Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

I know from hours of watching Netflix shows that in the States, the students move around to different classrooms throughout the day. But in most Asian schools, the students stay put and the teachers are the ones who move around to different classrooms according to the timetables. So every year, students pray that they’re placed in the right class, because if you happen to be placed in a class with someone shitty—a mean kid, or cliquey athletes who dominate the class—then you’re shit out of luck.

At Mingyang, our classes were given animal names, and I was in Year Eleven Dragon, which was hands down the coolest animal out of the lot. I relished being referred to as “the Dragon kid” rather than, say, “the Orangutan girl.” At Xingfa, the classes are given virtues as names. Ugh. They go by Year Eleven Charity, Eleven Diligence, Eleven Faith, and so on. Who’d want to go from Dragon to (ugh, my new class) Purity? This feels like a bad omen. Why is “purity” even a virtue? What kind of purity are they referring to? Racial purity? ’Cause that just sounds like straight-up racism. Or do they mean sexual purity, which is a whole other kind of gross.

Okay, so maybe my mind is spiraling and glomming on to anything it can focus its anxiety on. Now that Eleanor Roosevelt has scurried away to her class (Year Seven Justice), I’m left to find my class on my own. In a way, I’m glad that I’m not being escorted by some elderly admin lady, but Xingfa is really huge and I’m sort of lost.

“I’m the GOAT,” I whisper to myself as I make my way through the crowds of students filing into their various classrooms. My eyes ping-pong between the classroom labels and the other students, all of whom glance at me as I pass by, their eyes crawling from my head down to my legs. Crap, none of the other girls have shortened their skirts. What the hell?

Never mind. Focus on finding your classroom.

Outside the classrooms are these huge bulletin boards. A few of them are filled with exemplary projects—there’s one about the chemical composition of popular shampoos and why they may or may not cause cancer, another about the physics of eggshells and why they’re so much stronger than we think they are. Other boards are filled with medals and paintings and other memorabilia. All of them proudly announce which class the students who made them are from: Year Eleven Wisdom, Year Eleven Hope, Year Eleven Kindness—they’re not even in alphabetical order? Gah! But finally, I see it: Year Eleven Purity. My home for the next year.

I take my time standing outside the class to study the bulletin boards. Well, okay, I take my time standing outside because I’m sort of scared shitless to go in. But also, I’m gathering intel on my future classmates. The first bulletin board is filled with two projects, one of them an English Lit project (a study on Shakespeare’s patronage), the other one a calculus project. Both of them were done by someone named Jonas Jayden Arifin. The name rings a bell, and I take my phone out and do a Google search. Which is kind of creepy, I know, but knowledge is power, and I need all the power I can get today.

When the search loads, my breath catches. There are a ton of news articles about Jonas Jayden Arifin, because his family owns TalkCo, the nation’s biggest telecommunications corporation. Holy shit. Okay, wow. So Jonas Arifin, teenage billionaire, is the class nerd. Did not expect that, but I can respect it. But then I go to the second board, which is filled with medals for tennis, and I see that they were all awarded to Jonas as well. Okaaay. I adjust my mental picture of Jonas from a gangly, pimply nerd to a less pimply nerd with tennis shoulders. The third bulletin board is filled with photographs taken from various events, groups of sailor-uniformed students with their arms around one another, laughing. There’s one of them at some sort of arts and crafts and baking fair, another of them wearing protective goggles in what looks like a woodworking class.

As I stand there checking out the board, a couple of girls walk past me. They glance at me with passing curiosity, and when our eyes meet, they smile. Before going inside the classroom, they take out their phones and plop them into a basket hanging off the wall. On top of the basket is a sign that says Phones Here!

Wow, okay. I guess we’re not allowed to take our phones into the class. That’s pretty hardcore. With a lot of reluctance, I fish my phone from my pocket and place it carefully inside the basket. I feel naked without it. I won’t be able to pretend to look busy without my phone. But maybe I won’t need to pretend to look busy; maybe I’ll be swarmed with so many new friends that I won’t even remember that I don’t have my phone on me. With that, I take a deep inhale, grip the strap of my messenger bag, and walk into my new classroom.

