Because Papa wanted me to learn from her intelligence and good behavior, he gave me permission to spend time with Helian whenever I liked, so long as she had approval from her mother.

  We spent most of our free time together, sometimes playing with the other children from the village. Helian seemed uninterested in most of them, however, particularly shying away from those whose names she struggled with. I did my best to look unbothered whenever she got my name wrong since I didn’t want to see her cry.

  Helian spent a lot of time crying when she thought no one was around.

  One afternoon shortly after my fifth birthday, I found her lying prone on her bed.

  “What’s that, Helian?” I pointed at whatever she was holding in her hands.

  “Oh, XXXXX. It’s paper. You can put words on it using this stick called a pencil. Then other people can read the words and know what they mean. Does that make sense?” She demonstrated by scribbling some letters on the paper. “This means ‘goat’. Like Expy and Reci.” She took care to use their nicknames, since most of us couldn’t pronounce the full names correctly.

  I nodded. “Your writing is pretty, Helian.”

  She blushed. “Thank you. I’ve been practicing. The letters here are so unfamiliar…”

  I glanced over to the nightstand next to the bed. “Are those papers for practice?”

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  She looked over at the stack of papers. Her expression changed to one of concern and she replied, “… yes, they’re practice. Don’t bother trying to read them because my handwriting isn’t good enough yet. You won’t be able to understand the words.”

  I nodded. “Okay, Helian.”

  She smiled. “In fact, how about this? If you promise not to tell anyone about my practice sheets, the first time I write a letter, I’ll write to you.”

  ------

  As promised, I never told anyone about the practice sheets. But curiosity got the better of me, and the day before my seventh birthday, while Helian and her mother were out in the city (shopping for my birthday present, I hoped), I snuck into their home. Helian was the cleverest girl I’d ever met, but she wasn’t able to hide a big stack of papers from me in a house as small as theirs.

  The pile had grown since I’d last seen it. After Helian noticed the way I’d looked at the practice sheets, she made a point of hiding them whenever I came to visit. The topmost papers were as she said: messy sheets where she’d practiced writing the names of people from the neighborhood, as well as difficult words I hadn’t yet learned.

  The sheets underneath, however, were all written in a practiced hand, the words arranged into rows of neat lines. The pages had large headings, some containing elaborate diagrams with words in circles and boxes connected by lines.

  With an overwhelming sense of pride, I realized she was wrong. I could understand these words just fine! It was probably because her letters were so good. Though many of the words didn’t make much sense to me, I could still recognize them. Helian’s sheets were much easier than the storybook Papa had bought me after I’d asked him why I couldn’t write letters like Helian.

  Helian was so smart! I must have been reading the wrong kind of letters! This realization cleared my head and filled me with energy. But now I had a dilemma. If I asked Papa or Helian about this, they would know I’d snuck in to read the practice sheets, and she’d be upset with me. Maybe she would never speak to me again.

  I decided to return the papers to their hiding place and speak of it to no one. I’d promised to keep them a secret, after all.