On the first day of school, Bai Ye gets pulled out of formation by the drill instructor for marching out of step during military training. The whole class cracks up. The only one who doesn’t laugh is the top student in their grade, Gu Qingcheng. They grew up together: she’s bound for Peking or Tsinghua, while he’s a troublemaker ranked somewhere below eight hundred.
Then the monthly exam results are posted, and Gu Qingcheng leaves him with one sentence: “Want tutoring? Tomorrow after school. Meet me on the rooftop.”
That tutoring goes on for a whole year. She pulls Bai Ye from the bottom of the class all the way into the top 141 in the grade, and the rooftop becomes the center of the class’s gossip.
Bai Ye isn’t the only troublemaker in Class 3. Chen Mobai does practice problems by day and hauls goods at night, earning a scholarship that covers his tuition. Lin Hao wears fake shoes to keep up appearances, but when he’s found out, he says through red-rimmed eyes, “My dad raised me driving a pedicab, too.” Su Qing wants to study fashion design, but people call her a pretty face with no substance. Her mother fires back right on the spot. Xu Nian quietly draws a portrait of the whole class, and it ends up displayed at the city art museum.
The Sea Eagles basketball team brings them all together. They roar as one when they win, and train together when they lose.
“Gu Qingcheng, I made it into the top 150. You promised you’d watch the sunset with me, remember?”
“Summer vacation. A sunny day. By the sea.”
On the eve of choosing their academic tracks, she says, “Two more years. Let’s both get into a university in Beijing.”
It takes him one year of high school to catch up to a figure who once seemed impossibly far away. Summer is long, and the rooftop door is never locked.