The first day of every year is harrowing no matter what, but being the new kid makes everything so much worse. I’ve had enough experience by now to know that the first step into a new classroom is a make-or-break moment that sets the tone for the rest of the year. It’s imperative that I make the best possible first impression right now, or everything’s going to go down the toilet.

Even though every muscle in my body is tense and wants to push my head down and hunch my shoulders forward, I force myself to stand straight. Chest out, shoulders back, chin up. A small, confident smile plastered on my face like war paint. Everybody else in here is just as intimidated as you are, I remind myself.

“Heads up—new girl!” someone hoots.

Okay, so not everyone else is as intimidated as I am.

Immediately, heads turn toward me like meerkats, and I find myself the subject of about a dozen interested stares. I freeze. I swear my heart forgets to beat. But somehow, I manage to nod in the general direction of the boy who hooted at me. “Hey.” My voice comes out small and squeaky.

“You’re sitting behind me,” he says.

“Uh. That’s okay, thanks.” I lower my head slightly and make my way to the back of the classroom. Why am I saying no to him? He’s actually not bad looking, but my instinctive reaction is to say no to him. Instead, I find an empty desk in the back row and put my bag down on it.

“Hey,” a girl next to me says.

I turn to her, relieved that someone’s talking to me. People here seem really friendly. “Hi.”

Instead of the introduction I’m expecting, the girl says in a matter-of-fact way, “You can’t just sit there.”

“Oh?” I gape at her stupidly.

She sighs. “That’s Grace’s seat.”

“Oh. Sorry, I thought—” My mind goes blank. I thought that since this is the first day of a new term, no one’s claimed a desk yet.

“You can’t just sit anywhere you want. We have assigned seating.”

“Oh!” Okay. That makes more sense.

She nods at the front of the classroom. “The seating plan’s there.”

“Thanks.”

She gives me a close-lipped smile and goes back to reading a book. The walk to the front of the classroom feels never-ending. I scan the roster quickly. All the seats are in pairs. I find my name next to someone named Liam Ng, and in front of me is the famous Jonas Arifin. I don’t know how I feel about being seated behind the all-around star, but maybe his shine will distract the other kids from me. But when I turn around and head for my desk, I realize that Jonas is the guy who hooted at me when I entered the room.

He’s sitting with his arms crossed in front of his chest, a smirk on his face. “Told you.”

Heat flushes my face. When he told me to sit behind him, I assumed that—what? He was hitting on me? Turns out he was just letting me know, as a matter of fact, where I’m supposed to sit. Now I feel really stupid, like duh, of course he wasn’t hitting on me or anything. Gah.

As though he read my mind, Jonas says, “Did you think I was hitting on you?”

My entire face bursts into flames. How did he guess what I was thinking? A small part of me wants to curl up and disappear, but hey, I’m Kiki Siregar, damn it. Today is intimidating as hell, but I’m as confident as they come. So I grin at him and say, “Yeah, obviously. Were you not?” Okay, that came out a lot more flirtatious than I intended. I went for Challenging in a Friendly Way and somehow landed on Very Suggestive. My insides squirm with embarrassment.

Jonas’s eyes widen, his mouth parting slightly, and I’m torn between laughter and further embarrassment. Then his eyebrows knit together and he smiles and goes, “Okay, I see how it is.”

I sense people watching us, and when I turn, sure enough, a handful of the other kids are staring, some of them looking less than friendly. A guy like Jonas must have his share of admirers, and I’m not here to step on anyone’s toes, so I give him a reserved smile before turning pointedly to my bag. I make it clear that I am Very Focused on unloading books from my bag and therefore too busy to continue our chat. I turn to face the girl across from me, hoping to strike up a conversation with her. More than anything, my first goal here is to make female friends. Boyfriends come and go, but female friends are the ones who will stick around.

“Really? You’re just gonna leave me hanging like that?” he teases. Or at least I think he’s teasing? But I catch just a tiny hint of an edge in his voice, like he’s not used to having girls turn away from him. Or maybe that’s just my imagination running wild, because I’m the one who’s on edge despite the numerous times I’ve reminded myself of how confident I am.

I glance back at him as I take out my pencil case and arrange it neatly on the top left-hand corner of my desk. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging. You’re Jonas, right?”

