"For the first few days of his life, Wilbur was allowed to live in a box near the stove in the kitchen. Then, when Mrs Arable complained..."

  Vicente watched his classmate read another paragraph of the story, standing confidently at her seat and her book held nice and high. At the front of the classroom, his English teacher nodded approvingly at her performance. Then, a few lines later, his teacher gestured for the student behind her to start reading. He stared down at his copy of Charlotte's Web and counted down until he found the paragraph he'd have to read. The vocabulary was easy enough, but still, he repeated the sentences over and over in his head, muttering quietly to himself.

  The boy in front of him sat down. Vicente stood up, bracing his hands on his desk and stared down at his book. He cleared his throat and began. "Fern peered through — "

  "Speak up," someone at the back of the class shouted. The teacher frowned at them, whoever they were.

  Taking a deep breath, he started over. "Fern peered through the door. Wilbur was poking the straw with his — his snout." Luckily, nobody corrected him — he'd worried that he was pronouncing "snout" wrong. "In a short time he had dug a tunnel in the straw."

  It was becoming easier to read the paragraph, easier than he'd thought it would be. He looked to the next page and continued, "he crawled into the tunnel and disappeared from sight, c-completely covered with straw." He squinted at the sentence that followed. It had a big word in it, one he wasn't sure how to pronounce. "Fern was... was encanted?"

  "Enchanted," his teacher corrected.

  "E-Enchanted." His face burned. "It re-relived — "

  "Relieved," the teacher corrected again. They smiled consolingly, though it didn't help much. "Take your time."

  "It relieved her mind to know... know that her baby would sleep covered up, and would stay warm." His heart was racing, and he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. Then Vicente sat down, staring at his feet listlessly. It felt like the entire class was staring at him, judging his every move and word.

  Behind him, his classmate stood up and started reading. His heart pounded in his ears, he felt freezing despite the lukewarm autumn sunlight shining in through the classroom windows. Adrenaline was rushing through him even after the bell rang and signalled the end of class.

  The teacher left, and the classroom instantly flooded with noise. For a moment, the sight of everyone packing their bags confused him until his watch beeped, lighting up slightly with the numbers 3:00 p.m. He reached for his bag and dropped in his pencil-case and his folder, filled with the few worksheets he had to complete. His new school had far less homework, one of the nicer changes about it.

  Outside their schoolhouse, Yao was waiting for them. He smiled at him, asking, "how was your day?"

  Before his humiliating performance in English class, there had been French class, when he'd barely said a word. And before that, there had been science class, where he'd struggled to memorise the complicated new English terms. He could relay all that to Yao, but why would his brother want to listen to him complain about his day? Vicente settled on replying, "it was fine."

  "That's good to hear." Yao smiled, switching to sling his bag over his other shoulder. "Ah, I got lots of homework today. My teachers say that next year when I go on to high school, things will be even more stressful." His Northern accent, still intact nine years after leaving Beijing, felt almost soothing. "But the workload still isn't as big as it was back in Taipei."

  He continued talking about high school, and the electives he might not be able to apply for, and exams, until he began tuning out. It was then that Ling and Leon trooped out onto the schoolyard. Vicente opened his mouth to greet them, then realised with horror that Ling was walking with a slight limp and was clinging to Leon's arm for support. Her knees were scraped, the red wounds visible even behind patches of pink bandages.

  Yao was at her side in seconds, kneeling down to look at the injury. "Aiyah! Yue Ling, what happened? Did you fall over?"

  Ling pouted, kicking out when Yao tried to touch her knees. "Someone pushed me."

  The thought that someone could hurt his sweet little sister sent anger pulsing through him. "Who pushed you?" He demanded.

  "Don't remember." Ling tried to keep walking. "But it doesn't hurt. When I fell, I didn't cry."

  "Not even a little?"

  "No!" Ling stared up at him as though the very notion of tearing up was absolutely ridiculous. "I really didn't." She nudged Leon. "Tell Jia Lin I didn't cry."

  Leon started at being mentioned. "She didn't cry," he repeated robotically.

