“It’s fine. It’s lunchtime right now.” Tiểu Quang waved a hand.
Feeling guilty, I took out my English and history notes, wanting to help Tiểu Quang a little, too.
“Let’s do it this way. We’ll review together at lunch. Tiểu Quang is good at science, Song Ha has a solid foundation in the humanities, and my scores are average in every subject, so I’m the right person to keep us organized. The plan is for the two of you to work on your weak spots until you catch up to me, then bring each other up to the same level.”
That settled it. At lunchtime, we stayed in the dorm and worked on each other’s weak spots, focusing on shoring up the basics.
Vi Vi was in charge of organizing and testing us, while Văn Văn handled logistics and kept track of rewards and punishments.
Tiểu Quang’s bed was covered in English vocabulary words. Since she didn’t know how to pronounce them, she wrote the Chinese phonetic spelling beside each one.
“If you don’t memorize it, copy it ten times. That goes for the whole passage, too.”
“But Văn Văn isn’t Song Ha, you know. I won’t go easy on her if she gets assigned copying.”
I also had to practice the harder problems. I couldn’t stay safe in my comfort zone. I’d keep the questions I was sure to get right as they were and focus on cracking the big problems.
“Do you understand the barrel effect? The problems you can’t solve are what determine how much you improve.”
“Don’t memorize math formulas the way you do in the humanities! You have to know how to use them!”
“Maybe... we should just give up sleeping?”
It was still cold in January. Washing my face with cold water in the morning woke me right up.
We could chant slogans while running at lunchtime.
The students in the honors class next door shouted with gusto:
“I want to get into Zhejiang University!”
“I want to get into Shandong University!”
Our regular class just ran quietly. No one said a word.
I wanted to shout, too, but I didn’t dare yell that I wanted to get into Peking University. I was afraid people would laugh at me.
“I want to get into Tsinghua!”
Suddenly, I heard a familiar shout beside me.
The name Tsinghua was so renowned that even the honors-class students turned around to see who was “delusional.”
I turned around and saw Văn Văn, the lowest-ranked student in our class, shouting with confidence.
She winked mischievously at me. In her baggy uniform, she gave my hand a gentle squeeze and encouraged me with her eyes:
“Shout it. What are you afraid of?”
“I want to get into Tsinghua!”
“I want to get into Peking University!”
We shouted one after the other until our voices were hoarse.
I want to get into Tsinghua! I want to get into Peking University!
I was born to be a mountain peak, not a stream.
I was born to be a hero, not a blade of grass.
The honors-class students looked at us with contempt, mocking our regular class for not knowing our place.
I stayed up late doing homework, my eyes drooping again and again. In the early morning, I had to squeeze in time to memorize material for my humanities classes.
“Can’t memorize it? Go outside and feel the north wind. I guarantee you won’t be sleepy anymore.”
Tiểu Quang, Vi Vi, and I took Văn Văn outside with us. The north wind really did chase away our sleepiness.
“When Heaven is about to entrust someone with a great responsibility, it first makes them suffer in mind and body...” Tiểu Quang muttered, shivering. “Thanks. This lesson’s burned into my memory now. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”
As we stood there shivering and reciting, students from the honors class walked past on their way to get water. They looked at us and sneered:
“Standing here reciting lessons, trying to show off?”
“You think you’re going to get into Tsinghua or Peking University? Take a good look at yourselves.”
“The thing regular-class students are best at is putting on a show of working hard.”
Văn Văn wanted to argue back, but Vi Vi stopped her:
“Don’t waste your time.”
Tiểu Quang gripped the book in her hands tightly.
“Are you girls standing here reciting?”
Our homeroom teacher spotted us. His surname was Zhang, he was in his forties, and he taught civics. The school administrators didn’t think much of his teaching ability, so they usually just had him handle discipline. Since he was balding, a few mischievous boys had nicknamed him Baldy.
“It’s too easy to get sleepy studying inside.”
Maybe he thought the four of us were just putting on a show, too. He gave a vague acknowledgment, then went back to the classroom.
For that month and a half, our eyes were open as we did homework and closed as we reviewed.
On the one day off each week, I made time to visit Grandma in the hospital. My aunt told me not to worry; Grandma woke up from time to time and still asked for me by name.
On the way back, I wiped away my tears, gritted my teeth, and picked up my book again.
4
The final mock exams of the term began.
Teacher Baldy stood at the lectern. When he received the score sheet, he stared at it blankly for a moment. I was sitting in the front row when I heard him exclaim in surprise:
“...You girls actually did it?”
He coughed softly, then quickly glanced over at the four of us in the front row:
“Some students made tremendous progress on this exam, jumping twenty places in the class rankings.”
“Trần Văn Văn, you’ve finally gotten the hang of it, too. You passed the average mark in one subject.”
“Lâm Vy Vy, very good. You’re in the top ten in the class now, though you still need to work on your grade-level ranking.”
