Her sharp cat-like eyes crinkle at the corners, and she’s looking at me like she expects me to laugh or agree.

I don’t.

I can’t. Not when my stomach seizes up as if I’m the one she’s bitching about.

And maybe it’s because I’m aware of Henry sitting close beside me, watching and no doubt judging this whole exchange, or because I’m still riding the power high of my test results, or because there’s a chance everything might not work out and I’ll be gone from Airington in a semester, but I do something wildly out of character: I say exactly what I’m thinking. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure she does more work than you do.”

Vanessa’s eyes widen.

I shrink back in my seat by instinct, suddenly scared she’s going to punch me or something. Too late, I remember that in addition to all her prestigious art awards, Vanessa also won the national kickboxing championships last year.

But all she does is let out a loud high-pitched laugh.

“Damn. Wasn’t prepared for a roast, Alice,” she says, her light, teasing tone not quite matching the flash of anger in her eyes. Before I can backtrack, however, she marches to our usual table—her table now, I guess. I have a feeling I won’t be sitting next to her anytime soon.

“Wow,” Henry says once Vanessa’s out of earshot.

“Wow what?” I demand, cheeks flushed, regret already twisting into my gut. There’s a reason I never get confrontational with anyone at school, and it’s not because I’m a coward—well, not only because of that. With all the connections my classmates have, I can’t burn a single bridge without burning a hundred more bridges by association. For all I know, I might’ve just ruined any chance I had of one day working at Baidu or Google.

“Nothing,” Henry says, but he’s looking at me like he’s never really seen me before. “It’s just—you can be quite surprising sometimes.”

I frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind. Nothing,” he repeats. Looks away. “Anyway, what were you saying earlier?”

“Oh, right. About the next task—”

“Wait.” He opens up to a blank Pages document on his laptop, and motions for me to write what I want to say on there.

I type: srsly? we’re passing notes like we’re in year six now?

To which he immediately responds: Yes. Unless you want everyone eavesdropping on us right now to know you’re Beijing Ghost.

I look up just in time to catch four people staring our way with great interest. Point taken.

So I spend the rest of class filling Henry in on Rainie’s request and planning how to proceed via laptop, occasionally looking up at the board to pretend I’m taking class notes. It’s not like I’m missing much anyway; Mr. Chen’s handing back papers and going over the answers to our latest test, and most of the “model answers” he uses are either Henry’s or mine. See, I’m almost tempted to tell Henry as my classmates copy down my answers word for word. Here’s another source of joy. But when I play the sentence over in my head, I’m not sure if it makes me sound less pathetic or more.