Chapter 60: Enlightened
Zhao Meimei didn’t succeed in occupying Xu Xu’s prime desk spot, but she wasn’t angry. She was mainly over the moon with Xu Xu’s compliments and didn’t know what to say.
She turned her head and squeezed her stickers before returning to her seat, eventually pasting them over her schedule, covering up an old picture.
What Xu Xu said was true. Others might not have noticed Zhao Meimei’s changes, but since starting fifth grade, Zhao Meimei’s eyebrows and eyes had become more defined, and her whole appearance began to change significantly. Even Xu Xu’s mom, on rare occasions when she saw Zhao Meimei, would compliment how Meimei was becoming prettier as she grew.
By sixth grade, the overall vibe of the class started to change. The silly girls and mischievous boys who used to be wild were starting to pay attention to their image, and discussions slowly turned to what kind of clothes were in style and how to style their hair.
Boys and girls would secretly talk about who in the class was good-looking and who was handsome.
Zhao Meimei was one of the later bloomers. Her happiest thing every day now was her nightly, unbreakable phone call routine with her Brother Yangyang.
Zhao Meimei could hold the phone and chat with Shi Yang for half an hour, giving a play-by-play report of everything she’d done from morning till night, and then she’d make sure to ask about Shi Yang’s recent activities, mainly focusing on whether there were any pretty sisters eyeing him and what girls he thought were particularly pretty.
From a young age, Zhao Meimei had developed a sense of crisis, always worried that her Brother Yangyang would suddenly bring home a girlfriend, and they’d go from siblings to strangers.
Whenever Shi Yang received Zhao Meimei’s calls, he usually put the phone on speaker and continued doing whatever he was doing. He only needed to listen and occasionally respond, so much that Shi Yang’s dorm mates knew he had a sister who stuck to him like glue, and the two had a particularly close relationship.
During the second semester of sixth grade, it suddenly became trendy from somewhere; everyone started keeping a notebook for memories. You could buy them at the stationery stores outside the school, and they contained printed pages with various formatted sections for people to fill out. You’d pass them around for others to write in.