Chapter 11

My scalp tightened and I immediately denied it: “No, that’s not true.”

I quickly glanced at Mom.

Mom hooked a sweet potato out of the ground with her hoe: “No, Shasha has always been smart. I bet she’s doing well.”

I secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

On the way back, Mom said:

“Your Uncle Zhao and Aunt Zhao are no good people, they treated Shasha terribly.

“It’s a good thing she ran away.

“If you write to her, tell her she should find a good man to marry while she’s still young.”

I wouldn’t try to persuade her.

In the year since Shasha left, I’ve been gathering information about finding relatives from all sorts of sources.

Whenever there’s even a slight possibility, I save up money to make a phone call and ask.

Most of the time, it’s disappointing.

If there’s even a little hope, I write it down.

Now that I have Shasha’s QQ, I treat a boy in my class who knows how to use the internet, Li Hu, to orange soda and ask him to help me register a QQ account.

Back then, QQ was still a new thing, and I didn’t know how to use a computer.

Every time, I would write down what I wanted to say.

Li Hu would go to the internet café, log into my QQ, send my messages to Shasha, and bring back her replies for me.

It was nowhere near as convenient as WeChat is now, but it wasn’t limited by mailing addresses, and much easier than writing letters.

I never stopped helping her search for her family.

Whenever I thought there was a chance, I would give Shasha’s QQ to the person and let them contact her.

What Shasha said to me most often was:

[Xiaoxia, just focus on your studies.

[And don’t waste your time. My birth parents will never come looking for me.]

How could it be a waste of time?

What if-what if her family really is looking for her?

I carry her hopes on my shoulders, so I don’t dare slack off for a moment.

That night, around eleven, I was nodding off while working on a physics test paper, and I jabbed my fingertip hard with a needle.

Mom happened to get up to use the bathroom and saw me.

She stood by the desk for a long while, then spoke: “Xiaoxia, if you get into No. 1 Middle School, Mom will send you there.”

“Really?”

“As long as you get in, just like your brother!”

A child unloved is so easily satisfied.

At that moment, no matter how biased she’d been in the past, I’d already forgiven her in my heart.

With nothing holding me back, the pressure of studying felt lighter.

I kept pushing myself, gritting my teeth and working hard.

But right before the entrance exam, I only managed to get fifth place in the class.

The homeroom teacher comforted me: “As long as you hold steady, you still have a good chance of getting into No. 1 Middle School.”

The night before the exam, I even dreamed of Shasha.

She placed her scarred, bloody hand on my face and whispered, “Xiaoxia, you can do it.”

I performed as well as I could on the exam.

I did all I could; now it was up to fate.

The day after the exam, my brother’s Gaokao results were due too.

Mom had been talking about it for days:

“Your brother said he did okay, hopefully he’ll make the cut for 985 or 211.

“At the very least, he should get into a key university.”