The Silent Girl (Chapter 3)

*Disclaimer*: This is a work of fiction. Some events may be based on real life, but some events are made up. For translations of the Chinese, see the Translation section at the very end.

    Mrs. Lat is a very nice person. She has long red hair and kind green eyes. She sometimes gives us snacks while we work on projects. Today, we're going to finish our sketches of our grandparents. All of the boys drew their grandpa and all the girls drew their grandma. 

    I am really good at drawing. Art is my favorite subject. My sketch of Nai Nai¹ was very detailed. Clara on the other hand, was horrible at drawing. Her drawing was very funny.

    

    Next, we had PE. PE was okay. I honestly really like basketball, I hate soccer. Our school has a big field and our  PE teacher brought us to the field to play soccer twice a week.

    Then, we had math. Math was awful. I am so bad at it. On the other hand, Clara is very good at math. She could do her times tables in first grade!!!

    After math, we had a quick break for lunch. For lunch, Nai Nai usually packs us whatever we had last night. In this case, we got Cao Fan². She also packs us some kind of fruit. We usually get grapes or apples, but sometimes we get blueberries, strawberries, star fruit, or watermelon. We also had a scrambled or  hard boiled egg. Ye Ye³ made these glass jars that Nai Nai uses for milk bottle. She fills them up with milk from our cow and that is the last thing we get in our meal. When we were eating lunch, we have to watch this weird video for science. The video is usually about weather or something like that. 

    Finally, there is English class. I continued to write about trees. When I finished, my English teacher said that I could do some free writing. I decided to try to write my own little story. This is how it started,

"Once upon a time, there lived a girl who works very hard for her stepmother, but could not please her. She worked late into the night, but  it made no difference. It wasn't because her stepmother was mean or anything. It was because when she was a baby, her mother had displeased a fairy. The fairy, Laya, had gotten so angry that she cursed the girl, so she would never be able to please anyone. Her mother had been so heartbroken that she died. Her father had been a very nice person before mother died, but when she died he told everyone that I had disgraced the family. Her father married Lily, my mother's twin sister. Lily was just like her mother and she treated her just like her other two daughters. Her mother's name had also been Lily. Her name should have been Lily, but her father decided that she had disgraced him too much. He named her Disgrace instead."

    Class ended, so as always, I waited for the Lee family bus and when it came, I went to the very back and sat next to Clara. 

    "Isabella, I just got a text message from Nai Nai. It says that we can go to the science meeting!" Clara said. I nodded.

    The science meeting was actually just a group of kids watching science videos while eating food. We mostly just came for all of the yummy food. It's also free and Bing, one of Clara's friends goes there too. My favorite food that was there, is the cream puffs. They were so creamy and yummy. When the science meeting was over, Clara's friend Bing's mother dropped Clara and me at home. 

    We went to our room and Clara asked," What are you going to give Ava for her birthday?" I smiled, walked over to the closet and opened it. Clara gasped. "It's so cute.", she said. I knew that Ava loved to eat oranges, so I had grown a little orange tree for Ava's birthday present. I had kept it a secret for a long time!!!

Translations:

¹ Grandma

² Chinese Fried Rice

³ Grandpa

To be continued... 

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