The monthly assessments simulated O’Levels in the classroom. A rehearsal for doomsday, a day that wrote their futures in stone. Their grades decided how much of their June holidays they would spend on remedial. Before that, however, was Alicia’s FCE deadline.
The submission checkpoint was the assessment, alongside today’s practical lesson.
Alicia’s straight ‘B’s excelled past the need for remedial, but not the merit of praise. But, thanks to Mom confiscating her phone, her performance dipped. She only had a half-baked solution, which was to draw the document from memory, and write her answers on paper. Mr Lee was unlikely to accept it, but it was better than nothing.
Furthermore, if Mom refused to return her phone, a hard copy would be her only means of progress. FCE was the last class of today, which left her with recess and downtime in between classes to catch up.
While she held a sandwich in one hand, she drew tables with her other, using her elbows to hold her ruler in place. Writing in this awkward position required her to lift her elbows, releasing support from her ruler. Without it, the ruler failed at its job, and led her strokes to be crooked.
She slammed the table every time it happened, set her sandwich aside, and erased the stroke away. But no matter how hard she rubbed, a faint residue of it lingered on the paper.
The bell rang. Recess had ended. That left only downtime, of which there was none. All her teachers were punctual today.
Stupid detention. Stupid teachers. Stupid assessments. She sat in the back row with her arms folded in the FCE kitchen. Other students flocked into groups like schools of fishes, laughing over whatever it was they found funny. With limited eavesdropping, her best guess was that they were discussing TV shows and video games.
How did everyone have so much free time? O’Levels are coming. If Mom ever caught her watching those shows or playing those games, she would be dead meat. Which only begged the question, what were their mothers doing to discipline them?
At least it brought them together. Meanwhile, the inverse applied to her. What entertained her bored everyone else. No one took their studies seriously. No one cared about what their Moms thought of them. Some of them didn’t even know what a taco was.
She tried to converse nonetheless, because Mom said it wasn’t good to be alone. She carried her chair to the smaller groups and joined their circle.
Step one, introduce yourself. “Hi! My name is Alicia! I’m from class 3A!”
The discussion stopped dead cold, and everyone looked at her like a complicated word they found in the thesaurus.
Step two, wait for a handshake. No one offered one.
“Uh… Hi.” One of them said, and they all turned away from her.
Step three, give a compliment. “Your keychain looks nice.” She pointed to a bag under their chair with a cartoon keychain hung on the zipper. “What are you discussing?”
“Um, just some show.”
“What are you looking at?” She craned her head forward and saw a phone, switched on during class hours. The audacity!
“Hey! You’re not allowed to use your phones during class!”
Now they looked at her the way she looked at Vinn, pulling their chairs away from her.
“Mr Lee would confiscate your phone if he catches you using it.”
“Oi.” One of Vinn’s monkeys kicked her chair. Luckily, their leader wasn’t here. Vinn took Literature as his elective. “Shut up.”
“That warning applies to you as well!”
Everyone avoided her like the plague. Their funeral. Mr Lee entered, and everyone hid their phones behind every nook and cranny they could find: in their pockets, under their legs, inside their uniforms. Mr Lee caught none of them.
Except her.
“Alicia, please put your chair back in its original spot. You’re blocking those behind you.”
“Okay, sorry Mr Lee.” She returned to the back row. In a world that made sense, the inverse would’ve happened. But alas, she did not live in that world. So how did everyone else made sense of it?
Today, Mr Lee would teach the class how to cook carbonara. But only students who had submitted their coursework were allowed to join.
Those who hadn’t, stayed in the computer lab until they did, and their parents were called.
Mr Lee brought the entire class to the computer lab and instructed everyone to show their coursework on their screens. Upon his approval, they’ll make their way back to the kitchen one by one and form into pairs of two while waiting.
She flapped her hands under her chair. Spaghetti was her second favourite noodle.
“Um…Mr Lee.” She approached his desk, staring at his sneakers.
“Alicia, where’s your coursework?
“I um… So… My Mom confiscated my phone because of the smoking incident. So I can’t work on my coursework, but—”
“Look me in the eye when you’re talking to me, Alicia.”
She nodded and looked at his eyes. It hurt. She opted to look at his bag behind him instead, “But I copied the template you sent us on foolscap, and I can write my answers down in a few minutes.” She showed him the hard copy. “Can I still do the practical lesson please?”
“Alicia, didn’t I say to inform me if anyone had trouble doing their coursework online?”
“You said you would only offer help if I provided a valid reason, and having my phone confiscated is not a valid reason. Is it?”
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“You should have still told me. I could’ve let you use the computer lab some time after school to finish it.”
“I have detention after school.”
He sighed, “Now do you understand the consequences of picking up bad habits like smoking?”
“Yes. Can I still do the practical lesson, please?”
“If you finish early, you can come back and catch up with the rest.”
“Okay.”
“And I want to talk to you after your assessments.”
She nodded and returned to her desk, and raced to finish her work as fast as possible. Stretching her back and retying her hair back to the centre, she honed her focus on the keyboard to type faster.
Only Alicia did her work. Everyone else formed crowds and played video games together. Did the school not blacklist them all? Were they not disappointed over missing the practical lesson?
Forget about them. She could already smell that sweet aroma of cheese in her nose. She entered her password and got to work, bobbing up and down to keep the adrenaline pumping. But the computer denied her energy with the dreaded buffering symbol.
Loading, loading, loading…
Was she not connected to the Wi-fi? The Wi-fi symbol in the bottom corner was on full bars. When the crowd behind her grew especially loud, she flinched and cupped her ears on reflex. What were their ears made of?
