Some Things About My Cousin

My cousin recently came to stay with us, so I can’t use the computer as freely anymore. After a while I have to hand it over to her. She just finished the college entrance exam and didn’t do well. She’s feeling pretty down and plans to retake it next year. Coming to Chengdu is partly to clear her head. Unfortunately, I haven’t taken her out much. There aren’t really any places in Chengdu I particularly want to go to anyway. A few times I offered to take her somewhere, but she didn’t seem interested. Maybe she came to Chengdu just to get away from my uncle. He had high expectations for her, and this result must’ve been disappointing. He doesn’t say anything, but you can feel the disappointment in the air.

She mentioned wanting to check out some universities in Chengdu. I remembered the time I passed the main gate of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and thought, “If you can walk in and out of here, someday I will too.” We all know how that turned out. I took her to Xipu to wander around Southwest Jiaotong University, and I meant to show her Xihua University too, but I’m not very familiar with Xipu and never made it there. In the end we just took the 5-yuan high-speed rail back to Chengdu. I probably shouldn’t have let her ride that train—her first time on something that nice. If she ends up taking regular trains to study elsewhere later, the contrast might be too big.

She went home today to start her senior year of high school for the retake. Dad drove her. I really wanted to go back and visit too, but Mom vetoed it pretty firmly, so I didn’t push. This is the first time Mom’s opposition actually worked. She’s opposed plenty of my decisions before, but it almost never stuck. I’ll let her have this one. I’m not going back with my cousin. I think she’ll probably do much better on the next exam, but there’s one uncertain factor: girls’ psychology. I can’t figure out how she thinks at all, and I don’t know what to say to her. I’m worried she’ll overthink everything during the coming year and make things harder for herself.

Whatever happens, I hope she makes it through smoothly.