She turns to Doi. “You know what Peasprout said about you? Peasprout said that the Chairman told her that she’s the kind of daughter he always wanted.”
“You lying, vicious—” I start to say.
“Don’t encourage her,” says Doi. “It’s like leaving table scraps out for badgers.”
“Wah, so bold!” cries Suki. “Then why did your father skate right past you like a ghost but invite Peasprout to meet privately with him every time he came to Pearl Famous?”
How did she know that? She must have been spying on me!
“And why,” she continues, “did he give her that precious pendant that she was wearing around her neck?”
“It isn’t a pendant!” I say.
I look to Doi, but her face is unreadable.
“Then what is it?” says Suki.
I don’t know how to answer.
“And you,” she continues to me. “I’m going to tell you…” She slows and begins to smile, pleased with herself. “I’m just going to tell you what you already know about her. Do you know what you know about Niu Doi?”
I don’t give her the courtesy of a response. I won’t let her drive a wedge between Doi and me.
Suki smiles sweetly and begins to skate away. She turns to say over her shoulder, “Nothing.”
I stop and let her word sink in. When I turn to look at Doi’s reaction, she is already gone.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
I hate relying on anyone else for anything because I hate being disappointed. But I find myself forced to rely on so many other people. I’m going to have to convince Hisashi to help me find someone in the city market willing to sell me wine. I’m going to have to choose a partner at the fifth Motivation. Only two weeks left before the Fifth Motivation and my chance to escape into the city, and I haven’t made any progress on either of these tasks.
As if this weren’t bad enough, a week later, Sensei Madame Phoenix comes up with the worst class assignment. She announces, “You are to form small groups and write a one-act opera based on a historical event by the end of the class hour.”
A group project.
I came to Pearl to become a legend, not to work in a group with other students like donkeys leashed to a cart. However, Sensei Madame Phoenix refuses to let me work alone.
I say to her, “Sensei Madame Phoenix, I would like to do the project on my—”
The sleeping birds let out a squawk, and Sensei Madame Phoenix bats me on the head with the Too Exciting! paper paddle.
I whisper, “I can produce a much more beautiful script by myself about Little Pi Bao Gu and Cloud-Tamer Zwei.”
“So you think you are entitled to special treatment,” she replies, “just because you are the ‘special emissary’ of the Empress Dowager.” I don’t like how she says “special emissary” and I remember that she’s the one delivering the Pearl Shining Sun headlines, so I back off.
Meanwhile, all the other students have formed into pairs, signed their names on the scroll listing the members of each group, and pushed their desks together. They’re staring at me, ready to begin the exercise.
“Find a group and be swift,” whispers Sensei Madame Phoenix.
Two girls with meek faces sit together at the back of the room. I’ve seen them before in class, I think. They never speak. They just look at each other as if they’re exchanging words encoded in Chi pulses.
Their eyes widen as I skate over.
“May I join your group?”
They look at each other, turn expressionless little mouse faces back to me, and say nothing.
A thought strikes me. What if they’re a couple, like those second-year boys, Hong-Gee and Matsu?
“Are you two together? I don’t want to interrupt.”
They exchange looks, peer at me with bright blinking eyes, and say nothing.
“I mean, are you together, as in … are you in love with each other?”
That didn’t come out as gracefully as I hoped. The girls regard me as if I were one of those vile crusted creatures that suck onto the bottom of a ship or whale. I sense them subtly shift their weight to adopt defensive combat positions.
“Chen Peasprout, do you have a group yet?” whispers Sensei Madame Phoenix.
“Yes!”
“Group partner names?”
“Ah … these girls,” I say, pointing to them. How can I be expected to learn every student’s name here?
“Can we just get through this class?” I say to them. “I don’t want this any more than you do.”
I skate to my desk to retrieve my brush, ink, and scroll. When I return, the girls have already unsheathed a length of scroll and written on the title line, The Great Leap of Shin.
“No, no, we’re going to write about Cloud-Tamer Zwei and Little Pi Bao Gu.”
The girls look at each other and proceed to write.
“I’m not going to write about such a shameful episode,” I say. The Great Leap destroyed both Pearl and Shin. Why under heaven would they choose to write about that?
The girls don’t lift their attention from the scroll.
“Sensei said we have to work as a group!”
They continue taking turns to add lines of dialogue.
Fine, if they want to be stubborn, I’ll show them stubborn. I go back to my desk and begin writing my script about Cloud-Tamer Zwei and Little Pi Bao Gu. I’ll finish my script before they finish theirs and submit it as our group project. I’m not going to let them embarrass me with some mediocre effort.
While I’m writing the thrilling scene where Little Pi Bao Gu courageously leads the women and girls of Pearl to block the Shinian soldiers from coming ashore, a tear trickles down. As I wipe it from my cheek, a hand slaps sharply on my desk.
“I told you to work in a group!” whispers Sensei Madame Phoenix. The birds awake and begin screaming as if we’d just dropped a pile of snakes on the floor. Sensei claws the scroll from my desk, tosses it in the air, and slices it in two with a chop of her hand. Ten
