Bad Kids Read online

  He was despondent about being told off again by his form teacher, as he was still seething about being blamed for something he hadn’t done. He had survived the torture of the second independent study session when he headed towards the toilet and saw Chimin washing her thermos. He couldn’t resist smacking the sink in the same way that she had slapped his desk earlier. “Why did you accuse me of something I didn’t do?”

  Chimin sized him up briefly and went back to her rinsing out her flask.

  “Bitch,” he said, and started to walk away.

  All of a sudden, Chimin started crying loudly. He looked back, surprised. Talk about melodramatic! He was even more confused when she filled her thermos with cold water and poured it over her own head before running away. He went to the toilet as quickly as possible and returned to the classroom to get his things. He saw Ye Chimin in the teacher’s office, wailing at Mrs Lu. Two other teachers were trying to console her.

  Mrs Lu spotted him and used her most threatening voice. “Zhu Chaoyang, get in here!”

  He quivered at the sight of her, but he had no choice.

  “What’s gotten into you? Pouring water on Ye Chimin’s head?”

  “What?!” Zhu Chaoyang stared at Chimin, then looked back at his teacher. “I didn’t do anything, she did that to herself!”

  Suddenly, he realized what was going on. There was no point in fighting because it was her word against his. Ye Chimin’s hair was soaked and she was crying bitterly. Mrs Lu had believed her the first time around, so it wasn’t surprising that she would now.

  “I’m going to speak to your mother about this,” the form teacher warned.

  Chaoyang looked stricken. “But… I really didn’t do it, she did it to herself.”

  “You’d better change your tone, or you can forget about your final exams,” Mrs Lu said severely.

  “I didn’t pour water on her. She did it herself, honestly,” he said, his lip quivering.

  “Again you won’t admit what you’ve done! I’ve never seen a student like this before! Just because you ace your exams doesn’t mean we’ll let you off for bad behaviour. I want to speak with your mother tomorrow—otherwise you don’t need to bother to come for the exams.”

  Chaoyang dug his fingernails into his palms. This was the worst day of his life.

  He watched as Mrs Lu guided Ye Chimin back into the classroom, telling her in soft tones not to be intimidated by the bully.

  When Chimin disappeared through the doorway, Mrs Lu came back and spoke to Zhu Chaoyang: “Your mother explained your situation to me at the beginning of the year. Your parents are divorced, your father does not discipline you and your mother works away from home a lot, so you spend a lot of time alone. Last time she spoke with me, your mother asked me to be firm, but I never expected you to do something like this.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Chaoyang said, his voice cracking.

  Mrs Lu took a deep breath. She knew that he was a good student but once she made up her mind, she never backed down. “You can’t keep denying what you’ve done. Tell your mother to come to school in the morning, I must speak to her.”

  “But… she has to work.”

  “Then she will have to take a day off. Go home and call your mother. Explain that she has to come to school tomorrow, otherwise you will not be allowed to take your exams.”

  He stood still.

  “Go home! Now!” Mrs Lu shouted, pulling him along by his arm.

  When he had reached the door of the office, he couldn’t stand it any more. “I’m sorry, I was wrong. I won’t do it again. Please, Mrs Lu, let me take my exams tomorrow. I’m sorry, I will never bully Ye Chimin again. Please.”

  The other two teachers liked Chaoyang very much and helped him make his case. “Don’t be so hard on him, he’s admitted it. Let him write an apology letter and be done with it. He needs to take his exams, after all,” one said.

  Mrs Lu sighed, but was finally persuaded by them and Chaoyang’s tears. She made him write an apology letter promising not to do it again before letting him go.

  He slung his backpack on his back and headed home, exhausted. On the way he ran into Ye Chimin who gave a cruel smile. “Who gave you permission to be top of the class? My dad shouts at me for not being number one and it’s all your fault. We’ll see who’s really the best tomorrow then, huh?”

  He finally understood why this had happened. She was jealous of his exam scores! She did this just to cut him down!

  He glared at her briefly, and kept walking.

