“What do you mean?” That it was unusual for there to be a motley of European architecture in our Chinese city had never even occurred to me. We were in front of the HSBC bank, your mother admiring the columned entranceway, the huge white dome, the glimpses of the murals inside showing all the other cities where the bank operated.

“It doesn’t feel like home,” you said, and I was peeved at you for rejecting what I thought of as our nicest view.

But you did not notice my annoyance. You were fixated on the two bronze lion statues flanking the bank’s entrance. Their paws had been rubbed to a shine by the many visitors wishing for luck, or to be made as rich as the bank owners. You approached one of the lions. It loomed above you on its pedestal. You reached as high as you could to tap its paw. I was close enough to hear you whisper a desperate wish to return home.

Your mother soon registered you for the same elementary school as me, much to my disappointment. But when you sat in the classroom, only a few desks away, I discovered I had a clear advantage over you: you did not speak Shanghainese, whereas I had grown up with it. You stumbled in your responses to our classmates, and we all giggled when you gave a wrong answer.

I doodled a picture of you. This, I am sure, you remember. It started accurate and then I distorted it. Over your lips, I drew slight protrusions of your front teeth. I erased the line where your head started and moved it farther up, almost off the page, elongating your forehead and shading in bushy eyebrows. I gave you a speech bubble with nonsense characters. The girl who sat behind me stifled a laugh and held out her hand. I passed my drawing to her, and before long it had circulated the classroom behind the teacher’s back.

When it reached your desk, you did not lift the paper, only cast your eyes downward. Then your eyes found mine, and for a moment it seemed like the classroom disappeared, its giggling students and droning teacher along with it, and it was only me and you and a fury that pulsed.

I thought you would run home right after school and report me to our mothers. Instead, you waited for me by the school entrance. I fell in step with you, maintaining a small distance, wary of your calm.

“You draw well,” you said in our mothers’ dialect. “What kind of pencil do you use?”

“The eighty:twenty for sketches,” I answered slowly. I had never talked to anyone other than Mother about pencil compositions before. But you were from the same line of pencil makers, so I did not shy away from the technical clay-to-graphite ratio.

“Can I see?”