To My Dearest Roseanne

Chapter 24

"That pharyngitis must have rewired your brain or something," Emily remarked while eating chips.

"You haven't seen the best of me yet."

The girls were enjoying a 30-minute lunch break in the middle of the schoolwork. Dozens of students would pour out of the building and head over to a large shopping mall across the street to get stuff from KFC, McDonald's, and Subway. Some less demanding high schoolers would buy junk food in a stationery shop like Żabka (together with cartridges for vape pens). Even though they had thirty minutes to buy the food and eat it, they often returned late for classes, and with unopened bags packed with chicken wings and hamburgers. Just the smell drove everybody crazy.

But Emily, Natasha, and Isa had the tradition of spending lunch breaks at school. Empty corridors gave them much-needed peace and quiet to unwind, eat snacks, and chat away. Although Roseanne was a regular participant in these meet-ups, Cho already felt like an accomplished veteran. She enjoyed the company of the three girls who stuck to themselves and weren't keen on picking unnecessary fights with others.

"I know you're good at English, Roseanne, but not that good. I can't go past 'yes-no' questions, you know," Natasha said.

"English is easy, but you need to work on it in your free time as well. Watch YouTube videos that interest you, play a Netflix show with the original voice track, or listen to your favourite music while reading the lyrics. Some people also do that with novels and audiobooks. Every chance of practice is an opportunity to learn," Cho advised.

"Easier said than done," Natasha emptied her lunchbox and tossed it into the backpack. "I tried learning with apps, you know."

"Apps, won't do you any good. They expose your short-term memory to new vocab, but you don't learn anything because you don't use these words."

"You think so?"

"Yes, try speaking for 15 minutes a day instead. Just speak and don't get stressed about rules and grammar. Use the words you remember to construct sentences, and never try to translate stuff from Po language to English. Your language is inflectional while English operates on the pattern of subject-verb-object. In Po language it doesn't matter with which linguistic part you begin the sentence, the meaning stays the same. If you were to do this in English, you would get mumbo jumbo."

"Wait a minute! Your language? It's our language, Rosie, you know."

Cho's ears turned red at the thought she made such an obvious blunder.

"Sorry, you're right! My bad."

Natasha grabbed the lunchbox, fidgeted with it for a while, and tossed it again.

"Would you like to chat with me for these 15 minutes a day?" she asked.

"Me?!"

"I don't know anybody else who knows English as well as you, you know."

"Honestly, I'd be honoured!"

"It's not like Natasha is asking you to prom or something," Emily remarked.

***

During the economics lesson, the students were burdened with the intricacies of how to run their own shop. Isa asked about the difference between supply and demand, thus the teacher thrust herself into the whirlpool of convoluted explanations. Emily tried to make notes, but she was puzzled about something.

"Roseanne..." she whispered. "Last week I saw a huge explosion on the horizon. I think it was that power supply line everyone is talking about in the news."

"Really?" Cho wasn't keen on discussing the incident that led to her arrival.

"Yeah, the explosion was so powerful that it threw me off the bike! But I didn't want to just mention that. Before the explosion, I got into an argument with a shop assistant at a petrol station. She asked me something, and, to tell you the truth, I didn't know what to do."