…………After that incident, all the boys in Class Seven kept quiet for a very, very long time, and Andrew Lane disappeared from Zoe Young’s sight for just as long. The little bullies of Class Seven, led by Daniel Hughes, loyally kept silent—because they themselves were also involved. The girls in the room were too far away to know what had happened, so the only ones who knew the truth were Zoe Young and Claire Daniels.

The squad leader lost all her authority over a pack of sanitary pads, fleeing in embarrassment with a flushed face. However, Zoe Young knew a little more than the others.

Just a little more. It was at the moment when Andrew Lane stuffed the sanitary pads back into her hand that he said, in a voice so soft only she could hear, “Zoe Young, all you ever do is bully me.” All you ever do is bully me. Only me.

Zoe Young was stunned. The bravado that had just burst out of her under pressure instantly vanished. She stood there in a daze, watching him run into the stairwell and disappear. In a blur, it seemed she saw that on his flushed cheeks, only his eyes remained clear and bright, glistening with a faint sheen of tears.

She instinctively reached out to stop him, but in the end, all she caught was the breeze stirred up by his running. The next second, Zoe Young calmly withdrew her hand and stuffed it into the pocket of her overalls, then turned to the boys standing there dumbly and said, “Don’t tell me you don’t want to go to PE class?” The mischievous boys shoved each other and disappeared at the stairwell as if fleeing for their lives. “Communist Youth League!” The first girl on the left stepped forward. “Communist Youth League!” The first girl on the right stepped forward. “You are forever the big tree!” The second boy on the left stepped forward. “Forever the big tree!” The second boy on the right stepped forward. “A tree!!!” All four shouted in unison.

Looking at the four of them, faces solemn and gazing into the distance with reverence, Zoe Young, standing to the side, could barely hold back her laughter. She felt the muscles in her lower abdomen cramping from holding it in, yet the corners of her mouth still crept up into a suspicious arc, half-smiling, half-not, looking a bit scary.

She simply widened her smile, putting on a look of serious appreciation. “Emily Xavier, where are you looking? Why are your eyes so unfocused? All you do today is laugh, you can’t even keep a straight face—where’s your mind at? If you laugh again, I’ll confiscate your hair clip! Don’t think I don’t know you can’t stop looking in the mirror! Do you four have any peripheral vision at all? Are your eyes just for eating? When you step forward, don’t you know to use your peripheral vision to line up with the person next to you? Charles Johnson was the last to step forward—look at you, four people in four different lines. Good thing you only took one step, or the stage wouldn’t fit you! How many times have you rehearsed this? Are you still half asleep?” The squad counselor, Mr. Lewis, had especially eye-catching lipstick today, a bright orange that made her mouth opening and closing seem almost hallucinatory. Even though Zoe Young wasn’t the one being scolded, she didn’t dare laugh anymore and could only stand quietly to the side. Just now, when Mr. Lewis was scolding the four reciters, Zoe Young felt a tiny drop of spit land on her upper lip from afar. The squad counselor must have eaten garlic chives for lunch, Zoe Young thought in infinite misery. She looked up and saw that Emily Xavier, who was being scolded for laughing, was still trembling slightly, as if she couldn’t hold her laughter in.

Zoe Young knew that even though Emily Xavier, like herself, had wanted to laugh during rehearsal, once the squad counselor’s rolled-up script tapped her on the head, she couldn’t laugh anymore.

Pretending she couldn’t hold it in was just a way to save face. Even though her ears were red with embarrassment, she still acted like she didn’t care, as if both the recitation and the squad counselor were ridiculous. Her pretense made Zoe Young sigh inwardly—then she thought, isn’t it because she herself is just as pretentious that she can see through it so “empathetically”? Maybe people of the same kind always find each other hard to tolerate. Zoe Young suddenly realized that lately she’d been especially prone to overthinking, zoning out at the drop of a hat, her mind getting stuck in some detail and unable to get out. Although she’d often daydreamed before, this time it felt different. What’s wrong with me? she wondered, tilting her head, unable to figure it out, her mind growing more and more scattered, her attention drifting from the peeling wallpaper on the wall all the way to the squad counselor’s bra strap—black, very obvious under the light blue dress. Zoe Young blushed a little and obediently lowered her gaze to her own nose, and as she stared, her eyes started to cross and her brow ached faintly.

Last week, her mom had suddenly reached out and touched her chest, making her cry out in embarrassment, but her mom just laughed: “I was wondering if I needed to buy you… but looks like it’s still too early.”

