Linda Nunes, A Slow Drift
Burning Red
Huina Zheng
In the summer of 1997, the air in southern China clung like wet cloth, but twelve-year-old Xue had already curled up on her bed. She buried her face in her pilled dog plushie and squeezed her eyes shut.
The night market buzzed below–the blare of motorcycle horns, street vendors shouting, cheap speakers blasting pop songs, and the smell of deep-fried food drifting up from who-knows-which stall–all slipped through the not-quite-closed window. Xue hugged the plushie tighter and pretended she couldn’t hear any of it.
Tomorrow at 8:00 a.m., she would walk into the entrance exam that would determine whether she got into a top middle school.
Her Chinese teacher and homeroom teacher, Teacher Chen, was always pounding the podium, shouting: “The gate to a top school is the watershed of your life!” As she said it, her eyes bulged behind her glasses, and her spit sprayed onto the desks in the first row. Her knuckles thudded against the chalkboard like a metronome.
Last week, when returning their mock exams, she’d called Xue to her office and drawn three enormous red exclamation marks next to a mistake–so hard the pen nearly tore through the paper.
Xue rolled over. She thought of her best friend Mei, and how–
Outside, neon signs flickered on. Xue counted the blurry light spots spinning on the ceiling and felt like tomorrow’s test was a giant sieve–and she, a speck of dust, teetering at the edge of one of its holes. Mei wouldn’t even get the chance to be sifted.
They’d been assigned to a test center three blocks away, at Second Primary School–not their usual campus.
Last Sunday, under the blazing sun, the girls had walked half an hour to get familiar with the route. The whole way, Xue silently memorized landmarks: the bakery on the corner, the blue mailbox, the breakfast shop that always smelled like fried dough. But now, lying in bed, all those places blurred together like smudged colors in a dream.
“I’ll wait for you at the alley entrance tomorrow,” Mei had said after school, absentmindedly picking at a loose thread on her backpack. They’d agreed to meet at 7:00 a.m.–early enough to handle any surprises, but not so early they’d be stuck waiting around forever.
Xue stared at the ceiling fan wobbling overhead. Its rusty bearings creaked in rhythm. Hot air, soaked in the market’s leftover oil and smoke, blew across her forehead, lifting her bangs and letting them fall again.
She had a plan: wake at 3 a.m.–an hour later than usual–to be more rested, but still have time to flip through her math notebook until the corners curled, drill her English vocab cards until they frayed, and recite every underlined line in her Chinese textbook. By then, the world would be quiet–except for the occasional blur of a motorcycle speeding past. That thought gave her comfort until something hit her–what if the alarm didn’t go off?
In the living room, her mother and little brother Ming were watching a soap opera. Laughter and conversation drifted in between scenes.
At dinner, her mother focused entirely on picking bones from Ming’s fish, scolding him for slurping his soup. When Xue looked up, half her food still untouched, her mother shot her a glance. “Don’t get too full of yourself. Even if you pass, it’s nothing special.” Then she stood, gathered the dishes, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Xue never understood her mother’s attitude. She often sighed about how she’d only gone to school for three years–how back then, village officials had knocked on their door again and again, urging her grandfather, a party member, to set an example. Other parents refused to send their daughters to school, insisting girls should stay home to farm and do chores. Eventually, her grandfather gave in.
But when relatives praised Xue for always coming first in class, her mother would wave it off. “This girl’s not that bright. She just crams like a machine.” Then she’d ruffle Ming’s hair and say, “My son’s got real smarts. As long as he puts in the effort, his grades will catch up.” Even though Xue knew full well his test scores hovered just above failing.
And her father, managing a brick factory in their hometown, hadn’t even called. Xue had spent a year preparing for this exam, but her parents hadn’t offered a single word of encouragement. It was as if tomorrow were just another pop quiz.
The fan’s shadow spun on the wall like a hand drawing endless circles.
Xue realized that by the day after tomorrow, the girls who always whispered together, the boys who slouched in the back, the classmate who never had an eraser–they’d all be gone, like chalk washed away by rain. She’d spent the year drowning in tests and couldn’t even remember if the girl in the front row had dimples when she smiled.
She rolled over again. This time tomorrow, the exam would be over. In September, some students would celebrate their admission to top schools. Others would be squeezed into regular ones. And some might vanish directly into factories. She hadn’t been the friend Mei deserved. She just hoped–
“Sleep,” she told herself. She tried to empty her mind–no thinking, no distractions.
But what slipped in instead was a question: What kind of look would her father give her if she failed?
Maybe he hadn’t expected anything from her at all.
His words still burned in her memory: “Study hard. If you get into a top middle school, I’ll support you.” The rest didn’t need saying–fail, and you’d end up like the neighbor girl, working in a factory.
