Jude and Peter met

I don’t remember anything about it. I’m pretty sure we were both in year 10, and it was at one of those tuition centres that you go to after school.* It was the first time I got to go anywhere after school by myself.

I’m not sure what my parents thought I would get out of it. It was a popular place, and I guess one of our family friends had recommended it. After all, her son was a genius, at piano, at study, at everything according to her. My parents bought it and I got my first taste of freedom. Jokes on them, he had a mental breakdown at the end of high school and ended up becoming a recluse/gamer, but not before snapping at his dad one day for being short and giving him weak Vietnamese genes. What a dud.

I can’t remember anything more about it honestly. I only remember that the class was easy, way too easy for me – and I’m no genius – so I spent time scanning the other kids in class, sizing them up. One other kid seemed to be equally bored – he was still working, unlike me, but I could tell he didn’t really care. After that, my memories all blurred, which is funny because I always remember people and not things, things that happen or things I’m told. I always took notes on the people that were around me at the time. One kid from Newington** – a rich dropkick of a cousin of a girl who had a crush on me back in primary school, a cute Korean girl with a big nose who liked movies, a really jacked Indian guy who was a printer and that one bored guy.

I don’t remember how we became friends. I don’t think we even sat next to each other, but the class had a horseshoe shape to it, so you could look all your competition in the eyes and guess their prospective ATARs.

The first distinct memory I had of that place was my parents picking me up from the centre and driving past him. Defying the laws of physics, he had his ridiculous catholic school backpack, like the shell of a tortoise, and somehow his hands clasped behind his back like a Cadet. Pretentious, I thought. My parents waved to him and called out – I shouldn’t have told them he was Vietnamese, but I did. He replied in broken Vietnamese.

“Hey Khai, he’s a good Vietnamese boy”, my mum said, “you should be friends”.

I groaned.

*No one calls it tuition. Everyone calls it tutoring in Sydney. Don’t ask me why. It’s a staple of the culture here. What’d you do on the weekend, the whites ask? Went to tutoring, we replied. They stared blankly except for the few who knew what we were talking about, nodding along.

**One of those suburbs that’s so rich it has its own water filtration system and footy players at the private schools fly around the world to play – dumb.