CHAPTER 27

I returned home a week later, after securing a promise from Kyle that he would come and visit some time during the holidays.

The O Levels' results were at least two and a half months away, so I found a job waiting tables nightly at a hotel in town. The pay was miserly, the job lousy, but the tips from diners made up for everything.

Kyle and Ben came to visit in the middle of February and stayed for two weeks. We spent the days swimming, playing badminton and at nights shooting pools at the town's only bar. I knew the owner, so we managed to patronise the premises despite our age.

Both of my friends immediately hit it off with my mom, giving a hand in her vegetable garden almost on a daily basis. Sometimes we would cycle to my family's fruit orchard and feast on rambutans, mangosteens and other fruits that were in season.

Kyle loved durians, and he would attack the spiky fruits, savouring its yellow pungent flesh, with relish. Ben and I would look at him, our noses crinkled in distate, for durians were never our favourites.

We said goodbye towards the end of the month but would see each other again when school reopened in three weeks, in time for the announcement of our O Levels.

After they left, my old nagging feeling came back. I was a nervous wreck worrying how I did in the exams.

The results were announced towards the end of March, but it wasn't until a week later did I gather enough courage to call the school's principal to find out. As expected, I flunked Chemistry and Calculus but were rather brilliant in other subjects. My overall performance was good, and I might stand a chance of getting a scholarship to study at a foreign university, the principal told me.

He was right. An offer from the government for a six-year study programme in International Relations at a university in the US came six months later.