Production wrapped today. Once the director yells “Cut!”Erin yelped in excitement, and declared a wrap. She decided to host a viewing party to celebrate everyone’s hard work at the end of the week before releasing it to the public. She felt a confusing blend of happiness and envy.

“Dismissed.” Erin announced, letting everyone off for the day. They packed their bags together and she called the cab home.

“Wait.” Honey said. “Actually, tell your mom I’m not coming for lunch today.”

“What?”

“I’m gonna go have lunch with Erin, and she’s gonna teach me how to play the cello later.”

“What?”

“The big violin.”

“No, i mean, since when were you two friends?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know if we’re… friends, she just invited me today and I said yes. Wanna come?”

She shook her head. “Have fun then.”

“Ok! We’ll call later?”

She nodded.

“Love you!”

A wince of pain weighed her smile down. Honey held her hands for a second, and dashed off with Erin, helping her pack up the equipment. It reminded her of the embarrassing phone call to her father where she had to request a hundred dollars to compensate for her mistake; he did not take the news well.

She goes home alone, and eats lunch with her mother on the couch. Today’s dish was potato wedges, still scalding hot to the touch. After a bit of nudging, she finally agreed to watch something else besides Charlie Chaplin.

“Where’s Honey?”

“Off to hang out with Erin.”

“The girl who did the music?”

“Yeah, she’s the leader of the club now.”

“Oh, how’s that going?”

“Surprisingly well. Probably because she agrees to everyone’s demands, making her an instant favourite over me. We wrapped production today, ‘Raft’ releases next Monday.”

“Oh, congratulations!” Her mother hugged her, fingertips reeked of oil and salt.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t seem happy about it.”

She shrugged. Nowadays, her emotions were a complete mystery to her. “It’s a 4/10 day today.” Suggested by her mother, she would rate her emotional well-being out of ten to communicate her feelings to her and Honey.

“Ok. What are you gonna do today?”

“Probably start writing episode 2 of ‘Raft’. Erin turned it into a mini-series.”

“I see. Do you need help?”

“Maybe.” Sonia repulsed at the thought of asking this question. “How’s your novel going?”

Her mother seemed to almost burst into tears. “Thanks for asking. I finished editing, I’m just having my beta readers look it over one last time before I publish it.”

“Publish? Wow.”

“Yup! But I don’t know if it’ll do well.”

“Can I… Can I read it? Be your beta-reader?” Sonia was only half-sure what that term meant.

Her mother gave her a long hug. “Sure. Let me go get a copy.” And Sonia finished the last potato wedge. Her mother came back with her computer, and gleefully passed it to her. “It’s okay if you can’t finish it, it’s quite long.”

“Ok. I’ll go read it in my room.”

“Tell me what you thought of it, okay?”

“Ok.”

**

One chapter in and Sonia already lost focus. Her eyes observed the words without comprehension, seeing black lines and squiggles scroll by. Instead, she thought back to her promise made to Honey. Honey already fulfilled her’s at the therapist’s office, and was now an active patient there. According to her, they began talking about her family.

In primary one, she had her first test ever. Being young and naive, she had no concept of what a test was, and what ‘studying’ meant. She entered it woefully unprepared, and ended up getting every question wrong. Her teacher, being one of the bad apples, announced her failure to the whole class and used to show the class what careless mistakes to avoid in the future. Sonia of course took no such advice, instead she sat there with a sour look as her failures were made an example of.

In primary two, while going through a phase of environmentalism, she joined a science fair and was tasked to create a toy from recycled items in the span of two weeks in teams of three. She had no idea how to communicate with the other two, and ended up contributing nothing to the project. The other two squealed to the teachers about her inaction, and she was disqualified almost immediately. Her team did not win, which she found to be karma at work.

In primary six, she burnt the midnight oil for a month straight trying to study for PSLE. Both her parents were more than confident she would pass with all that torturous preparations. Unbeknownst to them, Sonia suppressed an oncoming fever during the test, and due to overwhelming fatigue, could barely focus on her papers. She passed by the skin of her teeth, landing her in the worst secondary school in her neighbourhood. Her ‘friends’ did little to console her of that fact.

On the first day in that terrible school, she met a pink-haired girl who was so clueless to her failures that it came off as charming. The two experienced a lot of road bumps at the start, reluctant to spend any time with one another but always doing so regardless. One day, she came to her with an A on her test in elation, and pressured Sonia to show her results. She shamefully displayed her F, expecting Honey to mock her to death for it. Instead she gave an ‘oh’ and began flipping through the pages, trying her best to tutor and correct her mistakes.

Sonia snapped out of her trip down memory lane, and scrolled to the second chapter, pushing herself to focus on it for as long as possible. She stepped outside three seconds later for a cup of water, and gave up on ever reading the book itself.