“Triệu Tiểu Quang, you passed the cutoff in politics. Very good. You may have gone about it the wrong way, but at least you filled the whole page with answers.”
He paused, then looked me in the eye for a moment.
At parent-teacher conferences before, because I was stronger in the sciences than the humanities, Grandma had pulled him aside and talked with him for a long time. He never showed the slightest impatience.
I’d heard he’d taught at this school for over ten years, always teaching regular classes. The college acceptance rate was so dismal that whenever parents found out their child had been assigned to Teacher Baldy’s class, they invariably tried to pull strings to get them moved into an honors class.
He talked with Grandma for a long time. I waited outside the office, and afterward he said to me:
“Study hard. Don’t disappoint your grandma.”
But back then, I was lazy and couldn’t make myself study.
“Song Ha.” Teacher Baldy looked at me with a smile. “You’re ninth in the class. Keep working hard, and you could get into a decent university.”
I did the math in my head. Even the top student in our regular class would only rank around two hundredth in the whole school.
To get into Tsinghua or Peking University, I’d have to rank first in the whole school and work several times harder.
It wasn’t enough. I was still a long way from enough.
My grades improved quickly, and lately it seemed like all the teachers liked calling on me.
“Song Ha, come up to the board and solve this problem.”
“Song Ha, analyze the characteristics and effects of a peasant economy.”
“Song Ha, analyze the forces acting on this object.”
“Song Ha, change this sentence to the passive voice.”
I knew they were giving me special treatment.
Like sunshine and a sudden shower, they always wanted to give special care to the plants struggling to reach upward.
To my surprise, Teacher Baldy had gone to the school administrators and asked to have the top ten students in our class transferred to the honors class next term.
The middle-aged Political Studies teacher scratched his head, tangling what little hair he had left. Unable to come up with any fancy words, he simply patted my shoulder.
“To keep the regular class at a consistent level, the honors class only covers the major topics at the end. You wouldn’t get to hear those here.”
“You’re the top ten students in our class. Go do well in the advanced class, and don’t let the regular class down.”
“I know you three and Trần Văn Văn are very close, but Trần Văn Văn can’t transfer. I even tried massaging the administrators’ shoulders and pounding their backs, but they still wouldn’t agree.”
We couldn’t help laughing when we heard that.
The three of us transferred before finals, carrying our books to a different classroom. I turned around in the hallway and saw Teacher Baldy poking his head out of the office, giving me a “keep it up” gesture.
“Song Ha, work hard and get into Peking University for me!”
My eyes suddenly blurred with tears again.
In the honors class, our grades were nothing special. On top of that, we were transfer students, so we were seated all the way in the back.
During the final half of the year, no one in the advanced class was going to stay behind and review the basics with us. The teachers raced through the major topics at the end. They flipped past the earlier problems and said offhandedly,
“We’re not going over this one. Surely everyone knows how to do it, right?”
Pen tips scratched across paper with a steady rustle. The sky grew light earlier and earlier, but the classroom lights stayed on later and later.
And I realized that without a solid foundation, the gap was truly enormous.
I thought that if I gave it everything I had, I could catch up. I thought that if I pushed myself day and night—even dreaming of formulas and getting practice problems wrong—I could at least break into the class’s top ten.
If I could just rank tenth in the class—that is, twentieth in the whole school—I’d have one foot in the door of a top university.
But my results on the finals before winter break shattered my hopes.
“Song Ha, twentieth place.” My new homeroom teacher looked up at me with an approving gaze. “That’s a huge improvement, but math is still holding you back.”
I looked at the last two major problems on the math test. I’d carelessly miscalculated one, and I hadn’t had enough time to finish the last one.
My heart sank halfway.
“Tsinghua and Peking University are hard to get into. You can’t just study and expect to get in.”
“This is already good. Maybe a regular university is all you were ever going to get into.”
“Maybe your parents didn’t take the money back then. Maybe you misunderstood them. And even if they did take it, they wouldn’t have known the password.”
“Your parents aren’t as bad as you think. Maybe you’re just being suspicious. Of course they weren’t happy when you went there to confront them.”
“Hard work doesn’t always pay off, but not working hard is definitely comfortable.”
When the results weren’t what I’d hoped for, a thousand days and nights of hard work felt like stones thrown into a black hole—there was no echo, and I had no idea whether any of it had mattered.
On the bus ride home, I vaguely heard the passengers around me chatting excitedly about shopping for the Lunar New Year and going home to reunite with family.
The city’s countless lights came on one by one, but I didn’t know where my “home” was.
She told me I didn’t need to come look after Grandma. She’d talked it over with my father: she would watch over her at night, and my father during the day. They wanted me to stay home and get plenty of rest.
But I still brought my tests to the hospital, intending to study while keeping Grandma company.
Grandma lay in the hospital bed, complicated tubes running into her body. She seemed to have withered away so much. Beneath the thick blankets, there was no sign of movement at all; only one thin, dry hand, cracked and swollen from the cold, stuck out.
I gently took her hand.