by H. Y. Hanna
So when the quiet boy wearing the wrong clothes and carrying a shabby schoolbag arrived with entrance grades that shot him to No. 2 on the rankings table, he made enemies immediately. Chief amongst these was Eric Hu—a ruddy-faced boy, big for twelve years, with narrow eyes and hair cut short and spiky. Eric was used to being the first in class and the centre of awe and admiration. He didn’t take kindly to a new boy challenging his position, especially one who didn’t own a thread of designer clothing and whose parents were nothing more than a poor teacher and a nurse.
They cornered the new boy in class on his first day, during lunch when the teachers were busy in the staffroom and most of the kids were out in the playground. Leah was one of the few who had stayed behind, drawing quietly in a corner of the class. She looked up in surprise when a group of boys barged into the room and surrounded one of the desks in the other corner. A boy sat at the desk, an open lunchbox in front of him. It was the new boy, Leah realised. He had been so quiet, she hadn’t even known he was in the room with her.
“Hey look, it’s our new little Einstein…” Eric thrust himself into the new boy’s face and Leah heard jeering laughter from the other boys.
She saw the new boy’s shoulders stiffen, but he said nothing. His lack of reaction seemed to enrage Eric who started talking louder, jabbing the new boy on the shoulder with a fat finger as he did so.
“Your lunchbox’s looking a bit rusty, Einstein—maybe you should get a replacement the next time you go to the second-hand shop, eh? Looks like they did a pretty good job on your uniform,” Eric sniggered. “Oh, wait, I forgot—Daddy probably can’t afford a new lunchbox for you until he finishes paying off his cheap Toyota.”
They roared with laughter. The new boy packed up his lunchbox and stood up, trying to move towards the door, but the other boys crowded around the desk, not letting him leave.
“Let me pass.”
It was the first time Leah had heard him speak. His voice was soft, with a very faint burr of a Scottish accent, but there was a steely quality to it. He looked thin and wiry next to Eric’s bulk, but his face showed no fear.
“Trying to run away?” Eric said nastily. “You’ll have to give us the password if you want to go.”
“Password?” The new boy turned his head slowly and looked at Eric.
Leah saw the bigger boy take a step back, then he scowled and said, “Yeah, password. Since you’re such a genius. You’re gonna have to give me the answer to a question first.” Eric’s eyes roved around and he spied the heavy atlas sitting on the teacher’s desk. He grabbed it and shoved it in the new boy’s face. Leah caught her breath as the heavy spine came within inches of smashing his face, but the new boy didn’t even flinch.
“Go on, then,” said Eric. “What was the tallest mountain in the world before Everest was discovered?”
The new boy said nothing.
“Not so clever now, are we?” jeered Eric. “Wanna look in the atlas? Huh? Do ya? Do ya?” He started shoving the new boy again, this time using the heavy atlas as a sort of battering ram. The new boy stood his ground, although he reeled back more and more as the shoves got harder and harder. Leah curled her hands into fists. The other boys were all laughing now too and cheering Eric on.
“Hey, Eric, cut it out!” Leah didn’t even realise she had spoken until she saw all the boys turn their heads and look at her. She left her desk and walked over to them. “Stop that.”
Eric narrowed his eyes at her. “Stay out of this, Leah.”
She raised her chin. “Or what? You’ll push me around too? Go on, then. See if you dare.”
Eric gave a sickly smile, pulling his lips back to show his gums. “Oh, I’m not going to push you. I can think of much better things to do.” And before she could react, he lunged and grabbed her skirt, yanking it up to expose her panties. The other boys howled with glee.
Leah screamed and brought her hand up to slap him, but Eric laughed and shoved her roughly away. Then the new boy moved like lightning. There was a blur, a soft thump and a thwack. Leah gasped as the new boy whipped around and behind Eric, twisting the bigger boy’s arm and forcing him head-down onto the desk. At the same time, he flipped the atlas in mid-air and brought it smashing down on Eric’s hand. The hand that had yanked her skirt.
