Chapter 5: Hunger and Hurt

Shellie stopped talking to me. That wasn’t all, she wanted to change seats.

During a break before evening study ended, she went around asking everyone if they’d switch seats with her. Desperation in her voice, but nobody cared.

No one paid attention to her. Most girls didn’t like her—she was sloppy, not clean, and liked to lie. The boys just made a scene, joking that no one dared touch Mike’s lunch.

She kept asking, as if she couldn’t understand what people were saying. After asking everyone, no one agreed. She had to stand next to me again.

The second study period was about to start, the bell rang, and to get inside she had to ask me to move my chair a bit. She looked down at me, her dog-bit bangs drooping, silent.

I’d held my bladder for a whole class, could I move? We stared at each other in silence, I spun my pen, all my attention on her, waiting for her to call my name and ask me to move, just call my name, just cough once. But she didn’t.

Just as I couldn’t hold it anymore and was about to speak, Riley spoke up, saying she would switch. She sat right in front of me. Her new desk mate was a chubby guy—Eddie—talkative, easy to fool, willing to listen to her brag for homework help.

It annoyed me. I’m a jerk; when I see things that annoy me, I can’t help myself.

One day, she was telling Eddie about her mom practicing piano with her as a kid, how her mom listened to her, if she said her hand hurt, her mom would massage her fingers one by one, then blow on them. She looked so proud, like she was reliving a memory that belonged to someone else.

I said: “If your mom loves you so much, why doesn’t she give you money for food? This morning you ate the chubby guy’s again, why should he feed you? Aren’t you ashamed? Every day, your mom really taught you well.”

She blushed, stood up suddenly. I stood up too, and now that I wasn’t standing on the desk, I was a head taller than her.

“What?”

She paused and sat down. She still didn’t talk to me, just turned to Eddie and said: “My mom is the best mom, she treats us all equally. Over the years, I’ve spent way more than my sister—living expenses, dorm fees, tuition, all together, even rounding down it’s twenty grand. So—”

So that’s why she was so tightly controlled. She said her mom used to bring rice to school to cook, didn’t have so much spending money. Her sister’s classmates in the countryside only had ten bucks a week in high school.

“So, I’ll study hard, I must be number one, my mom will be proud of me, she’ll be happy.” Her big brown eyes almost touched Eddie’s face, and in her eyes only those words seemed certain.

Eddie was busy copying her homework: “Oh, oh, oh.”

I suddenly felt a strange feeling I couldn’t describe. Guilt, maybe? Pity? Something I didn’t want to name.

I muttered: “Fine, so what?”

She didn’t speak. She kept saying: “My mom will definitely be proud of me.”

After that, she ignored me, and Eddie too, and focused even more on studying. I secretly felt pleased. But she really stopped eating, and looked thinner and thinner. During evening study, she drank at least three bottles of water.

I’m a moral person, I can’t let someone starve to death because of me. That’s not okay. My conscience wouldn’t let me sleep at night if I did nothing.