1. The End





I killed a girl when I was nine and to my shame, I cannot even defend myself and say it was unintentional. Perhaps I should not tell you this either but truthfully, it was my greatest moment.

Up until this point, my life was uncomplicated in its routine. Monday to Friday, I went to the only fee-paying private school in the large northern town of Bexley, where I was taunted by rich girls from nine until three-thirty. Oddly enough, the boys left me alone - perhaps because they were preoccupied with stink bombs and making up new jokes about bodily functions. On Saturdays, I went to the Multi-Ethnic Centre for Chinese lessons and on Sundays, my mother and I would be on the number 82 bus to the sprawling open-air fish market where everyone smelled like Old Mrs Yim.

My life was as inevitable as the moon's monthly cycle, and it would have carried on this way had it not been for Mrs Yeo’s reading of the almanac. You see, the Chinese believe in auspicious dates, and the greatest day of my life was fated to be on Friday the twenty-first of July. On that day, two of the school year’s greatest events were to converge: the last day of term and our annual Prizegiving ceremony.

When I found out that I would receive my first ever award at school - the Townsend-Hooper Award for excelling in science – I almost squeaked out loud with excitement. Faye Chang came up to me at the notice board that afternoon, where I was quietly chanting my name over and over to myself, afraid that I had misread the Prize-winners list.

“Don’t forget to wear your pyjamas,” said Faye.
I was confused by two things: first, that she had approached me and second, the kindness of her smile. Faye was three years my senior and the only other Chinese girl in my school. Three years older than I, Faye had the further benefit of height and glamorous sophistication, at least to my nine year old eyes.

“Pyjamas?” I said, blankly.

“Prize-winners are wearing pyjamas this year. It’s like a charity thing, or something.” Faye shrugged and rolled her eyes. “I think it’s a stupid idea, but the teachers think it’ll be fun for the last day of term.”

Grateful for her advice, I thanked her for telling me and floated home in a cloud. But I did not tell my parents about the prize. Instead, I quietly nursed the secret in my heart like a seed planted in sacred ground, afraid that if I told them my seed would not grow.

The weeks passed quickly and were filled with my usual vivid dreams. But this time, there were no ghosts or demons. Instead, my dreams prophesied greatness. In the darkness of my bedroom I saw everyone in school crowding around to applaud me as I stood in the centre like a movie star.

The girls in my class sniggered when I asked whether slippers were permissible. I suppose this should have been my first clue that all was not well, but I didn't want to jeopardise my special day by wearing the wrong attire. Even thinking about holding the silver trophy in my hands made my mouth dry up so I could barely swallow rice at dinnertime. On Thursday evening, I brushed my teeth without prompting and stole upstairs to my bedroom, taking great pains to select the right pair of pyjamas. I set my alarm clock half an hour early so that I could savour every minute of what would be the greatest day of my life.

Of course, I had forgotten in the midst of all my excitement that I was Kitty Kwan, who tripped over every crack in the pavement and fell down more often than leaves tumbled from an autumn tree. If only I had paid closer attention to my dream, I would have realised that the sound inside my head was not that of clapping hands from ardent admirers, but the flapping wings of a startled bird in flight.


#


The night was clear enough for me to see thousands of stars scattered across the sky. A full moon hung above me as I walked towards the pond.

I was wearing a winter coat, but could still feel the chill as I made my way through the tall grass. The surface of the pond gleamed silver in the moonlight. I stood by the edge of the calm water and looked down. I examined my reflection, my features clear and ghostly: frizzy hair, funny teeth, and a perfectly round face.

A slight breeze stirred and a ripple broke across the surface, breaking my face into a hundred fragments.


#


I awoke to the rumbling of the train tracks behind our block. A metallic taste filled my mouth, as if I had sucked on copper coins. The trains ran every twenty minutes, sometimes loud enough to wake me from my sleep. I lay in bed and listened until the rumbling faded into the distance.


#


Two of us sat outside Mr Wensel's office that Friday morning; a boy in plain black trousers and white shirt and myself in pyjamas and two day old underpants. There were three empty chairs between us and I quickly placed my tattered rucksack on the nearest one. A Wonder Woman rucksack wasn't much of a barrier, but I felt sufficiently protected.

