Amidst The Stars

Mid-Autumn

   "For the first few days of his life, Wilbur was allowed to live in a box near the stove in the kitchen. Then, when Mrs Arable complained..."

  Vicente watched his classmate read another paragraph of the story, standing confidently at her seat and her book held nice and high. At the front of the classroom, his English teacher nodded approvingly at her performance. Then, a few lines later, his teacher gestured for the student behind her to start reading. He stared down at his copy of Charlotte's Web and counted down until he found the paragraph he'd have to read. The vocabulary was easy enough, but still, he repeated the sentences over and over in his head, muttering quietly to himself.

  The boy in front of him sat down. Vicente stood up, bracing his hands on his desk and stared down at his book. He cleared his throat and began. "Fern peered through — "

  "Speak up," someone at the back of the class shouted. The teacher frowned at them, whoever they were.

  Taking a deep breath, he started over. "Fern peered through the door. Wilbur was poking the straw with his — his snout." Luckily, nobody corrected him — he'd worried that he was pronouncing "snout" wrong. "In a short time he had dug a tunnel in the straw."

  It was becoming easier to read the paragraph, easier than he'd thought it would be. He looked to the next page and continued, "he crawled into the tunnel and disappeared from sight, c-completely covered with straw." He squinted at the sentence that followed. It had a big word in it, one he wasn't sure how to pronounce. "Fern was... was encanted?"

  "Enchanted," his teacher corrected.

  "E-Enchanted." His face burned. "It re-relived — "

  "Relieved," the teacher corrected again. They smiled consolingly, though it didn't help much. "Take your time."

  "It relieved her mind to know... know that her baby would sleep covered up, and would stay warm." His heart was racing, and he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. Then Vicente sat down, staring at his feet listlessly. It felt like the entire class was staring at him, judging his every move and word.

  Behind him, his classmate stood up and started reading. His heart pounded in his ears, he felt freezing despite the lukewarm autumn sunlight shining in through the classroom windows. Adrenaline was rushing through him even after the bell rang and signalled the end of class.

  The teacher left, and the classroom instantly flooded with noise. For a moment, the sight of everyone packing their bags confused him until his watch beeped, lighting up slightly with the numbers 3:00 p.m. He reached for his bag and dropped in his pencil-case and his folder, filled with the few worksheets he had to complete. His new school had far less homework, one of the nicer changes about it.

  Outside their schoolhouse, Yao was waiting for them. He smiled at him, asking, "how was your day?"

  Before his humiliating performance in English class, there had been French class, when he'd barely said a word. And before that, there had been science class, where he'd struggled to memorise the complicated new English terms. He could relay all that to Yao, but why would his brother want to listen to him complain about his day? Vicente settled on replying, "it was fine."

  "That's good to hear." Yao smiled, switching to sling his bag over his other shoulder. "Ah, I got lots of homework today. My teachers say that next year when I go on to high school, things will be even more stressful." His Northern accent, still intact nine years after leaving Beijing, felt almost soothing. "But the workload still isn't as big as it was back in Taipei."