Spy School Walking East

Chapter 4: Memorization

"Alright, since school starts on Monday and today's only Saturday, we need to practice you Chinese," Cyrus said with his hands crossed.

We had hopped in a taxi and got to the hotel, where we got treated with robots. Surprisingly, everything in China was just plain technology. When we checked into the hotel, Cyrus was shocked that he didn't even need to use cash and had to spend ten minutes setting up a WeChat account so they could scan the money over. Besides that, everything was surprisingly cheap. Since everything in American dollars transferred in china's dollars was a lot cheaper, we basically bought a whole sweep of random snacks from the vending machines, half of them I didn't even know what it was. Since we had a ton of extra money left over, Catherine thought to treat us with a bigger room in the hotel, so we ended up each getting our own space.

And the good thing about this hotel was that it was spotless and all of the hotel staff were nice. Erica and Cyrus ended up doing everything for us since we couldn't speak Chinese. The room service was fantastic since it was in the summer; it was boiling in China. But the room happened to come with free rubber duckies in the bathroom and also came with a welcome slice of cake which Catherine enjoyed.

"My Chinese skills?" I asked.

"Yeah. You didn't think people from Jessica's private school would speak Chinese, right?" Cyrus asked. Immediately after we checked in, Cyrus insisted on giving me a Chinese lesson which I wasn't too keen about because I wanted to catch up on some sleep.

"I thought that I would have something sorta like a translator in my ear, so it was translated all into English," I said warily.

"You are going to be given one. It's just that don't you think that you would need to speak Chinese actually? And, Jessica isn't going to speak English in a Chinese school," Cyrus pointed out. "And also, you need to get close to Jessica, which you aren't going to get close to if you're going to speak English all the time."

"So," Cyrus said, "let's practice on some basic Chinese."

He pointed to the board, which said something that I didn't understand. To me, it was just a jumble of slashes and sticks.

"What does that say?" I asked.

"I thought Erica taught you how to say hello in Chinese," Cyrus gruffed out. "That's how you say hi. If you can't even say hi, how am I supposed to teach you the rest?"

Cyrus said a few words of Chinese, and to my surprise—and Cyrus' delight, I all caught on and didn't have any trace of an accent in my voice. Although I figured it was because of my memory, Cyrus insisted it was because of his excellent teaching skills.

A few hours flew by, and before I knew it, I could start a Chinese conversation with Erica. I didn't know a lot of the Chinese idioms they used or know about any of Chinese history, but I figured it would have to do.

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"Ben," Erica said to me as we talked over dinner. We were at the hotel's huge buffet, and I had to admit, it was delicious; it wasn't as good as the pizza or chips that I adored, but it was good enough. (Not everything, though. Some strange lobsters were wiggling in one of the bowls)

Chip and Jawa were racing around the tables, piling all sorts of noodles, fried rice, and food onto their plates, and Erica and I were practicing our oral Chinese. Cyrus, Catherine, and Alexander were chatting about something that you couldn't make out. Still, I could sort of tells that Catherine and Cyrus were trying to talk about the school I was going to attend while Alexander attempted to change the topic back to noodles. Or he could have been trying to change the subject back to poodles, or toodles but noodles made more sense in this case.

The buffet had surprisingly a lot of people and for some reason, everyone was aiming for the shrimp and the lobsters. Each time that a worker came out of the kitchen doors, everyone would race up and snatch them all away. It wouldn't even be a minute before the plate would be empty and would need to be replaced again.

Although there were rows of delicious foods to pick from, rainbow ice cream with infinity types of sprinkles, BBQ chicken that Chip for some reason really liked, and the noodles with hot sauce that I really liked. Erica's plate was just piled with vegetables that everyone avoided. There were a few fruits on the plate and had piles of lettuce and green beans. I looked at her plate with disgust and continued to eat my strawberry cheesecake.

"Now, we hired a few makeover artists to come over in the morning to help with your makeup to look like a different person," Erica said in fluent Chinese.

"I don't get it, why can't we just get Chip of Jawa to—" I said and then asked, "how do you say replace in Chinese again?" Erica rolled her eyes and told me the correct definition.

"Why can't Chip or Jawa replace me?" I asked again this time saying it correctly.

"Well as you can see, Chip and Jawa are probably going to just flirt with her," Erica pointed out.

"But isn't that the point so who cares?" I asked and Erica gave me a hard look.

"I mean actually. They're going to get too attached," Erica said. "And plus, you hit it off with Jessica first so it would make sense if you just do it instead of them."

"Alright fine, I'll will can it," I said groaning, not realizing that I just made a mistake.

"You mean I'll do it," Erica corrected.

"Ugh, why is Chinese so hard?" I asked.

"Actually English is a lot harder and Chinese, it's just that you're not used to it yet," Erica said.

"We also placed you in every single class Jessica has," Erica replied.

"Every single one? Then isn't that sorta creepy?" I asked, scrunching my nose up.

"It's the only way," Erica said and then added, "Oh and another thing, watch out for the bullies."

"There's bullies?" I asked my eyes wide open.

"Why are you so surprised. There were also bullies in your old school too right?" Erica asked me with a weird face.

"That's different," I said.

"Jason also probably is going to hate you for stealing his girlfriend. So you might want to watch put for Jason's really tough friends," Erica said and I paled. "You can't beat them up, it's going to blow your cover so you're going to have to avoid them best as possible."

"So you're basically saying I'm going to just stand there like a scarecrow doing nothing and just getting attacked?" I demanded.

"Pretty much. It's not like I can tell them to stop. The best I could do is drag Jason's attention away from Jessica and into me," Erica said.

"Great. Thanks for the help. I'm probably going to get hurt so badly that my face isn't even visible anymore," I said angrily and stormed off.