“That’s me,” he says with obvious pride, like I’m supposed to have heard of him. I suppose, technically, that I have heard of him—or, rather, read about him—from the bulletin boards outside. “And you’re Kristabella.”

“Kiki,” I say quickly. “It’s what everyone calls me.”

He gives me a calculating look. “You look more like a Kris to me.”

“How does a Kris differ in appearance to a Kiki?”

His expression turns thoughtful. “Well, Kiki’s kind of a silly name, like something you’d call a tiny, yappy dog, you know?”

“Wow, okay, not holding back any punches, I see.”

He laughs and holds up his arms, giving me a good view of his tennis forearms and straight white teeth. “No, I’m trying to say that you’re not at all like a tiny, yappy dog. You’re more like a Kris, sophisticated and…”—he pauses meaningfully before meeting my eyes straight on—“pretty.”

Despite myself, I feel goose bumps crawling up my arms and my cheeks turning red again. I’m used to flirting with guys, but flirting with a cute guy on my very first day at a new school is a whole other level of stressful/exciting that I wasn’t quite prepared for. I do what I always do when I’m uncomfortable: my sense of humor slams into place like a shield, and I dramatically flip my hair over my shoulder and say in my best dramatic voice, “Why, thank you for noticing.”

He laughs, thank goodness, and I laugh as well before looking pointedly down at my bag and unpacking the rest of my stuff. I wonder when my seatmate is going to turn up. Liam Ng. It’s an interesting surname, not at all Indonesian. I’m weirdly nervous about meeting him. I wouldn’t say I’m shy or introverted, but being the new kid in school is way out of my comfort zone, and I’m so wrapped up in making a good first impression that every muscle in my body is tense.

“Yo, Liam!” Jonas calls out. “You’re next to the new girl.”

I look up, the back of my neck burning, to see a super-tall guy striding in. He gives Jonas a close-lipped smile, then he turns and sees me, and phew, I must have the best karma ever. Because Liam Ng is devastatingly handsome. Cheekbones for days, thick eyebrows, a jawline that, if Greek gods were still in operation, would’ve gotten him struck down out of envy. Our eyes meet. I swallow. My mouth creates more drool. I swallow again. Altogether, not a great start for me. I wish I could tell my saliva glands to stop salivating. Wow, this boy is literally drool-worthy. And he’s my soul—er, seatmate! I tell myself not to stare as he walks toward me.

“Hey.” He flashes me a friendly smile. An earnest one, not the kind of condescending smirk that I half expected from someone this hot. Dimples appear in his cheeks. He has dimples? How dare he.

“Uh.” No words come out. My brain has given up and is currently rocking back and forth in a tiny dark corner.

“I’m Liam.” He flushes a little. “Sorry, you probably knew that from the seating chart. Anyway, nice meeting you, Kristabella.”

“Kiki!”I bark. Oh my god. I clamp my mouth shut and glare down at my lap. I have forgotten how to human.

“Cool,” he says easily, as though I haven’t just yipped at him like a nervous chihuahua.

Thankfully, the teacher walks into class then.

“Class stand,” Jonas barks in such a loud voice that I jump in my seat.

Chairs scrape back against the floor. I look around, confused. Everyone’s standing up. I quickly follow suit.

“Greet the teacher,” Jonas says.

What the hell?

As one, the whole class bows and intones, “Good morning, Teacher.”

The teacher waves at us without bothering to return the greeting. “You can sit.”

Everyone sits back down. Okay, that was interesting.

As the teacher takes stuff out of his bag, I use the chance to check out my classmates. Subtly, of course.

The differences from the kids at Mingyang are small, but they’re there. At Mingyang, we were allowed to wear whatever shoes, socks, and hairbands we wanted. But here at Xingfa, there’s a very strict dress code in addition to the sailor uniform: white socks (no visible brand names or logos), black shoes (again, no visible brand names or logos), and hairbands only in navy blue or black. All female students with hair past their shoulders have to tie it back. No “outlandish hairstyles” allowed. All male students have to maintain their hair above their ears. No dyeing of hair, no nail polish, and absolutely no makeup allowed. Mingyang has the same rule about makeup, but I know just about every girl wears something. Most of us wore tinted lip balms, at the very least. I usually darken my eyebrows too, because I have the unfortunate kind that only go half the width of my eyes before thinning out. Without eyebrow pencils, my brows would look like sad little thumbprints.

