Page 9 of Didn't See That Coming

“Sure!” Phew—saved by the bell.

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 gatheringintel 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 saysPhones Here!

Wow, okay. I guess we’re not allowed to take our phonesinto 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,Iremind 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 turnaround and head for my desk, I realize that Jonas is the guy who hooted at me when I entered the room.

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