The memory came back: the summer she was ten, when she was sent to a toy factory two blocks from home. Her job: glue tiny eyes onto plastic bears–left hand grab the part, right hand press the glue gun, repeat, thousands of times a day. The foreman, Old Li, patrolled the aisles with his hands clasped behind his back. If anyone slowed down, you’d hear his keychain jingle first, then his smoky bark, “What’s wrong with your hands? Can’t even do this right?”
Whenever Xue couldn’t solve a tough math problem and wanted to quit, that memory would rise. She would see herself, twenty years later, still at that table. Eyes dull. Fingers moving like clockwork, assembling the same parts that never ended. In those moments, she’d pinch her thigh so hard her nails left marks. The sting was sharper than any strong tea–it jolted her back.
But what if Ming didn’t do well? Would their parents pay to get him into a good school? She bit her lip and forced the thought away.
This morning, Teacher Chen had drilled them on exam rules. In the back row, Jun, the class clown, had grinned and said, “Hope everyone forgets their admission ticket tomorrow!” His pimply face scrunched up like bursting pomegranate seeds. Teacher Chen’s chalk snapped in half, and the next second, Jun was being hauled into the hallway. Through the window, Xue had seen him with his forehead pressed to the tiled wall, legs swinging as if none of it mattered.
Now, in bed, something tightened in her chest. All day she’d felt like she was tiptoeing across a frozen lake, every step whispering cracks beneath her. Math formulas and classical Chinese notes spun in her mind, refusing to lock into place.
She imagined herself sinking–arms flailing beneath the ice–while above, the surface reflected her father’s smoking profile: cheek sunken, eyes unreadable.
The next morning, when Xue closed the door behind her, her mother and Ming were still asleep–her entrance exam was scheduled for Saturday. The storm had darkened the sky like dusk, rain pouring off the eaves in a heavy sheet. She looked down at her worn canvas shoes. If she wore them out, they’d be soaked in no time. That would be miserable–and distracting. She packed them and her socks in a plastic bag, put on flip-flops, rolled up her uniform pants, grabbed her umbrella, and left.
The rain was fiercer than she’d imagined. Drops hammered the umbrella. Within steps, water had splashed up her shins, soaking her pant legs and hem. The umbrella ribs groaned in the wind, and rain slipped in through her collar, trickling down her spine. She clutched her backpack to her chest like a lifeline–her exam slip and pens inside, checked and rechecked the night before.
At the corner, Mei stood beneath the grocery store’s awning, plastic flip-flops splattered with mud. They nodded to each other without speaking, lowering their umbrellas. The street, usually lively, was now deserted, the rain forming torrents across the pavement. A white flash lit the sky. Xue counted instinctively: “One, two . . .” The thunder cracked before “four,” so loud it made her flinch. Her gasp was lost in the downpour.
They stepped onto the pedestrian bridge. Another bolt tore through the clouds, so close the air smelled burnt. Xue hadn’t even reached three when the thunder exploded–like someone had hurled a metal drum from the school building, crashing it against the bridge’s railing.
“Ah!” Mei froze, her right hand trembling. “I think I was struck . . .”
Xue grabbed her wrist. The tip of Mei’s index finger was darkened, like a scorched matchstick. Xue remembered from science class that lightning burns could leave fern-shaped marks, but rain was washing everything away.
“Can you move it?” Xue’s voice came out sharper than expected.
Mei flexed her finger. “It’s just numb . . .”
“Let’s go!” Xue pulled her, flip-flops slapping. “It’s safer off the bridge.” Only at the bottom did she notice her nails had dug into Mei’s wrist.
The school came into view through the rain. In the corridor, students wrung out their clothes. Wet footprints covered the floor. Xue and Mei crouched down, dried their feet with their uniforms, and put on their socks and canvas shoes.
“Wait for me at the gate after,” Xue said, hands trembling as she tied her laces. “Promise.”
“Good luck!” Mei smiled, a quick, wilted-paper kind of smile.
The hallway walls were lined with exam rosters. Xue stood on tiptoe and scanned the names, finally finding her own near class three’s door. No familiar classmates. Her chest tightened, like on her first day after transferring two years ago, like the day the sixth-grade class lists were posted. But she forced the feeling away. You’re here to take the test, not to make friends.
Just as she was about to turn away, one name caught her eye: Li Jiansheng. She blinked and read it again to be sure. “Jian” implied worthlessness, “Sheng” meant life. Together, the name hinted at “lowly life,” or even “born of disgrace.” Why would anyone name a child that? Then she remembered something her grandma once said: “The humbler the name, the sturdier the child.” She’d once known a boy called Gousheng, a crude childhood nickname that meant something like “useless dog.” He’d drowned in a river. She still didn’t understand why adults gave names that sounded like curses and called it protection. Jiansheng was probably a boy. His parents must’ve really wanted him to survive.
Stop thinking nonsense. She rushed to the restroom. Bathroom breaks weren’t allowed during the test, and she didn’t want a full bladder interfering with her focus. A line had already formed. She waited.
