Wall called fractions
The days in junior high school were like a green train that suddenly accelerated. The scenery outside the window began to blur, leaving only the sound of the wind whistling past my ears.
The wind was mixed with chalk dust, test paper ink and a smell called "competition".
There is a wall that is harder to cross than the unspoken line between men and women that we all understood when we were children.
It is made of numbers and is called "scores".
It is silent, but it can divide the partners who have been running side by side into the front and back echelons.
The junior high school teaching building is three stories higher than the primary school building.
On the honor roll at the corner of the stairs, the densely packed names were marked with levels in red pen, like the different prices of pork in the vegetable market, clearly marked with prices.
On the day when the monthly exam report cards came out, the ten minutes between classes suddenly became long and unbearable.
Lulu's name was at the top of the list, followed closely by Jiang Yuanzhou.
They are like fish that were born to live within this set of rules, swimming easily in the sea of questions.
But I, like a clumsy landlubber, choked in the vortex of quadratic function.
On the way home from school, we still walked together, but the topic changed.
Lulu and Jiang Yuanzhou would naturally discuss several solutions to geometry problems. I listened but couldn't get a word in.
A subtle feeling of being abandoned arose in my heart.
Mom flipped through my test paper and sighed, "Nian Nian, you have to work harder."
I looked down at my math test paper covered with red crosses, and the score was like a blow to my heart.
"Look at Xia Xia!" Her opening sentence structure remained the same every time, but the content had changed from "the skirt is clean" to "the math score."
"Niannian, math is actually not that difficult. Let me teach you?" Lulu suggested kindly, her eyes sincere behind the glasses.
Oh, I forgot to mention that.
Lulu started wearing glasses after entering junior high school, but her eyes behind the lenses became more calm and determined.
But her sincerity, set against the backdrop of that high wall called "score", actually made me feel a little embarrassed.
"Okay, thank you!"
I suddenly began to thank him politely, with a tone so distant that it was unfamiliar to me.
When Aunt Fang came to pick up Ye Zhixia, she still had a decent smile on her face.
She patted Lulu's shoulder more and more affectionately, "Lulu, you got full marks in math again this time, right?"
When his eyes turned to me, the smile faded a little, "Where's Nian Nian? How did you do on the exam?"
At that moment, an unfamiliar discomfort welled up in my heart.
Am I sensitive?
It feels like you thought everyone was standing on the same level ground, and suddenly someone was lifted up by invisible hands, rising higher and higher.
I stood there, looking up, my neck feeling a little sore.
For the first time, the friendship that had once protected the "holy stone" together in the sand pit seemed so... insignificant in front of the numbers outlined in red pen.
Among us, Lu Xingye was probably the only one who was completely unaware of this.
He was still immersed in the studio, with paint staining the cuffs of his school uniform.
"You failed again?"
He glanced at my paper and rarely refrained from mocking me. "Do you want me to give you extra lessons?"
I rolled my eyes at him and said, "You're lucky you passed the exam."
At that time, I felt like I was stuck in a middle ground.
Looking forward, I am no longer the innocent child who could cry for a Barbie doll or giggle for a camphor fruit.
Looking back, I can’t be like Lulu and the others, who used good scores and clear aspirations to pave a seemingly bright and smooth road for themselves.
I was like a larva that had shed its childish shell but had not yet grown hard wings. I was wriggling clumsily in the dim corridor, feeling both longing for and fear of what lay ahead.
————
At first, my mother still adhered to the concept of "happy education" and comforted me to "just do my best."
But after several parent-teacher conferences, her brows furrowed more and more as she faced the teacher's subtle reminders and the looks from other parents when they talked about cram schools.
I have seen her sighing over my test papers late at night, and I have also heard her and my dad arguing in low voices about whether "it's time to take action."
Later she seemed to make some kind of resolution.
She pulled me into the math teacher's house.
She was carrying a beautifully packaged fruit basket and health supplements, and saying things like "I'm sorry for taking care of you, my child."
The teacher pushed his glasses and his smile became much kinder.
"Lin Nian is a smart kid, but he's not practical enough."
After we left the teacher's house, my mother pulled me aside and said, "Nian Nian, let's not compare ourselves with others, but with ourselves. Let's make ten times better progress next time, okay?"
My mother's fingers were a little cold, and that coldness spread from the way she held my hand all the way to my heart.
It’s hard to describe the feeling, it feels like I’m carrying something even heavier.
I don’t know if it’s a psychological effect, but the teacher asked me more questions in class.
The extra "attention" I received was like a spotlight shining on me, and I dared not relax.
Textbooks, test papers, reference books...
They fill my desk and also take up my time looking at the camphor tree outside the window.
Lulu and Jiang Yuanzhou began to appear frequently on the lists of various "training classes" and "Olympiad classes".
I was not spared and was forced by my mother to attend cram schools every weekend.
I was stuck in the cracks, like a top, being whipped and spinning, with no idea of the direction.
This state of running around lasted for almost a semester.
Until I lay down on the desk piled with exercise books, tears fell without warning, hitting the spread-out math problems, and the ink spread out into a blurry gray shadow.
When my mother came to tell me to rest, she saw the lingering tears on my face and a blank piece of draft paper in front of me.
She looked at it for a long time, then sighed, letting go of something that had been tense.
She touched my head and said, "Forget it, Nian Nian, let's not go."
She seemed to have finally accepted a fact.
Her daughter may be just an ordinary person among the countless people after all.
She took the initiative to rescue me from the "prison" filled with chalk dust and anxiety.
She looked at me and said, "Let's go at our own pace and go as far as we can."
When I finally stopped obsessing over measuring myself by others' speed, I was able to stumble and catch up with the team.
The numbers on the report card still fluctuate, but most of the time, it can finally stabilize in the middle, and occasionally perform exceptionally well and even squeeze into the top ten.
I am satisfied with this result.
Most importantly, I learned to appreciate their brilliance and accept my own warmth.
I accept that my mathematical talent is limited, but this does not prevent me from still finding comfort in words and feeling warmth in friendship.
The score wall that once made me feel so stressed has unknowingly become a few points lower.
On weekends, we stayed in Aunt Shen’s studio.
Lu Xingye was pondering over an unfinished painting, while Lulu and Jiang Yuanzhou were discussing physics problems in the training class with great enthusiasm.
I leaned against the window, flipping through the newly bought "Youth Literature and Art", and the warm sunlight shone on the pages.
Jiang Yuanzhou gave me half of the strange-tasting peanuts that he thought were delicious.
Looking at them, the corners of my heart that had been wrinkled by confusion were stretched out and smoothed by the wind.
The wall is still there, but it no longer fully defines who we are, nor does it block the path we once walked together.
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