Chapter 11

It was nearly six by the time Li Lan got back to the flat, looking thoroughly worn out. Every teacher who'd taught her that day had held her up as the example, with the result that at the end of afternoon lessons the classmates who knew her formed a ring around her to ask how she'd done it, while the ones who didn't affected disinterest nearby with their ears wide open for her "experience".

Getting clear of them took the better part of an hour, and Li Lan was fairly sure that if it hadn't been late and time to eat, that enthusiastic circle would not have broken up so easily.

She had barely got through the door before Li Cheng and Zhao Xinxin, hearing it, came straight out of their rooms — so the first thing Li Lan saw on looking up was a pair of expressions she had been looking at all afternoon.

Li Lan said nothing.

Li Cheng didn't quite know how to start. The two of them bickered as a matter of course, and Li Lan's marks had never been better than hers, so for once she couldn't find the words. Zhao Xinxin, beside her, managed it — all curiosity and amazement. "Li Lan, you came first in the whole school!"

"Mm."

"How did you revise? Our teacher was talking about you in class today." Zhao Xinxin dragged her over to the sofa.

Li Cheng nodded, which suggested she'd had much the same experience.

"I revised with you two, didn't I. Other people don't know how I study, but you do — I suppose it just clicked." Li Lan produced the line she'd been using on her classmates all afternoon.

Zhao Xinxin and Li Cheng nodded thoughtfully.

It was true enough. The three of them lived together, ate together and were never out of each other's sight, so they knew exactly how she worked.

"It's brilliant, though. You're the best of the three of us now. You really are a genius — you stop reading novels for five minutes and your marks go up," said Zhao Xinxin, envious.

Genius was a nickname Li Lan had given herself in a self-important phase a while back, after watching Slam Dunk. Everyone around her knew it, which is why Zhao Xinxin used it.

"Hmph. If you'd stopped reading them sooner your marks might have got better sooner." Li Cheng, in the end, went with the usual approach. So she'd come first in the school. She was still her sister. Nothing to get awkward about.

"Exactly. If I'd listened to Chengcheng and left the novels alone, it might have clicked ages ago," Li Lan agreed, nodding.

Not being bickered with in the usual way left Li Cheng faintly embarrassed. "Let's go down and ring Mum and Dad. They'll be pleased if they know you came first in the school."

"All right."

"Xinxin, are you coming?" Li Lan turned to ask.

"I've already rung. You two go — Li Cheng wanted to ring earlier but she was waiting for you," said Zhao Xinxin, shaking her head.

"Right, we'll go down then."

---

Beiguan.

Chen Ying was doing the accounts when her phone rang, and answered without looking up.

"Hello? Chengcheng."

Li Cheng said a few things, and her mother's calm expression transformed. "Really? Well, aren't my girls something. One in the school's top fifty and one first in the whole school."

"Very good. My eldest really is a genius. You keep that up."

"You two have something nice to eat at the weekend as a reward."

"Are you short of money? Shall I get your father to bring a few hundred over? Don't go without."

Delight first, and then the careful instructions.

"Your father's busy in the back, I'll call him out. Hang on."

And then, at full volume across the yard, "Li Quan. Come out here a minute."

"Coming."

Li Quan, sorting things in the back, assumed there was a big load coming in, answered, and headed for the gate.

Finding no pedlar there, he was puzzled. "What do you want me for?"

Chen Ying held out the hand with the phone in it. "Your daughter."

He took it. "I'm in the middle of something. She rang you, that's enough — what do you need me for?" He said it, but a smile had got onto his face without his noticing.

"Hello? Chengcheng?"

Like his wife a moment earlier, the smile widened at what came down the line. "Good. Good."

"This is only a mock, mind. You two keep it up and don't get above yourselves."

He'd thought for a long while and produced that, and then, apparently realising he'd come out rather stiff, added quickly, "Are you short of money? Shall I bring you some more over?"

Married couples. Word for word.

When the call ended the two of them looked at each other and laughed, and went back to work — moving, somehow, with rather more spring in them.

---

By the time the sisters got back upstairs Zhao Xinxin was already studying in her room. Li Lan went to the sofa and took several thick notebooks out of her bag.

She got up and stopped Li Cheng, who was heading off to work. "Li Cheng. Come here, I've got something for you."

Li Cheng came over and saw the notebooks. "What are these?"

"Revision notes." Li Lan pushed them into her arms.

"Where did you get them?" Li Cheng had assumed they were bought, then opened one and found handwriting. "You wrote these?"

"Mm. I looked at some of your papers, remember — I sorted out what was in them and added a few things. Have a look later."

Li Cheng opened her mouth to say something, then thought about her sister's result, changed direction, and swallowed whatever argument had been coming. "All right. I'll read them."

She turned to go, and at the door looked back, awkwardly. "You didn't have to do all that, you know. I've got my own mistakes book. It's a waste of your time." It trailed off quieter and quieter.

"Heh. Touched, aren't you. It didn't take long anyway, it counted as another pass through it for me," said Li Lan cheerfully.

"Touched my foot. Right, I'm revising." Li Cheng went into their bedroom, leaving her sister alone in the living room.

Having delivered Zhao Xinxin's set as well, Li Lan sat back down and started writing and sketching again. The PE exam was behind them and there was under two months left. Time for a new plan.

So the next morning Li Cheng and Zhao Xinxin got up to find a freshly made sheet on the wall: Exam Revision Plan — Go Go Go.

Both of them stared at it.

What kind of name was that?

The night before, having looked properly at the notebooks, they'd found them a great deal more use than the study guides or their own mistakes books. Every point in them was something they habitually got wrong, graded by how well they'd grasped it, with related questions attached.

One pass through and each of them could see exactly where she was weak, instead of blindly copying out wrong answers as before. With those notebooks, both had the feeling that another twenty or thirty marks might not be a problem after all.

Neither knew how Li Lan had done it, but it clearly hadn't been quick — and even Li Cheng, who bickered with her as a matter of habit, said "thank you" before going to sleep, which was unheard of.

Just as well it was dark. Li Lan didn't see her sister's embarrassed face, and Li Cheng didn't see Li Lan give an involuntary shudder at being thanked, and then quietly rub the gooseflesh off her arm.

---

The time that followed went in an unbroken cycle of exams and going over papers. With Li Lan's notes to work from, several mocks later Li Cheng's and Zhao Xinxin's marks had indeed climbed a good deal — but the most striking figure was still Li Lan's.

If anyone had doubted the first mock, the ones that followed settled it: easy papers or hard, Li Lan held first place at Minhe No. 1 with a near-perfect total and no argument possible. Even on the difficult paper used for the joint exam with other schools, she came two marks short of full and finished nearly twenty ahead of second in the county.

At the same time, the story of a girl who had gone from outside the school's top hundred to first in the school — and then first in the county — in a single term travelled out of Minhe No. 1 to other schools, and became material for other teachers' pep talks.

And at last, two weeks after the university exams that had the whole country's attention and were still some way off for Li Lan, the twenty-fifth of June arrived, and her year sat their own.