Rifton Girls' High School is the most elite all-girls school in the city. With a strict scholarship-only admission, a grand school campus and plentiful funding from its wealthy alumni, it is no doubt that the already-talented young ladies within its...
In my books, the environment, no matter how much you ignored it, would always have an impact on you in some form. Ignoring the corruption present in the world did not mean it was not there; those who could likely wielded the privileges of talent and wealth in the palms of their hands. I had neither, and thus I could never see the world as she did.
"Yeah," I agreed, twisting my fingers together, "Wild."
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Mandarin was one of the classes in which I didn't fail miserably in - which was a good thing, whether was it for my self-esteem or for saving my ass from getting whopped by my parents and relatives during Chinese New Year for not being able to top the class. (Socialising during Chinese New Year was possibly even more frightening as compared to maneuvering the social scene in school. It was even worse when they asked about school and I had to fake-smile and tell them how wonderful the culture was et cetera. As much as I'd learned a bit about being fake, I didn't quite enjoy withholding the true teas.)
Another good thing about Mandarin class was that my teacher could crack a good joke any time of the day and sort-of liked me - or at least I thought she kinda did. Thus, I always tried my best to pay attention in her class despite my limits. My limits reached till about twelve noon - my ability to comprehend school-related information after two was non-existent unless granted a nap or a cup of coffee. Even worse if I'd procrastinated packing my bag and doing homework the day before, leading to less than six hours of sleep.
Today, however, I was anxious not because I couldn't wait to get home and sleep for the rest of the afternoon... but because I was dying of curiosity to find out the tea about Rianne Clifford's boyfriend.
And time was passing oh so slowly.
3:27. Three. More. Minutes.
TIME, MOVE FASTER, I exclaimed internally as I twirled my Muji pen impatiently and continued to doodle on the edge of my paper. I had a shocking amount of inspiration for my essay today, where I'd given 王老师 a good usual dose of flowery language and general fluff about being a good person and learning the morals of the story, allowing me to finish early. I checked and re-checked the question just to be sure my hubris in this one subject wasn't going to cost me my marks.
Well, if she thought my stuff was wrong, then too bad, I guess. I'd given it my best shot and that was what mattered for now.
Finally, halfway through a doodle of a vampire girl, we were told to hand up our work - which I gladly did before quickly packing my stuff, shoving my books in almost by default action, my eyes trained on Rianne's behaviour.
God, she packed so slowly - could she just stop talking to Jamie and get on with stuffing those worksheets in? Moments like these reminded me that being a loner allowed me to be more efficient in some ways since I never needed to spend ten years doing small-talk. I took the time to pull out my phone and adjust it to mute - wouldn't want the phone to make camera sounds if I needed to get evidence, would I?