I did not know this scruffy boy who slouched by the wall, picking at a red scab on his knee. From what little I could see of him, he did not look particularly pleasing, with spiky brown hair that pointed in all directions. His shirt was rumpled, as if it had had an argument with him and lost. I wondered why he was not in school uniform and supposed this was why he was waiting to see Mr Wensel. The boy did not look at me, preferring instead to sigh mournfully and gaze out of the side window, where rain was pelting down.

My legs were not quite long enough to reach the floor, so I spent much of the time swinging my legs to and fro, listening to the satisfying squeak of my chair. Mrs Hardy, the school receptionist, made occasional cranking noises through her teeth whilst eyeing me from the hatch window in the waiting area. Her mouth always puckered when she saw me, as if she had tasted something sour and could not spit it out. Even from my seat several feet away, I could see the dark thoughts gathering behind her big wrinkly forehead. She knew it, I could tell, for her eyes darted quickly to her paperwork. She was afraid to look at me because I saw her thoughts so clearly, like a cartoon bubble hanging above her head. Everyone I met had cartoon bubbles bobbing over their heads, all filled with the same kind of words: clumsy, lazy, troublesome, annoying, stupid, ugly.

I looked away from Mrs Hardy's unpleasant thoughts and stared at my rabbit slippers. I was in my favourite yellow pyjamas, with little mice running over the sleeves and hem. It was made of thick flannel, which was inappropriate for late July and made my skin itch, but it was the only set of pyjamas that my mother would let me wear in public.

"People should not see your underthings," she said sternly.

My itchy nose was steadily dripping onto the waxed linoleum floor. I imagined an army of ants crawling up and down inside my nostrils and behind my eyes, but I didn't mind so much because my father had it too. I inherited a lot of things from my father, like his ears and nose, and even the small mole on his left temple. My mother was very unhappy that my father and I looked so alike, not because she felt left out but because she had to tell people that I was her daughter.

"It is a pity you do not look like me," she would say as she looked through old photograph albums. "See how pretty I was? I was the prettiest girl in six villages! All the boys called me 'Sweet as Honey'."

My mother's maiden name is Tian, pronounced tihn. This sounds very much like the word for sweet - tihm - and so they used this clever way to flatter her.

"And then I married your father and lost my pretty name," she sighed, closing her book of photographs. "From Tian to Kwan. Your father's name is much more complicated to write."

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

"Kitty, stop fidgeting!" said Mrs Hardy, banging her stapler on the desk.

My cheeks burned with shame and I pressed my hands against the sides of my legs in a bid to control them. The warm still air of the waiting room and comforting tick-tock pressed heavily on my eyelids. I had not slept well last night.

Faye Chang sauntered into the room and went straight to the hatch without a backward glance.

"Mrs Hardy, I'm supposed to see Mr Wensel," she said sweetly.

"He's expecting you, Faye. Go right in."

Mrs Hardy smiled kindly at her, those dry puckered lips suddenly smooth and wide like a slice of melon. Her teeth were yellow and stained. They reminded me of the old newspaper clipping that my mother kept in the biscuit tin at home.

Faye politely thanked Mrs Hardy, but her face was not happy when she turned towards the door beside me. She sneaked a quick punch in my arm as she passed. She knew better than to cause me to shout out, but jabbed hard enough to make me wince with pain.

The thick mahogany door to Mr Wensel's office opened briefly, a clean waxy smell drifting through, then closed again.

I looked at the wooden clock that loomed above the hatch. It was nine forty-one. The stiff plastic chair pressed against my skin like the hard flat palm of my mother's hand. Not knowing how else to pass the time, I tugged a dog-eared comic from out of my rucksack and my pencil case fell onto the floor with a clatter. Pens rolled in every direction. Mrs Hardy made a growling noise.

"You're wearing pyjamas," said the scruffy boy, who had moved up two seats to take a position by my rucksack. Up close, I could see that face was smudged with dirt, like he had been dipped in chocolate and had then proceeded to rub his face with a wet towel.

