That afternoon, Denita set out to find house number 56.. She had said she would come for the notebook and she was not the kind of person who said things she did not mean.. She walked along Howrang street looking for the right number, the houses all a little unfamiliar still, the whole street belonging to a city she had not yet learned..
She found Mian before she found the house.. Mian was out on her bicycle, somewhere in the middle of the road, in that particular way of someone who has not yet decided where exactly they are going.. Denita stopped.. called out.. Mian looked up and cycled over without any fuss, as if she had been expected.. 'You came for the notebook', she said, not a question.. 'Yes', said Denita.. 'Come then'..
They went together to house number 56.. Mian went inside and came back with the English Grammar notebook and handed it over simply, without ceremony.. Denita took it.. said thank you.. and that was that.. a notebook exchanged on Howrang street between two new girls who did not yet know what they were to each other.. but who would, slowly and without announcement, find out..
After that, things simply.. continued.. the way things do when two people discover they are going to the same place and decide to go there together.. They walked to school together in the mornings because it made no sense not to.. They sat beside each other in class because they already had.. They played together during the breaks that came between lessons, filling the empty spaces of a new city with the easy noise of becoming friends.. Denita found that Wushan felt slightly less unknown with Mian beside her.. not because Mian knew it either, she didn't, she was just as new.. but because being new somewhere with someone is an entirely different thing from being new somewhere alone..
Mian came to her house often after that.. for notebooks, for homework, for no particular reason at all.. and Denita found she was always glad to see her at the door.. There was something straightforward about Mian.. she said what she meant and she showed up when she said she would and she laughed easily and loudly and without apology.. Denita, who had not yet found her footing in this new place, found it easier to find it with Mian somewhere nearby..
It was not long before they discovered their brothers.. Ray and Mian's brother were in the same class.. which was the kind of thing that sounds like coincidence until you realise that in a new city where you know no one, a coincidence like that is everything.. The boys found each other the same way the girls had.. through proximity and shared newness and the particular ease of two people who have no history together and therefore no reason to be complicated with each other.. They became good friends quickly, the way young boys do, without ceremony or negotiation..
So it was that two families, dropped into the same unfamiliar street by the same unplanned currents of life, found their way to each other through a notebook and a bicycle and the simple fact of living at house number 63 and house number 56.. Wushan, which had been enormous and unmapped and slightly frightening when they arrived, became something else entirely.. It became the place where Mian was.. which meant it became something close to home..