She remembered the one time she complained to her mother about the onslaught of failures. She laid on her lap and vented all her frustrations in school, especially regarding her grades. She expected her mother to either give other-worldly advice that made everything click, or follow in her father’s footsteps and chide her to ‘study harder’. Instead, her mother simply said, “Well then it just seems like you’re not the studying type.” Sonia still had no idea what that meant to this day.

She barely scored well for her final exams, and despite scoring much better than her, Honey chose to enter the same school as her. It was equal parts touching and stupid. The two went to prom together as friends, seeing that she had no one else to bring and Honey didn’t want to bring the millions of boys fawning over her. Try as she might, Honey could not get her to dance whatsoever, and Sonia stayed rooted to the chair watching Honey have the best day in her life, and wondered why she couldn’t do the same. She thought she blew it, ruining the experience of prom forever, but Honey dragged her across the street to a void deck in the middle of the night, and while no one was watching, tried for the last time. Sonia managed one awkward move before demanding to go home in an instant.

“So what?” She suddenly told herself, snapping herself out from memory lane for the second time. Sick and tired of counting the marks on her wall of failures, she asked herself ‘so what?’ If she had to hear her brain scold her for not dancing with Honey one more time she’ll shoot herself in the head. Of course, her brain proceeds to scold her immediately for not dancing with Honey and for thinking to shoot herself in the head as petty revenge. She wanted to bash her brains out so the two could finally brawl it out and settle the score.

In mind-splitting frustration, she played one last move to turn the tables. “I don’t care.” She told herself and looked deep into the mirror. She waited for her reflection to magically take life of its own, airing all the insults it could think of, which couldn’t be many since she lacked creativity.

She failed her exams. ‘So what?’ she barked at her reflection, as if that mattered to anyone on planet earth. Her failures were so severe it even failed at memorability. She failed so hard that the failure itself was forgotten, rather than being written in the history books or being a viral sensation online. That was how much and how hard she failed, and thus returns the question, so what? She failed to dance with Honey, so what? She failed to say ‘I love you’ to her, so what? She failed to kiss her, so what? She failed her tests, so what? She failed her life, so what? Today’s a 4/10, so what?

The shackles came free, and her head was weightless for a moment, a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. Then, an overwhelming passion overcame her, and she knew she needed to do something. She searched through her drawers and pulled out the black dress Honey bought for her, only ever worn once.

With her heart beating outside her chest, she requested her mother clean it immediately.

**

The dress lay neatly folded in her bag Saturday morning. She called Honey and asked her to meet up at the beach this afternoon, giving her all morning to rehearse. The moment she began said rehearsal, someone unexpectedly gave her a call. She thought she’d never hear from him again.

“Sam?” She answered in genuine surprise.

“Hey… can we talk? I just… I need to say something to you.”

“Uh… I don’t know if I’m-”

“Please? It won’t be long, I promise.”

Sonia remembered the last time she saw him, and wondered how he was doing. “Ok, fine.”

“You know the cafe by the beach where we all met? Meet me there ASAP. I’m already here anyway.”

She already planned to meet Honey there this afternoon. “Ok.” It seems she would have to rehearse in the car.

With a stack full of bright orange post-it notes in her hand, they drove off to the beach. She wrote down all her thoughts on the car, trying to craft all of them together into a neat and cheesy speech.

“What are you gonna write?”

“My feelings. And that’s it. It doesn’t matter if it’s not grammatically correct or phrased properly.”

“Hm, really?”

She nodded firmly. “So what if it’s broken English in… bullet points…” She thought saying it out would’ve made it more persuasive.

“Yeah, so what?”

“So what?”

“Who taught you, ‘so what’? Was it my book?”

She scratched her head. “I didn’t finish it.”

“It’s okay.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m already happy that you read even a word of it.”

“Ok.”

She wrote down more abstract thoughts and sensations that came to mind, hoping it would all come together eventually. Nothing made sense so far. The blinding sun and speed bumps did nothing to help.

Soon, they arrived at their destination, and her mother wished her the best, “Good luck little genius.”

“Thanks.” Sonia declared as sincerely as she could. She gave her mother a hug, “You know that one time I asked you why I kept failing my tests and you said I wasn’t the studying type?”

“Hm? Yeah.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’re never good at sitting down and focusing on something for very long, unless it’s Charlie Chaplin.”

“Huh.” She wondered how she had never noticed this about herself.

“Yeah.”

“Ok, thanks.”

She made her way to the cafe where Sam asked to meet. In the early morning, there was barely anyone here, and he sat on the inside with a cup of coffee half empty. Beside him sat his adorable little brother, whom she met for the first time. “Sorry, I can’t just leave him home.”

“So… why’d you call me here? What do you want?”

“To apologise.”

Sonia crossed her arm, finding potential for redemption in his eyes.