Unsettled, I scrambled to pick my pens up off the floor. The boy did not offer to help, hanging over his seat like a happy spectator.

One of the pens had rolled right to the door of Mr Wensel’s office. I crawled across to retrieve my pen, ears straining. I could hear nothing of their conversation except for an occasional low rumbling of words. I wondered how many lies Faye was telling him; how wide her eyes were growing as the words tumbled quickly from her mouth.

"To be clever with words is the greatest gift," my mother always told me. "Do not be lazy, lo-shu-ji. You are not pretty, so you must learn to be clever."

My mother used words as weapons - to coax, to threaten, to slice, to wound. She was like a skilled swordsman from old Chinese dynasty films, leaping from rooftops and wielding her words like a steel blade.

"Hey, I heard that woman call you Kitty,” said the boy.

I broke out of my thoughts and reluctantly drew my eyes to this tiresome stranger. There was a faint smell of cherry about him, as if he'd been sucking sweets. I packed away my pencil case and sat back down again.

"That's what that woman called you, isn't it? 'S funny name."

I gave him a so what? kind of shrug, which I had carefully practised over the years to defend myself against such moments. It was useful to have bony shoulders, one of the few parts of my body that I accepted without sinking despair.

I was named after a girl who had fallen into the South China Sea during a boating accident and died of hypothermia. I later found out that her name was Katie Olin, a tourist from Sweden who was nineteen. My mother had saved the newspaper clipping and kept it in an old biscuit tin above the refrigerator. I used to beg my father to lift it down so I could stare at the crinkled picture for hours on end; a tall pretty girl with blonde hair and good teeth. My own teeth were small and crooked.

"Like old fence," said my mother, watching me feel around them with the tip of my tongue.

"Her name is Katie," I pouted, feeling ashamed of my mouth.

"Yes, that is your name," she said. "Kee-tee.”

"You're funny-lookin', ain'tcha?" said the smudgy boy, as if stating a fact.

His rudeness, considering we had known each other for less than six minutes, was so shocking to me that I could not help but kick his leg. At the time, it seemed like an involuntary spasm, like the flex of an arm when you scratch an itchy nose, occurring so naturally that I was surprised at how easy it was.

"Yoooow!"

Mrs Hardy snapped her head up, like an alligator widening its jaws for attack. My body stiffened in preparation of punishment, my mind flooded with instant regret.

"What's going on?" she demanded.

"Nothin'," sulked the boy, rubbing his shin.

Mrs Hardy’s eyes narrowed and her gargoyle head disappeared below the hatch.

"Saved your skin," said the boy.

I opened the pages of my comic and secretly contrived to find an opportunity to kick his other leg before my time was out.

"Don’tcha know anythin’?" he said. "You can't kick superheroes, stupid."

His tongue was bright red. So, he had been sucking cherry sweets after all. I glanced at his trouser pocket, wondering if he had any sweets left. If I could get close enough, it would be easy to find out. All I need to do was casually move my rucksack onto the floor and-

"I'm Ethan McGann, Superman," said the boy.

Ethan solemnly offered me a greasy-looking hand. There were blotches of black ink all over his fingers. My hands remained where they were.

"I just moved here," he said. "You can be my first friend."

"I have too many friends already," I sniffed, turning away. This was a lie of course, but I wanted a friend who was pretty and tall and graceful. Not a short, smudgy boy who had scabs on his knee.

"You're rude," he said, looking hurt.

"You don't even look like Superman," I said with contempt.

The boy shook his head sadly at me, as if I had much to learn.

"There isn't just one Superman, you know." I could smell the sweetness in his breath and I suddenly longed for a bag of Cherry Bombs. "There are many of us, living secret lives, protecting the world from injustices."

I didn't like the self-righteous tone in his voice. He sounded like my mother.

“So what’s your superpower?” he asked me. “Mine’s Super Strength.”

I looked at him dumbly, as if he had suddenly splashed water on my face.

“I don’t have a superpower,” I said, wondering if this boy was a little slow.

“Oh yeah? I’ve seen you flying around in your shop,” said Ethan.