Back at the classroom, students were filing in. She found her assigned seat.
Two invigilators stood like sentinels at the front. The woman with the ponytail raised a sealed envelope and swept the room with a steely gaze. “Place your exam slips at the top left corner of your desks. Follow all rules strictly. Any violation may result in disqualification.”
Xue aligned her slip. Her heart pounded in her temples. The math exam landed on her desk. As her eyes met the first fill-in-the-blank question, the world went quiet. Footsteps in the corridor, a student sniffing beside her, the buzz of the ceiling fan–all dissolved into a distant hum. The anxiety that had clouded her mind vanished like steam. Her thoughts sharpened like a blade slicing through creases.
After finishing the last problem, she had time left. She took out a different-colored pen to double-check her work. When the bell rang, she realized her damp shirt was stuck to the chair.
Xue capped her pen and stood, gently thumping her lower back. She had held the same posture for too long. She headed to the washroom, where a line had already formed. As she waited, she reviewed useful phrases for her English essay. Her body slowly relaxed.
Before the listening track crackled to life, she had already scanned the questions and answer choices. The British accent was clear–slower than the ones she usually practiced with. The vocabulary and grammar sections were straightforward, though one cloze passage gave her pause for a couple of seconds before she chose an answer by instinct. Of the three subjects, English felt the easiest. She often scheduled it after math in her daily study plan, using it to let her mind unwind. With five minutes remaining, she reviewed her essay and revised two phrases that sounded a bit off.
When the bell for the English exam rang, her right hand still held the pen grip. A red mark pressed into her finger. Sunlight broke through the clouds, casting gold onto the puddles. She walked out. Reflections of the broken sky shimmered underfoot. Mei stood in one of them.
“You–” Xue bit her tongue, swallowing the instinctive How’d it go? That question would be like asking someone drowning if they knew how to swim.
Mei spoke first, cheerful as if discussing the cafeteria menu. “Those last two math questions were evil. I didn’t even understand the wording.” She kicked a pebble, ripples spreading. “Not like I’ll ever need to solve equations again.”
“I barely finished either,” Xue said, staring at the spreading circles.
“You’ll be fine.”
Xue didn’t know what to say. She managed a quiet “Thank you.”
They stopped at a large puddle. A motorcycle roared past, splashing Mei’s leg with dirty water, brown speckles like sudden freckles. She brushed it off and said, “Good luck on Chinese. It’s your best subject. Actually, you’re good at everything. You’ll get into a top school. I’ll miss you. I’ll write. Just write me back when you can. Tell me what it’s like in middle school.”
Xue grabbed her hand. She felt the rough calluses on her palm–scars from summer and winter breaks spent in garment factories. “One letter a month,” she said, voice trembling.
Mei’s eyes gleamed. “Tell me about the lab microscopes. The phoenix trees on the playground . . .”
“I’ll even tell you if snacks got fifty cents more expensive.”
“We’re still best friends, right?”
“Always,” Xue said.
Mei grinned, her tiger tooth showing. They didn’t let go until the intersection forced them to. In the puddles, their shadows stretched side by side, then broke into sunlight-spattered fragments.
As Xue pushed open the door, the smell of fried garlic wafted from the kitchen. Her mother, wearing an apron, was stirring something at the stove. The “keep warm” light on the rice cooker still glowed. Xue set down her backpack and saw a plate of scrambled eggs with dried radish already on the table–crispy, golden egg edges and finely chopped radish. It was her favorite dish to eat with porridge.
They ate lunch in silence. The steam from the rice porridge dissipated under the breeze of the fan. Xue sipped hers in small spoonfuls, the sharp Cantonese dialogue from the TVB drama filling the room. It was through these dramas that she had learned Cantonese. Though she rarely spoke it, she could understand it fully. If someone asked her something in Cantonese, she was sure she could answer.
Afternoon light shifted between bright and dull. Xue forced herself to open her Chinese textbook. She feared that if she dozed off, she might miss the afternoon exam. She pinched the web between her thumb and index finger hard and recalled the expression on Mei’s face–half smile, half sorrow–when she said, “Not like I’ll ever need to solve equations again.” Of course she cared. A weight settled in Xue’s chest. She shook it off. Focus. Not now. She returned to memorizing classical poems.
Rain began again, thin drops tracing paths across the windowpane. As Xue left the house, Ming was curled up on the sofa watching cartoons, the screen casting flickering blue light across his face. Their mother was napping in the bedroom.
Mei was still waiting where she had stood that morning, her toes still muddy in plastic slippers. They walked to school under their umbrellas without a word, the rain drumming steadily on the fabric.
