Zoe Young’s feelings, kept deep in her heart, only ever burst out when she confided in Alan Carter. She was so focused, writing furiously, that she didn’t notice Lena Taylor had already read her letter from top to bottom.

“But I’ve never seen anyone write back to you, have I? There’s never a letter for you in the mailbox.”

Lena Taylor often checked the mailbox for letters. She’d been hanging around an online chatroom called “Boys and Girls” since sixth grade, under the name “Dream Angel.” Zoe Young didn’t understand—if they could chat online, why bother being pen pals?

“You don’t get it. Writing a letter and typing just don’t feel the same, do they?” Lena Taylor snorted disdainfully. “But seriously, who are you writing to? You write every day, even more diligently than a diary, and the other person never writes back. Is it a radio host? Or a celebrity? Oh, right, you like Stefanie Sun, don’t you? Or maybe Faye Wong?”

Zoe Young bit her pen cap, thought for a moment, and said, “An older boy.”

Lena Taylor immediately put on a look that said, “Didn’t expect you, you little dummy, to be so capable.” Zoe Young hurried to explain, “No, it’s not like that!”

“Not like what? What did I say?” Lena Taylor grinned, all gossipy. “Is it someone you like?”

Zoe Young put on a face that said, “So tacky, you’re really tacky,” lowered her head, folded up the letter, and didn’t answer.

“He doesn’t write back because he’s busy, or because you annoy him?”

Zoe Young paused: “He wouldn’t be annoyed by me.”

God knows why she was so sure.

Lena Taylor was unimpressed. “How old is he?”

“Six years older than me, already in college.” Zoe Young thought for a moment, looking a bit proud, but still swallowed the words “Peking University.”

“Then it’s even less likely he’d bother with you.”

“Why?” She was a little impatient.

“Think about it. If a first-grade girl wrote you a letter, complaining the flag-raising ceremony was too long, her new shoes were too ugly, she forgot to put her lunchbox in the boiler room, why aren’t there any two-stripe class leaders like her…

Never mind replying, would you even want to read that kind of letter?”

Zoe Young was stunned for a while, a feeling of unwillingness rising in her heart, but she still honestly shook her head.

“Of course you wouldn’t want to read it.”

“There you go,” Lena Taylor spread her hands. “My old pen pal was like that. I stopped writing back, but he kept sending letters, it drove me crazy. Luckily he wasn’t someone I knew—if he was, I’d probably feel guilty for not replying, and the guiltier I felt, the more annoyed I’d be…”

Lena Taylor kept chattering on, but Zoe Young had already quietly put away the last unfinished letter.

Zoe Young’s house had lots of envelopes with addresses and stamps already prepared. She picked the one with the prettiest stamp, stuffed the letter—without a closing or signature—into it, and mailed it in the dark green postbox.

She’d meant to write a proper farewell, something like, “Alan Carter, this is the last letter I’ll write to you. I won’t write again—not because I’m mad you never reply—I always said you didn’t have to. But…”

But what? She couldn’t think of anything, so she just skipped the whole melodramatic goodbye.

Actually, she knew that real goodbyes don’t need to be said. When you’re truly ready to move on, you just rush off to your new life. Wanting to put a period on things is just a sign you’re not ready to let go.

She watched as the brown envelope was swallowed by the narrow slot of the green postbox, disappearing into darkness.

Forever second place. The final exams were the same—she was left 11 points behind the top student, Sean Sherman.

But this time she couldn’t accept it, because she’d studied so hard for a whole month before the test.

Zoe Young suddenly understood the class sports rep, Mia Waters, who was always sixth in the class. The female teachers always liked to ruffle his hair, half admiring, half scolding: “If you’d just put a little effort into studying, catching up to Zoe Young would be no problem!”

Mia Waters always laughed it off, carefree as ever, still goofing around every day. Sometimes he didn’t finish his homework and got a few words from the teacher, but he still managed to stay sixth in the class.

Even though being used as the “easy to surpass” example made Zoe Young, the class’s number one, feel pretty embarrassed, she still had to smile at the sports rep and act like she admired him, just like the teachers did. Sometimes, Zoe Young would steal a moment to glare at him, then quickly look away.

But after the final exams, when they came back to school to get their report cards and winter homework, Zoe Young and Mia Waters ran into each other in the hallway.

Mia Waters gave his usual big grin, his white teeth shining among his pimples.

“Class leader, second place again?”

Zoe Young controlled her expression. “And you? Sixth again?”

“Yup.” Mia Waters looked very satisfied.

Zoe Young wasn’t keen on small talk, so she just repeated what teachers and classmates always said: “You hardly ever study, but you always stay sixth. If you really tried, you’d definitely…” She swallowed the words “definitely beat me,” which were both self-deprecating and proud, and instead said, “definitely do really well.”

“Come on, class leader, don’t tell me you actually believe that.”

“What?”

Mia Waters’s expression turned serious. He stared at the ceiling, giving the half-a-head-shorter Zoe Young a dramatic dead-fish look.

“What if I really tried, and still came in sixth, or even did worse? Damn, wouldn’t that be humiliating?”

What a load of crap.

Zoe Young shook her head. “No way, you’re so smart, if you just tried…” Halfway through, she saw the dismissive look in Mia Waters’s eyes and stopped herself from saying any more of those useless, catch-all words.

Good students love to downplay their efforts to each other. Zoe Young and her peers all knew that after exams or when grades came out, they’d ask each other how they did. If someone did really well, they’d say, “It was okay, just average.” If they did average, they’d say, “I totally bombed it.” If they really bombed, they’d pretend not to care, muttering, “I just played games the whole time, didn’t even study,” or “I had a stomachache during the English test, didn’t even finish the last page, just slept on my desk,” to save face…

As for others, whether sincerely or not, they’d praise them to the skies—after all, if someone falls from that height, it’s not your problem if it hurts.

After Zoe Young stopped talking, they just stared at each other, the hallway filled with an awkward silence.

Forget it, this is pointless.

Zoe Young suddenly felt it was all meaningless, really meaningless.

Actually, Zoe Young had always been a bit hostile toward the boys in the top ten, like the math whiz Mia Waters. She’d never forgotten that saying, “Once boys hit middle school, they’ll catch up and leave the girls behind,” or how in fifth and sixth grade, guys like Daniel Hughes suddenly shot to the top. Even though Mia Waters was only sixth, the way teachers compared him to her always made her bristle like a wary cat. She didn’t care much about the girls who were always second or third, but she always kept an ear out for how Mia Waters was doing.

Sometimes she hoped Mia Waters would never “wake up” or get motivated. Like how Chinese people are so proud that Napoleon supposedly said, “China is a sleeping lion. When it wakes, it will shake the world,” but actually, he also said, “But thank God, let it keep sleeping.”

But sometimes, she’d get fired up and hope he’d really try hard, so she could beat him herself and show the teachers that not just anyone could surpass her with a little effort, as if she were just some bookworm.

Mia Waters saw Zoe Young suddenly fall silent, staring at the floor tiles for a while, then inexplicably sighed, shook his head, and walked past her like a stern old dean.

Because you hope, you try.

Because you try, you get disappointed.

Whether it was the letters to Alan Carter or a month of hard studying, she’d hoped, and she’d tried.

That’s why she was unhappy with the results.

But Mia Waters was much smarter. Maybe even if he tried, he wouldn’t do much better, so he might as well just coast along, enjoying everyone’s admiration for his brains and laid-back attitude. That was probably the best way.

Zoe Young’s choices weren’t necessarily everyone else’s cup of tea.