Chapter 2

Actually, I dream too.

I imagine myself as a princess from a fairy tale, only accidentally stranded in the human world.

Soon, I’ll return to the castle, put on a princess dress and crystal shoes.

But a dream is just a dream…

I lowered my head, fiddling with the ants at my feet, and whispered, “No way, otherwise why did they abandon us in the first place?”

Shasha found out my secret-that I was picked up too.

But she promised she would never tell anyone.

We became friends, though I didn’t dare openly go to play with her.

I was afraid of facing the other children’s ridicule and isolation.

I would secretly take my brother’s old pens and give them to Shasha.

Anyway, my brother had plenty of pens; he wouldn’t notice.

She would climb tall trees to pick mulberries for me.

I would dig up the biggest sweet potatoes from my family’s field for her to eat.

She would hide green, mouth-puckeringly sour tangerines in her pocket to bring to me.

We would imagine that we were actually real sisters, and our parents were the richest in the county.

We longed to leave this tiny mountain village and see Beijing and Shanghai like on TV.

Sometimes she’d say to me, “Xiaoxia, actually you’re happier than me.”

She was right.

When chicken soup was stewed, my brother got the drumstick, I got the wing.

My brother got fifty cents in pocket money, I got ten.

When I was sick and coughing, although Mom wasn’t nearly as anxious as when my brother was sick, if I couldn’t get better after a month or so, she would still take me to the barefoot doctor for a shot in the butt.

But I still didn’t dare be willful, nor did I make any excessive demands.

Mom often proudly told people, “My Xiaoxia is really sensible…”

Because I was afraid of being abandoned.

So I had to be sensible.

I didn’t want to be a wild child without parents.

Back then, I had enough to eat at every meal, and the frog belly unique to children.

My body was clearly plump, yet I often felt completely empty inside.

It was only when I grew older that I understood.

My body was full, but my soul was hollow.

Because there wasn’t enough love to nourish and bind me, I felt like a kite with a broken string.

Drifting lightly.

Any gust of wind could blow me to some unknown faraway place.

My brother was three years older than me and loved to bully me.

But he was very smart; he could memorize the textbook after reading it a few more times.

He was often first in his class.

When you’re in school, those with good grades always have a kind of inexplicable aura that makes people want to get close and admire them.

I didn’t understand that back then.

I was already a girl who wasn’t valued, and I was so clumsy.

My brother’s excellence was a halo for him.

But for me, it was a weapon that could hurt.

The summer before I started school, in the rundown yard filled with frog croaks, my brother taught me to count from one to one hundred.

Every time I got to thirty or forty, I’d get stuck and have to start over.

He’d get really frustrated: “Even a pig isn’t as stupid as you!”

After I started school, I often couldn’t do the homework the teacher assigned.

When I asked my brother, he always pulled a long face: “Don’t bother me.”

Dad didn’t have patience either: “How come you can’t do anything? Were you swatting mosquitoes with your ears in class?”

Hard work can make up for clumsiness, so I studied late into the night.

Mom sighed:

“Forget it, maybe you’re not cut out for studying.

“That’s fine too, our family’s poor, we can’t afford to send two kids to school.

“After you finish middle school, you can go work to support your brother.”