She stood there stiffly, arms wrapped around her chest—the two little hard lumps that had just started to form hurt at the slightest touch. The pain in her chest constantly reminded Zoe Young that something was changing in her—something both frightening and inexplicably, eagerly anticipated.

Don’t think about it—though she didn’t really understand, her intuition told her this was something shameful. Zoe Young shifted her gaze a little and noticed a snag in the milky white stockings at the squad counselor’s ankle—so dangerous, it was about to tear. That was close.

She snapped back to attention; the squad counselor had already thrown the script to the floor. The loudspeaker outside crackled. It was Andrew Lane’s voice. “Mr. Lewis, Mr. Lewis! Please come to the playground right away, the drum corps and horn corps can’t keep in time.” Only then did Zoe Young realize that the drum and horn corps outside had been silent for a long time. The squad counselor tossed out a “Recite it for me” and slammed the door on her way out. The four kids who had been trying so hard to stand straight immediately slumped their shoulders. Emily Xavier flopped onto the sofa and said with a forced smile, “So annoying.”

Zoe Young pulled Claire Daniels to sit on a small chair near the sofa, where their backs were to the door and they could hear the squad counselor’s high heels clacking energetically as soon as she came back.

For the provincial Communist Youth League commendation conference, the elementary school’s squad was in charge of everything from the drum corps, bouquet team, Young Pioneers’ speeches, to the recitation performance. Zoe Young and Fiona James were the Young Pioneers’ representatives giving speeches at the conference, while Emily Xavier, Claire Daniels, Charles Johnson and others were performing the recitation.

Someone joked that this was Emily Xavier’s comeback. As for Andrew Lane, as squad leader, he had to coordinate all the parts and was also one of the two conductors of the drum corps. Sitting on the sofa, Emily Xavier unconsciously reached up to touch her hair clip, took out a small tube of clear anti-chap lip oil, parted her lips and applied two layers, then gently pressed her lips together. In this restless autumn, it wasn’t just the pain in Zoe Young’s chest that was quietly changing, nor just everyone’s perfunctory attitude toward the teacher. There was also Emily Xavier’s little mirror and lip oil.

“I went to the entrance of Haichao Building yesterday, you have no idea how crowded it was, the temporary stage was surrounded by security guards, otherwise the fans would have rushed up! I saw with my own eyes a little girl who got knocked down by the crowd—if the security guard hadn’t pulled her up…”

Emily Xavier really liked Yu Quan, and had been talking nonstop about the autograph session since this morning. “So how did you get Yu Quan’s autograph? Could you even get close? Did they sing ‘The Most Beautiful’?” Charles Johnson’s tone was always the same as when he recited poetry, a bit effeminate, with a perpetually confused look on his face. For the first time, Emily Xavier wasn’t annoyed when someone interrupted her animated storytelling, because the question was just what she wanted to answer. “What are you thinking? Why would I squeeze in? My mom knows the organizers, I went straight to their dressing room in the building to get the autograph. On the way back, my dad even bought me Dove’s new chocolate. Dove dark chocolate, the one they just advertised on TV. I think after getting used to dark chocolate, milk chocolate just tastes cloying, too sweet, I can’t stand it…” “So annoying.” Claire Daniels, who had been silent, finally couldn’t help but complain. Straightforward Claire Daniels never hid her likes and dislikes.

Emily Xavier blushed, wanting to retort, but her eyes shifted and she smiled instead. “Hey, Claire Daniels, what’s going on with you and Scott Zack?” Emily Xavier’s gossipy tone was a bit forced, too exaggerated, so it actually sounded a bit jealous. Claire Daniels rolled her eyes at her and ignored her. But Zoe Young noticed a faint blush quickly spreading up Claire Daniels’s fair neck.

Zoe Young remembered that after school yesterday, she and Claire Daniels passed by the entrance and overheard Emily Xavier chatting loudly with a few girls. One girl said in a strange tone, “Yanyan, your Scott Zack…”

“What do you mean, my Scott Zack? He’s never had anything to do with me!” Emily Xavier got flustered at the tease and hurried to distance herself, especially when she caught sight of Claire Daniels and Zoe Young out of the corner of her eye. She rattled off a string of “nothing to do with me,” then said in a not-too-loud voice, “It’s Claire Daniels… what does it have to do with me, you’re just talking nonsense, you’ll make Claire Daniels mad…”