When I finally realised what he was talking about, my face flushed with colour. I had a red hooded raincoat back home, which I liked to fasten at the neck and wear like a cape, pretending I was Wonder Woman. I only ever wore it inside the takeaway shop where I lived, but he must have seen me through the window. I often played in the counter area out front.

Ethan was grinning at me. There were two big gaps along the front row of his teeth where his canines should have been. A pleasing thought came into my head, of what a useless vampire he would make without his fanged teeth. I amused myself with visions of him stumbling along dark alleyways and having to content himself with sucking lollipops instead of necks. Perhaps that's why he smelled of cherry.

“Ever jumped off a bridge to see if you could fly?” he asked.

I stared at him. “Have you?”

“Don’t need to. Flown plenty of times. Bein’ Superman and all.” He puffed out his chest. “What about x-ray vision? You got that?”

“I can’t do anything!” I hissed.

“Course you can! I could tell soon as I saw you.” He jabbed a thumb at himself. "I'm a real expert. I've read hundreds of comics. Can spot a superhero a mile off."

I looked away.

"Go on - test me! I dare ya!" he said, squaring his shoulders. "Ask me anythin'! I'll give you the answer! Ask me how tall Dr Doom is. Go on!"

Sighing, I asked him, "How tall is Dr Doom?"

"Six foot two. Ask me why the X-Men formed."

"Why did the X-Men form?"

"To train mutants in the use of superhuman powers and defend humanity against mutants who use their powers for evil."

I had no way of checking whether his answers were right or wrong, but I was impressed by the authority with which he delivered them. Of course, I could hardly admit this to him.

"The Expert," he crowed, inflating his chest.

"Oh really?" I said, growing irritated by the second.

The boy's face was much too dirty for me to take him seriously. I turned my body away from him, away from the mouth-watering smell of cherry, and resumed my leg swinging activity.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

My right slipper flew off and skittered across the floor, finishing up just beneath Mrs Hardy’s hatch.

"Kitty Kwan, you’re a walking disaster!” she snapped, looking me square in the eye.

I wiped my runny nose on a pyjama sleeve, while Ethan’s laugh rattled like short bursts of a machine gun aimed at my chest. I was suddenly aware of how ridiculous I looked, sitting in the middle of the school waiting room, clad in pyjamas and one rabbit slipper. I could not have felt more ashamed than if I was naked.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” said Mrs Hardy.

I suddenly felt dull and useless, like the loose change that made my mother's purse smell of rust and metal. I slid off my seat to retrieve my rabbit slipper.

At that moment, the telephone on Mrs Hardy's desk buzzed. The headmaster's thin, reedy voice crackled through the intercom.

"Send Kitty in, please."

"Well, well!" said Mrs Hardy, clasping her hands together as if about to watch the opening act of an entertaining play. "It looks like it's your turn to see Mr Wensel."

I slipped my foot into the slipper, hiked the Wonder Woman rucksack onto my shoulders, and marched past the new boy with as much dignity as I could scrape together. Mrs Hardy smiled at me for the first time that morning.


#


Mr Wensel's long, creased face reminded me of the way the skin on my fingertips wrinkled after I'd sat in the bath for too long. He was somewhere in his forties, just like my father, but he seemed older than Mr Gau who ran the video shop next door to us. The only way to describe him would be to imagine if every person you had ever met took turns to draw a line on your face - that is how Mr Wensel looked. Every fold of his sagging skin hid a secret worry, as if they were drooping pockets in an old musty coat.

"Kitty, please take a seat."

I swung my rucksack off my shoulders, inadvertently knocking the brass nameplate off Mr Wensel’s desk. Faye snickered as I scrambled to pick it up. A shadow of irritation crossed the headmaster’s face.

I quickly took my place beside Faye who was sitting quietly on the left. As I waited for Mr Wensel to start, I wondered if he liked being a headmaster. It did not seem to fit a thin, nervous man like him. It was like watching a young boy trying on an oversized suit in a tailor's shop and hoping that no one would notice.

