Twenty minutes after the lunch bell, the school building was emptying out. Students had either gone home or headed to the cafeteria. Ling and I walked to our usual spot on the fourth-floor corridor, facing the sports field.

“What university will you apply to?” she asked.

“I haven’t decided. Maybe a foreign studies university in Beijing or Shanghai.”

“That far?”

“The farther the better.” I kept my voice even. “Far from my mother.”

I wanted to tell her my grandmother cursed my mother for not giving birth to a boy. My parents hid in the mountains to escape the one-child policy. Only after my brother was born did my mother feel it was over. She said it was all my fault. But I said nothing to Ling. As daughters, we are taught to be filial, to keep silent.

The next day at noon, in the same place, Ling told me she had repeated our conversation to her mother. Her mother told her to stay away from me because I was selfish. “You never think how hard it was for your parents to raise you, only yourself,” she said.

I didn’t argue. I just looked at her. I thought I was right not to have told her how my mother used to beat me with a broom, the bruises that stayed for days.

Ling looked out at the sports field. I did too. Flame trees lined the edge, heavy with orange-red blossoms, like clusters of fire.

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Huina Zheng holds an M.A. with Distinction in English Studies and works as a college essay coach. Her creative work has been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and other literary journals. She has received multiple nominations, including four Best of the Net and five Pushcart Prize, and one for Best Small Fictions. She lives in Guangzhou, China, with her family.