The Lovable Girls

 story & illustrations 

by Maggie Ho

The age of 16 is a very important milestone in my life because that means from now on, I can stay away from my junior high school classmates FOREVER. I really hate those artificial girls, who act like they have class. They always eat little, wasting the yummy food; they love to scream all the time— even a tiny bug could make them scream for ten minutes; they only care about their grades and how to attract boys’ attention. While I thought I could get into a new school and start a different life, God just played a serious joke on me—I’m going to study in a girls’ high school! What worse could happen?

     Believing that I would run into more artificial gals, I was surprised to find the girls in my new class are actually as dirty as boys! I used to be the dirtiest girl in my old class, but now, many of my classmates can compete with me for the Olympics of Untidiness, and our classroom is always in a mess. Maybe things aren’t as bad as I expected. Besides, in my new class, we are TALKING all the time. 

  This is a heaven for a chatterbox like me! What shocks me most is that the girls are always hungry. Most of them can eat a horse! Now, we go to the school cafeteria during the break, and our trash can is always brimmed with plastic bags of potato chips and paper bowls. Apart from acting like boys, the new girls’ easygoing personalities really wow me. For example, when we play tricks on our classmates, the ones who are made fun of never get mad, which would be impossible in my previous class! 

I used to believe girls go for forming cliques and that different circles would dislike and ignore one another. In my new class, surprisingly, we don’t have this problem. We’ll help each other when anyone is in need; we’ll comfort others when they need a shoulder to cry on. We invest ourselves and never ask for return. To my amazement , the girls in Jingmei Senior High are not artificial at all; they show their true colors. They make me see girls differently, and thus I start to like them gradually.

However, it was not until the singing contest that I truly fell in love with my new class. It was the first interclass music competition for the 10^th graders, which was to test our class morale, so it meant a lot to us. In junior high, our class always lost every interclass game because our teacher said we just needed to focus on studying. We ended up learning nothing about teamwork.

But my new class gave me a completely different outlook.

We chose the song Sing, which was written for the Queen of Britain to celebrate her 60-year reign. We were impressed by the unpretentious voice of the singers, which we thought could represent us. While we were wondering where to start, one of my classmates volunteered to prepare sheet music for the whole class. That wouldn’t happen in my old class for we only cared about how to improve our grades. After all, it was a time-consuming process and you wouldn’t see the feedback on your school report card. Hardly did I know that everyone was willing to go all out like the unselfish girl.

 When we began to practice, we had to stay after school for one hour every Wednesday. Though many girls had to go to cram school, everyone made it to the after-school practice. We let the people who are good at music lead us instead of the class leader or the high achievers. From this, I learned that people with various talents should be put to good use. In my new class, I realized everyone is unique and there is a place for each girl here. 

Thanks to our effort, we won the championship. At that moment, we couldn’t help crying and screaming. This was the first time I felt that I really belong to a group. Because of my new classmates in high school, I found that girls can be simple, kind, and helpful. That’s why I love my senior high school life so much.