  He desperately wanted the term to be over.

  5

  2 JULY

  After Chaoyang had finished his last exams, school ended and everyone went home. It was finally summer. He felt he could say goodbye to a thoroughly rotten year.

  He was home alone that afternoon in their shabby apartment, which measured barely 650 square feet. The floors were covered in a plastic material that was popular in the ’90s and the walls were unpainted. The place smelled a little musty. A steel fan creaked, providing a feeble breeze against the heat. Chaoyang had taken his shirt off to cool down. He was sitting on his bedroom floor, reading Home Remedies to Increase Height. He would give anything to be a little bit taller.

  He had seen an ad for the book and bought a mail-order copy for 20 yuan. There were all kinds of tips. Chaoyang had gone through the list and underlined the key points. The first thing he would do was stop drinking carbonated drinks, because the book said they leached calcium from the bones. He drew a star next to the tip and vowed never to drink soda again.

  He was fully absorbed in the book when he heard an urgent knock on the door. He stuffed the book on the shelf and went to the door. He opened the door but left the steel security grille locked. He could see a boy and a girl who were roughly his age. The boy was a head taller than him, at about 5 feet 5 inches; the girl was shorter. They both seemed frightened.

  “Are you looking for someone?” Chaoyang asked hesitantly.

  “Zhu Chaoyang, I can’t believe you still live here!” The boy beamed. “Remember me?”

  Chaoyang took a closer look. “Ding Hao! What are you doing here?”

  “We need your help. Quick, open the door!”

  He opened the grille, and Ding Hao quickly guided the girl in and closed both doors. “Can I have some water? I’m super thirsty.”

  Chaoyang got them glasses of water and Ding Hao downed his. The girl took small sips, her face expressionless. She resembled an ice sculpture.

  “Who is your friend?” Chaoyang asked Ding Hao.

  “You can call her Pupu. She’s my sister. Not my actual sister, but we’re family now.” He looked at her. “Pupu, this is Zhu Chaoyang, the guy I’ve been telling you about. We were best friends at school. But we haven’t seen each other in… five years now.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  Zhu Chaoyang felt awkward sitting in front of a girl half naked. He got his shirt and returned to the kitchen. “Ding Hao, how did you get so tall?”

  “I dunno,” he said, chuckling and scratching his head.

  “You guys looked really frightened when I answered the door. What’s happened?”

  “Long story,” Ding Hao said, swinging his arms in a familiar carefree way. “Someone wanted to nab us and we jumped out of a van to get away.”

  Chaoyang looked alarmed. “Were they traffickers? Should we call the police?”

  “Nah. They were…” Ding Hao stopped. He laughed to ease the tension. “It’s a long story.”

  “Seriously, what happened? Where did you go to school for the past five years? The teachers all said you moved to another city and I thought I’d never see you again. You left without even saying goodbye.”

  Ding Hao grew serious and looked at Pupu, who did not give any indication that she cared what he said.

  “What?” Chaoyang was starting to get creeped out.

  Ding Hao lowered his voice. “You really don’t know why I moved?”

  “How would I
know when you never told me?”

  “It’s because… my parents were arrested.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ding Hao made a face. “My parents killed someone, they were caught, and they were executed.”

  “What!” Chaoyang’s eyes widened and he studied them both more carefully. “Why didn’t I hear about this?”

  “The teachers probably didn’t want you to know that a former classmate was the son of murderers,” Ding Hao said in an attempt at a joke.

  “Don’t talk like that. Your parents might have killed someone, but that has nothing to do with you. Umm… why did they do it?” Chaoyang asked, although he wasn’t really sure he wanted to know the details. He was trying hard to think of a way to get rid of them. He didn’t want any trouble. It had been years since he had seen Ding Hao and he didn’t really know anything about him now. Chaoyang was home alone, anything could happen.

  Ding Hao blushed. “I still don’t know. Someone told me that it happened like this, but I don’t know if it’s true: my mum cheated on my dad, and he wanted her to find a girlfriend for him or something. So my mum tricked a college student into helping her. The kind student helped my mum home after she fainted on the street; then my dad raped the girl. Apparently they both killed her to cover it up, but they were caught. So they were executed by a firing squad.”

