Chapter 3

Saying I would study hard was easy. Actually doing it was agonizing.

I had played around for all of tenth grade, and I had not studied once during the first half of eleventh grade either.

All my attention went toward makeup, clothes, celebrities, and clubs.

I genuinely thought studying was pointless.

My family was rich. Even if I failed to get into a university in China, my parents would find a way to send me abroad.

Why should I work myself to death?

In a year and a half of high school, I had never completed a single homework assignment. During exams, I either submitted a blank paper or scribbled a few random answers. I was firmly entrenched in the bottom three of my grade.

After thinking for ages, I decided to start by catching up on tenth-grade material.

But once I opened a textbook, I found that although I recognized every word, together they might as well have been an alien language.

I forced myself to read for ten minutes before I could take no more. Stars swam before my eyes, and I could not stop yawning.

This was hard. Ridiculously hard.

Jiang Shuhua barely seemed to think when he solved problems. His pen simply moved. How could it be so difficult for me?

I began to lose my nerve.

My family was rich anyway. So what if they went to Tsinghua? One day, they might end up working for me.

Just as I was about to put down the book, my mother knocked and came in.

She held a plate of fruit, and shock was written all over her face.

“Ru, are you studying?”

Her astonishment quickly turned to nervousness. She stretched her lips as though she wanted to smile, set the fruit on my desk, and rubbed her hands awkwardly.

“Oh, did I interrupt you? Keep studying!”

She hurried out and closed the door so gently it made no sound.

I stared at the fruit.

They were grapes, snipped from their stems and washed several times with flour until every one was spotless. Not a single grape was bruised.

My mother did things like this every day.

She worried the housekeeper would not wash my fruit properly or cook food I liked. She waited on me in a hundred different ways.

Her expressions kept flashing through my mind. One moment, she was saying sadly, “Give your mother something to be proud of.” The next, she was terrified that she had disturbed my studying.

I tightened my fingers around my pen and opened the book I had been about to close.

Damn it. I would read a little longer.

…

Studying truly was painful, but once I endured that torturous beginning, it no longer felt quite so unbearable.

I even began to find a little pleasure in my history textbook.

I had visited the Terracotta Warriors with my mother, but I had never known what the First Emperor of Qin did after unifying the six states.

His vision and ambition were astonishing.

I had never taken notes. The pages of my books were covered in doodles from class.

I had added a mustache and a new hairstyle to the portrait of Qin Shi Huang.

It had only been a way to kill time, but after reading about him seriously, I felt a little guilty.

I turned the pages one by one and could not remember when I fell asleep.

When my alarm rang the next morning, I discovered I had spent the night slumped over my desk.

The imprint of a page still marked my cheek.

I stared at myself in the mirror in disbelief.

Qiao Ru had actually fallen asleep while reading a textbook.

My mother was unusually attentive at breakfast, piling food into my bowl.

“Eat more. Studying burns energy!”

“My daughter is brilliant. If she studies even a little, she’ll surpass that brat. What’s so impressive about him? We’ll get you into Tsinghua too!”

I looked at the chicken drumstick in my bowl, overcome by mixed emotions.

My mother had always believed in me this much.

Her daughter could be a pile of dog poop, and she would still think it was the greatest pile in the world.

The slightest effort from me delighted her.

She was so easy to please.

I looked into her shining eyes.

Tonight… I would study a little longer.

When I arrived at school that morning, I ran into Qiu Ting.

My girlfriends crowded around me and asked where we should go that night.

“Hey, Qiao Ru, a new bar opened on Nanjing Road. I heard there’ll be tons of hot guys. Let’s go tonight!”

Qiu Ting passed beside us and swept us with a sidelong glance.

She said nothing. Her expression did not even change, yet I saw unmistakable contempt in her eyes.

It was the look one gave something filthy.

In her eyes, we were garbage—scum from a class of society entirely beneath hers.

And perhaps that was true.

Wherever she went, teachers and students praised her.

When people mentioned someone like me, they said only, “That delinquent.”

“Qiao Ru, say something. I’m paying tonight. Why aren’t you wearing makeup? Let’s touch it up later!”

I snapped out of my thoughts and looked at my friends in their tight pants and heavy makeup.

Only then did I realize that I had been so preoccupied with studying that morning, I had forgotten to put on makeup.

Yet for some reason, the sight of their carefully painted faces suddenly made me uncomfortable.

“I’m not going. I… have something to do tonight.”

I was too embarrassed to admit I intended to go home and study. They would laugh themselves to death.

“Whatever. What could be so important? Boring.”

When they realized they could not persuade me, they scoffed and walked away.

I watched Qiu Ting wave to Jiang Shuhua nearby. She hurried over and wrapped her hands around his arm.

Jiang Shuhua turned to her with a smile and stroked her hair.

They looked perfect together.

I stood there, dazed.

They were dating, yet our homeroom teacher had never summoned their parents.

I heard Qiu Ting had sworn to him that her grades would not fall.

So even though dating was forbidden, they could be open and fearless about it.

Of course. How could the top two students in the grade hurt each other’s performance?

They were a match made in heaven. Everyone seemed to accept it.

Qiu Ting said something to Jiang Shuhua. He glanced toward me without turning his head too obviously, and his smile vanished.

His eyes held the same disdain as hers.

I wanted to rush over and slap him, but I knew what the consequences would be.

I stared at their retreating backs until they disappeared.