Confessions of a Cat-holic (86)

I knew for a fact that people had been calling me names behind my back. They called me Belle. I was perceived to be a superficial and materialistic biatch, fishing for a rich bachelor through selling my body. Why? Because there were people doing it at SPCC, and that person was Belle. Belle was not her real name. Her official name was Caroline Fung. She looked like the celebrity, Lilian Ho, and she was a size smaller and shorter. She was around a head shorter than me so when I was talking to her, I had to look down onto her forehead. But she was pretty. Not the kind that looked seductive, but cutie kind of adorable. They said we looked alike, because we both looked younger than our age. She gave off a vibe that was supposed to be innocent, sweet and friendly.

Belle's name was repeatedly associated with some scandalous vices and she was not the only one. It was said that she traded her body with the upperclass men for money and luxury items. I didn't know her well enough to comment on that. I didn't know where she lived and why she carried such a bad name. All that I knew was that she went to Sacred Heart Canossian Primary School and she was the cousin of another student from SPCC, who was a year above me. The fact that she always hang out with Tracy, Vivian and Jessie obviously didn't help. Since we looked alike, people thought that we must have the same value system and social behaviors. But that was not true.

She was not my classmate, which might have explained why we were not close enough to get to know each other. She was allotted to class F, the humanities class all the way in Siberia. Obviously, her grades were not good. Not only that, she also dyed her hair and wore multiple earrings to school. The only interaction I had with her was that we had a photo sticker together when she joined one of our karaoke sessions. Other than that, I had not spoken to her inside or outside of school.

I remained Vivian's best friend in class E. Vivian knew that I admired Mark Lui and that was the reason why I applied to the school. One day, she took me to Siberia alongside with Jessie, Serena, and Rosanna in a mini league. She told me that Mark Lui's brother was Belle's classmate. He was supposed to be a year older but he repeated a year so he was then in the same class with her. The girls were really good friends with him and they had a long chat over break. Vivian told him that I liked Mark Lui and he was the main reason why I transferred school. I felt greatly embarassed because I didn't expect to actually get to know my idol's brother within such tangible reach. He seemed popular among the girls, and I didn't want to interrupt their conversation because I was obviously not as pretty as the other girls and I would like to keep my distance from my idol's family. Vivian asked him to sign a CD of Dry, a duo that made up of Mark and his buddy, Stephen Fung. Vivian liked to go by the middlesex name, Chris, and she gave me an autographed album of Dry that was directed to Chris. I thanked Vivian, because it was the first time that I ever got so close with an artist or his family. When I was in St Francis, we all had idols; some of us were even the chairlady of Nicholas Tse's fans club or the likes. But we grew up singing along to "softhard's homicide on Broadcast Drive", which might explain why I would like to stay forever in the fans zone. I was not particularly hyped about befriending with a celebrity anyways.

Vivian and I were the only MK styled students in E class and it was rather obvious. We never participated in the mainstream school-encouraged activities, such as choir practice, orchestra rehersals, prayer meetings, mathletes training or code cracking games. We might have been thought of as unorthodox by Central standards but I remained loyal to my heart. I never picked my friends based on materialistic gains or social benefits. Vivian and I were really in-sync in our views and reasonings. We could laugh at the same things for hours without the need to explain ourselves.