Faye and I sat one chair apart like two uneven bookends, me in my thick pyjamas, she in a neatly-pressed regulation skirt and blouse. Her legs, long and slender, were tucked neatly beneath her chair at an elegant angle. I stole a look at her and marvelled at how many shades of black there could be, for her long glossy hair was like a handkerchief of gossamer silk, though I was surprised to see that we wore the same red hair band. I wondered if she had noticed it yet. It certainly wouldn't please her as much as it thrilled me. It was a rare occasion when we had anything of obvious comparison, other than the fact that we were both British born Chinese. But whereas my hair band clashed with the dull pink of my rucksack, hers co-ordinated perfectly with her schoolbag, a red canvas Yaori satchel. Yaori was a Japanese designer brand, only available in the Far East. The Changs had holiday homes in Hong Kong and in France.

Mr Wensel settled back into his shiny leather chair, at the apex of our odd little triangle. He smiled at us in what he must have thought was a fatherly way, his narrow eyes running back and forth between us like a barcode scanner at the supermarket till, eventually stopping to blink at my rabbit slippers. One of the ears was covered in dust.

"So..." he began, rattling some papers on his desk. "Kitty, you know why you are here, yes?"

I nodded mutely.

"Would you like to explain why you, ah, decided to wear pyjamas to school today?"

I glanced nervously at Faye, who seemed perfectly at ease.

"Hmm?" said Mr Wensel, tapping a finger against his teeth.

"I thought..." My words trailed off as I grasped for the right words to say.

"Yes?"

I dipped my head low, so as not to look directly at Faye. Even without seeing her smooth calm face, we sat close enough for me to smell a faint layer of dewberry lifting off her skin. It added to her delicate, feminine air. "Someone told me that today was 'Pyjama Day'."

There was hesitancy in my voice, as if the words were unwilling to come out.

Mr Wensel nodded, as if he had anticipated this. "And what is... Pyjama Day?"

"Someone told me to wear pyjamas on Prizegiving Day, and that all the winners would be wearing them."

"And you believed that person?"

"I... yes."

"Didn't you think it was a strange thing to do?" asked Mr Wensel, leaning forward to look at me with scrupulous care. "To wear pyjamas to school? To Prizegiving Day, no less? Wouldn't you think that a girl with a certain amount of common sense would think it was a strange idea?"

When I heard him say it to me like that, my face grew hot and beaded with perspiration. The signs were not good.

"Well, let's get to the most important issue of all, hmm?"

I did not look at anyone, though Mr Wensel's exasperation was apparent. His usual tinny voice was rapidly thickening.

"You're saying that it is, ah, whose fault?"

I kept my head down, although I could hear the quickening breaths on my left.

"Faye," I whispered to myself, like the finish to a long prayer, the inevitable breath of amen.

"Speak up please, Kitty. I can't hear you if you're going to look at the floor."

I raised my head, focusing my attention on the long brass plate that ran along the front of his desk. Mr P. Wensel B.A.(Hons). I could tell it was regularly polished; it gleamed the whole way across like a row of freshly minted pennies. I wondered if the P stood for Potatohead.

"I'm waiting for an answer," he said, tapping against his teeth.

Reluctantly, heavily, I murmured my reply. "Faye. Faye told me."

"She's lying!" cried Faye, her voice clearly agitated. "Kitty dared me to wear pyjamas to school today and I said no. Then she called me a coward and told me that if I didn't copy her she'd get me into trouble. And she has! See?"

Her words tumbled out so quickly it sounded like one long sentence. Then she wailed as loud as she dared to in front of Mr Wensel, who did not like seeing girls cry. I had known this for a long while, for I had often cried before him on the occasions when his hand had hovered threateningly over the telephone on his desk, the fingers of his other hand waiting to punch out the numbers to the takeaway shop where my mother would be waiting. I had cried plenty then and told him what he had wanted to know. This time, however, I allowed my sorrow to go no further than a reddening nose. Faye was doing a fine enough job for both of us, and I knew that any tears from me would only appear superficial to Mr Wensel, like a clumsy afterthought in the wake of Faye's heartfelt melodrama. Besides, I didn't think Mr Wensel could handle two crying girls in his office. Crying made his mouth twitch convulsively, which it was beginning to do now. I had never stopped crying long enough to examine it, but now I had the opportunity to do so and it was fascinating, like watching the boys jump rope in the playground.