  It wasn't like he'd know whether it was true or not. Vicente took Ling's bag from her and carried it next to his own, trying not to let the extra weight slow him down. "That was very brave of you."

  She puffed out her chest in pride, beaming as she walked just a little faster and made Leon stumble in an attempt to catch up.

  In front of their apartment, Yao fumbled for his keys again and held the door for them. Once he entered, he went to his room and pulled out his homework folder and pencil case. He made quick work of his worksheets, then pushed them aside and looked at his planner — the same one he'd had since third grade.

  He had no quizzes or tests the next week, but it wasn't like he'd be spending the weekend celebrating because of it. Even after two weeks of school, Vicente still didn't know all his classmates' names, let alone befriend them. But he shook those thoughts out of his head and looked at his planner again.

  According to the Chinese characters below the dates, it was the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. A long-ago lesson during social studies class in Taipei suddenly flashed through his mind, reminding him that that date indicated the Mid-Autumn Festival.

  His first celebration of the Festival had been in Macau when Yao had walked him down to the car park of their apartment complex. He had lit up a small candle and placed it inside a paper lantern, then gave it to Vicente to hold. They'd walked all around the car park, staring out the street at the lights of the city, and only stopped when the candle inside the lantern had burned out.

  In Hong Kong, their parents had saved up to buy a tin of mooncakes. he had split a mooncake with Yao, and even though he'd only had half of the greasy, rich pastry, it'd been enough to make him full for the entire night. The day after the Mid-Autumn Festival, when school was off, he and Yao had stayed home and eaten the leftover mooncakes, stuffing themselves with lotus paste-filled delights until they were close to bursting.

  And after Ling was born, when he was in his second year of primary school and she was four, their parents had taken the four of them to the park with their starfruit-shaped lanterns. They'd chased each other around the lawn, lanterns swinging from their sticks while their parents barbecued chicken wings and fishballs, waving smoke away every time it billowed up. It had all been fun and games until Leon's lantern somehow caught fire.

  Then it'd been a matter of figuring out just how to extinguish the flames before they spread to the grass and, in his young, overactive imagination, burn the whole park down. He'd grabbed a bottle of soda and poured it all over the burning lantern (most of it had ended up on Leon's hands). The rest of the night had been spent cleaning the soda out of their shoes and hair.

  But in Arlingdale, where probably nobody knew about the Festival, Vicente could only keep his dreams of one day running around with a lantern and eating mooncakes to himself. That was all in the past, after all.

  He was snapped out of his memories when Leon, who'd somehow appeared next to him, suddenly tapped him on the shoulder. Vicente jumped a little, and he was harshly brought back to reality. Outside his bedroom, he could hear shouting — his parents were back, and they must've been having another argument.

  "Brother," he asked, "what is 'lei fuun'?"

  "What?" Vicente hadn't heard that term in years. "Where did you hear it from?"

  "I heard Father use the term just now. What does it mean?"

  He flipped to the last page of his planner and wrote down the Chinese characters of it: 離婚. "The English word for it is 'divorce'." The word "divorce" had been in one of his vocabulary lists in English class. "It means that two people will not be married any more."

  Leon's brow furrowed. "So if Mother and Father divorce, will they not be our parents?"

  He almost tore the page out of his planner in surprise. "They won't divorce."

  "You didn't answer my question," Leon complained.

  It took Vicente a moment to think of an answer. "They'll be our parents no matter what happens. But I'm sure that they won't go through with an actual divorce."

  "But Father said he wanted to."

  This time he did tear the page off. "He actually said that?"

  "He did."

  He could hardly believe his ears. His parents had argued since he'd been tiny. They had never gone a week without one conflict, and divorce was probably the only way the marriage was going to result in, but the mere thought that it could all end was... strange, to say the least.

  "Brother?" Leon piped up again. "Are Mother and Father divorcing because of us?"

  "I don't know, Ka Long." Vicente took one more look at the two Chinese characters on his tore planner page and crumpled the piece of paper up. "I really don't."