The Chinese exam went smoother than expected. The reading passage was about rural transformation. After scanning the questions, Xue hovered over the options for a moment, then flipped back to reread the opening. Was the intended answer nostalgia or progress? She eventually chose the one that spoke of “irreversible development, yet enduring human warmth.” The essay topic was “The Taste of Growing Up.” Running her fingers over the draft paper’s grid lines, she recalled how Teacher Chen had circled a slightly negative paragraph in red during the last mock exam, noting: “Could be more positive and uplifting.” So she wrote, “Setbacks are but a light rain before the sun,” then added, “Under the care of our motherland, we will surely grow strong.”
As Xue placed the final period in her essay, rain still fell outside, but the clouds had thinned, and faint light was beginning to break through.
On the way home, puddles filled their flip-flops, the cold soaking up to their ankles. When they reached the gray-white apartment building, Xue caught Mei’s wrist.
“Can I come over for a while? Tomorrow you’ll . . .”
The words caught in her throat. By this time tomorrow, Mei would already be in Dongguan–just like last summer, when she’d gone to work at a garment factory. Xue remembered the bandage on Mei’s index finger when she returned–yellowed, from a sewing machine needle. But Mei had just laughed and pulled a strawberry hair clip from her pocket, a gift bought with her first month’s wages.
Mei’s fingers trembled. She eased her hand away.
“I’m leaving early tomorrow,” she said, voice muffled like she was speaking into a pillow. “I hate goodbyes.”
“I know,” Xue said. But the rain had already drowned her words.
As Xue stood in the rain, memories surged over her like a tide. Last September, on the first day of school, just after the dismissal bell rang, Mei had appeared at her classroom door. As they crossed the noisy street, Mei yanked her aside to avoid a motorcycle.
“Once the entrance exam is over,” Mei said, “I’m going to work at a garment factory.”
Xue stopped in her tracks. “You . . . you’re not going to middle school?”
“My mom says elementary school’s enough for a girl. As long as I can write my name, read a bit, and do simple math, that’s fine. You know our situation–my brother’s still little. I need to help out.” Mei’s tone was matter-of-fact, as if she were describing someone else’s life.
Xue felt her heart sink. The previous summer, when she’d visited her relatives, she’d seen her cousin Fang–only fifteen, her fingers pocked with needle scars, already cooking for younger siblings like a grown-up. And Shan, another cousin, had started working at fourteen, handed her wages to her parents, married by twenty, and now spent her days chasing toddlers and stirring pots–living the same life Xue had watched her mother live.
Xue used to believe that if she just studied hard enough, she could escape that fate. She’d never imagined Mei would have to walk that road so soon.
She didn’t want Mei to become one of those women–dull-eyed, rarely smiling, like the stooped aunt back in their village. Her nose stung, her eyes burned. She fought the tears back and tightened her grip on Mei’s hand.
“Mei, you deserve better. If you get into a good middle school, maybe your mom will change her mind.”
“Thanks, Xue. But this is just how things are. I’m not smart. School’s not for me–”
“Don’t say that!” Xue cut her off. “We’ll work hard together. You can do it.”
Mei smiled softly, just as she always did. “Will you . . . always remember me?”
A tear slid from the corner of Xue’s eye. She let it fall.
“We’ll always be best friends. Forever.”
Now, as Mei vanished into the stairwell, time folded inward, carrying Xue back to a humid morning two years ago–her first day as a transfer student. Everyone had stared at her, except Mei, who turned from her front-row seat and placed a strawberry candy on her desk. “I’m Mei,” she said, eyes curving into crescents. “Want to walk home together?”
Mei had been her first friend at this school. Her only friend.
Xue trudged home, her feet dragging through puddles. Grit worked between her toes, rubbing her raw. Over the past year, she had been a terrible friend–she didn’t deserve Mei’s trust or kindness. All she felt now, beyond guilt, was something even cheaper.
After the classes were reshuffled, they no longer shared a homeroom. Xue threw herself into studying for the entrance exam. She used every break to memorize vocabulary–even when she knew Mei was waiting by the parallel bars. Sometimes Mei would appear at the back door, handing her a candy or whispering a quick word. But Xue’s seat was far away. Each time, she’d have to cross half the classroom. Eventually, she began pretending not to see–keeping her head down, or chatting with her seatmate. Mei came less and less.
When they passed each other in the hallway, Mei still smiled and called her name. Xue would nod quickly, saying, “Still haven’t finished my homework,” then hurried away. On weekends, she stopped visiting Mei’s home and no longer invited her over. She told herself it was just for now. Once she got into a top middle school, they’d have plenty of time. But every time she passed the snack shop and saw the strawberry candies on the shelf, her steps would slow.
If this was the price for academic success, she had convinced herself it was worth it. But now, she hated herself for it.
She stepped into a puddle. Dirty water splashed her pants. Mud crept between her toes. The stain bloomed across the fabric like guilt she couldn’t wash away.
Xue crouched down, shoulders shaking. In the rippling water, Mei’s face blurred and faded. Only the strawberry hair clip remained–still bright in her memory, burning red.