"Now, now, there's... there's no need to get upset," soothed Mr Wensel, moving around his desk with a box of tissues. He reached out to pat Faye on the shoulder, then thought better of it and drew back. His arm fell awkwardly by his side, as if it were no longer a part of his body.

"But she-she's l-lying!" sobbed Faye, burying her delicate red nose in tissue after tissue. "I've never been in tr-trouble before! Never! And I'm s'posed to get three awards today! My parents are waiting to see me get them, and I'm going to miss it because of h-her!"

Despite myself, I could not help but admire her splendid acting. Even in apparent distress, she glowed like a Hollywood star, and a bitter knowledge filled my heart.

I first met Faye Chang two years before. Up until then, she had been the only Chinese girl in Bexley Grammar School and from what I could see, enjoyed her unique position very much. The day I arrived, everyone asked me if I was her sister. This greatly vexed her, particularly as we looked nothing alike. Where she was tall and pretty, I was small and skinny with legs like chopsticks. Even worse, my face was (and still is) perfectly round like the moon, which made me look like a startled lollipop. That was why one of my many nicknames was 'Mooncake', after the sweet sticky bun which has a yellow egg yolk baked in the middle.

Although I made no pretence to be her sister in those early days, Faye disliked me from that very moment. I had tainted her image with my dark skin and frizzy hair. I tried to befriend her with small gifts of gel pens and rubbers that smelled of fruit, but gave up trying after she told everyone that I had nits. My patches of itchy eczema flared up at unexpected times, which convinced people even more of her story. Some days I would be scratching furiously at the back of my scalp, and turn to find that a small circle had cleared around me.

Faye was hiccupping now that her tears had subsided, squeezing out little choking noises between each sob. Mr Wensel was back behind his desk, a thin sheen of sweat streaked across his forehead. His fingers drummed on top of the plastic file in front of him.

"Let's settle this quickly, shall we?" he said, coughing to clear his throat. I did not know who was more nervous, him or me. "These stories do not match up, and it seems quite clear to me that someone has, ah, been lying. The question is, who is the liar in this particular case?"

He flipped open the file on his desk.

Even as Mr Wensel took the time to murmur to himself as he read through both of our report sheets, I knew what he was seeing. Faye had stopped hiccupping. Her face, delicately stained with dried tears, was strangely serene. Her record was clean, mine was not. A quiet but familiar rage was bubbling up inside my chest, like hot lava pouring out of cracks in the rotten earth. No matter what I did, it would be like throwing clods of earth onto a half-buried coffin. A cold body could not be dug up and resurrected. It would stay in the ground and slowly rot.

"If we look at Kitty's record here..." Mr Wensel ran his finger down a sheet of printed lines, "...daydreaming in class, late attendance twice this month, forgotten homework assignments...Faye, on the other hand, has no marks against her record. In fact, she has some excellent comments from her teachers, hmm?"

She smiled shyly at Mr Wensel, as if embarrassed by this praise.

"Yes, it is quite clear to me who is more likely to be telling the truth."

"But Mr Wensel, Faye said-"

"There are two girls sitting in my office," he said abruptly, looking over my pyjama-clad form with unhappy eyes. "One of them is a rule-abiding student with three awards to collect today, and one of them is in pyjamas and rabbit slippers."

I chewed the flap of dry skin on my lower lip.

"Faye, you may return to the Assembly Hall now."

I could not bear to look at Faye as she was leaving. She would be gloating, showing off that plastic smile of hers.

"Thank you, Mr Wensel," I heard her say in a sweet voice. "And my father said to tell you that he is sending his usual donation in the post."

Mr Wensel turned slightly red at this, his face making me think of the shrivelled red dates my mother used to boil up her strange smelling soups. He shifted slightly in his seat, eyes roaming the room as if to search for a misplaced object. He looked everywhere, it seemed, except in my direction.

"Thank him for me, please. You may go, Faye."

