The telephone

On Tuesday, Sun Pao followed Qin An and Li Xinlan out of the dormitory courtyard...

"Basketball, let me ask you something..." Sun Pao scratched his head, then ran off again. "Never mind..."

"What's with him? Weird..." Li Xinlan no longer disliked Qin An quite so much, and, by extension, she occasionally talked to Sun Pao too...

"Who knows?" Qin An shrugged, rode Li Xinlan to No. 2 Middle School on his bicycle, then hurried to his own school...

"Why didn't you spend time with Ye Zhulan after school yesterday?" Before morning reading, Qin An ran into Sun Sun reviewing her lessons in the corridor. He hadn't expected her to speak to him first...

Sun Sun wore her hair in two little braids that stuck up high. Her fair face had a soft glow in the morning light, and her delicate, thin oval face inspired tenderness, as exquisite as a doll in a display cabinet. Qin An leaned over to smell her fragrance, faint and reminiscent of fine incense...

"Yesterday? Oh, her mom picked her up..." Qin An answered honestly. Otherwise, he would have lingered with Ye Zhulan for a while before heading to No. 2 Middle School yesterday, and wouldn't have walked with Sun Sun...

"I knew it..." Sun Sun closed her book expressionlessly and walked into the classroom where she was taking her exams...

"What was that supposed to mean?" Qin An scratched his head, not quite understanding her behavior...

He waited for Ye Zhulan in the corridor and broke a banana off the bunch for her. Li Qin prepared some fruit for him every day. The care his mother showed her family in these little things deserved to be cherished, and sharing it with Ye Zhulan didn't count as wasting it. Qin An was thinking far ahead...

There were three exams left today: politics and history in the morning, and mathematics in the afternoon...

Qin An had a good memory, but the current history questions still intimidated him a little. Had a certain event happened in "1662, 1661, 1660, or 1663"? Multiple-choice questions like that were everywhere, to say nothing of the written questions that accounted for the largest share of the marks: "Briefly describe the historical significance of Wang Anshi's reforms," and "Analyze the reasons for the failure of the Taiping Rebellion." Qin An had some opinions about these historical events, but if he wrote them down, he was guaranteed to score zero. History questions at the time were just like politics questions: they all had standard answers, and even the order of the sentences couldn't be wrong...

In the second semester of ninth grade, they had been given collections of written questions as thick as Basic Exercises, one each for history and politics. Every student who got into No. 1 High School or the experimental class at No. 2 Middle School had memorized the entire collections...

That question collection had as many words as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Qin An had memorized it nearly twenty years ago. How could he still remember those formulaic standard answers that held no interest for him?

Qin An shaved the end of his pencil into four sides, marked them "A, B, C, D," and rolled it around on his desk...

The invigilators were all teachers from the school. Every teacher knew Qin Huai's famous son, who, together with Sun Pao from Class 70, was known as one of the "twin troublemaking cannons." Seeing him answer questions this way, the invigilator came over to warn him several times. Unexpectedly, every time he did, Qin An simply asked him for the answer, until the invigilator finally stopped bothering with him...

Zhao Weiguo despised Qin An even more. As a model student, he had every right and every reason to look down on these poor students with their abysmal grades. Unfortunately, why did Ye Zhulan lack the awareness a good student ought to have?

For Qin An, the afternoon mathematics exam was even easier than rolling a pencil around to choose answers. In thirty minutes, he finished and left. They had agreed to take advantage of getting out of school early today: Qin An and Ye Zhulan were going to catch some crabs in the Qingshui River...

From upstairs, Qin An spotted several people waiting not far from the school gate. If he walked straight out, he would never see them hiding behind the wall off to one side, but they could get a good look at every student leaving the school and then secretly follow them...

The little thugs from outside school all used this trick when lying in wait for someone: follow them away from school before beating them up. None of them really dared block the school gate and attack someone...

Most teachers in those days had a strong sense of professional duty and plenty of spirit. What they could least tolerate was these thugs bullying students. If trouble really broke out and these thugs caused a scene at the school gate, they would most likely get beaten up by a crowd...

Qin An spotted a familiar figure. It was none other than Tu Gang, pushing his bicycle with its patched tire, a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he eyed Town Junior High School disdainfully...

It wasn't as though nobody at County No. 2 Middle School knew that Qin An seemed to be taking Li Xinlan to and from school every day. Plenty of people knew that Li Xinlan was the girl Tu Gang was pestering. Qin An's repeated appearances at No. 2 Middle School made Tu Gang lose face, as though someone else had barged in and stolen the woman he had his eye on...

The few thugs Tu Gang had brought were only senior students at County No. 2 Middle School. He hadn't brought the older thugs from the auto repair shop; he didn't dare let his father find out about his petty business either...

Qin An ran to the principal's office. The only telephone at Town Junior High School was there. In those days, never mind pagers or mobile phones-even landlines were a rarity in a backward place like Qingshan Town...

He had noted down the telephone number for Qi Mei Restaurant...

"Uncle Zhu, could I make a phone call? I can't make it to where Secretary Tang and the others are having dinner..." Qin An first greeted Principal Zhu Wenliang politely, then invoked Secretary Tang's authority...

The telephone was locked inside an iron box. For a long time, home telephones were kept like this too, for fear that someone would secretly make calls on them, and so were public telephones. It wasn't until many years later, when mobile phones became far more widespread than landlines, that the sight of telephones locked in iron boxes became rare...

"Secretary Tang? Which Secretary Tang?" Zhu Wenliang was a little puzzled. What secretary did this boy know? Still, anyone addressed as secretary probably wasn't a nobody...

"Secretary Tang from our town. Last time, Secretary Tang invited my second uncle to dinner to talk about investing in a factory or something, and I went too. It's probably something like that again..." Qin An scratched his neck and narrowed his eyes, looking like an innocent child bewildered by adult affairs...

"Oh, go ahead..." Zhu Wenliang smiled, unhooked the keys from his belt, and opened the iron box. "Do you need Uncle Zhu to dial for you?"

Zhu Wenliang knew that Qin Huai had a cousin from Taiwan. In his eyes, a wealthy businessman from Taiwan ranked even higher than the town Party secretary. How could he refuse to let Qin An make this call?

"No, thank you. I know how to dial..."

Qin An dialed Qi Mei Restaurant. "Auntie Qi, is Junzi there?"

Qi Mei was a little curious about Qin An calling. "He is. What do you need him for?"

"It's that thing Secretary Tang asked Junzi to help me with last time. Could you have him come pick me up at school?" Qin An saw Zhu Wenliang listening intently to his call. He didn't care at all that what he was discussing was completely different from his excuse for making the call. Surely Zhu Wenliang wasn't going to snatch the telephone away from him now?

Qi Mei's pleasant laughter came over the line. "So you really did get into a fight over a girl? All right, all right, I'll send Junzi to help you. Once this is over, your studies still come first... Your Uncle Tang even told me this boy is full of tricks, so his grades must be bad..."

Qi Mei sent Junzi over. Qin An knew to cover for her and her lover, so naturally she had to return the favor...