Chapter 2

Mom stood frozen for a long time.

She looked up at me, then down at the huge bags of groceries in her hands.

“Come down,” she said. “Let’s go home. I’ll make you something delicious.”

That night she cooked grilled fish, salt-baked chicken, beef in sour broth, a massive braised pork hock, and hot-and-sour shredded potatoes.

I ate three bowls of rice.

At last, she smiled.

Not long after that, Mom quit her job and took me to a new city.

Looking back, she had a hard time after the divorce. Her salary dropped sharply when she changed jobs.

Dad, meanwhile, became a wild donkey off its leash. They had agreed to split the cost of supporting us, one daughter each. But he threw money at private tutors and enrichment classes for my sister.

Writing, painting, Olympiad math, volleyball, swimming, programming—those were only the beginning. He even enrolled her in embroidery classes, saying she had a duty to preserve China’s intangible cultural heritage.

“A genius like our Wenwen has great intelligence and great responsibilities,” he declared.

Mom said, “Is all that necessary? She won’t be able to cope.”

Soon afterward, my sister called her and asked coldly, “Do you just not want to spend money on me?”

Mom had no choice but to give in.

When it came to my sister, Mom had gotten the worst possible deal in the divorce. She still had to pay, yet had no say in anything. Even after she paid, my sister barely acknowledged her calls.

Back then, Mom sat with a calculator every day, adding and subtracting until she looked ready to go bald.

Luckily, I was cheap.

One day the piano bit me. The next day I got poisoned from eating paint. I never lasted in a single one of those stupid classes.

I saved her money, but not her peace of mind.

Mom still had pride, after all. She had earned a doctorate from H University, yet somehow given birth to a champion bitter gourd like me. She used to supervise my sister’s homework; now she had only mine.

Her blood pressure shot through the roof every day.

When I fought at school, she got summoned.

The first time she arrived, she approached the office as though marching onto a battlefield. Then she hid outside the door and overheard me clinging to my teacher’s leg, sobbing.

“Teacher, please don’t do this to my mother! She’s a poor single mom!”

The teacher was stunned. “Where is your father?”

“He’s dead! He died in a freezing winter…”

“Oh…”

“He was an alcoholic. He died in a drunk-driving accident…”

“Oh, my…”

“Teacher, my mother only finished primary school! Please don’t scold her!”

The teacher said awkwardly, “Xiao Mi, you hit someone. Your mother did not.”

Outside the office, my mother—a doctor of literature—made a noise like a steam whistle.

Her anger soon gave way to embarrassment. The teacher told her I had been fighting and had scored twenty-eight in math.

“Mrs. Zhang, I understand that you only completed primary school, so educating a child must be difficult…”

Mom’s face turned crimson. She did not dare correct the teacher.

She certainly did not dare explain that I attended the bottom-ranked No. 9 Primary School while she was the dean of students at No. 1 High School.

After several more fights and several more summons, Mom was utterly baffled.

“Why do you keep fighting people?”

“Because I’m the boss!”

“What?”

How could I possibly explain? I led Mom down the sixth-grade corridor. Students rushed out of every classroom to call me “Boss.”

Mom went from shocked to confused to terrified. She collapsed onto the floor, seized my collar, and stared at me in despair.

“Xiao Mi, did you join a gang?”

I bared the Makka Pakka tattoo on my arm. “No, Mom! I finally found my people!”

A crowd of children rushed over and showed off the tiny cartoon characters and polka-dot tattoos on their arms.

Mom nearly blacked out. She angrily grabbed my arm to drag me away—and rubbed my tattoo right off.

She stared. “It’s a sticker?”

“Yup.”

Mom had no words.

Later, she discovered that bullying was rampant at our school. My so-called organization was an alliance of primary school students who had all been bullied.

It began by chance. On my first day, some children cornered me and demanded my pocket money. I knew that routine. Back in T City, every child in our neighborhood had called me retarded and tried to steal my snacks and cash.

By then, punching bullies was practically a reflex.

One fight made me famous. The whole school heard that the “boss” of Class One, Grade Six could beat up middle schoolers. I punched my way through the hierarchy until I truly became the school’s boss.

The other children paid tribute in stickers.

I told Mom, “Can you believe these kids? They used to let bullies hit them without fighting back. Then one day, I descended from the heavens…”

Mom was furious—far beyond her usual anger.

She turned around and filed a complaint against the school with the Education Bureau.

The school went into a panic. No. 9 Primary was the worst school around. Who had ever bothered to police it? Then, out of nowhere, someone reported them.

Mom marched into the school with me and gathered a group of young victims to testify. Even our homeroom teacher was dumbfounded.

No one could understand how the “single mother with a primary-school education” had suddenly become the dean of students at No. 1 High School.