Page 30 of If You Could See the Sun
“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 mysolesource 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 goescompletely stillfrom 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.
“You’re sittinghere?”she demands, her thin voice stretching into a whine. When I don’t respond, just give her a small, apologetic smile, she pouts and continues, “You’re leaving me at our table withLucy Goh?”
“What’s wrong with Lucy?” I say, even though part of me suspects I already know the answer.
Lucy Goh is one of the rarities at our school; thoroughly lower middle-class, with white-collar parents working at small local companies. She’s kind to everyone around her—she once baked the whole class personalized cookies for our end-of-year party, and she’s always the first to run over when someone falls in PE class—but she’s not an art prodigy, like Vanessa, or a musician, like Rainie, or particularly good at any of her subjects. And that’s the problem. Here at Airington, there are many different tickets to respect—talent, beauty, wealth, charm, family connections...
But kindness is not one of them.
“Like, yeah, she’s nice and everything,” Vanessa is saying, fluffing her bangs with one charcoal-smeared hand, “but when it comes to group work...” She pauses, then leans forward like she’s about to share a juicy secret, though her voice is still loud enough for the whole class to hear her next words: “She’s kind of useless, you know what I mean?”
Her sharp cat-like eyes crinkle at the corners, and she’s looking at me like she expects me to laugh or agree.
I don’t.
Ican’t. Not when my stomach seizes up as if I’m the one she’s bitching about.
And maybe it’s because I’m aware of Henry sitting close beside me, watching and no doubt judging this whole exchange, or because I’m still riding the power high of my test results, or because there’s a chance everything mightnotwork out and I’ll be gone from Airington in a semester, but I do something wildly out of character: I say exactly what I’m thinking. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure she does more work than you do.”
Vanessa’s eyes widen.
I shrink back in my seat by instinct, suddenly scared she’s going to punch me or something. Too late, I remember that in addition to all her prestigious art awards, Vanessa also won the national kickboxing championships last year.
But all she does is let out a loud high-pitched laugh.
“Damn. Wasn’t prepared for a roast, Alice,” she says, her light, teasing tone not quite matching the flash of anger in her eyes. Before I can backtrack, however, she marches to our usual table—hertable now, I guess. I have a feeling I won’t be sitting next to her anytime soon.
“Wow,” Henry says once Vanessa’s out of earshot.
“Wowwhat?” I demand, cheeks flushed, regret already twisting into my gut. There’s a reason I never get confrontational with anyone at school, and it’s not because I’m a coward—well, notonlybecause of that. With all the connections my classmates have, I can’t burn a single bridge without burning a hundred more bridges by association. For all I know, I might’ve just ruined any chance I had of one day working at Baidu or Google.
“Nothing,” Henry says, but he’s looking at me like he’s never really seen me before. “It’s just—you can be quite surprising sometimes.”
I frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
