Confessions of a Cat-holic (9)

I would not apply to a school based merely on the gossips from a rival. Would you trust anything your enemy said? I wouldn't. I didn't plan to try another school so I continued my studies in my alma mater upon elementary school graduation.

Things started to shuffle in secondary school. If I could use one word to describe my secondary school days in alma mater, it would be turbulent. My friends started to engage in school fights. I found myself a spectator of MMA fights, except I was actually right next to the boxers inside the ring. I didn't want to get myself in troubles and my figure was too small to wrestle, so I started swearing. I cursed a lot in middle school and I teamed up with Hatty Leung and Winnie Yam. Hatty's father was a parole officer at the Correctional Services Department. She lived in the penthouse at Wong Nai Chung Road in Tin Hau overlooking the Victoria Park. Trust me, she fought hard. She brought a cutter to school every day for self-defence. She cut herself at the thigh in recesses and lunch breaks so no one would come close to us. I asked my parents to take me to Europe a few times during the first two years of secondary school and strategically loaded myself with more than half a dozen Victorinox Swiss Army knifes, while the other taitais in the tour were busy shopping for LV, Gucci, and Prada handbags. The Swiss Army knives were still with me, now for decorative purposes. I used to also own a Japanese samurai sword and a police baton to guard my household. Did I tell you I always fight back and take my revenge at all costs? I grew up among real bad people and I needed to thank my atrocious friends for safeguarding my life. Hatty and I still keep in touch. The last time I saw her, she was a hardcore goth with pierced accessories all over her body, one of which inside her tongue even.

Winnie Yam had been residing on Kennedy Road in mid levels Wanchai since grade 1. Her apartment should cost around 30 million dollars now. But she never bragged about her wealth. She was not humble. I would say maybe she was just sober? Her dad was a taxi-driver. She was one of the shadiest person I knew in my entire life. We loved singing along the songs of Richard Billyham in school breaks. We were really into the ghetto underground music culture like LMF and other self-funded artists whose songs were only known to real Hong Kong natives. The last time I talked to her, she told me she commited a theft in a nearby supermarket. She pickpocketed a 6-HKD chewing gum and nobody reported her. I told her she did a good job. As a friend, I could only ask myself to be as supportive to my gang as possible, right?

There was a newbie from Sacred Heart called Angela Ng in our year. There was something funny about her. She told us that she had a boyfriend from Bangladesh who wired her half a million HKD dollars over the internet when we were in F.2. I don't trust her stories but I find them ludicrous. She was the only one in our year who brought a Chanel bag to school while the rest of us usually preferred other brands like Bally, I.T., Miu Miu, or YSL. She said her boyfriend from Bangladesh bought it for her as a gift. Apparently, she also possessed and hid a handful dose of marijuana inside her music recorder at her locker in school. As far as I remembered, she didn't have a college degree but she claimed that she owned an apartment in Tung Chung by her early twenties as a result of her financial acumen. I was very entertained. I liked her anecdotes.

I had been the elected monitor of my class for two years in a row in F.1 and F.2. I should be a peace-maker even though I was always the tiny one in school. My selected friends were bulky enough to fence off the haters. But still, I felt a strong sense of insecurity, literally. Sharon and Lavinia paired up to befriend dear Jane. And my good old friends started to grow apart and went all scattered among the newbies. I got closer with Vicki, an odd kid from Tin Wan who later moved to my neighborhood. I never talked to Vicki in elementary school, even though Vicki and I used to take the same school bus to school in elementary school. She was always sitting alone because no one wanted to talk to her. It was quite obvious that she looked out of phase among the rest of us, mindtraveling in outer space. She looked quite desperate to pretend to be one of us by trashtalking a lot of random shit on school bus after we ascended to secondary school.