you know who you are."
"I know who I am," Emil whispered. But in his chest, a quiet storm was brewing something heavier than sadness.
He opened his notebook again and, with his pencil, drew a big circle around the words PRESIDENT EMIL. Beneath it, in shaky handwriting, he wrote:
"I will show them."
Outside, the boys' laughter faded into the distance. Inside, Emil's dream burned brighter than ever