  “Oh…” Chaoyang was shocked at Ding Hao’s far-fetched story. He felt nervous and certainly wanted them to leave, but he couldn’t think of a good way to do it. He kept on talking. “So where have you been all this time?”

  “At an orphanage in Beijing. People don’t want anything to do with children of murderers, none of my aunts or uncles would take me. I had no choice. Pupu’s just like me, she didn’t have parents or a guardian, so she had to go to the orphanage, too.”

  Pupu looked up at Chaoyang, then turned her head away. They sat in an uncomfortable silence. They both had murderers for parents! Again Chaoyang regretted opening the door. He should have hidden in his room and pretended not to be home.

  “So, how did you get here? Beijing is really far away,” he finally said.

  “We ran away,” Ding Hao said. “We didn’t want to stay at the orphanage, so we escaped and made our way here. Pupu is from Jiangsu and she didn’t want to go back. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, so we came here. I was too chicken to contact my relatives. I knew they would just call the police. We planned to spend a few days here and then move on, but then a bunch of stuff happened. This morning—” He suddenly clammed up.

  “What happened this morning?” Chaoyang pressed.

  “We kinda ran out of money, so we begged on the side of the road,” Ding Hao said after a pause.

  “You did what?” Chaoyang could hardly believe that this was his best friend from primary school. He had seemed like a perfectly normal kid years ago, but now his story suggested that he was with the wrong crowd.

  “I knew that you would think less of me if I told you. But we didn’t have a choice.”

  “No, no, I don’t think less of you,” Chaoyang fibbed.

  “Really?” Ding Hao brightened. “Then a van came along, it said… what did it say on the van again, Pupu?”

  “City Enforcement,” she said coldly.

  “Yeah, that’s it. They said we couldn’t beg and we had to move along. So we started walking, but we were hungry, so we bought something from a bakery. And then another van came, and those guys were from the Civil Affairs Bureau. They told us they wanted to contact our parents. No matter where they took us, they would find out that we ran away, and they would just put us back in the orphanage. So Pupu said she had to pee, and they stopped the van for her, and we ran off. We happened to be close to your house, and I recognized where we were, so we took a chance and knocked on your door. I can’t believe that you are still living here!” he finished.

  After hearing all this, Chaoyang was even more anxious. Ding Hao and he were good friends before, but that was a long time ago. He tried to think of a plan of action. Kicking them out might be dangerous, but if they stayed too long, what would happen then?

  “What… uh… are you planning to do?” Chaoyang stammered.

  Ding Hao shrugged. “I might try and find some work, but Pupu is too little. She’s only eleven; she should be at school.”

  “And you shouldn’t? You’re only thirteen!”

  “Man, I hate school. I want to start working as soon as possible.”

  “But nobody would hire you. You’re not old enough to work.”

  “If I don’t tell ’em, they won’t know, will they? I’m tall enough to pass for sixteen,” Ding Hao smirked.

  Chaoyang finally brought up the awkward question. “So what are you planning to do… in terms of sleeping? My place is small, I mean… you know…”

  “I won’t freeload off you really, I promise. But if it’s OK, we would like to spend the night here,” Ding Hao said.

  “Oh…” Chaoyang looked away awkwardly.

  Pupu spoke up. “Ding Hao, forget it. Let’s go.”

  “We left our bag in the what-d’ye-call-it van, remember? I don’t think we’ll find a place to sleep tonight,” Ding Hao stage-whispered to Pupu.

  “There’s always a way,” she said.

  Ding looked at her, back at Chaoyang, and then stood and laughed jovially. “OK, then, we’ll leave. See you around, Chaoyang. I’ll come back after I find a job.”

  Chaoyang led them to the door, his brows knitted in concentration.

