If You Could See the Sun (29)

He is, in short, everything I want to be.

“Ah. Alice.” Mr. Chen smiles widely when he sees me. He smiles a lot, Mr. Chen, despite the fact that there’s very little to smile about at eight o’clock on a Thursday morning. Then again, if I were a successful, award-winning Harvard law grad-slash-poet, I’d probably be grinning like an idiot even at my own funeral.

“Morning, Mr. Chen,” I say, smiling back and forcing as much enthusiasm into my voice as I can. This is a strategic move, on my part. When it comes time for the teachers to help us write letters of recommendation, I want to be remembered as someone “upbeat” and “positive,” with “excellent people skills”—never mind if that’s the complete opposite of my actual personality.

Of course, now that I might be leaving, all my efforts could be for nothing...

No. I crush the thought before it can fully form. I have Beijing Ghost now. A source of income. People who want to pay me 50,000 RMB for a single job.

Everything can still work out the way I want it to.

“...consider that English program?” Mr. Chen is saying, a meaningful look in his eyes.

It takes me a second to figure out what he’s talking about. He’d recommended this prestigious two-month writing course to me and only me at the end of last year, and I’d let myself get excited for exactly five seconds before erasing the whole thing from my mind. The program cost about as much as my parents’ flat, and even if I were rich and had the time to spare, I’d probably invest in a coding boot camp like the one Henry went to in Year Nine. Something with a high ROI.

But obviously I can’t tell Mr. Chen that.

“Oh, yes. I’m still thinking about it,” I lie. My smile is starting to feel even stiffer than usual.

To my relief, Mr. Chen doesn’t push the matter. “Well, no rush. And in the meantime... I have something for you.” He holds up a paper with my tiny writing scribbled all over it. It’s last week’s English test: an essay and two long-answer questions on symbolism in Macbeth. “Good job.”

My heart stutters a beat, the way it always does when I’m about to receive academic feedback of any kind. I grab the paper and quickly fold it in two so that Henry, who’s walking toward us, can’t see my score.

“And you too, King Henry,” Mr. Chen says with a wink, handing him his test over my shoulder. I don’t remember who came up with the ridiculous nickname first, but all the humanities teachers seem to get a real kick out of using it. I’ve always found it a bit too on the nose. After all, everyone knows Henry is the equivalent of royalty at our school.

I have a nickname, too, though only my classmates sometimes call me by it: Study Machine. I don’t mind, to be honest—it highlights my main strength and suggests at control. Purpose. Ruthless efficiency.

All good things.

As Henry thanks the teacher and strikes up a conversation about some extra readings he did last night, I step off to the side and sneak a glance at my score.

99%.

Relief floods through me. If this were any other subject, I’d already be beating myself up for that deducted 1%, but as a rule, Mr. Chen never gives out full marks.

Still, I can’t celebrate just yet...

I turn to Henry when he’s finished talking. “What did you get?” I want to know.

He raises his eyebrows. He looks more well rested than he did the last time I saw him; his skin smooth as glass, dark hair falling in neat waves over his forehead, not a single wrinkle to be seen on his uniform. I wonder, briefly, if he ever gets tired of being so perfect all the time. “What did you get?”

“You tell me first.”

This earns me an eye roll, but after a pause, he says, “Ninety-eight percent.”

“Ah.” I can’t help it—my face breaks into a wide smile.

Henry rolls his eyes again, and heads to his seat. He unpacks his bag slowly, methodically: a shiny MacBook Air, a clear Muji pencil case, and a thick binder with colorful annotated tabs running down the sides. He arranges them all in straight lines and ninety-degree angles, like he’s about to take one of those esthetic Studygram photos. Then, without lifting his head, he says, “Let me guess, you got ninety-nine percent, then?”

I say nothing, just smile some more.

Henry glances up at me. “You realize it’s rather sad that your sole source of joy comes from beating me by one percent in an English unit test?”

The smile slides off my face. I scowl at him. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not my sole source of joy.”

“Right.” He sounds unconvinced.

“It’s not.”

“I wasn’t disagreeing with you.”

“I—ugh. Whatever.” Despite the fact that there are literally a million other things I’d rather do—including walking barefoot over Lego bricks—I take the seat beside him. “There’s something kind of important I need to discuss with you...”

Henry’s expression doesn’t change when I sit down, but I can still sense his surprise. It’s an unspoken yet universally acknowledged rule that the seat you take at the very start of the year is the seat you stick with.

Which is why, when my usual desk mate and Airington’s top art student, Vanessa Liu, comes through the door a few seconds later, she freezes in her tracks. This might sound like an exaggeration, but it isn’t; she goes completely still from head to toe, even as more students trickle in behind her. Then she marches over to me with the sort of betrayed, wounded look one would usually reserve for when they catch their boyfriend cheating on them with their best friend, or something worse.