3. Xinyue: My Ultra Annoying Life

Ever heard of dyslexia? I thought I had it, or maybe it was just the stress of coming to America.

In China, my English was the best in the class - but the words in that annoying book my mother gave had letters that changed every five seconds! Reading it just gave me a headache as I desperately tried to make sense of the shifting alphabets and swirling sentences. After two hours of trying, I had just managed to finish the first chapter. Even so, I found that I did not really understand what the whole thing meant. Something about a water fountain? A monster of some sort? A pen which suddenly became sword?'

WHAT?

I swallowed nervously, biting my fingernails. Was I losing my edge?

Of course, there was no way I would tell my mother. She would make a huge fuss about the whole thing, a fuss that I would never need. I probably would be dragged to the doctor or something.

Being the mother that she was, my mother completely forgot the fact that it was very difficult for Americans to pronounce my name correctly. However, I liked that fact.

"Why don't you tell everyone to call you Yue? Its still a cute name! And it means the moon!"

"But without the Xin, it won't have the family sound!"

Yeah, I was very picky about my name, even if it was not even my real name. On my passport, it has some random letters that looks greek to me, or it might just be the 'dyslexia' problem. Weird how I didn't have dyslexia until AFTER I came to America.

I guess I also had horrible memories.

...

"The Story of Xinyue's Childhood" - or not.

There once was a girl named Jinyi - my mom - who got a scholarship to go to school in America. The problem: 8 different schools accepted her - or so I was told. I always live in the shadow of my mother's perfect life. In the end she chose School of Visual Arts, in New York. (My mother's dream was to be an artist)

She went there 13 years ago and met my father, whom she would never talk to me about, and give birth to me. My mom won't tell me anything else about the childhood that I don't remember I had except for the fact that I spent my first two years in America - and then when we went back to China, she left me with my grandparents because she move around too much.
I tried so desperately hard to recall memories of my father, but as much as I tried, I could not seem to remember him. My mom always say that he was a great man, a kind man who would have loved to watch me grow up, but she also said that he could not do that. He had to leave. He had to go. It was not his fault. But leave to do what? My mother never gave me a straight answer for that. Every time I tried to ask her, she would get a faraway look in her eyes, and she would change the subject, telling me to go practice the violin, or do some homework.

Why didn't I just search my history online? Surely there's information about my father in the government's databases. The problem is, my family doesn't believe in technology. I guess the last few computers I used all ended up broken or blocked. In the computer labs in school, it was always my computer that got blocked or jammed, or simply hanged and did not didn't seem to like me, and the feeling was mutual.

Now, where was I? Oh, my father, he was definitely not Chinese, because I had eyes of - I don't know what color. Greenish grayish brownish eyes, that I never really understood. It was always something that my friends and teachers in school teased me about. The Chinese who was not really Chinese, the American who was not really American.

The one time I asked my grandmother about my father, she told me, "Your father is busy, but it is his fate to visit you one day."

Whatever that meant.

...

My school was weird.

Home room was called advisory, which lasted 5 min per day. Really, I thought. What was the point?

We recited the "Pledge of Allegiance", which made no sense to me whatsoever. I was an atheist. As far as I knew, my mother and grandparents were too. I did not believe in God. I wondered what would happen if I just stubbornly stood to one side and not said anything. I know my mom would expect better of me, but sometimes its stressful to always be a model for others.

I got new classmates with every class - as if just 20 isn't hard enough I had to get to know at least 150. Every single one of them asked my name. Right now I am VERY tired of 'What's your name?" repeated over and over again.

Everyone called me X-in yua, or some other weird sound they made up, which made it impossible to tell if they were calling me, or some other person.

The other people in the orchestra I joined had all played for at least a year long than I had, and I found it quite difficult to keep up with the pace of everything. I was used to being a soloist, and everything was do different when all of a sudden, we had to learn to play "as an ensemble". The piece wasn't hard, what's hard is to be together with everyone else and look up at the conductor.