  “When I start making money, I’ll take you to KFC,” Ding Hao said with a grin. He waved goodbye and had started to walk away when he turned around again. “Oh, wait, I have some candied haw berries for you in my bag! It’s a snack from Beijing, I bet you’ve never had it before. I thought if I had the chance to see you…”

  Pupu rolled her eyes at Ding Hao. “You left the bag in the van, remember?”

  Ding Hao smoothed his hair awkwardly. “Next time, I guess. Take care, mate! Bye!”

  “Wait, guys,” Chaoyang said. He felt a pang of guilt—after being best friends in primary school, how could he not help? When an older student had bullied him, Ding Hao had stepped up and taken a beating for him. Chaoyang ran away but Ding Hao never blamed him for it, saying it was better that only one person got hurt. Now his worries were rejected because of their past friendship. “You can stay over tonight. My mum works at a tourist attraction and only comes home once every few days. She won’t be back for two days, so you can stay here.”

  “Really?” Ding Hao asked hopefully.

  “Yeah. We can all squeeze into my room. Pupu can have the bed and you and me can sleep on the floor.”

  Ding Hao turned to Pupu. “What do you think, Pupu?”

  “I don’t want to bother anyone,” she said, shaking her head.

  “It’s fine,” Chaoyang hurriedly said.

  Pupu was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded, her face still serious. “Well, OK. Thank you, Brother Chaoyang. If you want us to go, you can tell us at any time.”

  He blushed.

  6

  “Pupu, you’re a pro at making noodles. This is delicious!” Chaoyang said between bites.

  “Yeah, she helped out in the kitchen at the orphanage, she knows her stuff,” Ding Hao said.

  Pupu, expressionless as usual, sat at the table and took small nibbles of her noodles. She had only said a few sentences since she arrived. Chaoyang was not entirely sure why, but he wanted to make a good impression on her. “Pupu, you’re not eating very much. Do you want something else?”

  “No thanks,” she said.

  “She doesn’t eat much,” Ding Hao explained. “Plus it’s so hot outside, I don’t think either of us is really hungry.”

  Chaoyang saw that Ding Hao was polishing off his third bowl of noodles, but didn’t comment.

  “So… Pupu, you went to the orphanage for the same reason as Ding Hao?” he asked cautiously.

  “Duh,” Ding Hao said.
“It’s the same for everyone at the orphanage. No parents, no guardian.”

  “Oh,” Chaoyang studied his friend’s happy expression. He didn’t think he would be so upbeat if he were in their shoes. “So how did Pupu’s parents die?”

  She dropped her chopsticks on the table and stared at him.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” Chaoyang said hastily.

  She didn’t answer, but picked up her chopsticks and slurped a mouthful of noodles.

  Ding Hao laughed it off. “Never mind. You’re one of us now, so it doesn’t matter. Right, Pupu?”

  When she did not say anything, Ding Hao took her silence as agreement and spilled the beans. “Her dad killed her mum and her little brother, and then he was caught. Got the death sentence.”

  “He didn’t do it!” Pupu’s response was loud. “I told you before, my dad never killed anyone.”

  “But the support workers all said he did.”

  “They don’t know anything. Right before he died, my dad told me I had to believe him that he didn’t kill my mother. He told me even if he fought with my mother sometimes, he loved me and he would never take my mother away from me,” she said.

  “But then why did the police arrest your dad? Police officers don’t make an arrest until they are sure they have the right person,” Chaoyang asked innocently.

  “They get the wrong guy all the time! My dad told me they forced him to stay awake and interrogated him for days, until he had to admit to killing them just to make the torture end. But he didn’t do it! I was only seven, but I remember my dad saying it was too late to change anything, and all he wanted was for me to know that he was innocent.” Despite her impassioned speech, her face showed no emotion.

  Chaoyang did not know what to say.

  “Brother Chaoyang, do you have a camera?” Pupu suddenly asked.

  “A camera? What for?”

  “My dad told me I should take a photo of myself once a year and burn it so that he would receive it in the afterlife. Every year on the anniversary of his death, I take a photo of myself and write a letter to him. Then I burn them so he can receive them.”