Loading, loading, loading…
She slapped the screen. Smacked it, punched it, slammed it. She pressed every key on the keyboard, then again whilst holding ‘Shift’, ‘Ctrl’ and ‘Alt’. Nothing. Technology was such a paradox: such exponential advancements, yet it couldn’t load a website. Clearly, the Wi-fi was connected! Unless the computer lied to her?
Loading, loading, loading…
There was no teacher in class to ask for help, only delinquents. She prepared herself and approached the screaming table, flinching every time they screamed. It was like walking to, but not away from, a fire. Like a ghost, no one noticed her unless she moved their things about.
“Hi.” Her muscle memory almost led her to use Mom’s method. But, she learnt the hard way, Mom’s method did not work on delinquents. They were playing those shooting games, where people fired guns at each other and screamed if they killed, or got killed. How did they get the Wi-fi to work?
“Can anyone here help me with the computer? I’m unable to do my coursework, the website keeps buffering.”
“Sucks to be you.” The one on the computer, Joseph, snickered.
Nevermind. She gritted her teeth and looked around. Who else could she ask? Besides the screaming tables, only Kat was left, sitting all the way back with both feet up.
“Hi.” She tried again.
Kat also ignored her. Why did everyone do that?
“Could you help me with the computer? I’m unable to do my coursework. The site keeps showing me a buffering symbol.”
“Too bad.”
“Please? No one else will help me.”
She tensed up, like a bomb resisting detonation. Four years of this nonsense, and it still wasn’t any less frustrating. This behaviour didn’t qualify as bullying, and thus didn’t warrant a complaint to the teachers. That was the worst part.
She did anyway, and all Mr Lee advised was a visit to the school counsellor, and a tip to be more friendly in her body language, whatever that meant.
“Kay and?”
“Please!” She raised her voice, “I need to complete my coursework so I can join the practical lesson! Just cooperate with me for once! We’re classmates!”
“Just use your phone's hotspot.”
“My Mom confiscated my phone. And you’re not allowed to use your phone during class!”
“Then too bad.”
She rubbed her temples. This was a dead end. There was only one move left to make. It was a long shot, but it was the only one she had.
“I smoked a cigarette during recess last week during school hours. And I would do it again without hesitation. I am a smoker!”
“What? Dude, can you leave me alone?”
Forget it, it did not work. Go figure. She returned to her desk and held a staring contest with the error screen. The longer she stared, the more she imagined herself smashing this computer to smithereens. All the glass shattered. All the electronics fried. All the wires snapped.
With nothing else to do, she typed in the site address for the game. Mr Lee wasn’t here anyway. She could get away with it this one time. The site booted up. How? She typed in her name when asked and was directed to a 'Sandbox' mode, where she was the only player.
Click. Shoot. The screen jerked a little. What was all the fuss about? The bullet left a little black dot on the concrete wall. Scrolling down, she read the lengthy instructions on the controls. It was all gibberish to her.
Then Kat sat beside her. What now?
"It’s so fucking cold back there." She said.
"I agree. But the IT staff said not to change the temperature of the air-conditioner." She pointed to the remote on the teacher’s desk.
“Oh, there it is!” Kat took it, and upped the temperature. “Much better.”
“I said the IT staff—”
"You play it too?" Kat looked at her screen. "Why are you in Sandbox mode?"
No, it was the first time she played it; she wanted to answer. But a sixth sense stopped her. She added a fourth step to Mom’s method: lie to have something in common. Lying was bad, a voice argued. But this was the only way; another voice rebutted. She listened to the latter one.
"Yes. And I'm in Sandbox mode because the Wi-Fi isn’t working."
"Oh, right, your phone got confiscated. Ha-ha. Wanna 1v1?"
‘1v1’. She had a vague understanding of what it could mean.
"Yes. I do."
"Just use my hotspot."
Hotspot. Wi-fi. Ten minutes to dismissal. Everyone was eating their carbonara. She could do her coursework. Or she could play the game and befriend Kat.
She entered a private match with Kat, one against one. Oh! That's what '1v1' meant!
"It has been a while since I played this game. Could you remind me how it works?"
"You know I can tell you're lying, right?"
"I'm sorry for lying."
But to her surprise, Kat did not leave. Instead, Kat went over the controls, pointing to them as she explained, as if Alicia had never seen a keyboard before: ‘W’, ’A’, ’S’, ’D’ to move. ‘G’ for the grenade. ‘Q’ to switch weapons. ‘R’ to reload. Shift key to crouch. Right click to scope…
“What?”
“Try to hit me.”
Kat’s avatar, a military soldier dressed in camo gear, hopped left and right in a zigzag pattern. No human person could jump like that so effortlessly. This game had no respect for physics.
Kat hounded instructions on her. Shoot, reload, dodge. It came faster than Alicia could process them, and before she knew it, she died. Her avatar flew across the building and crashed head-first into a wall. The screen turned red.
Respawning in 5…4…3…2…1…
Her avatar respawned in the same spot. Adrenaline helped her focus.
She tried the scope. The screen honed in on Kat like an eagle. A circular vignette outlined the screen, and two lines ran across its diameter. Kat explained that the point where those lines intersect was where the bullet landed. She also gave this advice: aim where the opponent would be, not where they were presently.
Her finger hovered over the mouse. Her eyes waited for the perfect moment. Her heart stopped beating.
Click.
Crimson splashed out the head of Kat’s avatar. The body glided across the floor as if the grass was secretly ice. Got her!
“Headshot!” Kat screamed, pumping her fists into the air. A classmate came over to check the commotion, and gave Alicia a thumbs-up.
“Again! Again! Again!” She flapped her hands. Kat drummed the table in similar excitement.
"By the way, there's a mobile version of the game. When you get your phone back, go download it." Kat said, moving back into position.
This time, Kat would try to kill her.