Second Sister

by Chan Ho-Kei

  Nga-Yee wanted to argue—after all, she wasn’t a professional, of course she wouldn’t be as good at ferreting out information as N—but she swallowed the words. This wasn’t the time for an argument.

  N led the way to the rehearsal room. As they walked down an L-shaped corridor toward the stairs, they passed a number of students who glanced at the two strangers, then lost interest when they noticed the visitor passes dangling from their necks. Nga-Yee guessed that plenty of parents, reporters, or government officials must show up here.

  “How much pocket money did your sister get?” N asked as they started up the stairs.

  “Why do you need to know that?”

  “Never you mind, just answer the question.”

  “Three hundred a week.”

  “Including food and travel?”

  “Yes. And she ate breakfast at home.” Nga-Yee had wanted her little sister to learn thrift, so when she started secondary school, she and her mother had discussed her allowance. By their calculation, travel would cost fifteen dollars a day with a student card, and the remaining two hundred-plus was enough for her lunches and snacks. If she wanted weekend spending money, she’d have to save up during the week. Nga-Yee didn’t know if Siu-Man had ever asked their mother for more, but since their mother passed away, Siu-Man hadn’t taken a single cent extra from her.

  They reached the fourth floor. The rehearsal room door was open, revealing a dozen or so students in a space the size of three regular classrooms. There were about thirty rows of chairs, though the front ones had been pushed aside to clear the space. The kids were clustered there: three boys in the center, the others standing or sitting to one side, watching the trio.

  “‘Three thousand ducats, for three months. Let me see the rate.’”

  “‘Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?’”

  The name confused Nga-Yee for a moment, and she thought they were talking about Sherlock Holmes. A few lines later, she recognized it: The Merchant of Venice. She’d read it a few times, but this seemed a little different—probably abridged.

  “Cut! You’re being too choppy,” called out a girl—apparently the director. “Don’t just say the lines, be more natural! Five minutes break, everyone, then we’ll run it again.”

  N seized the opportunity to rap on the door, and a plump boy walked over. “Can I help you?”

  “Sorry to interrupt. We’re looking for Miranda Lai.” N’s friendly face was back.

  The boy turned and hollered, “Countess!” As he wandered away, a girl came toward them. Even in her school uniform and not wearing makeup, she was unmistakably the person from the selfie.

  “Hello there,” said N politely, taking a step closer. “You’re Miranda from three B, aren’t you?”

  “What if I am?”

  The Countess might look sweet, but nothing in her words or gestures suggested any respect for N and Nga-Yee—she probably addressed her acolytes the same way. Princess syndrome, Nga-Yee thought.

  “Could we have a word? This is Au Siu-Man’s sister,” N murmured, quietly enough that no one else could have heard.

  The Countess looked alarmed and took half a step back. As far as Nga-Yee was concerned, that slight movement was a clear sign of guilt.

  “What’s this about?” She seemed wary of N, and her tone remained hostile.

  “Um …” N nodded at the room, where several students were clearly eavesdropping. It seemed that strangers coming to see the Countess was quite an event.

  The girl led them to the far corner of the room, where a table stood littered with props, costumes, and scripts. Nga-Yee noticed quite a few copies of Merchant with ENOCH SECONDARY DRAMA SOCIETY stamped on their covers. The Countess glared at N impatiently, waiting for him to speak.

  “Sorry to bother you.” N put the condolence book down on the table to free his hands and got out his wallet, from which he extracted a couple of bills. “Siu-Man borrowed two hundred from you, didn’t she? We only found out after she passed that she’d been asking her classmates for loans. She didn’t get much pocket money, after all. And even though she’s gone, we’d still like to honor her debt.”

  “Huh? She did no such thing.”

  “Really? We found a notebook among her things with a record of who she owed. Some water got spilled on it and blurred some of the words, but I made out your name.”

  “I never lent her money.”

  “Your name is Miranda Lai?”

  “Yes, but I never lent Au Siu-Man a cent.”

