China's Son by Da Chen — Read

The school was without I-Fei now, and I had stopped going to the rehearsals. My classmates stared at me as though I were a dinosaur. Most of them hated me because I was arrogant, pompous, and too much of an artistic star. In elementary school, they would have gotten together and beat me up, but times had changed. I was the big guy, sitting in the backseat, angry, ignorant, a fallen star of yesterday, a hostile sight to avoid. They cold-shouldered me. The rest of the school carried on as if I weren't there. I watched them disdainfully and quietly. A few smaller guys in class still speculated that I had dated the most beautiful girl in the school's performing troupe. They winked at me when they saw her pass our classroom window. I said nothing and kept them guessing in order to maintain the last ounce of respect I commanded among the students.

Dia was one of the guys who warmed up to me after he saw the vacancy left behind by I-Fei. He was a thin fellow who seemed to jump rather than walk. He had monkey ears and his hair was always a messy lawn that seemed as if it hadn't been mown for ages. He lived in a poor village ten miles west of Yellow Stone and walked to school every morning at sunrise, returning home at about eight each night. He was one of those kids known around the school as walkers to distinguish them from the students who bunked at the school dorm. He was the only person I knew who made thicker and longer tobacco rolls than Yi. And he used old newspaper to roll them. Sometimes when he ran out of old newspaper he would run around school looking for any scrap paper he could find.