Chapter 2

When she’d finished laughing, Blondie asked,

“Even if you stole the money and got caught,

“couldn’t your family just yell at you? Why actually call the cops and have you sent here?”

I gave her a look that said, How can you not understand this?

“A scolding wouldn’t teach me a lesson.

“Good grades are one thing. Stealing shows bad character.

“If I wasn’t punished this time, what if I stole fifty thousand next time? Five hundred thousand?

“What if I stole from someone else?”

Dreads snorted.

“Who keeps that much cash at home these days?

“Besides, there are cameras everywhere. You could try, but the minute you did it, you’d get hauled in just like me.”

Blondie reached for the hair Dreads had only just managed to tie back up.

“Shut it. Stop talking crap. Don’t corrupt the kid.”

Then she turned to me, something complicated in her eyes.

“Your parents told you all that, didn’t they?

“It’s all bullshit. Don’t believe it.”

Puzzled, I asked,

“How could it be?

“My parents gave me life and raised me. They love me more than anyone in the world. Why would they hurt me?”

“They haven’t already?”

Dreads slipped another comment in.

“Being in here leaves a record!

“Even if you graduate from Peking, you won’t be able to join the civil service. The background check’ll knock you straight out!”

I froze.

I remembered my parents’ stern, righteous faces when they called the police.

Had they really been hurting me?

Not teaching me a lesson?

Over the next few days, the atmosphere changed.

The others stopped shunning me.

Instead, they developed a peculiar desire to study me.

They were always turning my head this way and that, examining it.

Blondie even measured its circumference.

“It’s not that big. How do you get all that incomprehensible stuff into it? How do you score so high?”

…

Blondie and Dreads got out before I did.

On the day they left, Blondie stood in the doorway and pointed back at the others on the sleeping platform.

“Little Four-Eyes is under my protection.

“Anyone who messes with her, wait till I get hauled in next time. I’ll fucking kill you!”

After they left, Streaks and Tattoo Sleeves naturally took over their duties.

Every day, they kept fussing with my head.

I suddenly remembered something.

All my life, my parents had forbidden me to play with anyone who got bad grades.

In primary school, a girl on the track team once took me out to kick a football around on the field.

My mother happened to see us when she came to pick me up.

She rushed over, grabbed me, and pointed at the sweating girl in front of all those people.

“There’s a saying: all brawn and no brains.

“What does it mean?

“It means people who aren’t smart take up sports.

“Play with her and you’ll turn stupid too!”

She even went to warn the girl’s parents.

That was how I lost my first friend.

In middle school and high school, they screened my social circle even more strictly.

They made scenes at school, refusing to let the teachers seat anyone with lower grades beside me.

They said I was such an unremarkable child, yet those people scored even worse than I did.

What did that prove?

That they were either stupid or bad. Potential criminals once they went out into the world.

Did I want to end up in jail too, sharing a desk with people like that?

But I was always first in my year.

There wasn’t anyone in the school with better grades.

So I always had to sit alone.

No deskmate, no friends, no chats during the ten-minute breaks.

Still, I thought my parents must be right.

Otherwise, how could my grades have stayed so good?

Until now.

I sat on the cold, hard bed in the detention center, looking at the girls beside me with their rainbow-colored hair.

And somehow, I thought these street girls were rather nice.

They would give me half a sausage they’d been saving for themselves.

When I was cold in the middle of the night, they’d nudge a little of their own blanket over me.

After several days of having my head petted, I suddenly realized.

Damn. I’d forgotten to ask Blondie and Dreads their names.

I asked the others, but they didn’t know either.

All they knew was that Blondie was an orphan and a formidable fighter.

If she really meant to hurt someone, one sweeping kick could take down a grown man weighing a hundred kilos.

So she was always getting arrested for fighting.

And Dreads was always stealing money.

This place was practically a second home to them.