Huina Zheng
In the summer of 1997, the air in southern China clung like wet cloth, but twelve-year-old Xue had already curled up on her bed. She buried her face in her pilled dog plushie and squeezed her eyes shut.
The night market buzzed below–the blare of motorcycle horns, street vendors shouting, cheap speakers blasting pop songs, and the smell of deep-fried food drifting up from who-knows-which stall–all slipped through the not-quite-closed window. Xue hugged the plushie tighter and pretended she couldn’t hear any of it.
Tomorrow at 8:00 a.m., she would walk into the entrance exam that would determine whether she got into a top middle school.
Her Chinese teacher and homeroom teacher, Teacher Chen, was always pounding the podium, shouting: “The gate to a top school is the watershed of your life!” As she said it, her eyes bulged behind her glasses, and her spit sprayed onto the desks in the first row. Her knuckles thudded against the chalkboard like a metronome.
Last week, when returning their mock exams, she’d called Xue to her office and drawn three enormous red exclamation marks next to a mistake–so hard the pen nearly tore through the paper.
Xue rolled over. She thought of her best friend Mei, and how–
Outside, neon signs flickered on. Xue counted the blurry light spots spinning on the ceiling and felt like tomorrow’s test was a giant sieve–and she, a speck of dust, teetering at the edge of one of its holes. Mei wouldn’t even get the chance to be sifted.
They’d been assigned to a test center three blocks away, at Second Primary School–not their usual campus.
Last Sunday, under the blazing sun, the girls had walked half an hour to get familiar with the route. The whole way, Xue silently memorized landmarks: the bakery on the corner, the blue mailbox, the breakfast shop that always smelled like fried dough. But now, lying in bed, all those places blurred together like smudged colors in a dream.
“I’ll wait for you at the alley entrance tomorrow,” Mei had said after school, absentmindedly picking at a loose thread on her backpack. They’d agreed to meet at 7:00 a.m.–early enough to handle any surprises, but not so early they’d be stuck waiting around forever.
Xue stared at the ceiling fan wobbling overhead. Its rusty bearings creaked in rhythm. Hot air, soaked in the market’s leftover oil and smoke, blew across her forehead, lifting her bangs and letting them fall again.
She had a plan: wake at 3 a.m.–an hour later than usual–to be more rested, but still have time to flip through her math notebook until the corners curled, drill her English vocab cards until they frayed, and recite every underlined line in her Chinese textbook. By then, the world would be quiet–except for the occasional blur of a motorcycle speeding past. That thought gave her comfort until something hit her–what if the alarm didn’t go off?
In the living room, her mother and little brother Ming were watching a soap opera. Laughter and conversation drifted in between scenes.
At dinner, her mother focused entirely on picking bones from Ming’s fish, scolding him for slurping his soup. When Xue looked up, half her food still untouched, her mother shot her a glance. “Don’t get too full of yourself. Even if you pass, it’s nothing special.” Then she stood, gathered the dishes, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Xue never understood her mother’s attitude. She often sighed about how she’d only gone to school for three years–how back then, village officials had knocked on their door again and again, urging her grandfather, a party member, to set an example. Other parents refused to send their daughters to school, insisting girls should stay home to farm and do chores. Eventually, her grandfather gave in.
But when relatives praised Xue for always coming first in class, her mother would wave it off. “This girl’s not that bright. She just crams like a machine.” Then she’d ruffle Ming’s hair and say, “My son’s got real smarts. As long as he puts in the effort, his grades will catch up.” Even though Xue knew full well his test scores hovered just above failing.
And her father, managing a brick factory in their hometown, hadn’t even called. Xue had spent a year preparing for this exam, but her parents hadn’t offered a single word of encouragement. It was as if tomorrow were just another pop quiz.
The fan’s shadow spun on the wall like a hand drawing endless circles.
Xue realized that by the day after tomorrow, the girls who always whispered together, the boys who slouched in the back, the classmate who never had an eraser–they’d all be gone, like chalk washed away by rain. She’d spent the year drowning in tests and couldn’t even remember if the girl in the front row had dimples when she smiled.
She rolled over again. This time tomorrow, the exam would be over. In September, some students would celebrate their admission to top schools. Others would be squeezed into regular ones. And some might vanish directly into factories. She hadn’t been the friend Mei deserved. She just hoped–
“Sleep,” she told herself. She tried to empty her mind–no thinking, no distractions.
But what slipped in instead was a question: What kind of look would her father give her if she failed?
Maybe he hadn’t expected anything from her at all.
His words still burned in her memory: “Study hard. If you get into a top middle school, I’ll support you.” The rest didn’t need saying–fail, and you’d end up like the neighbor girl, working in a factory.
