Chapter 11: 11. The First Day of School

The rest of the day as Ahmad went by pretty smoothly. I spent the day in my room. Luckily nobody came over to talk to me, and dinner was still provided, though everyone was silent when we ate. I liked the silence. It was only the postponement of the apprenticeship that was a bummer.

DubbAlina didn’t seem to like it either. Though she had been disapproving of my decision to become a crafter, now she seemed to want me to be a good one- probably so I could change my job and be a fighter or something.

Sleep came quickly. The instant I woke up, I was dragged out of my room in the cupboard. It was Jun. The man looked into my eyes as I looked angrily back into his. He tossed me like a ragdoll into the car.

You know what? I thought. I preferred my life as a grounded Ahmad more than a not-grounded Aby.

Jun tossed some clothes into the backseat.

“Put it on.” His voice was even. I took off my clothes- they weren’t very clean or a good fit, either- and put on a white shirt and a pair of blue pants. They were both too big for me. There was a name tag on the shirt- Wu Lintian, that was what it said. It was probably a hand-me-down.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

Jun didn’t answer. He wouldn’t answer, I thought. My left eye was still red. Jun didn’t do anything about it, and I suspected he didn’t care, either. My right eye was okay. It wasn't anything serious. I could make it through the day.

The car stopped in front of a building. A school, or so I guessed so. The building was massive.

There was a large playground. The Chinese flag hung proudly there. Children were walking into the building with bags on their shoulders. Jun, from the front seat, handed over a backpack. My backpack.

My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest. I felt like all the air had gotten out of me in a second. I was so surprised. It was a relief. I hugged my backpack ever so closer, except something was wrong. It was so much lighter than before.

I opened my backpack.

Only the notebook and pens remained. Of course. My heart sank back into my chest where it belonged. Of course Jun looked. I should have known.

“Get out.”

I bounded out of the car immediately.

I was glad Jun decided to let me go to school. I thought he wouldn’t, and even if he did, I didn’t think he would let me go so quickly. But he had. It was unexpected. A smile was on my lips. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me, I thought happily. My bad day as Ahmad was quickly forgotten to be replaced by my first good day as Aby instead. School was a dream. And it wasn’t only my dream- me going to school was Grandma’s dream, too.

At school, I could finally learn the things I had been missing. How to make money, how to survive the apocalypse. I could learn things Ahmad’s Grandpa couldn’t ever teach me. And maybe I could even learn more about the algebra questions I had been solving as a hobby- some were horribly difficult. 

My left eye was closed, and so my body wasn’t as well-balanced as it would have been. Someone rushed past me, and I fell over.

It was a tall person. If only I was as tall as Ahmad, I thought. That much height would be nothing. It was one of the only things I still missed. But currently, I was much smaller than the boy who had bumped into me.

My knee felt like it was burning up. I stood up and brushed the dirt off of my clothes. I skinned my knee, I observed. It was bleeding. That wasn’t a good sign.

Even children couldn’t be taken lightly. I walked carefully, looking around to my left and right. There were adults in the playground holding up signs that read: ‘New Students.’ There were signs from class 1 to- I gulped. That was certainly a lot of classes.

And of course, Jun told me absolutely nothing about what my class would be.

I walked over to the teacher the best I could to ask her.

It was funny. You live out your life dreaming of a certain thing, but when you get it, you realize it’s not as good as you think it is. The first thing I thought of on the first day in school: it was overcrowded. There were a lot more kids than I had expected. I wondered how the teachers could manage everyone.

The female teacher balked after looking at me.

“Hello.” I said. “My name is Wu Aby. I’m a first year student. I was wondering where I should go?”

Her eyes went up to my closed left eye, then down to my skinned knee, and after I opened my mouth her eyes widened as if curious. She smiled.

“Aby, follow me.”

The female teacher acted like she was in a hurry. Maybe it was because there were tons of students milling around unorganized, or maybe it was because of some other reason. Despite my expectations, the teacher didn’t lead me to my class, neither did she yell or abandon me. 