There was Chinese foreign language class - I had to take it to learn English because the school didn't have an English Second Language teacher yet - and the teacher could not read Chinese. I thought teachers have to be at least 10 times better than their students!

I was also pretty surprised at the content of the lessons, too. China was quite a competitive place for students. To us, exams meant almost everything. We learnt things way beyond the syllabus, just so we could hope to have an edge in the examinations. The curriculum itself was rigorous too. Not only were tests and graded quizzes given every week, we also had projects and research papers to do as well. I was therefore surprised when I found that the 8th graders here were still doing pre-algebra. I learned that four years ago!

Well, perhaps I could just treat it as revision.

My problem with America? I can't understand what the students are saying to me unless they write it down and GRR WHY DO I HAVE DYSLEXIA FIVE YEARS AFTER I LEARNED ENGLISH?! Which made communication even harder. At least I won't mistake cat for sat now...

I was also told I had ADHD by the school councilor. Basically it meant that I could not sit still for long. Well, I guess that was true. I really could not sit still. Trying to remain in one position for long periods of time made my head swim and my limbs twitch, itching for movement.

Many nights, I also stayed awake, unable to sleep because of the whirls of totally random images and thought my hyperactive brain ran through all the time. I also vaguely remembered an occasion when someone in China had also diagnosed me with that, too. I wondered why my mother had never explained this to me.

Well, I was guessing that ADHD was also the reason I saw a person with one eye in the middle of his forehead.

At least I had made a friend. She is the first true friend I've ever had, even if I only know her for a week. In China, people either think I am too perfect to be a good friend or I am too good at everything to approach me.

I had not really got to know the other people in the same classes as me. Most of them gave me sidelong glances in class, as though wondering how much I was worth. I found it rather annoying, as though they were constantly judging me, scrutinizing my flaws. Well, I would show them what I could do.

Well, back to my friend now. Her name was Willow, and she was the only person who believed me when I saw the one-eyed man. When I told her about it, she looked at me with a grave expression and said, "yeah, I know," as if it were something much more serious. However, when I tried talking about it later, she denied she ever knew what I was talking about. She would avoid my gaze and develop sudden interests in the plants around her, then go "I... I don't think anybody has one eye in the middle of his head, Xinyue."

It never fooled me, though, being student president for six years taught me many things about how to read people.

Since I had much less homework here than in China, I took the time to read the strange book my mom had given me. Why was she suddenly interested in fantasy all of a sudden? My mother was usually the type of person who preferred world renowned classics. She never really liked these so called "unrealistic" stories about "people flying about randomly".

However, as I read on, I started to develop a feeling that I was somehow related to the story. Afterwards, when ever I opened the book, I have migraines, making reading impossible, so I shoved it into my closet and forgot about it.

The boring week passed, and I barely learned anything - just re-going through all the topics I learnt before, anyway. Well, on the bright side, at least I could understand what the people are saying to me now.

I started spending a lot of time with Willow because I had nothing much to do. She was quiet and shy, and got nervous often, but I thought she was nice. She had stringy brown hair, bright green eyes, and wear a green dress. However, she seemed to have a lot of homework, even when we were in all the same classes together. I wondered why she did not just finish all her homework in the free time at school, as I tried to do most of the time.

Another week passed. The book shoved deeper in my closet, but the quote from the first chapter kept on coming back to me... "If you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you." I was not all sure why, but this quote just made me as uneasy as I could be.

As if on cue, my English teacher had told us we were doing a unit on Greek and Latin for the next three weeks of school. Everyone cheered. I was not entirely impressed, however. What was so good about two worlds that were almost completely gone?

Of course, as usual, I had no idea how much I was wrong...

Well, one good thing about this unit? We were going to go to the National Hellenic Museum for a field trip the following week.

And for one reason or another, this just started to remind me of a particular part in the book I just read...

^.^

Does anyone know if its possible to put drawings on fan fiction?

Also, does anyone like the picture I put up?

PLEASE REVIEW I REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT OTHERS THINK!