Fiction: Group 4
One afternoon, during a dour meal of Jinhua ham, potato French fries, and minestrone, he had received a
tactful Snap
from the contemptuous Cecile-suitor, whose name had come to his attention:
TIPPY TAM: “Hey there, Stephen, sorry about that thing…” (indecisive keyboard emoticon)
TIPPY TAM (SUCCEEDING SNAP): “Cecile told me you would be jealous.”
STEPHEN: “Nah, haha - now, why on earth would I be jealous?”
(A crowd of Stephen’s contemporaries are gathering around the table, each saying furiously: “Lemme see the
screen,” and pushing.)
TIPPY TAM: “I guess. Just thought twas’ time for her to move on and all.”
TIPPY TAM (SUCCEEDING SNAP): “I mean you’ve been gone like four months.”
STEPHEN: (His lips stirring unsurely): “Yeah you’re right. It only makes sense, hahaha.”
STEPHEN: (SUCCEEDING SNAP) “Didn’t even like her. Just Bants.” (ended with a pair of sunglasses
emoticons)
(He gets up emotionally from his chair, and leaves the dining hall.)
TIPPY TAM: “Haha yep, just banta. Thanks dude.”
(The dining hall door slams shut from the wind).
“HAHA, NOW WHY ON EARTH WOULD I BE JEALOUS?” Stephen repeated a while
later, lounging by the breezy open window in Jake Ma’s room, the wealth of early-afternoon sunshine
filtering through. Jake was reclined in a large chair reading, in the original Chinese, Jin Yong’s
The Duke of
Mount Deer
, borrowed digitally with the help of the librarian. Stephen was scrutinizing the lightness of his
response to the contemptuous boy-suitor who had subtly tried to apologise:
“Well, damn!” he said after a long while, tossing a bright mandarin peel right out the window.
“Damn!”
III
“BABES IN THE WOODS”
Gone were the thoughts of Cecile now, two days before Christmas eve. In these times, Badminton had
about it an aristocratic indolence -- like a spring day, and so it was only appropriate for the headmaster, as
inarticulate as he was in his much-too-long e-mails, to decree that there was to be a dinner-dance to
celebrate.
In the large ballroom, dark forms retreated into silver shadows and Stephen, yet to run into any of his
friends, nervously found his place card. He had now been at Badminton since the beginning of August,
having boarded, and he had found the settling-in pleasant, the people of some consequence and even
“admirable” in some academic faculty or some bright, resonating personal quality or the other. On that blue
evening, he had come, like many other upperclassmen, for Myra Chang, the most popular girl at school - in
any school in the East.
Myra Chang was a girl of the most curious mixtures of love and inwardly radiance. It was said her
eyes were like a butterfly’s wings, and her steadfast and bright personage, which had filled in it countless
lights that glowed and accepted all the vibrant walks of life -- served to balance this intense physical
magnetism.
Seven o’clock moved into nine. The last polished plate of lasagna had been removed by the dandy,
conscientious waiter, but Myra still couldn’t be found, and Stephen, and inevitably many other voracious
upperclassmen, were beginning to tap their wingtips on the marble floors irritably. The air turned languid
and thick and powdery. Disappointed boys began to pick up their evening coats.
Click Clak!
Aching heels
limped out of the ballroom doors. Stephen, suddenly alone, sat a dark, empty table. When he got bored, he
drifted out to the moonlit veranda.