The memory came back: the summer she was ten, when she was sent to a toy factory two blocks from home. Her job: glue tiny eyes onto plastic bears–left hand grab the part, right hand press the glue gun, repeat, thousands of times a day. The foreman, Old Li, patrolled the aisles with his hands clasped behind his back. If anyone slowed down, you’d hear his keychain jingle first, then his smoky bark, “What’s wrong with your hands? Can’t even do this right?”
Whenever Xue couldn’t solve a tough math problem and wanted to quit, that memory would rise. She would see herself, twenty years later, still at that table. Eyes dull. Fingers moving like clockwork, assembling the same parts that never ended. In those moments, she’d pinch her thigh so hard her nails left marks. The sting was sharper than any strong tea–it jolted her back.
But what if Ming didn’t do well? Would their parents pay to get him into a good school? She bit her lip and forced the thought away.
This morning, Teacher Chen had drilled them on exam rules. In the back row, Jun, the class clown, had grinned and said, “Hope everyone forgets their admission ticket tomorrow!” His pimply face scrunched up like bursting pomegranate seeds. Teacher Chen’s chalk snapped in half, and the next second, Jun was being hauled into the hallway. Through the window, Xue had seen him with his forehead pressed to the tiled wall, legs swinging as if none of it mattered.
Now, in bed, something tightened in her chest. All day she’d felt like she was tiptoeing across a frozen lake, every step whispering cracks beneath her. Math formulas and classical Chinese notes spun in her mind, refusing to lock into place.
She imagined herself sinking–arms flailing beneath the ice–while above, the surface reflected her father’s smoking profile: cheek sunken, eyes unreadable.
The next morning, when Xue closed the door behind her, her mother and Ming were still asleep–her entrance exam was scheduled for Saturday. The storm had darkened the sky like dusk, rain pouring off the eaves in a heavy sheet. She looked down at her worn canvas shoes. If she wore them out, they’d be soaked in no time. That would be miserable–and distracting. She packed them and her socks in a plastic bag, put on flip-flops, rolled up her uniform pants, grabbed her umbrella, and left.
The rain was fiercer than she’d imagined. Drops hammered the umbrella. Within steps, water had splashed up her shins, soaking her pant legs and hem. The umbrella ribs groaned in the wind, and rain slipped in through her collar, trickling down her spine. She clutched her backpack to her chest like a lifeline–her exam slip and pens inside, checked and rechecked the night before.
At the corner, Mei stood beneath the grocery store’s awning, plastic flip-flops splattered with mud. They nodded to each other without speaking, lowering their umbrellas. The street, usually lively, was now deserted, the rain forming torrents across the pavement. A white flash lit the sky. Xue counted instinctively: “One, two . . .” The thunder cracked before “four,” so loud it made her flinch. Her gasp was lost in the downpour.
They stepped onto the pedestrian bridge. Another bolt tore through the clouds, so close the air smelled burnt. Xue hadn’t even reached three when the thunder exploded–like someone had hurled a metal drum from the school building, crashing it against the bridge’s railing.
“Ah!” Mei froze, her right hand trembling. “I think I was struck . . .”
Xue grabbed her wrist. The tip of Mei’s index finger was darkened, like a scorched matchstick. Xue remembered from science class that lightning burns could leave fern-shaped marks, but rain was washing everything away.
“Can you move it?” Xue’s voice came out sharper than expected.
Mei flexed her finger. “It’s just numb . . .”
“Let’s go!” Xue pulled her, flip-flops slapping. “It’s safer off the bridge.” Only at the bottom did she notice her nails had dug into Mei’s wrist.
The school came into view through the rain. In the corridor, students wrung out their clothes. Wet footprints covered the floor. Xue and Mei crouched down, dried their feet with their uniforms, and put on their socks and canvas shoes.
“Wait for me at the gate after,” Xue said, hands trembling as she tied her laces. “Promise.”
“Good luck!” Mei smiled, a quick, wilted-paper kind of smile.
The hallway walls were lined with exam rosters. Xue stood on tiptoe and scanned the names, finally finding her own near class three’s door. No familiar classmates. Her chest tightened, like on her first day after transferring two years ago, like the day the sixth-grade class lists were posted. But she forced the feeling away. You’re here to take the test, not to make friends.
Just as she was about to turn away, one name caught her eye: Li Jiansheng. She blinked and read it again to be sure. “Jian” implied worthlessness, “Sheng” meant life. Together, the name hinted at “lowly life,” or even “born of disgrace.” Why would anyone name a child that? Then she remembered something her grandma once said: “The humbler the name, the sturdier the child.” She’d once known a boy called Gousheng, a crude childhood nickname that meant something like “useless dog.” He’d drowned in a river. She still didn’t understand why adults gave names that sounded like curses and called it protection. Jiansheng was probably a boy. His parents must’ve really wanted him to survive.
Stop thinking nonsense. She rushed to the restroom. Bathroom breaks weren’t allowed during the test, and she didn’t want a full bladder interfering with her focus. A line had already formed. She waited.
