2014: It's Hard to Differentiate Real from Fake, for Faces are Deceiving

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On the first day of school, Vera and I met up before proceeding to the assembly venue. At the venue, Jerome approached us.

"Sup," he said.

"Oh hi. You're in 5A?" I asked him.

"Yes. 5B isn't too bad as long as you work hard. And your name is?" Jerome turned to Vera.

"Vera," she replied.

"I'm Jerome. So, how were the holidays?"

"The same old things. Studying, playing, hobbies and hanging out with siblings and friends," I replied.

"Your brother is Elijah from 6A and your sister is called Rebecca?" Jerome queried.

"Yes! Your siblings told you?" I replied.

"Right. I have four older siblings and two younger ones, so there's seven of us. What are your interests?" Jerome asked.

"Astronomy. I want to be an astronomer. I love Geography a lot too."

"What about you, Vera?" Jerome turned to Vera.

"I like to play Plants VS Zombies 2 and Minecraft," she replied.

At that moment, Jerome smiled and waved at someone. Within seconds, I heard a new (probably not) voice.

"Hey Jordan! Congrats for topping your class in Chinese last year!"

It was Daniel.

"Er...how did you know?" I asked, still shocked by his sudden appearance.

"Willis told me just now. Have fun in class! I'll catch up with you later," Daniel replied.

"Top in Chinese? How? My Chinese has been so bad even though I attended a Chinese church all my life!" Jerome chuckled.

"I'm from a Chinese church too. I just like the subject and study it a lot. I'm sure you can do well if you study hard for it," I shrugged.

"Yeah, alright I'll see both of you around! I'll talk to some new classmates," Jerome said and went to join his classmates.

While waiting for assembly to start, I chatted with Vera about how Jerome was a much nicer and less dangerous person than Daniel. Vera agreed to some extent, as from her own experience, Daniel did not make an effort to socialise with her. Overall, she did not see much difference between the two, besides Daniel being much more popular than Jerome. She then told me that she felt sad she was not chosen to be a junior leader because she could not take part in the relevant activities with me. That triggered a thought - why didn't Vera get nominated out of nearly 40 students in 4B the previous year?

That thought made leadership seem like an even bigger grey area. Vera was very well-behaved, hardly got into trouble in class and was serious about her studies. Could it be her being too reserved which hindered her ability to lead?

Recalling how Elijah mentioned that P5s who were not nominated as junior leaders in P4 could be nominated in P5, I told Vera to take up a leadership position in class. She said she would want to be the IT (Information Technology) Representative. As she was a shy person, she found initiating conversations with new classmates a challenge, but she said she would try to do it.

There were two other junior leaders in 5B, namely Rayana Aliyeva and Wong Li Xuan. They already seemed to have friends in class so I had no chance to speak to them. Our seats were allocated according to registration number so I was separated from Vera. As her name began with 'Ang', her registration number was one, so she sat at the front right corner of the classroom. On the other hand, my registration number was 21 so I sat in between Sonia Lee and Thalia Siew.

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