But here I don’t see any tinted lips or mascara-plumped lashes. Every face is naked. Unless these girls have fully mastered the art of natural makeup? But the teacher starts talking, so I’m forced to stop staring at my classmates like Joe Goldberg from You.

“Right,” the teacher says. “I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. Some of you may know me already. For those who don’t, my name is Mr. Francis Tan. I’m your Form teacher, and I’ll also be teaching you English Literature.” He pauses to give us all a small, businessy smile. I guess “Form teacher” here is what we know at Mingyang as our Homeroom teacher. I regard Mr. Tan more carefully.

As though reading my mind, Jonas turns to me and whispers, “Don’t worry, Mr. Tan’s chill. I had him for English Lit last year.”

“Jonas, we’ve been over this.” Mr. Tan sighs. “No talking in class unless I give you permission.”

Jonas gives him a sheepish grin. “Aye, Shifu.”

A handful of students laugh at Jonas’s calling Mr. Tan the Mandarin word for “master,” and Mr. Tan shakes his head with an affectionate smile. Then he seems to notice me for the first time. “Oh yes. And we have a new student joining us this year.” He pauses, scrolling through his tablet. “Kristabella Siregar?”

“Yes,” I say quickly. “Just Kiki will do.”

“We don’t do nicknames here, Kristabella.”

“Wow, okay,” I mutter, and immediately regret it. I hadn’t meant for it to come out so full of attitude. “I mean, sure, that’s fine.”

One corner of Mr. Tan’s mouth quirks up, though I’m not sure that I would call what he’s doing smiling. “I’m glad you think that’s fine, because those are the rules. Well, I hope you settle in here just fine. Anything you need, you can come to me.” He swipes down on his tablet and turns on a screen projector. “Right! We’re diving right in.” He glances over his shoulder at me. “I’m assuming you’ve read our guidebook?”

Negative. Very much so. Who reads those things anyway? Xingfa’s welcome booklet included a stupidly heavy guidebook, which I tossed aside and forgot about completely until this very moment. But I hesitate for only a split second before nodding with enthusiasm. “Yep, totally. Riveting.”

Next to me, Liam stifles a snort. I can’t tell if it’s a friendly one or a derisive one.

“Good,” Mr. Tan says. “So you know that Xingfa isn’t just an academically oriented school; we take pride in our students learning to think outside the box. Forty percent of Year Elevens’ final grade will come from projects instead of exams. Last term, we were assigned Science as our project topic, which most of you aced.”

A few students hoot. One of them shouts out, “Yeah, Jonas!” Jonas, in turn, gives a smug smirk. I think of the bulletin boards outside the classrooms and how Jonas dominates the one outside ours.

“This term, I’ve advocated really hard for Purity to be assigned an interesting topic. No Geography or, god forbid, History.”

There are a few snickers.

“I hope you didn’t get us assigned to Science again, Mr. Tan,” Jonas calls out.

A corner of Mr. Tan’s mouth quirks up, and he taps on his computer screen. The projector screen lights and brings up a vibrant collage of—oh my god—games. There are lots that I recognize: Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed, Stardew Valley, Fortnite, even lesser-known ones like Bugsnax and Slime Rancher.

“Video games!” Mr. Tan says with an exaggerated flourish, and everyone breaks into applause.

“That’s awesome!” someone shouts out.

“Great job, Mr. Tan!”

I clap along with them, grinning hard. A project about games, heck yeah! That’s my jam. Maybe Xingfa isn’t going to be as dreary as I feared.

“I’ve assigned you to groups based on your seating chart.”

I meet Liam’s eyes and flush, breaking eye contact immediately. Am I glad to be in the same group as someone who’s obviously too beautiful to be human? I mean, I’m not NOT glad. But damn, it’s going to make focusing that much harder.

The projector goes to a different slide and shows our assigned groups. I’m in Group B: Kristabella Siregar, Liam Ng, Jonas Jayden Arifin, Peishan Wongso. The four of us look at each other, and Jonas grins.

“We’re going to kill this,” he says.

Well, we’re definitely going to kill something.