  N clutched his wallet, looking perplexed. “Do any of your classmates’ names start with M?”

  “Um … yes, there’s Mindy Chang.”

  “Oh, maybe it’s her, then. Was she close to Siu-Man?”

  “I don’t know.” The Countess seemed in a hurry to end this conversation.

  “We’ll try Mindy, then. Siu-Man talked about you all the time, that’s why we were so certain.”

  “She talked about me?” The Countess was genuinely confused. Her eyes drifted from N to Nga-Yee and back.

  “Yes, she said there was a Drama Society girl in her class who was surely going to be a big star someday. Siu-Man could be socially awkward, and not everyone understood her … Oh, she did mention that she’d made you look bad, so I told her to apologize to you.”

  “Apologize?”

  “Didn’t she? She voted against Disneyland for the school outing when everyone wanted to go, and I think she said you were the one who suggested Disneyland in the first place. She actually would have liked that, but her big sister here is such a stingy—I mean, such a thrifty person, she’d never have paid for it. That’s the only reason Siu-Man said no.”

  It took everything Nga-Yee had not to defend herself, but she forced herself to nod in agreement.

  “Why didn’t she just say so? I could have lent her the money for the admission fee and whatnot.” The Countess’s voice went up a little, and her brow furrowed.

  “She’d already borrowed from quite a few classmates by then. She probably already owed so much, she didn’t dare mention it.”

  The Countess had a complicated expression on her face, part resentment and part remorse. Nga-Yee couldn’t tell if she was regretting not having gone to Disneyland or upset about causing Siu-Man’s death over such a trivial matter.

  “Well, if she didn’t say it, then I will,” said N. “Sorry.” His face was utterly sincere. “And that incident she got involved in must have caused all of you quite a bit of trouble. Sorry for that too.”

  “Oh that—That was fine, actually,” said the Countess, apparently unsure how to handle an adult bowing and scraping to her.

  “Siu-Man must have offended someone at school pretty badly to make them want to smear her that way,” said N. “You were in her class, Miranda. Can you think of anyone who’d do that?”

  The Countess’s face sank, and she crossed her arms. “I don’t know.”

  “You never discussed it with your classmates?”

  “Our teachers told us not to. If anyone was blabbing away to reporters or other strangers, I didn’t know about it.”

  The Countess was clearly saying as little as she could, which made Nga-Yee even more suspicious. She waited for N to prod her into revealing even more, but his next words took her completely by surprise.

  “Never mind, then. I don’t want to take up any more of your rehearsal. Sorry to disturb you.”

  He nodded goodbye. Nga-Yee had no idea what was going on, but she’d agreed not to interfere, so she stood there and smiled at the Countess, who gave them a polite little bow that Nga-Yee thought looked completely fake.

  “Oh, one more thing.” N turned abruptly after a couple of steps. “You were at Siu-Man’s funeral, weren’t you?”

  A tiny tremor went through the Countess, and she stared at N for a couple of seconds before mumbling, “No. You must have the wrong person.”

  “Ah, sorry about that. Bye now.”

  They left the rehearsal room and walked down
the open-air corridor to the other end of the fourth floor. N stopped by the stone balustrade and pulled out the white smartphone, as if he were checking for messages. Four stories below them was a volleyball court, on which a group of girls in athletic gear were in the middle of a game.

  “Did she do it?” asked Nga-Yee, having checked to make sure no one was around.

  “No idea.” He shrugged and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

  “No idea? Then why did you let her go so quickly? You should have asked more questions!”

  “No use.” He crossed his arms, imitating the Countess’s pose. “That girl’s so guarded, we wouldn’t have got past her defenses no matter what. And there were so many witnesses around, pestering her would probably have made things worse.”

  “What, then?”

  “We’ll have a chat with her another time, that’s all.”

  “If she’s being so careful, she might not even be willing to speak to us again.”