Eric let out a howl of pain. The other boys staggered backwards, their laughter abruptly cut off. Their gaze was riveted on the new boy who stared back at them with cold, hard eyes.
He leaned down to Eric, still keeping the bigger boy’s arm twisted behind him, and said softly, “Keep your hands to yourself.” He made a sharp movement and Eric let out another yelp. The new boy added, “Oh, and by the way, the highest mountain in the world before Everest was discovered was still Everest. It just hadn’t been discovered yet.”
Then he stood up and let Eric go. The bigger boy stumbled backwards, nursing his hand to his chest. The other boys looked at each other uncertainly, then they all began to edge towards the door. Eric hesitated then followed the others, his eyes smouldering. At the doorway, he gave them a last dirty look, then left.
There was silence in the classroom. Leah smoothed her skirt down, her cheeks flaming. Then she looked up and met the new boy’s eyes. They were green, she realised. An amazing, brilliant green.
“Thanks for speaking up for me,” he said. “I’m…I’m sorry about what happened to you.”
She smiled shyly. “It’s okay. Eric’s a creep, but he didn’t really hurt me.”
There was an awkward silence.
“What were you drawing?” he asked, gesturing towards her desk.
Leah’s eyes widened. “How did you know…? I didn’t think you even saw me at the back.”
He smiled slightly. “I saw you the minute I walked into class this morning.”
“Oh.” Leah felt herself blushing.
“I don’t know your name, though.”
“It’s Leah,” she said. “Leah Fisher. I don’t know yours either.”
“Toran James.”
“Toran?” She furrowed her brow. “That’s… that’s an unusual name.”
“It’s Gaelic. It means ‘chief’.”
She grinned. “I think it should have meant ‘lightning’. I couldn’t believe how fast you moved.”
He grinned back at her and his green eyes sparkled under the thatch of unruly dark hair. Leah felt her heart beat a little faster. Then the bell rang, signalling the end of the lunch hour. The babble of voices and the clatter of running footsteps filled the corridor outside, then kids started pouring into the classroom.
Leah felt a tug of regret as she turned away and made her way back to her own desk. But as the teacher shut the door and began handing out worksheets, her eyes slid across the classroom… to meet Toran’s brilliant green ones. Their gazes held for a second and Leah knew that she would never forget the way he looked at her...
***
Thirteen years ago…
Leah had expected her fourteenth birthday to come and go quietly. Now that they were in Eighth Grade, they had more homework, more exams, more extra courses—and class field trips were a rare luxury. She wondered whether Toran would still remember her birthday; they had hardly spoken to each other after that day in the principal’s office and hadn’t seen each other at all over the summer. Although they were in the same class again, he had barely acknowledged her since the first day of term and she stopped looking across the classroom in the hope that she might catch his eyes on her again.
So the rose was a complete surprise. One single, long-stemmed rose, its dark red petals still almost tightly closed in bud, lying diagonally across her desk as she came into school on the morning of her birthday. Leah saw it and her heart began thudding hard in her chest. She darted a look across the room in Toran’s direction. He had his head down, carefully making notes in a textbook, completely ignoring her.
“Oh my God, Leah, who gave you the rose?” Julia squealed as she arrived at the desk next to Leah’s.
“I don’t know,” murmured Leah, picking it up and fingering the delicate leaves and stem. She touched the rose to her lips. The petals were velvety soft and a sweet fragrance drifted upwards.
“You lucky cow—you always have the most romantic things happen to you,” said Julia.
Leah looked at her in surprise. Pretty, confident, and flirtatious, Julia was always surrounded by boys vying for her attention. Leah had never thought that she would have anything for her friend to envy.
