That Nameless Summer Chapter 39

Escape

The number “7” on the countdown board for the college entrance examination was dazzlingly red, the sound of answering questions in the rocket class was as dense as a web, Ling Qingye’s fingertips had just landed on the last step of the final question in the competition, and Song Li’s seat in the ordinary class had been empty for most of the class.Qin Jiangwen returned from Rocket Class to get materials and saw that Xu Jiangyou’s desk was also empty. Their schoolbags and textbooks were gone, as if they had never been in this classroom.

No one knew that at three o’clock in the morning in the community, the sound of the debt collector’s kicking on the door broke the silence.Zhang Youzhi’s loan shark interest compounded, and his gambling addiction completely brought down the family. Song Li’s mother dragged Song Li and Xu Jiangyou, carrying simple luggage that they had packed overnight, and slipped out of the back door amidst the scolding debt calls. She didn’t bring a mobile phone charger, didn’t leave a note, and didn’t even have time to lock the door.

“Don’t look back, don’t contact anyone, just pretend we disappeared into thin air.” The mother’s voice trembled, and she held their wrists so hard that they turned white.Song Li looked at the brightly lit home behind him, and then at the pale Xu Jiangyou next to him. His Adam’s apple rolled, and he didn’t say anything. He just squeezed her hand tightly and followed his mother into the black car in the alley.

Instead of going to a neighboring city, they moved to a strange city hundreds of kilometers away and found a room on the top floor with a monthly rent of 300 yuan. The walls were peeling off and there was only a small window facing the gray sky.There was no Internet or phone. My mother turned off her only old mobile phone and hid it under the bed, cutting off all contact with the outside world – she was afraid of being targeted by debt collectors, and she was even more afraid of implicating anyone.

The commotion in the classroom lasted only ten minutes.Chen You checked his attendance, frowned and muttered “Maybe he asked for leave”, and then continued to talk.No one thought much about it. It was common for high school students to miss class occasionally. However, the tip of Ling Qingye’s pen paused for half a second when he was writing the question. The corner of his eye swept across Song Li’s empty seat. The small basketball mark he drew on the corner of the table was still there, but it lost the warmth of the past.He went to the ordinary class twice during the break to ask questions. No one knew where Song Li had gone, and there was no news about Xu Jiangyou.

Qin Jiangwen held in her hand the half piece of eraser that Xu Jiangyou had left on the corner of the table. He accidentally dropped it during the sports meeting. She picked it up and kept using it.He asked all the classmates in the ordinary class, and they all said that the last time he saw them was during self-study last night, and there was nothing unusual.The rhythm of Rocket Class waits for no one, and the piles of competition papers and super-syllabus handouts quickly fill his eyes, but he always thinks of Xu Jiangyou’s side face with his head down while taking notes, and feels empty in his heart.

Ling Qingye’s uneasiness became more and more serious.Song Li never missed class without any reason, and he never even said hello.He looked through the chat history between the two of them, and the last one was “I got stuck on the last math question” sent by Song Li the night before. He didn’t have time to reply.He went to Song Li’s community to look for it. The door lock was rusty and dusty. Neighbors said they hadn’t seen anyone for a few days and only heard noises in the middle of the night.He asked all his basketball teammates and classmates, and even went to the old locust tree cave where the two of them hid things when they were children. It was empty and there was no message.

Qin Jiangwen also quietly inquired, and asked Xu Jiangyou’s distant relatives, but they all said they had no contact.He stuffed the half piece of eraser into his pencil case, and every time he touched it while writing a question, his heart felt tight.One mock test after another in the Rocket Class, his grades were firmly in the top five, but his fingertips always trembled when he saw words like “disappear” and “escape” in English reading.

In the cubicle on the top floor, Song Li and Xu Jiangyou, who were in their third year of high school, could only answer questions and remain silent.My mother would go out to do odd jobs during the day to collect rent and living expenses, and when she came back at night, she would curl up in a corner in a daze.Song Li borrowed a dilapidated folding table from the landlord, and the two sat facing each other, using the street lights outside the window and the dim desk lamp to write questions. The materials were expired college entrance examination papers found in a second-hand bookstore. The handwriting was blurry but they were reluctant to throw them away.

Without the wrong question book compiled by Ling Qingye, Song Li worked on the difficult questions by himself. When he encountered something stuck, he would repeat the calculation on the draft paper until dawn; without the English key points marked by Qin Jiangwen, Xu Jiang memorized words from an old dictionary when he was young, copying the new words in the reading in the palm of his hand, and memorizing them while walking.They never mentioned their previous school, Ling Qingye or Qin Jiangwen, and they rarely even spoke. Only the rustling of the pen tip across the page sounded in the small cubicle day after day.

Xu Jiangyou would occasionally stare out the window in a daze, remembering Qin Jiangwen’s back running 3,000 meters during the sports meeting, and remembering the sweet soup he secretly put in the locker. His eyes would turn red, but he would quickly lower his head to brush up on the questions and suppress his emotions.Song Li would dream about playing ball with Ling Qingye on the playground at night, dreaming that he was squatting in the alleyway and wiping his knees. When he woke up, his pillow was wet. He touched the corner of the table and found no warm milk, only cold walls.

The registration for the college entrance examination in the city began. My mother asked someone to find connections and registered the two of them with temporary residence permits. The examination center was at a middle school on the outskirts of the city, far away from the compartment where they lived.On the day when the registration was successful, Song Li looked at the unfamiliar name of the test center on the admission ticket, and suddenly remembered the countdown card of Rocket Class, and remembered Ling Qingye’s words, “Wait until you take the exam to the same city.” His heart felt as if he had been hit by a blunt instrument, and he was so painful that he couldn’t breathe.

When the Rocket Team’s countdown card turned to “1”, Ling Qingye went to the old locust tree cave for the last time, but it was still empty.He carefully placed the math test papers and English composition templates he had compiled in the hole, with the basketball pendant pressed on top, as if he was waiting for an old friend who would never come.

On the day of the college entrance examination, it was raining lightly in a strange city.Song Li and Xu Jiangyou got up at five in the morning and walked for an hour before arriving at the test center.There were no classmates to cheer me on, no teachers to tell me, my mother stood outside the cordon and said with red eyes, “Just do your best.”When the two of them walked into the examination room, they looked back at the gray sky, as if they were looking at that morning when they said goodbye silently.

At the same time, outside the local examination room, Ling Qingye stood at Song Li’s usual spot, holding two bottles of warm milk in his hands, but he never saw that familiar figure.Qin Jiangwen also wandered outside the examination center, scanning everyone who walked out of the examination room, but found no trace of Xu Jiangyou.

The end-of-exam bell rang. Song Li and Xu Jiangyou walked out of the examination room, their school uniforms soaked by the rain.No cheers, no hugs, the two walked back to the small compartment side by side.Their mother was waiting for them at the door, holding a crumpled newspaper in her hand with news about the local college entrance examination, but it had nothing to do with them.

They were like two grains of dust blown away by the wind, disappearing without a trace in a strange city. No one knew where they were or what they had experienced.

At the rocket class’s celebration banquet, Ling Qingye looked at the empty seats and drank a glass of wine silently; Qin Jiangwen put the half piece of eraser on the table and looked at the sunset outside the window without moving for a long time.

In the partition on the top floor, Song Li and Xu Jiangyou were sitting at the folding table, looking at the table full of draft paper and looking out the window in silence.

The college entrance examination is over, but their escape is not over yet. Those concerns hidden deep in their hearts and those silent farewells have become the heaviest secrets in this lonely city.