  “I promise you she will.” N waved an object that looked like the condolence book, but Nga-Yee realized it was a Merchant of Venice script. In one corner were the words “Miranda Lai.”

  “You stole her script?”

  “Nonsense. I’d put my things on the table, then I, uh, accidentally picked this up along with your sister’s condolence book. I’m going to very thoughtfully come back here another day, and I’ll insist on returning it to her in person.” So even as Miranda was leading them to the corner, N had spotted her script on the table and planned this little trick. He must have carried out the switch when he was fumbling with his wallet. It was a slim booklet, only twenty or thirty pages, and easily picked up.

  “Huh, she’s playing Portia,” N said, flicking through. “Seems quite serious. Look, she’s made lots of notes next to all her speeches. I guess that means she’ll be eager to get this back.”

  This sounded a little like extortion to Nga-Yee, but given the circumstances, it was probably the best thing to do—because she was now certain that the Countess was kidkit727.

  “She actually shivered when you said Siu-Man’s name, didn’t she? When you threw that last question at her as we were walking away, even I could tell she had something to hide.”

  “You’re right, but that can’t be considered definitive evidence.”

  “That’s not enough?”

  “All right, you tell me why and I’ll defend her. We’ll see how conclusive your evidence actually is.” N shut the script, stacked it with the other books, and looked up at her.

  “She tried not to answer our questions and was hostile.”

  “Any fourteen-year-old is going to be a bit grumpy when a couple of adults they’ve never seen before come snooping around asking this and that.”

  “When you mentioned Siu-Man apologizing to her, she got quite agitated. Surely that’s guilt?”

  “There are other things she might be guilty of.”

  “When you asked who would have smeared Siu-Man’s name, she ducked the question. That means she’s the culprit.”

  “The school told the kids not to talk to anyone about this. Of course she wanted to keep her mouth shut. She doesn’t know us. What if we told her teacher what she’d said? She’d be in big trouble. Enoch seems to enforce their rules quite strictly.”

  “Okay, fine, that all sounds plausible. But the biggest piece of evidence is that she lied about coming to the funeral parlor!” Nga-Yee flung this down as if it were her ace in the hole.

  “How do you know it’s not Kwok-Tai and Lily who’re lying?”

  Nga-Yee stared at him. After he’d explained about the karaoke lounge photo, she’d crossed Lily off her list of suspects. Surely no one who’d helped Siu-Man out of a bad situation could be so evil.

  “You still think she’s an accomplished actress?”

  “We don’t know,” said N. “But she might be misleading us on purpose, so we can’t trust what she says. Think about it. If you’d caused the death of a former friend, and that friend’s family came by to ask questions, wouldn’t you push the blame onto someone else as hard as you could? All the better if that person had already clashed with Siu-Man. Doesn’t that make sense?”

  “Well …” Nga-Yee couldn’t refute this.

  “That’s just a supposition, of course. I can’t prove or disprove that Lily or the Countess are kidkit727. All I’m saying is that it’s too early to draw any conclusions.”

  Nga-Yee thought about it and nodded. She’d jumped the gun. Ever since stepping on campus, she felt a strange pressure growing inside her.

  Was it too much for her to bear, being in the same space as the culprit?

  “Let’s go,” said N. “We need to have one last chat today.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Violet To, the other girl at the funeral. When you mentioned her name just now, Kwok-Tai seemed a little jumpy. Maybe something happened between her and your sister, and she might know more than she’s letting on.”

  “I suppose you looked into her too? Where is she now? Which club?”

  “Same as you.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s a librarian.”

  The Enoch library was on the fifth floor of the west wing, right above the rehearsal room, and it took up half the floor. As they walked past the chemistry labs that made up the other half, Nga-Yee glanced at the long workbenches with their sinks and Bunsen burners, thinking back to her own school days. Their library had also been next to the labs.

  As they walked into the library, Nga-Yee felt some of the tension drain from her. Here were wooden shelves with the marks of time on them, books neatly lined on the shelves and more on the trolley waiting to be shelved, all reassuringly familiar.