“So who do you think it is?” asked Julia, coming closer and lowering her voice. “Jenny told me that Alan Wong likes you, you know. His family own half the office blocks in the city. And I’ve seen Philip Souter looking at you as well—you know his father is really well connected…” She gave a coy smile and threw a quick glance in Toran’s direction. “I can’t imagine that he would have the money for a rose like that?”
Leah tried to hide her surprise. She had never mentioned her feelings for Toran to anyone, not even Julia, and she had never told anyone what had really happened in the cable car last year. Somehow, it had felt like a private thing, to be kept between Toran and herself.
“Wh-what do you mean?” She cleared her throat. “I have no idea who it might be.”
Julia gave an impish smile. “I could ask each of the boys for you—force them to admit who left it.”
“No!” Leah gave her a stern look. “Don’t you dare.”
“Well, we can at least ask if anybody saw who left it,” said Julia.
So they did and nobody had seen anything. It was as if the rose had just magically appeared on her desk that morning. Leah shrank from the envious attention of the other girls and was relieved when they eventually dropped the subject, but inside, she continued to wonder. She knew who she desperately wished had left it.
She never found out and the term ended. Christmas came, New Year passed, and then the new term began. And now the thing topmost on most girls’ minds was Valentine’s Day. Officially, of course, it was against the school rules to celebrate it, but every year, there were squeals of delight on the morning of February the 14th as girls arrived in class to find a red or pink envelope tucked into their desk compartment.
Of course, most of the cards were anonymous—the ultimate prize was to receive one where the boy had boldly signed his name. This, said Julia knowledgeably to the girls clustered around her, was a sign that he chose you and wasn’t afraid to show it.
“What do you do if you get one of those?” asked one of the girls breathlessly.
“Well, the tradition is, you have to meet the boy… and kiss him,” said Julia with dramatic flourish as various girls gasped and squealed and clutched their chests.
Leah tried to ignore the lurch of her own heart as she listened to Julia. Her eyes strayed across the classroom to the dark-haired boy laughing with his friends in the other corner and she blushed as she wondered what it would be like to kiss Toran. It was something she had been thinking about more and more recently and the thought always filled her with both fear and excitement.
It might have seemed silly to get so worked up about a kiss—Leah knew that teens in places like the United States and Britain had probably done a lot more than kiss by the age of fourteen. But things were different in Asia. With the culture so focused on academic study and the strict school and home environments, kids grew up slower and remained innocent for longer. Leah knew that she wasn’t the only one in class who was fairly naïve—even Julia, for all her confidence and bravado, had yet to experience her first kiss.
Valentine’s Day arrived and Leah walked into class with hope forming a large lump in her throat. The memory of the rose waiting for her last time filled her with excited anticipation. She approached her desk, barely noticing that Julia was at her adjoining one already, and lifted the top with trembling fingers.
Nothing. The compartment inside was empty.
Leah hadn’t been prepared for the sharp disappointment that knifed into her stomach. Quickly, she dropped the lid, hoping that no one had noticed, and looked across at Julia. The Singaporean girl was sorting through five scarlet envelopes, tearing them open eagerly. Lurid red hearts and pink flowers were scattered across the fronts of the cards she pulled out. She opened the first and her face fell. She did this again with every card and each time, her face grew darker.
“What’s the matter?” asked Leah.
Julia tossed them aside. “Nobody signed their name.”
“It’s still amazing to get so many cards,” Leah said wistfully. Across the room, she could hear a few squeals as other girls arrived and found cards waiting for them in their desks. She felt the sharp stab of disappointment again.
Julia made a sound of frustration. “But I wanted to get one with a name. They’re all such cowards,” she said in disgust, pulling some textbooks out of her schoolbag and banging them on her desk.
Leah sat down next to Julia and pulled her own books out of her bag, trying not to think about the empty space inside her desk compartment. She had been silly to think that there might be anything from Toran. Given his remoteness since the beginning of the year, what had made her think that he might send her a card? That rose probably hadn’t even been from him, Leah realised bleakly.
