In the end I called Huang Munan after all—Annie and the others had no idea I made the call. It was during the second morning we spent in the third hotel. Annie was out buying the newspapers, Little Horse was asleep in his room, and the hotel manager was on the couch picking out the gook from between his athlete’s foot-infested toes when I did it. It was a Sunday and the weather was clear. I collected the loose change Annie had left on the dresser at the foot of the bed and dropped the coins into the public phone in the nearby alley. As I picked and tore at the utilities’ and moving companies’ advertisements pasted on the alley wall, I listened to Huang Munan’s report of what had happened that week at school.
When Huang Munan heard my voice he must have been scared out of his wits, and then he gleefully gave me a wolf howl—that was our basketball team’s cheer. He said that everybody in the world plus everybody in the universe was all out looking for me. I said I knew. He said it was really out of control, even the cops were out trying to find me. Once again I coolly told him I knew. He asked where I was, and I told him I was someplace. He said that’s good, he said he knew I wouldn’t tell him. I said then what the shit are you asking for? He said that he was asking shit from the beginning—what he meant was I was a piece of shit.
But Huang Munan still carefully told me all about what had happened that week at school.
On Tuesday during the flag ceremony, Mr. Hippo announced my “unfortunate incident” to the entire student body; he included my burning of the exam books and assaulting a teacher as being unforgivable behavior. I retorted to Huang Munan that I wasn’t the one who burned the exams. Huang Munan said, “Who cares what you say, anyway? Everybody was really happy for you.”
However, the really sticky part came late.…
The Department of Education sent a guy to school twice; one of the times my mother went along, and so did the police. And then the rumor started going around school that third-grade student Hou Shichun had been kidnapped. Someone even said that before long my picture would begin to appear on the glass doors at 7-Elevens. “Beside that, Weng Jiaping has allegedly already begun a new story, it’s called something like ‘The Final Battle of Big Head Monkey and the Hippo Monster.’ Moreover, the first chapter already appeared Thursday evening on the Internet!” I told Huang Munan to tell Weng Jiaping not to go overboard, otherwise I’d send someone to teach him a lesson, I’d fix him so good that it would hurt to even blink his eyes.
Huang Munan also told me something funny: when Mr. Hippo went to confiscate my belongings, he got the wrong seat and ended up taking all of Chen Guoqing’s stuff. By the time he figured out he got the wrong desk and went back to switch the stuff, Li Ahji had already hidden my Batman stickers, toy handcuffs, and shit-shaped crab shell. The funniest part was that when the principal’s office sent a notice for Chen Guoqing to pick up his stuff, he rushed down only to find that only one of his super, super-cool gym shoes was left.
“Do you need anything else out there?” That is what Huang asked me after he told me everything that had happened—including the incident of the piano lid slamming down on Mr. Jiao’s fingers.
“Nope!” I answered.
“So then what are you doing out there?”
“Nothing much, just hanging.”
“Damn! You’ve really become cool!”
“Not really.”
“Did you smoke any amphetamines?”
“Smoke your mother!”
“Did you see any gang leaders?”
“There’s been a couple here and there.”
“…”
“…”
“Mr. Jiao’s fingers got caught in the piano lid.”
“You just told me.”
“Oh, okay then. Well… well, I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Bye.”
As I hung up the phone, I had a strange feeling that something had changed. I figured that Huang and my other classmates must also have felt that I’d changed, even though, as I knew, from elementary school, when I’d begun to understand things, all the way up until today I’d barely changed at all. However, in the past couple of days something must have happened that made me miss them so, while at the same time leading me to feel that I would never again be as childish as they were. I truly had this kind of a feeling.
