The first thing Alicia noticed in detention was the teacher in charge. The Gloomy Gus looked like he drank spoilt milk for breakfast every day, and could not wait for his day to end. She found it ironic that supervising detention punished him with detention.
“Name?” He demanded.
“Alicia!” she answered, the first one here, despite being a minute late.
He flipped through the attendance sheet and made a tick on her name, then handed her a pile of foolscap. “Sit at the back row and write a reflection essay about what you learnt here. Once you’re done, you can leave.”
“But you’re not teaching anything. How do I write about what I’ve learnt here, if you aren’t teaching anything? Or would you conduct a lesson once the other students arrive?”
“I have no time for this. Sit at the back.”
“No time for what? I can’t see the whiteboard from the back.”
“You want me to add another week to your detention?”
“No.”
“Then sit at the back and write your essay.”
She was dumbfounded.
“And no talking!” He declared.
Other students, which included Vinn of course, poured in, and the Gloomy Gus had the secret sauce to keep them silent. Not even the librarian could do this good of a job at shushing, and teachers fared even worse. Perhaps the most effective method to quash chit-chat was to quash the mood for chit-chat.
To ensure none of these bad apples sat next to her, she took a page out of her classmates’ book and placed her bag on the seat beside her. It took her a semester to understand this gesture as code for , “Go away.”
Then the Gloomy Gus interfered, “Kat, go sit next to Alicia.”
Oh no. Kat, a fellow classmate who wore a skirt that was way too short, made her way to the back. Upon seeing the occupied chair, she pushed it aside and replaced it with another empty chair from another empty table. Despite her attire, she still sat with her legs up and wide. Thank goodness she wore shorts underneath.
Why did people sit like that? It wasn’t even relaxing, considering that they had to sandwich their legs in the desk drawer underneath at an odd angle. The one time Alicia tried it, her leg cramped.
At least Kat wasn't amongst those who picked on her. She was among the rest of them, who simply ignored her. Kat placed a few textbooks in the desk drawer to create a DIY phone stand and watched adorable dog videos on mute.
Almost everyone did this, though they all watched different things. The more daring ones even went a step further and played video games in broad daylight. Yet, Gloomy Gus knew none the wiser.
Only Alicia did her essay in silence. With no actual content being taught, her next best guess was to write about the sin that she ought to repent here over two weeks: smoking.
The routine after school was to visit the library to unwind with a good book, then go home and help Mom with the chores, and doing her homework or study until dinner time. After dinner was revision time.
This system was perfect. Unwinding in the afternoon allowed her to escape the blazing sun in the comforts of the library. Helping Mom with chores allowed Mom to come home to a cleaned house. Revising at night helped eliminate all distractions, and it was also when her brain worked best.
But thanks to detention, it was all ruined. Her day was off. She had to compromise one activity to get back on track.
She finished her essay, and all that remained was double check it. This was the habit that separated the ‘A’ students from the rest of the class. Mr Lee said so.
“I’m done!” She passed it to him.
“Okay, you can go.” He didn’t even look at it.
“Are you not going to mark it?”
“Do you not want to go home?”
“No, I do want to go home.”
“Then go.” He didn’t even look at her. His head was knee-deep in the biology papers he was marking. The speed he was going at explained why teachers had such terrible handwriting.
“Will you hand it back to me tomorrow?”
“You want me to mark it? Fine. I’ll take until four to mark it. Sit back down.”
“What? You told me I could be dismissed!”
“Four-thirty.”
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Everyone stared at her like a nutcase. From the back, she heard Vinn trying and failing to mask his laughter.
“But you said once I finished my essay, I may leave!”
“Four forty-five.” He dragged every word.
She balled fists and went back to her seat. How could a teacher, of all people, act like this? How does this not upset anyone else? And why was she asked to stay back for an hour longer, when everyone else was secretly using their phones the entire time?
To add salt to injury, the Gloomy Gus allowed the others to go to the toilet with their fully packed bags, ignoring the obvious ploy to skip detention. By four-forty five, she and the napping students were the only one left in class.
The sun was already setting, which meant she didn’t need to close the blinds at the library, which meant she didn’t get to hear the zip sound they made that scratched an itch in her ears.
Mom wasn’t ‘still at work’, rather she was ‘about to be home’. The floor was not cleaned, the laundry undone, and she wasn’t home. But if she went home without unwinding, the entire night would be ruined. She’d be like Mom: stressed, tired and angry.
There wouldn’t be enough time to finish her chores in time, even if she was at home. Mom would come home to dirty floors, undone laundry, and messy rooms. It would kill her, especially after yesterday.
