Chapter 4

Chapter 4

As if I were determined to spite my mother, I gave up on studying completely.

I even stopped trying in Chinese and English, the two subjects where I had always ranked near the top. During exams, I just filled in the answer sheet at random and scribbled whatever came to mind. In the end, even those two subjects were dragged down to average.

In the second semester of seventh grade, I came in second to last in the entire class.

My teacher was bitterly disappointed in me and moved me to the very back row.

I was a little nearsighted and could barely see the blackboard, so I simply put my head down and slept through class.

The student ranked dead last in our class was also a girl.

Blue hair, fluttery fake lashes, gum in her mouth whenever she was awake. She slept in class, read novels when she woke up, and every time she opened her mouth, out came a string of curses. No one in class dared mess with her.

But she was different from me and my self-imposed decline.

I didn’t listen in class, didn’t study, and failed exams, but I still obediently wore my school uniform every day, never arrived late or left early, and went home on time at night.

Jiang Min didn’t.

She smoked, drank, got into group fights, and had a whole crowd of older “brothers” and “sisters” outside school. At night, it seemed like… she didn’t go home either.

I ran into her by chance after school.

A tall boy had pinned her against the brick wall in the alley behind the school, his face very close to hers. A crowd surrounded them, shouting, “Kiss her! Kiss her!”

I was far away and couldn’t see clearly, but through the noise, I vaguely heard what sounded like her trademark profanity again.

“Go screw yourself. Stay the hell away from me.”

“Get lost! Don’t touch me!”

“Are you deaf or something?”

I had meant to leave.

But the next second, I heard Jiang Min scream.

In the dim, not-quite-dark evening, the air was thick with the earthy dampness before rain.

A group of thug-like people surrounded her. She had only just struggled when the boy leaning in to kiss her backhanded her twice across the face.

Smack, smack.

The sound echoed with terrible clarity through the alley.

I heard the boy laugh mockingly.

“Jiang Min, don’t you dare be so damn ungrateful!”

Boom.

After a clap of thunder, rain began pelting down. My heart was beating wildly.

“The police are here!”

“Run! The police are here!”

In an instant, the crowd scattered like startled birds, leaving only me and Jiang Min behind.

Her forehead had been split open. Blood and tears smeared her face, one corner of her mouth was torn, and several buttons on her shirt had popped open.

I hadn’t brought an umbrella. By then, the rain had soaked me from head to toe, so I probably didn’t look much better than she did.

“Who the hell asked you to help me?” Jiang Min asked.

“I-I felt like it.”

Jiang Min stared at me for a long while, the look in her eyes making my skin crawl. A few seconds later, she suddenly burst into laughter.

“Chen Miao, you really are hilarious.”

After that, though, Jiang Min and I somehow became friends.

When the teacher threw a piece of chalk at my head, Jiang Min caught it in one grab. When I got my period and stained my chair, Jiang Min carried the chair to the sinks after class and scrubbed it clean. She went to the bathroom with me, ate with me, and read those slightly dirty novels of hers with me.

Whenever my face turned bright red from reading, Jiang Min would sit beside me, waggling her eyebrows.

“Miaomiao, how about I introduce you to someone too?”

Before I could even figure out how to answer, my mother… was called to school by my homeroom teacher.

My mother was furious.

I had forgotten how much she valued studying.

Her job at the factory was so exhausting that after our huge fight, when I still ate meals as usual, went to and from school on time, and kept my night-light on until late, she naturally assumed I was still studying.

But I wasn’t.

When the homeroom teacher called her at the factory and earnestly said she needed to have a proper talk with the mother of a student who had given up on herself, my mother asked in complete bewilderment, “What happened to my Chen Miao?”

“Chen Miao hangs around with delinquents every day. She sleeps in class instead of listening. Last time, she didn’t even pass Chinese or English. Chen Miao’s mother, if Chen Miao keeps this up, forget college-even getting into high school will be difficult!”

That day, my mother lost her mind. Ignoring the line leader’s threat that her pay would be docked if she dared leave, she went straight home.

She pulled open my drawer.

Inside, one book after another, were nothing but magazines and novels.

She carried that huge stack of novels to school. To this day, I still don’t know how her two thin arms managed to hold so many heavy books as she searched the entire campus for me.

Then, in a corner of the school field, she heard Jiang Min say, “Miaomiao, how about I introduce you to someone too?”

In that instant, my mother pounced like a tiger.

She gathered every bit of strength in her body and slapped Jiang Min hard across the face.

“You are not allowed to corrupt my daughter! What else have you tricked her into doing?”

Those novels flew everywhere like scattered flower petals, their pages fluttering open to reveal all those unspeakable words hidden inside.

I saw classmates pick up the books, point at certain passages, and read them aloud while giggling with the people beside them.

But in that moment, I couldn’t think about anything else.

All I could remember was that year after my mother caused a huge scene at Zhao Lingling’s house. Zhao Lingling’s mother came to school and, in front of the dean and countless classmates, cursed me out from head to toe.

“You little bastard. No wonder your father is dead.”

“With a mother like yours, it’d be a miracle if you ever amounted to anything.”

After that, I went to school alone, ate alone, and even the teachers rarely called on me in class.

Aside from that fat bastard who only knew how to copy my homework, no one spoke to me.

At that instant, my heart sank heavily.

But Jiang Min yanked me behind her.

“Auntie! What are you doing?!”