T8 at the glass door

1The app turned red while we were still in the lift. T8. My brother cheered as if the Education Bureau had sent him a gift. My mother said nothing. She was holding a plastic bag of apples that would not be needed at the office.

2At home she taped the windows in an X, the way her own mother had done, although the glass was new and the tape was left over from a move. The building hummed. Across the estate, bamboo scaffolding wore silver skins of rain. A chair from someone’s balcony crossed the basketball court by itself, slowly, like a shy animal.

3We ate instant noodles at four in the afternoon because the day had lost its shape. My brother refreshed the news until the battery died. I watched the apples. They sat in the bowl, ordinary, and I understood that my mother had bought them for a lunch that the wind had cancelled. She washed two anyway and put them on a plate, as if the timetable could still be saved by fruit.

4When the signal dropped the next morning, the corridor smelled of wet cardboard. The chair was gone. My brother looked disappointed. My mother put the remaining apples in my backpack, for a canteen that would be open, and said, “Go. The test is still there.” The sky was a pale, washed colour, like a shirt that had been wrung out.