When Alicia told Mom about Kat, Mom was not proud. How dared she play video games now? Half a year before doomsday, a day before her assessments? Now was the time to study, study, study. Everything else can, and should, come after.
O’Levels were coming.
Video games were addictive poisons that rotted the developing mind. Mom predicted Kat to be a rowdy juvenile that skipped classes and used foul language; Alicia refused to admit Mom was right.
But Mom was right.
“And if your dad were to hear about this? He would smash your phone on the floor!” Mom scolded.
This touched a wound.
Mom wasn’t done. “I didn’t work hard every single day, cooking your food, washing your clothes, and dealing with your attitude just to have you waste it on video games!”
Mom still wasn’t done. “How are you going to get into JC like this? Or get into a good uni? Or get a good job? And earn yourself a good life? You want to end up like me? Straining your back every day for minimum wage?”
She wanted to cry. Mom still wasn’t done. “You know how my manager keeps her son in line? She canes him! Do you want me to go buy a cane? Do you want me to cane you? When did this start anyway? You were such a sweet girl before! What happened?”
Mom was done.
Alicia said nothing. She started a revision paper to keep the dam from bursting.
“You better be studying in there!”
English was the first paper of the week. Last night, she read and re-read all the model essays Mdm Lim provided, and chanted the vocabulary used to herself like a mantra. The more she used the merrier. But when she placed ink on paper, it was all lost to the fog. She only remembered the word, but not its definition or spelling. What costed more marks: An incorrect vocab word, or no vocab words at all?
During recess, she consulted her notes. As the prophecy foretold, she used all her vocabulary wrongly. There went her ‘A’. Locked in a bathroom stall, she stared at the pink door until recess was over.
When she stepped out, she saw Kat by the sink, washing her hands in a similar silence. Cheeks red, she ran to class without saying a word.
Mom shared this advice, “You should have spent more time on English then, if it was your weaker subject.”
Math was second. She stared at circles and triangles for hours over midnight, heeding Mrs Fei’s warning that this topic would be challenging. That funny looking ‘n’, pi, why was it only associated with circles? Come to think of it, why did no other shape have a ‘pi’, radius or diameter? Weren’t they all just symbols used to measure lengths, and don’t all shapes have length?
God, she hated numbers.
At least her memory cooperated this time, allowing things to run smoothly until the last page. A graph question. Mrs Fei had only spent one period (half-an-hour) covering this topic, and misled everyone to focus their attention on circles. Worse, this graph question was worth five marks.
God, she hated Mrs Fei.
Mom took a look at her textbook. “What’s so difficult about this? When I was doing my exams, we weren’t even allowed—we don’t even have calculators back then.”
History. She remembered the events, but not the dates. Chemistry, she ran out of time to write her answers, because Mr Will mandated everyone wrote a paragraph for every open-ended question. A paragraph, Mr Will added, must be at least three sentences.
FCE written paper. She had forgotten about, thanks to the sinking ship that was her coursework. Chinese, the worst; she didn’t speak it often for a good reason.
Kat, the rebel, dared ask her to hang out after every paper. Obviously, she declined, but still offered herself fifteen minutes with the dog before going home. Watching Kat cross the street with Minty through the bus window everyday tied her stomach into knots.
“You remember my manager? Her son, Zack, got like top five in his cohort or something like that. Why can’t you be more like him?”
Though ungraded and untested, table-tennis caused her headaches as well. The coach also had the Death Whistle hung around his neck, which he used with no mercy. Every session followed the same structure: queue forever, play with the coach once and receive his feedback, and reserve the spare tables to play with your friends.
Long-winded, micro-managing, and stinky breath; no one enjoyed playing the coach. They all brawled each other in the queue to get ahead, wanting to rip the band-aid off sooner. Childish alliances and cliques, social contracts to save spots whilst one went to the restroom followed by betrayals, all whilst drenched in sweat from the dead air.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Coach didn’t allow fans or air-condition, as the wind affected the ball. Everyone drank from the ice-cold water cooler like men trapped in the desert. The lunatics amongst them took it a step further to shower in it, or shower their friends with it, and waiting for the afternoon sun to dry it off them. It was like doing laundry whilst wearing the clothes and forgetting the detergent.
Alicia developed a strategy to endure this hellhole. After the coach’s briefing, she escaped to the restroom and waited a full minute, then joined the queue last. Waiting for her turn ate up half her time there, whilst she spent the other half with a worksheet and pen in hand, revising behind everyone’s back. Her unpopularity came in handy.
But, in such brutal conditions, her brain fried. She used it anyway, because O’Levels were coming.
