From Afar: 15 stories about modern-day China through the eyes of a Chinese girl by Yanyi Zhan & Yanyi Zhan

Author:Yanyi Zhan & Yanyi Zhan [Zhan, Yanyi & Zhan, Yanyi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-06T23:00:00+00:00

Overachiever

The teacher turned back to the blackboard to write something. I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t care at all at the moment. I tossed another note to Emma. This time it hit her right on the head. The girl sitting behind her got scared and squeaked slightly. Everyone stared at her except the teacher. She stopped writing for a second but continued quickly without even turning to the class.

Emma didn’t react. Just acted as if nothing happened - she was still resting her head on the one hand and diligently copying things from the board with the other. She must never have listened so carefully in class. I was sure because I was with her almost every day, almost every minute of almost every hour away from home. I knew why she was doing all this. I knew she just didn’t want to pay me the slightest bit of attention anymore, and she did because of the words I thought I would never say.

She sat in the same position for another minute. Frightened, I was getting warmer. I tapped my foot nervously, feeling my whole body shaking with fear. My blood was burning. It was as if my heart had begun to pump lava, which ignited my entire body, rose to my head. I felt it coming out of my ears, and after a moment it reached my brain, and it just stopped petrified by the heat. The heat coming from this lava came out of my breath. My neck, my face, my ears were literally burning! My head was buzzing with irritation, I couldn’t hear or feel anything else around me… Until something hit me on the right shoulder.

I looked around curiously to see where it had fallen. I was almost sure it was another note. It was forbidden to bring mobile phones to school, the teachers took them away upon entry. The post-it notes, rolled into a small paper ball, were our messenger, our social network. They were slower, but also more romantic. We only missed the carrier pigeons. And when you think about it - it takes more effort to write something on a piece of paper, more time, you have to be more careful, and everything comes out more significant and seems much more important. I still keep the iron box that sat hidden under my desk. In it, I kept my most important messages, my most important memories. That’s why the tap of the post-it note on my shoulder was such a familiar feeling.

I found a ball of blue post-it under my chair. “Oh no,” I heard myself shouting in my mind because the paper wasn’t Emma’s - she didn’t like the blue ones. She was still sitting there quietly, listening intently to the lesson in that same position.

The message was from JD, Emma’s boyfriend, who must have felt offended by my words, too, but apparently, they hadn’t reached him:

What happened? I asked Emma, but she only answered with two characters - “I’m fine.

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