Faye's father was a solicitor in a law firm. As she had proudly told everyone several weeks ago, the law firm was no longer called Simpson and Hollow. It was now called Simpson, Hollow and Chang. I longed to be rich too, like the rest of my classmates, though money seemed to make people do strange things. For example, the Changs lived in a six bedroom house in the countryside, even though Faye only had one older brother. Two bathrooms, three showers, eight toilets and four bottoms. It made no sense to me.

"Kitty Kwan, I cannot keep having you come into my office with such ridiculous behaviour," said Mr Wensel, after Faye had closed the door. "I should send you back into that hall as punishment."

"Mr Wensel," I begged, "please don't make me go back! They'll laugh at me."

Perhaps I imagined it, being so desperate for mercy, but I thought I saw the merest glimmer in his eyes.

"I suppose to send you back would further disrupt the event," he said crossly, brushing a piece of lint from his lapel. "You will have to spend the rest of the day in the library and hide yourself in a corner at the back. And I will have to tell your mother, of course."

I had listened to everything he said with a detached sense of misery until this very last sentence.

"My mother!" I gasped, fear fluttering inside my chest.

"You should have thought of the consequences, shouldn't you, hmm?"

"Please Mr Wensel, please don't tell her!” I begged. “I'm sorry for lying. I'm really, really sorry! I'll give up my prize - anything! But please don't tell her!"

"Of course you will give up your prize," he said calmly. "It will be forfeited and given to Faye instead. I believe she was second in the class, after you. Liars don't deserve awards, Kitty. I hope you remember that next time."

He looked at me for such a long time until I began to tremble under the weight of it. I could feel my chest sagging like a stack of dominoes.

"You can leave now. And no loitering - straight to the library as quick as you can."

I nodded to show my obedience and hoisted the heavy rucksack onto my aching shoulders.

"Know the rules, Kitty," said Mr Wensel in a low voice, looking me straight in the eye. "Even if you don't like them. You will get along better in this world when you learn to follow them."

When I left his office, Faye was waiting for me at the end of the corridor. She was singing a jaunty tune to herself.

"Don't ever try to get me into trouble, Mooncake," she said as soon as I was within earshot. "No one would ever take your word against mine."

She smiled broadly, her nose and cheeks still tinged with pink but in a way that made her look radiant and alive.

"Oh, and isn't it funny," she whispered, tapping her red hair band with a long finger, "how this hair band makes me look so pretty but makes you look so fat."

She skipped down the corridor to join the others in the Assembly Hall and I watched her until she turned the corner. Even though she was no longer in sight, I could still hear her happy little song.


#


The library was empty, as expected, except for Mrs Todd who was busy filing index cards behind the counter. Her eyes widened to see me in my pyjamas, but she was kind enough not to ask any questions. In fact, when I showed her the pink slip from Mr Wensel, I think she took pity on me for she directed me to a desk by the far window and provided me with a stack of Dr Seuss books, which she must have guessed were my favourite because my name was printed on every one of the lending cards inside. I didn't know why an important woman like Mrs Todd, the chief librarian, would be so kind to me, but I was very grateful to her. I made a promise to myself that if I were ever to have the power to avenge myself against all my injustices, she would be one of the few who were spared, alongside my father and Mr Gau.

I settled myself by the radiator, rucksack straining against my shoulders, and admired the sixty year old oak tree by my window. I loved this tree very much because he was majestic and tall, with strong muscled arms that reached for the sky. How frustrated he must feel, I thought to myself, enduring the indignity of small children climbing all over him and carving their names in his thickly veined skin, powerless to fight back.

I turned back in my seat and pulled out my comic. But I must have been more tired than I thought, because I did not manage to advance further than the second page. My head tipped forward and the weight of my rucksack pressed me further down, and I felt myself slowly spiralling toward a dark inviting pit. Perhaps, I thought as my mind began to shut down, I will have a nice dream this time. And when I wake up, I will see my father's face and have strawberry ice cream and comics to look forward to.

As the tip of my forehead touched the cool surface of the desk and consciousness began to slip away, I felt the rucksack of books slide off my shoulders with a thud. I remember thinking how strange it was that even after the rucksack fell, I should still feel such a heavy burden on my back.

The thought eventually gave way to a black calm and the faint rumbling of train tracks in a quiet pocket of my mind.