The bell sounded, then the teacher entered the room. Julia leaned across and said teasingly, “Hey, don’t look so glum… I have a surprise for you.” She lifted the lid of her desk slightly, reached inside and pulled out a red envelope. Leah’s heart leapt as she saw her name written on the front.
“I nicked it so I could see your reaction,” laughed Julia. “You’re always such an ice queen, Leah, but you don’t fool me! You were gutted when you didn’t get anything. Admit it, you’re just as into boys as the rest of us.”
“Julia!” Leah said in exasperation, trying to grab the envelope.
Her friend laughed again and waved the envelope out of reach, then finally let Leah have it. Glancing at the teacher, Leah quickly lowered the envelope out of sight behind her desk and carefully slid the flap open.
“Oh.”
She pulled out a pale cream card with a photograph of two white swans on the front. The swans were facing each other, their beaks touching, and their long, curved necks forming the shape of a heart. After the bright, garish images on Julia’s cards, this delicate picture was simple and beautiful.
“Well, open it. Who’s it from?” demanded Julia in a loud whisper, peering over her shoulder.
Leah knew who it was from. She opened the card to see the interior covered with firm, bold writing. She recognised the words. It was a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats:
HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
Underneath the poem, he had written simply: “Toran”. Leah caught her breath, running her eyes over the poignant words again. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever read.
Julia gasped and hissed, “He signed it!”
Leah shut the card, then tucked it into the front of her textbook. Ignoring Julia’s heated whispers, she opened her notebook and began copying what the teacher was writing on the blackboard. Her mind, though, was churning as she tried to take in what the card was saying.
He had signed his name. Toran was telling everyone that he chose her.
Leah risked a glance across the classroom. Toran was facing forwards, intent on the teacher’s words. She was about to give up and look away when she saw his eyebrows twitch. Then he turned his head slightly and their eyes met.
It was as if the rest of the classroom had receded and it was just the two of them. Leah caught her breath, feeling her heart pounding in her ches
t, the blood rushing in her ears. Even when Toran finally turned back to face the front, Leah found it hard to concentrate. She barely heard what the teacher said in the rest of that class and sat through the next class in an agony of impatience. Finally the bell rang. Mid-morning break. Fifteen minutes.
Leah stood up from her desk, unsure what to do. Then she noticed that Toran had left the room already. Without realising what she was doing, she found her feet carrying her out of the class, down the corridors, and out towards the main school gates. Just inside the gates was a corner of lush, tropical garden, thick with palms and heliconias. It was really more of an ornamental feature for visiting parents and was rarely used by students. Leah wandered into the garden, hearing the sounds of shouting and talking and laughter fade away into the distance. Walking deeper into the dense foliage, she rounded the thick trunk of an old tembusu tree and found that the pathway ended at a little pond. Water lilies and ferns crowded the edge of the pond.
“Leah.”
She turned around. Toran was a few steps on the path behind her. They stood and looked at each other. Leah suddenly felt terribly shy. She hadn’t been alone with Toran since the cable car incident over a year ago and he had changed again.
At fifteen, he was easily one of the tallest boys in class now, with a lean, toned physique that hinted of the potential still to come. His dark hair was cut shorter, but as unruly as ever, and his face had lost all traces of boyish softness, the jaw firm, the nose strong, the brows dark and straight above brilliant green eyes. Leah had heard the other girls talk about Toran a lot, raving about how “gorgeous” he was, and she had to admit that they weren’t exaggerating. Toran James was growing up into a devastatingly attractive man.
And he’s come here for me, she realised with a rush of surprised delight. She took a step back, suddenly nervous about how she looked. She knew she lacked the curves that many of the other girls had developed in the past year and her long brown hair still hung unstyled in a tumble of waves down her back. She had learnt how to apply make-up, though, and she wished now that she had decided to break the school rules that morning and highlighted her face with some subtle colour.