Mom would have to pick up the slack before cooking dinner. Dinner would come late, leaving her hungry for an hour or two. Dinner would be finished late, reducing her time for homework and revision. Lesser time to revise would place her further behind, making her first ‘A’ impossible. Or, she still revised as usual, but slept later, which would disrupt her sleep, leaving her to go to school exhausted tomorrow; or worse yet, oversleep.
Everything was ruined. If anyone understood, they would cry over it too, but no one did.
Also, her Food and Consumer Education (FCE) coursework was due soon.
The coursework was so large that Mr Lee had to divide it into three submission checkpoints. One, students had to propose a new dish to be sold in the canteen. With research, they had to explain how the dish suited the dietary needs, appealed the taste buds, and remained affordable for their schoolmates.
Two, students had to draft up a business proposal for how the new dish would be launched into the canteen, and give projections on the success that it would bring over a six-month period. They then have to conduct an interview with a canteen vendor to receive feedback. Reflecting on that feedback, they would make revisions to their proposal.
Three, students were tasked to compile and present their proposal to the class. After receiving feedback, they would make a final round of revisions before the final deadline.
This wasn’t even accounting for the written and practical exam.
Checkpoint one was due in two weeks, hence taking priority over her chores. The bare minimum required was for the student to pick a dish. Alicia had already done this in her head. She just needed to type her thoughts into words.
Her dish of choice was the Mexican staple, tacos. With its crispy hard or soft and doughy shell, a kick of spice and sourness over chunky pieces of meat, it was the perfect food to restore the canteen’s reputation.
They were also easy to prepare, which was a lifesaver for the practical exam. Mr Lee made special emphasis on this, discouraging the class from picking more elaborate food items. This crushed Ying Wen’s ambition to bring pizza to the school to dust.
She had also done her research on tacos, and learnt of its origin: It first came from eighteenth century Mexican silver miners, where they wrapped gunpowder into paper and inserted them into rocks before detonation, also known as a ‘taquito’.
Mom couldn’t care less about this stuff, so she talked about this to Dad instead. Or rather, a make-believe version of him that she wrote letters to with her Notes app. In these letters were private thoughts that Mom should never hear, or anything she thought Dad would be interested in.
Dad was always interested in her. He never grew tired of listening about taco history, he never found her hand flapping weird, and he understood her quest for scientific inquiry when she smoked. But even he thought it was a stupid mistake. Lesson learnt.
The metal gate rattled. Mom was home. She rushed out to greet her, helping to carry her bags and groceries.
"Did you do the laundry yet?" Mom asked.
She should have compromised her coursework. "No, because I had—"
"First you smoke, and now you stop doing your chores? When did you come back from detention?"
“Five-thirty.”
"It's already seven!"
"I was researching for—"
“What are you still doing standing here?”
She nodded and ran outside to collect the clothes off the rack. After seeing a viral video of a life hack, Mom demanded that she folded all clothes in that manner, to save time folding it and create better organisational symmetry.
“You could’ve reached home earlier if you took the train, which would’ve given you enough time to do the chores.”
“I don’t like the train.”
The metal tube of death screamed like a ghost fighting an exorcism and made her ears bleed. It surprised her how everyone could endure that sonic torture.
“You’re already Sec 4!”
She bit her lower lip as she folded her clothes. “I’m hungry.”
"You only get your dinner after you finish folding all the clothes and putting it in the closet."
This was all her fault.
Dinner came an hour late. Mom cooked egg fried rice tonight, another one of her staples.
"Your assessments are coming right?" Mom asked.
She pointed to her full mouth.
“Tsk! Give me your phone."
She gave Mom her phone. Mom kept it in her pocket. Why?
"I'll give this back to you if you score well on your assessments. That’s your punishment for smoking. Plus, all those phone games are distracting you from your studies.”
Alicia chewed as fast as possible, forcing the food down her throat with a gulp of water. It gave her hiccups.
"I don’t play video games, and I need it to do my coursework!”
"What coursework?"
"My FCE coursework! I also need it to talk to my friends, and—"
“Alicia, enough." Mom put a hand up. "I had a very long day at work, okay? Please."
Stressed, tired, and angry.
She frowned and chewed harder than necessary. It hurt her teeth a little. She scrubbed the plates violently, almost dropping it at one point, and locked herself in her room. No more time to research…anything, no more time to do her coursework, no more time to talk to her Dad, no more phone calls, no more texting, no more social media, not that she had one… She squeezed her plush, imagining it to be Vinn’s and his troupe of monkeys’ head, until it popped, and their brains oozed out their ears and blood began spewing everywhere, one by one by one.
Everything was off.