Her final paper, Social Studies, went fine. Afterwards, she allowed herself to hang out again. Crossing the street and watching the bus leave tied her stomachs into knots. But said knot loosened as soon as it was her turn to play Cyber-Strikers. Rather than 1v1s, Alicia and Kat took turns beating Campaign Mode on the hardest difficulty.
Against Kat, the Sniper was decent. Against these programmed enemies, the Sniper was utter perfection. With mock outrage, Kat would beg her to play any other class, but that ship had sailed ever since Alicia’s first headshot.
No matter what she did, Mom’s nagging wouldn’t leave her alone. As she landed headshots, she worried about her future. As she hid behind walls, she worried about her grades. As she reloaded her gun, she felt the disappointment everyone had in her.
The madness was multi-layered. One, listening to the same thing repeatedly would drive anyone insane. Two, the futile task of countering these rational concerns fried her brain. It killed her to admit that deep down; she knew they were right.
It distracted her enough to lose the game, but she still beat Kat’s high score.
Kat cheered with the pure joy of Minty. “So close! Agh!” She slapped the table, “Ha. I’m so proud that I got you to play video games. The goody-two-shoe.”
She lost it. Let Kat think she was a mental patient. She didn’t care anymore. She screamed into the sky, walked in circles, punching Mom’s voice out of her head.
“Holy shit! Chill!” Kat was horrified. The last time this happened, they chased Mom out of the fish market. Mom tried to shut her up by out-screaming at her. It felt so loud that she was worried it might turn her deaf.
The dam broke. Maybe the reason her behaviour led to people thinking there was something wrong with her was because there was something wrong with her.
“Shit… crying!” Kat walked in circles, too. The mirrored behaviour brought an odd comfort. “Um… deep breaths. Please.”
She was in no mood for deep breaths, only screaming. Kat dragged her to somewhere. Wherever that was, it was quiet. She needed quiet.
“Hey, hey… look at me,” Kat said, brushing her hair away from her eyes, “Minty, go.” The dog snuggled up against her. She hugged the canine for dear life, shedding tears into its fur. .
“Follow how I breathe, look…” Kat inhaled whilst counting to three, held her breath for three, and exhaled for three long seconds.
She followed, and after about five breaths, found her senses returning to her.
“I’m sorry.” She covered her face, rubbed the tears away the best she could. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I swear. I know it looks weird—”
“No, no, it’s fine! No shit, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
She laid her head on her knees and apologised to the world.
“Are you diagnosed?”
“With what?”
“I—I don’t mean this as an insult, okay? I only ask this because I have it too. I swear I’m not being an asshole.
She nodded.
“Are you autistic?”
“What is that?”
“It’s—nevermind, just breathe.”
She nodded, and ontinued crying, continued apologising.
“What’s wrong?” Kat sat next to her.
Alicia processed where she was; on the floor of a void deck, leaned against a wall.
“Everyone is disappointed in me.”
While Kat processed, Alicia gave Minty, who laid on his back, scratches on his belly.
“Dude, who the fuck cares? What’s so good about pleasing them, anyway? What do you even get out of that?” Kat imitated Mr Lee, “Class, be more like Alicia.”
“But…”
“You think this shitty neighbourhood school—” Kat pointed to their school across the street, “—cares about anything besides your grades? You think they care about tacos?”
Tacos? She flapped her hands.
“I saw it on your screen in the computer lab. It’s a pretty good idea… could replace the sandwich machine.”
“Yes! And it’s finger food, so it is convenient and delicious to eat!” Her eyes sparkled, “And different cultures have different ways of making a taco, like soft shell or hard shell, and the fillings…” She droned on for a full minute.
Kat nodded, then shared the time she had tacos.
She flapped her hands more.
“You know there’s a reason why no one in class gives a fuck, right?”
“What about—”
“And those who do, such as you, are miserable.”
“So… just… be lazy?”
“Yeah! Fuck it!”
She whispered under her breath, “F it.”
A week later, her results showed no improvements. Worse, it declined; a ‘C’ for math. Mrs Fei mandated remedial lessons over the June holidays as punishment. Luckily, the decline ended there. It seemed this was another straight flunk.
Until she received her history paper. 74/100. To achieve an ‘A2’ grade, she needed 75 and above.
As petty vengeance, she suffocated the paper within, and not inside, of her files, jamming it at an awkward angle to leave ugly creases and tears.
She did not do any corrections. She only chatted with Kat about Cyber-Strikers. F it.
That night, she skipped dinner to rip the band-aid off sooner. Mom turned on the lavender air refresher by her nightstand, which always made her sleepy. Tonight, she was wide awake.
She gave the report book with both hands and drew circles on the mattress whilst Mom read it. Kat had this to say about it. “It’s just one mark. No one cares! Trust me, your mother will understand. Just talk to her.” Oh, how desperately she wished this was true. But alas, she knew…
Mom wouldn’t understand.