Instead, she grabbed a first aid kit and put something on my knee. It smelled foul, and it was orange in color. I hoped it was medicine. The teacher smiled and put a bandaid on it to top it off.

“There.” She said, “Class 2, it's in that direction.” The teacher pointed to the front row, where I could see kids milling about.

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“Yes.”

The teacher seemed hesitant, as if she wanted to say something, but I didn’t care. Whatever she had to say, it probably wasn’t that important if she was so hesitant about it. She had no confidence, I judged. She probably didn’t have good character. I bounded over to my classmates. My knee hurt as I did so, but I still did it anyway. The pain wasn’t unbearable.

And then started the flag raising ceremony.

The ceremony was boring. My legs hurt from standing for so long. I listened to a bald man go up on a podium and give a speech about- what was it? Oh right. It was something about ‘school spirit’ and ‘youth’ and ‘the four basic principles of Communism’, et cetera.

The kids shuffled around nervously. It wasn’t very quiet, I thought, but that was only natural. Who could silence a yard filled with hundreds of eight year olds? Excited eight year olds. The ceremony passed quicker than I thought. The buzz of excitement was what did it. It was difficult to be bored on the first day of school.

“Everyone, single file!”

It was the female teacher from before. The teacher who helped me treat my skinned knee. The kids applauded. I was too short to see her face, but it didn’t matter. I clapped to her voice.

“Follow me.”

We walked back up to the classroom, which was on the third floor. And so it felt like cotton candy when I finally sat down on a seat. The seat closest to the door was already taken, along with the ones by the windowsills, so I had to sit in a seat smack dab in the middle of the class.

The teacher smiled.

“I am your homeroom teacher. You may call me Teacher Wang. Welcome to Class Two. Now, to start off, I want everyone to say ‘Good morning, Teacher Wang’. Ready?”

“Good morning, Teacher Wang.” I repeated, along with thirty other classmates.

“Good morning, class.” Teacher Wang said, with a smile. She smiled a lot, and, I observed, she looked good doing so.

“I’m happy to see you’ve all settled down. Your seats will be changed every month- those are your current seats,” she added. There were a bunch of groans.

“But I wanted that one!” A boy protested, pointing over at a seat by the windowsill. Those seats appeared to be popular, though I didn’t know why.

“Next month.” Teacher Wang said. “Now I’m going to hand out your school schedules, after-school activity applications. These are very important, so make sure to take them to your parents.” 

I placed my papers inside my backpack. No, I thought privately, I was never taking these to my parents. Never.

The kids put their things inside their bags. Teacher Wang clapped her hands. “That’s it for the boring stuff.”

“And now for introductions!” She smiled. The kids were whipped up into a frenzy of excitement, groans, and crying. “Now, don’t worry, it’s not anything difficult. I want everyone to introduce themselves, starting from Row One.” She gestured to the first row, the one to the very left. 

“You just need to say your name, and tell something about yourself.”

“I’ll go first. I am Wang YiRan, Teacher Wang to you guys, and I can play the piano. My favorite color is blue.” The teacher said, Her eyes twinkled, “Now it’s your turn.”

The girl at the front of Row One was a girl with pleated braids. She stood up.

“I am Li Meihui, and I ate bread for breakfast today.” Meihui said confidently, then she sat down. We all clapped. Meihui smiled.

Everyone introduced themselves one after another. We all clapped politely, much to the delight of Teacher Wang. Soon it was my turn.

“I am Wu Aby.” I began, “And-” I thought of a fact about myself. “My grandma is dead.” I sat back down.

We all clapped. I smiled at the sound of applause. Teacher Wang’s face contorted into a frown, or so I thought. I wasn’t good at reading expressions. I picked up the class schedule for today, curious and excited about what I might learn.

I smiled.

Today would be a perfect first day at school.