Behind the screen, Nazma's thin, fair eyebrows—forming a soft line that dipped slightly at the ends—seemed to furrow.
The brows weren't bold; they were like a subtle shadow above her eyes. When she frowned in confusion, the brows only moved slightly.
Siti:
[Are you not in the group?]
Nazma:
[What group?]
Siti:
[The class group]
[You're not in yet?]
Nazma shook her head slowly. She lowered her phone, then opened it again, as if by staring longer the notification would appear on its own.
Nothing. Only a blank screen.
Around her, conversations about assignments and profile pictures grew louder.
Her expression looked fragile, reflecting someone who more often kept her questions to herself. However, that uncomfortable feeling pushed her to act.
Nazma:
[Here, let me ask for Mrs. Ida's number]
After getting the number from Siti, Nazma typed with trembling fingers.
Nazma:
[Good afternoon, Mrs. Ida. Sorry to disturb you. I'm Nazma, Ma'am. I wanted to ask, which class am I in? Because I'm not in a group yet.]
Before long, a reply appeared.
Ida:
[Oh, for the class list, please ask Sir Beni directly.]
Nazma took a breath, trying to calm herself. She then switched to contacting Sir Beni.
Nazma:
[Good morning, Sir. This is Nazma Xanthe. May I ask which class I'm in?]
Beni:
[Oh, yes. Nazma is in Class 7A.]
Nazma's eyes instantly filled with stars. Class 7A? The class with the first letter? During her six years in elementary school, there was never a division of class A or B because there were so few students. In this large junior high school, she felt chosen.
With newfound spirit, she was immediately added to the Class 7A group. As soon as she entered, her phone screen was flooded with messages. Her eyes hadn't quite focused on reading the array of new names when suddenly…
***
Nazma didn't immediately reply to the flurry of messages in her class group. She set her phone down on her pillow and turned toward a stack of textbooks that still smelled of fresh paper.
Beside her, sheets of brown kraft paper, rolls of clear plastic covers, scissors, and tape were already neatly arranged.
She wanted everything to be perfect. She wanted to start this new chapter without a single folded corner.
Nazma's fingers attempted to fold the edges of the brown paper into the book. However, the paper felt stiff and slippery.
The fold came out crooked, creating a messy crease that ruined the view.
Nazma exhaled, her lips pressed tightly together and pulled slightly inward as she stared at her failure with a look of misery.
"Mom... help me cover these, please. I can't get it neat," she asked softly, her voice nearly drowning in the sound of rustling paper.
Her mother arrived, the scent of leftover cooking still clinging to her housedress, and sat beside her. Her mother's hands, rougher yet more agile, began to fold with precision. Srek, srek. The sound of paper being pressed with a fingernail was satisfying to Nazma's ears.
While waiting for her mother, Nazma began organizing her stationery. She took out her new pencil case. One by one, she tucked the items inside: two pencils sharpened to a deadly point, a black pen, a white eraser still pristine and spotless, a steel ruler, and a small green pencil sharpener.
She picked up a black marker and, with the neatest handwriting she could muster, wrote her name on each book label: Nazma Xanthe.
A warm sense of pride washed over her as she saw her name paired with the words "Class 7A." She stroked the surface of the plastic covers that now protected her books perfectly—smooth, clear, and tidy. In her mind, she could already see herself sitting in the front row, recording every word the teacher said in these beautiful books.
Nazma offered a thin smile. It was a rare expression for her. This time, it felt genuinely sincere. She truly felt ready for tomorrow.
Until then, the phone on the pillow vibrated again. Bzzzt.
The phone interrupted the silence of the room for a split second. Its screen briefly cast a pale blue light onto the dingy ceiling before fading back to dimness.
To her, the vibration was just a minor distraction—perhaps just spam, an app notification, or some unimportant chatter in the group. She didn't want to share her attention with anyone right now.
Tonight was too precious to be ruined by that small screen. Nazma looked away, intentionally breaking visual contact with her phone.
She left her silent phone on the pillow and turned to another activity—a small preparation she performed with slow, secretive movements, as if hurrying would make her luck for tomorrow slip away.
After ignoring the vibration, Nazma began to move in the silence.
The lingering warmth of her previous smile gradually faded, replaced by a sharper, colder gaze. She brought a glass of water near her stack of books—a small precaution so her focus wouldn't be broken by a sudden thirst.
She rearranged the yellow notebook, the blue pen, and the correction tape on the floor. Nazma tried several positions; sitting upright, cross-legged, until she finally found the most comfortable spot on the torn pink carpet.
Under the dim light of the lamp, she took a long breath. Her world was now only as wide as that carpet, and she was ready to conquer it.
Her phone screen displayed a 7th-grade Informatics learning video.
The narrator's voice on UsTube explained hardware and operating systems. Nazma absorbed it as if it were the most crucial information in the world.
The room had transformed into a "battlefield" of knowledge. Various textbooks and notebooks were scattered around her, creating islands of paper on the floor. In the midst of the chaos, Nazma sat cross-legged on the pink carpet that was no longer beautiful.
The carpet was dull, and at its corners, fibers poked out—torn and ruined from being the favorite target of their cat's claws over the years.
She focused on a bright yellow notebook in her lap. Her small hand gripped a blue-inked pen, moving nimbly to jot down note after note.
Input device: Keyboard, Mouse, Scanner…
She wrote with absolute concentration, ensuring every cursive letter looked neat and legible.
Her thin eyebrows furrowed occasionally as she paused the video to copy complex diagrams. The blue pen danced across the paper, leaving behind traces of ambition spilled in the form of ink.
To Nazma, every line of these notes was a guarantee. If she mastered this earlier than her peers, she had a better chance of maintaining her position at the top.
In the middle of that cramped room, on the torn pink carpet, Nazma was building the fortress of her own future—page by page.
Nazma looked down again, the tip of her blue pen just touching the white paper of her yellow notebook. She began writing a definition she had just heard UsTube.
Nazma's handwriting was very distinct.
The letters weren't too large, but rather dense and upright, as if she wanted every inch of the paper filled with knowledge without wasting a single space. She pulled every curve of a 'g' or 'y' with certainty, creating rows of sentences that looked packed yet pleasant to the eye.
There was a firmness in every stroke, reflecting a mind focused on digesting the foreign Informatics material.
The blue ink soaked into the paper fibers, forming neat rows that served as a silent witness to her struggle. Around her, stacks of Grade 11 Chemistry books and other notes lay scattered, but for Nazma, her world was currently limited to the tip of her pen and the phone screen. She wasn't just copying; she was etching every word into her memory.
The night grew later. The narrator's voice on UsTube was now only a faint, distant murmur. The yellowish light of the room reflected off the slick plastic covers of her books.
Nazma's fingers, still clutching the blue pen, began to loosen. The rows of her dense handwriting—Input device: keyboard, clean...—ended with a long, irregular line dragged downward, a sign that her consciousness had snapped in the middle of a sentence.
Her head slumped slowly, landing on the stack of open books. Her soft cheek pressed against the name label—Nazma Xanthe - Class 7A—that she had written so proudly earlier.
The coldness of the paper and the sharp scent of ink became her final pillow that night.
She fell into a deep sleep on the torn pink carpet, surrounded by a "fortress" of scattered textbooks. Her breathing was steady, though the traces of exhaustion remained in the faint line of her thin eyebrows.
In her brief sleep, perhaps she was dreaming of a front-row seat or her father's proud smile as he looked at a first-place report card.
The phone screen still glowed dimly, displaying a video that had ended, before finally fading and shutting off—leaving Nazma in the silent darkness, clutching her great hopes in silence.
***