Back at the classroom, students were filing in. She found her assigned seat.
Two invigilators stood like sentinels at the front. The woman with the ponytail raised a sealed envelope and swept the room with a steely gaze. “Place your exam slips at the top left corner of your desks. Follow all rules strictly. Any violation may result in disqualification.”
Xue aligned her slip. Her heart pounded in her temples. The math exam landed on her desk. As her eyes met the first fill-in-the-blank question, the world went quiet. Footsteps in the corridor, a student sniffing beside her, the buzz of the ceiling fan–all dissolved into a distant hum. The anxiety that had clouded her mind vanished like steam. Her thoughts sharpened like a blade slicing through creases.
After finishing the last problem, she had time left. She took out a different-colored pen to double-check her work. When the bell rang, she realized her damp shirt was stuck to the chair.
Xue capped her pen and stood, gently thumping her lower back. She had held the same posture for too long. She headed to the washroom, where a line had already formed. As she waited, she reviewed useful phrases for her English essay. Her body slowly relaxed.
Before the listening track crackled to life, she had already scanned the questions and answer choices. The British accent was clear–slower than the ones she usually practiced with. The vocabulary and grammar sections were straightforward, though one cloze passage gave her pause for a couple of seconds before she chose an answer by instinct. Of the three subjects, English felt the easiest. She often scheduled it after math in her daily study plan, using it to let her mind unwind. With five minutes remaining, she reviewed her essay and revised two phrases that sounded a bit off.
When the bell for the English exam rang, her right hand still held the pen grip. A red mark pressed into her finger. Sunlight broke through the clouds, casting gold onto the puddles. She walked out. Reflections of the broken sky shimmered underfoot. Mei stood in one of them.
“You–” Xue bit her tongue, swallowing the instinctive How’d it go? That question would be like asking someone drowning if they knew how to swim.
Mei spoke first, cheerful as if discussing the cafeteria menu. “Those last two math questions were evil. I didn’t even understand the wording.” She kicked a pebble, ripples spreading. “Not like I’ll ever need to solve equations again.”
“I barely finished either,” Xue said, staring at the spreading circles.
“You’ll be fine.”
Xue didn’t know what to say. She managed a quiet “Thank you.”
They stopped at a large puddle. A motorcycle roared past, splashing Mei’s leg with dirty water, brown speckles like sudden freckles. She brushed it off and said, “Good luck on Chinese. It’s your best subject. Actually, you’re good at everything. You’ll get into a top school. I’ll miss you. I’ll write. Just write me back when you can. Tell me what it’s like in middle school.”
Xue grabbed her hand. She felt the rough calluses on her palm–scars from summer and winter breaks spent in garment factories. “One letter a month,” she said, voice trembling.
Mei’s eyes gleamed. “Tell me about the lab microscopes. The phoenix trees on the playground . . .”
“I’ll even tell you if snacks got fifty cents more expensive.”
“We’re still best friends, right?”
“Always,” Xue said.
Mei grinned, her tiger tooth showing. They didn’t let go until the intersection forced them to. In the puddles, their shadows stretched side by side, then broke into sunlight-spattered fragments.
As Xue pushed open the door, the smell of fried garlic wafted from the kitchen. Her mother, wearing an apron, was stirring something at the stove. The “keep warm” light on the rice cooker still glowed. Xue set down her backpack and saw a plate of scrambled eggs with dried radish already on the table–crispy, golden egg edges and finely chopped radish. It was her favorite dish to eat with porridge.
They ate lunch in silence. The steam from the rice porridge dissipated under the breeze of the fan. Xue sipped hers in small spoonfuls, the sharp Cantonese dialogue from the TVB drama filling the room. It was through these dramas that she had learned Cantonese. Though she rarely spoke it, she could understand it fully. If someone asked her something in Cantonese, she was sure she could answer.
Afternoon light shifted between bright and dull. Xue forced herself to open her Chinese textbook. She feared that if she dozed off, she might miss the afternoon exam. She pinched the web between her thumb and index finger hard and recalled the expression on Mei’s face–half smile, half sorrow–when she said, “Not like I’ll ever need to solve equations again.” Of course she cared. A weight settled in Xue’s chest. She shook it off. Focus. Not now. She returned to memorizing classical poems.
Rain began again, thin drops tracing paths across the windowpane. As Xue left the house, Ming was curled up on the sofa watching cartoons, the screen casting flickering blue light across his face. Their mother was napping in the bedroom.
Mei was still waiting where she had stood that morning, her toes still muddy in plastic slippers. They walked to school under their umbrellas without a word, the rain drumming steadily on the fabric.
