i.
We meet mathematically, in the chaotic battlefield of a classroom, through an especially poorly phrased math question that obliges me to ask for your assistance. Although I only sit one table away from you, I have never ventured to speak to you. Thus, of you I know only this:

1. You’re always alone.

2. Your life goal is to be a quantum astrophysicist, whatever that is.

3. You have an affinity with all things numerical.
Your white tapered fingers fly across the page, subtracting equation three from equation four to obtain x. There’s some attempt at a hushed explanation, but the violent clicking of fans and hailstorm of paper planes drown it. Having obtained the answer, I gather my worksheets and am about to leave when suddenly you speak.

“I love x.”

“Um, all right.”

“It’s the solution to every unknown in the world. Isn’t that brilliant?”

“Yeah … well, I gotta go.”

My brown eyes part with your red-rimmed opium-colored ones. Bye

ii. The classroom hums with the calm monsoon winds and the slight ruffling of worksheets piled atop penciled wooden desktops. From the corner of my eye, I can see you staring at me intently. I wriggle uncomfortably in my seat, as if trying to deflect it somewhere else. There’s no escaping it, it turns out.

“Do you need anything?”

“Well, if you are free ….”

“What.”

“We could talk.”

iii. The conversation is a river: a few trickling words, then a flood of them. As the flow increases, you tell me about your parents, who are teetering on the edge of divorce. Their nightly quarrels have been growing worse, and sometimes your father will vanish for days on end. Split between your mother’s deep affections and your father’s loving brusqueness, the tension is ripping you apart.

You’re alone with only the pallid counselor, who dishes out slices of cold advice sanctimoniously, for help. For once I have nothing to offer but time.

“You can call me.” I smile guiltily.

And that began our endless phone conversations about mathematics and life. To be completely honest, I did not care much for you and your woes at first. However, after numerous heartfelt phone calls, what was at first selfish curiosity melted into abashed care.

And after a while, I learned to anticipate your calls.
Then they stopped.

iv. If we were celestial gifts, you would be the heavens and I would be the earth. Because we are starkly different in a beautiful way.

You are an idealist, and I am a realist. Your dreams often float off to the heavens and soar into dimensions free from man’s touch. Though I enjoy listening to your delicately spun worlds, I like to mockingly bring you back to earth by telling you about the world we can touch – of people, of places, of life.
After school I spend my afternoons under the sun beating softballs to a leathery pulp. Meanwhile, you would sit in the padded band room, your long white fingers taut against the silvered keys of the clarinet.

Out of the blue, I would burst into recitations of honeyed quotes with the gusto of a virtuoso painting the notes of his concerto. You would watch in amusement, quietly writing out the values of pi up til the 42nd value. 42 is your favorite number.

v. August casts the spell of crying rain, pounding rat-a-tat-tat on our schoolhouse. Still you do not return.
Every feverish endeavor in calling you ends in a lifeless beep. No one knows where you have disappeared to, nor do they seem to care.

vi. You return at last in mid-September. There was no preventing it – the divorce papers were signed. The next few weeks were a flurry of papers, tears, and lawyers in which you were too drained to go to school.

Even as you tell me, I see the redness in your eyes. So again I offer my time as a weak form of solace.

Balmy, bright afternoons spent listening to each other and the harsh chords of Bastille. Occasionally you shed a tear or two, but after some time you don’t cry at all. If I am lucky, I even get to see you smile.

vii. During recess we study together in silence, flipping the dog-eared pages of textbooks with the occasional “pass me the eraser.” Soon the words are rendered insignificant and a tap suffices.

viii. It comes in big black words on the bleak white backdrop of cheap printer paper: I move to Abu Dhabi in a week.
I imagine Abu Dhabi as a land where sand stretches further than the melding horizon. I imagine golden camels with two – or is it three? – humps reigning the sand dunes, their lashes flitting away the Arabian sun. I can almost imagine studying in a school where I trade my familiar Chinese tongue for an unknown Arabic one.

But I can’t imagine that you … will no longer be there.
When I tell you, your emotionlessness scares me. “When?” you ask.

“Next week, eight p.m. flight.”

“I’ll be there.”

ix. Our last conversation is an equation of math and good-byes. As the opened airport gate calls for me to leave, you hand me a notebook. The cover is phosphorous silk, bound tightly with cotton threads with a golden x embossed into it. I smirk dryly.

“It’s to remind you that you can pull through everything in an unknown, foreign land.” You smile. I want to cry, but I have no tears, so I smile too. We embrace, and it smells of the subdued scent of warm afternoons and math textbooks.

x. The airport gate calls for me one last time. I tuck the notebook into my breast pocket, right where my heart is, and walk away, into the gate that will take me to an unknown world.