“I’ve seen you in the tuck shop, always sitting by yourself. You don’t have any friends because you’re too serious. Always thinking. Worrying. That’s okay, we need serious people.”

“I thought maybe you took me on the ghost train to tell me all this without being overheard.”

“Who’s listening? I just like rides.” Lina tossed her hair and started walking towards the exit. Siew Li scurried to keep up. “Tell you what, though. It’s good to know you’re not easily scared.”

•

It went very smoothly after that, as if the movement was where she’d been meant to be all along, and she’d just needed a switch to flick in her head. To start with, she was happy with the occasional approving nod from Lina, then that became less important. Being on the inside felt not just good, but right—the only place she could possibly be. Impossible to imagine the person she had been, drifting through the world with no thought for anything but her schoolwork and her mum, gliding through each day without looking beyond her immediate surroundings. How could she have been
so unaware?

She still wasn’t sure what made Lina single her out, but to be honest she’d previously attended events because all her classmates were going, or it looked like there might be some excitement to be had. The idea of actually making a difference hadn’t occurred to her. Now she was becoming enlightened, there was real fervour behind her chants. There was history behind what they were doing—they were part of a chain of progress, every link of which was vital.

Already, amongst her comrades, there was a sense of having missed out on the headiest times. If they’d been a decade older, they would have joined Force 136 or the MPAJA, the guerrilla resistance against the Japanese; they would have gone to China to be part of the struggle, and shared in the glory of 1949. Things seemed grubbier now, less clear. It was easy to sit in a stadium as some firebrand flung strong words about, and to feel righteous and cleansed. But what good did that actually do? She listened to Lim Chin Siong, so stirring and strong. He’d been expelled for the exam boycott he organised; sitting there in her school uniform, Siew Li felt indicted, as if she’d never taken a real risk. They were under a state of emergency, and the National Service Act had been put in place just a couple of years ago, to co-opt their young men into fighting their brothers and sisters. With all this happening, how had she ever thought it was all right to be passive?