The Chinese exam went smoother than expected. The reading passage was about rural transformation. After scanning the questions, Xue hovered over the options for a moment, then flipped back to reread the opening. Was the intended answer nostalgia or progress? She eventually chose the one that spoke of “irreversible development, yet enduring human warmth.” The essay topic was “The Taste of Growing Up.” Running her fingers over the draft paper’s grid lines, she recalled how Teacher Chen had circled a slightly negative paragraph in red during the last mock exam, noting: “Could be more positive and uplifting.” So she wrote, “Setbacks are but a light rain before the sun,” then added, “Under the care of our motherland, we will surely grow strong.”
As Xue placed the final period in her essay, rain still fell outside, but the clouds had thinned, and faint light was beginning to break through.
On the way home, puddles filled their flip-flops, the cold soaking up to their ankles. When they reached the gray-white apartment building, Xue caught Mei’s wrist.
“Can I come over for a while? Tomorrow you’ll . . .”
The words caught in her throat. By this time tomorrow, Mei would already be in Dongguan–just like last summer, when she’d gone to work at a garment factory. Xue remembered the bandage on Mei’s index finger when she returned–yellowed, from a sewing machine needle. But Mei had just laughed and pulled a strawberry hair clip from her pocket, a gift bought with her first month’s wages.
Mei’s fingers trembled. She eased her hand away.
“I’m leaving early tomorrow,” she said, voice muffled like she was speaking into a pillow. “I hate goodbyes.”
“I know,” Xue said. But the rain had already drowned her words.
As Xue stood in the rain, memories surged over her like a tide. Last September, on the first day of school, just after the dismissal bell rang, Mei had appeared at her classroom door. As they crossed the noisy street, Mei yanked her aside to avoid a motorcycle.
“Once the entrance exam is over,” Mei said, “I’m going to work at a garment factory.”
Xue stopped in her tracks. “You . . . you’re not going to middle school?”
“My mom says elementary school’s enough for a girl. As long as I can write my name, read a bit, and do simple math, that’s fine. You know our situation–my brother’s still little. I need to help out.” Mei’s tone was matter-of-fact, as if she were describing someone else’s life.
Xue felt her heart sink. The previous summer, when she’d visited her relatives, she’d seen her cousin Fang–only fifteen, her fingers pocked with needle scars, already cooking for younger siblings like a grown-up. And Shan, another cousin, had started working at fourteen, handed her wages to her parents, married by twenty, and now spent her days chasing toddlers and stirring pots–living the same life Xue had watched her mother live.
Xue used to believe that if she just studied hard enough, she could escape that fate. She’d never imagined Mei would have to walk that road so soon.
She didn’t want Mei to become one of those women–dull-eyed, rarely smiling, like the stooped aunt back in their village. Her nose stung, her eyes burned. She fought the tears back and tightened her grip on Mei’s hand.
“Mei, you deserve better. If you get into a good middle school, maybe your mom will change her mind.”
“Thanks, Xue. But this is just how things are. I’m not smart. School’s not for me–”
“Don’t say that!” Xue cut her off. “We’ll work hard together. You can do it.”
Mei smiled softly, just as she always did. “Will you . . . always remember me?”
A tear slid from the corner of Xue’s eye. She let it fall.
“We’ll always be best friends. Forever.”
Now, as Mei vanished into the stairwell, time folded inward, carrying Xue back to a humid morning two years ago–her first day as a transfer student. Everyone had stared at her, except Mei, who turned from her front-row seat and placed a strawberry candy on her desk. “I’m Mei,” she said, eyes curving into crescents. “Want to walk home together?”
Mei had been her first friend at this school. Her only friend.
Xue trudged home, her feet dragging through puddles. Grit worked between her toes, rubbing her raw. Over the past year, she had been a terrible friend–she didn’t deserve Mei’s trust or kindness. All she felt now, beyond guilt, was something even cheaper.
After the classes were reshuffled, they no longer shared a homeroom. Xue threw herself into studying for the entrance exam. She used every break to memorize vocabulary–even when she knew Mei was waiting by the parallel bars. Sometimes Mei would appear at the back door, handing her a candy or whispering a quick word. But Xue’s seat was far away. Each time, she’d have to cross half the classroom. Eventually, she began pretending not to see–keeping her head down, or chatting with her seatmate. Mei came less and less.
When they passed each other in the hallway, Mei still smiled and called her name. Xue would nod quickly, saying, “Still haven’t finished my homework,” then hurried away. On weekends, she stopped visiting Mei’s home and no longer invited her over. She told herself it was just for now. Once she got into a top middle school, they’d have plenty of time. But every time she passed the snack shop and saw the strawberry candies on the shelf, her steps would slow.
If this was the price for academic success, she had convinced herself it was worth it. But now, she hated herself for it.
She stepped into a puddle. Dirty water splashed her pants. Mud crept between her toes. The stain bloomed across the fabric like guilt she couldn’t wash away.
Xue crouched down, shoulders shaking. In the rippling water, Mei’s face blurred and faded. Only the strawberry hair clip remained–still bright in her memory, burning red.