David Reed smiled and said, “When she got pregnant with a son, her mother-in-law said if her belly got any bigger, she wouldn’t be able to wear a beautiful wedding dress, so Jenny got married.”

Alice Grant laughed, “That’s just like our beauty-loving Jenny.” There was another reason that no one mentioned, but Alice Grant knew it well. She and Jenny Parker were the same age; when Jenny Parker was thirty-five, she herself had already been missing for seven years. When someone disappears for seven years with no news at all, everyone basically assumes she’s dead.

“Alice, will you go out and have fun with me today?” Jenny Parker requested.

Alice Grant didn’t even think about it: “Sure.”

At Jenny Parker’s request, David Reed and Brian Carter, the two old men, stayed at home, and only the two of them went out. David Reed worriedly reminded Jenny Parker, “Be careful, you know your own body, don’t get too excited, don’t eat sweets, and keep your medicine with you.”

Brian Carter glanced at Alice Grant and said gently, “If there’s anything you’re not sure about, just call, don’t be afraid.”

With their reminders, Jenny Parker took Alice Grant out. Alice Grant thought Jenny Parker was going to take her somewhere special, but they ended up at a movie theater.

“Going to the movies?” Alice Grant was surprised, but then thought she hadn’t seen what movies were like forty years later, so she accepted it. But Jenny Parker just pulled her to sit at a row of tables by the window outside the theater, with no intention of buying tickets to watch a movie.

Jenny Parker glanced out the window at the street, winked at Alice Grant, and said, “Do you know where this is?”

Alice Grant felt everything around her was unfamiliar and shook her head, “No idea, where is this? Was this your old house?”

Jenny Parker sighed, “This is our old high school site. Over ten years ago, No. 16 High School moved to the school district, and this place was demolished… You can’t tell what it used to look like at all, right? When the school was torn down, our high school classmates all gathered here once, everyone came except you… Actually, I haven’t been here in a long time either, and it’s different from the last time I saw it.”

Alice Grant really hadn’t expected this to be the No. 16 High School from her memories. She turned to look at the street and the passersby outside, her gaze a little distant.

Back when she was in school, especially during junior and senior high, she was basically always in a rebellious phase. To her at that time, school was no different from prison; she hated everything related to school. So she often skipped class, got into fights, went to internet cafes, smoked, drank, and even dyed her hair a flashy red—mostly just to piss off her dad. Whatever would make her dad furious, she would do. From her teens through her university years at twenty-two, she was dedicated to one thing: driving her dad crazy.

Later, she realized her dad was in great health, and after all those years of her antics, he was just fine. As she got older, her hatred faded, her rebellious phase passed, and she stopped doing those stupid things, choosing instead to ignore the man.

The memories were vivid, and to her, it didn’t feel like so long ago.

“That private school, Mingde, near No. 16 High, did it move too?” Alice Grant suddenly asked.

Jenny Parker said, “Yeah, it moved to the school district too, but it’s pretty far from the new No. 16 High.”

The No. 16 High School where Alice Grant studied was a chaotic, bottom-tier school, full of rebellious boys and girls. As their homeroom teacher put it, it was a pot of rotten apples, and they’d all become parasites in society. Back then, Alice Grant didn’t choose the No. 2 High School her dad had picked for her, but went to No. 16 instead, which got her a beating and left her limping for half a month.

Unlike her school, the Mingde Private School next door to No. 16, separated by just a wall, was a haven for top students—a fancy private school with high tuition and few students.

It was around the second semester of her first year in high school that Alice Grant often climbed over the wall to Mingde Private School. No. 16’s campus was so shabby that she couldn’t even find a quiet place to nap at noon, but Mingde was different: better teaching, much nicer environment. So whether she was skipping class to find some peace or just wanted to think, she’d climb that high wall and hang out at Mingde.

One day, as usual, she skipped class and climbed into Mingde. As she walked near a restroom, she heard a commotion inside.

With a cigarette dangling from her lips, she curiously walked over and saw two boys pinning a skinny boy in the corner by the urinals. One of them was using a cleaning bucket to pour water over the skinny boy’s head, soaking him completely. The skinny boy’s pants had been pulled down, and he was huddled in the corner, legs bare, silently enduring their bullying.

The two boys humiliated him and said, “So what if you got the top score? Think you’re so great? Do you dare tell the teacher, huh?”

Alice Grant leaned against the bathroom door, thinking, so even in a school full of goody-two-shoes, there’s bullying? She’d thought only her trashy school had this kind of thing. With that thought, she flicked the cigarette from her mouth and said with a half-smile, “So even you model students bully people, huh?”