It’s sort of like what they say about kissing the person you love (not that I would really know): each time is like the very first.
“Alice Sun,” Mr. Murphy booms into the microphone.
All eyes swivel to me as I rise slowly from my seat. There aren’t any wild cheers, not like with Rainie, but at least they’re looking. At least they can see me.
I smooth out my uniform and head toward the stage, careful not to trip along the way. Then Mr. Murphy is in front of me, shaking my hand, guiding me into the spotlight, and people start clapping.
See, I could shrivel up and die on the spot if I ever thought people were judging me or talking shit behind my back, but this, this kind of positive attention, with my full name on display as applause pounds through the room like a drumbeat—I wouldn’t mind bathing in this moment forever.
But the moment barely lasts a few seconds, because then Mr. Murphy calls out Henry Li’s name, and just like that, everyone’s attention shifts. Refocuses. The applause grows noticeably, painfully louder.
I follow their gazes, and my stomach clenches when I spot him standing up in the front row.
It’s truly one of life’s greatest injustices—aside from youth unemployment and taxes and all that, of course—that Henry Li gets to look the way he does. Unlike the rest of us, he seems to have skipped that awkward midpuberty stage altogether, shedding his cute, Kumon-poster-boy image almost overnight near the end of last year. Now, with his sharp profile, lean build and thick, black waves of hair that somehow always fall perfectly over his dark brows, he could just as easily pass for an idol trainee as the heir to China’s second biggest tech start-up.
His movements are smooth and purposeful as he steps onto the stage in a single stride, that look of mild interest I hate so much carefully arranged on his beautiful, terrible face.
As if he can hear my thoughts, his eyes cut to mine. The twisting, burning sensation in my stomach sharpens to a knife.
Mr. Murphy steps out in front of me. “Congratulations, Henry,” he says, then releases a loud chuckle. “Must be getting tired of all these awards by now, eh?”
Henry merely offers him a small, polite smile in response.
I force myself to smile too, even as I clench my teeth so hard my jaw hurts. Even as Henry takes his place beside me, leaving only two terrible, maddening inches of space between us. Even as my muscles tense as they always do in his presence, as he leans over, crossing the unspoken boundary, and whispers so only I can hear—
“Congratulations, Alice. I was afraid you wouldn’t make it this year.”
Most international schoolkids end up with some watered-down version of an American accent, but Henry’s accent has a distinct British lilt to it. At first I thought he was just following a step-by-step tutorial on how to become the most pretentious person alive, but after some stalking—no, researching—I found out he’d actually spent a couple years of primary school in England. And not just any primary school, but the same school as the prime minister’s son. There’s even a photo of the two of them together by the school stables, all wide smiles and ruddy cheeks, while someone’s cleaning out horse manure in the background.