  Perhaps because most of the students were busy with their various clubs, the library looked deserted, no one sitting at the tables or computer terminals. The only people around were a scrawny boy flipping through Newton Science Magazine and a long-haired girl behind the counter, reading a novel. Nga-Yee recognized her: Violet To.

  “Hello there.” N nodded to Violet in greeting. She looked up and seemed startled to see two adults walking in, but when she spotted their visitor tags, she turned as nonchalant as everyone else.

  “Can I help you?” she asked politely. Her wispy voice, thick glasses, and slight hunchback made Nga-Yee suspect that she’d chosen the library because she wasn’t particularly athletic. Reinforcing this impression was the blue sweater she wore, even though the air-conditioning wasn’t particularly cold. Of course, Nga-Yee recalled, some of the more developed girls might cover up to avoid male attention. During her own adolescence Nga-Yee had too been busy helping her mother run the household and taking care of her little sister to worry what boys thought of her.

  “Violet To? From three B? We’re Au Siu-Man’s family. This is her big sister.”

  The girl seemed shaken, and it took her a few seconds to stammer, “Hel—Hello.”

  “We had to pick up some of Siu-Man’s things today and thought we’d take the opportunity to thank you for coming to the funeral.”

  “It’s okay.” Violet looked wary. “How did you know my name?”

  “Not many of Siu-Man’s schoolmates came. We described you to a couple of people, and they told us who you were right away.” N made this sound perfectly plausible. “Were you close to Siu-Man? She didn’t tell us much about school.”

  Nga-Yee wondered why he was taking such a different approach with her than he had with the Countess. He’d made Miranda believe that Siu-Man mentioned her all the time, and now he was doing the opposite with Violet. She turned it over in her mind: they’d known about Siu-Man’s quarrel with the Countess, so it made sense to use that as an opening gambit. By contrast, they had no idea what Violet’s relationship was with Siu-Man.

  “Not very close.” Violet shook her head. “She came to the library after class to do her homework, so we saw quite a lot of each other, but we hardly ever spoke. Still, when she passed away, I thought I should at
least say goodbye.”

  “Thank you for the thought,” said N, smiling warmly. “What was she like normally? Did she get on well with her classmates?”

  “Um, okay, I guess. She didn’t seem too badly affected by the—incident, but we may have avoided her a little because we didn’t know how to talk about it. Then the—um—the next thing happened, and our teachers became even stricter about not letting us discuss it. After that, people stayed away from Siu-Man more.”

  “Did she still come to the library often?”

  “I’m not sure, I’m not here every day … But whenever I was here, I did see her.” Violet pointed at one of the long tables. “That was her regular seat.”

  For a moment Nga-Yee imagined Siu-Man slumped over the table, scribbling in her homework book with a ballpoint pen. Her posture had always been bad, and she would often sit with her nose practically pressed against the page. Nga-Yee had tried her best to correct this bad habit, but as soon as Siu-Man was distracted, she would fall back into it.

  All kinds of memories tugged at Nga-Yee, and she could feel her heart churn. She was starting to realize how many moments she’d started to forget.

  “Excuse me, could I get my phone?”

  N and Nga-Yee turned to see the Newton magazine boy standing behind them.

  “Sure.” Violet took his student ID, scanned the bar code, and reached under the counter to hand him a phone. He thanked her and walked off, already swiping at the screen as he walked out the door.

  “Students have to leave their phones behind the counter?” asked N.

  “No. We provide a charging service.” She pointed at a wooden rack behind the counter, with phone-size slots in it and a tangle of cables beside it. Most of these plugged into a gray power bank with a dozen USB ports, with one black charger standing on its own. “They installed one of these in every classroom for our tablets and phones. Later on, we got them in the library and club rooms as well.”

  “Oh, that’s a good idea.” N studied the wooden rack, apparently admiring it. “And it’s linked to the student IDs so everyone gets the right phone back?”

  “Yes. We’re fully computerized here.”