The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Vanessa Chan
- Language: English
- Genre: 20th Century Historical Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 7.4 MB
- Price: Free
CECILY
Bintang, Kuala Lumpur
February 1945
Japanese-occupied Malaya
Teenage boys had begun to disappear.
The rst boy Cecily heard of was one of the Chin brothers, the middle of ve
hulking boys with narrow foreheads and broad shoulders—they were Boon
Hock, Boon Lam, Boon Khong, Boon Hee, and Boon Wai, but their mother
called them all Ah Boon, and it was up to the boys to know which one she was
calling for. Throughout British rule, the Chin boys were known for being rich
and cruel. It was common to see them crowding in a circle behind the Chins’
gaudy brown-and-gold house.
They’d be standing over a servant, one of the boys
with a switch in his hand and all the boys with glints of excitement in their eyes
as the switch made contact with the servant’s skin. When the Japanese arrived
before Christmas 1941, the boys were deant: they glared at the patrolling
Kenpeitai soldiers, spat at the ones who chose to approach. It was the middle
boy, Boon Khong, who disappeared, just vanished one day as though he had
never existed. Just like that, the ve Chin brothers were four.
Cecily’s neighbors wondered what had happened to the boy. Mrs. Tan
speculated that he had just run away. Puan Azreen, always a cloud of gloom,
worried that the boy had gotten into a ght and was lying in a drain somewhere,
which made the neighbors peek fearfully into drains as they went about their
errands, unsure what they would nd. Other mothers shook their head; that’s
what happens to bullies, they said, maybe someone had simply had enough.
Cecily watched the Chin boys’ mother, curious to see if Mrs. Chin was stationed
by the door waiting for news, or if she performed the hysterics of the terried
mother, but Mrs. Chin and the rest of the Chin family kept to themselves. On
the rare occasion they left their house, the four boys surrounded their gray-faced
parents in an enormous wall of sinew and muscle, keeping them out of sight.
Only once did Cecily encounter Mrs. Chin, very early in the morning at the
sundry shop. Mrs. Chin was staring at a bag of squid snacks, face glistening with
tears. Cecily marveled at the quietness of it all, no sobs, no shaking, just bright,
damp cheeks and wet eyes.
“She’s been like that for ve minutes now,” said Aunty Mui, the shop
owner’s wife, delighting in being able to share her discovery with someone else.
After a few weeks, because there were no further public displays of anguish,
no other gossip to be gleaned, people stopped wondering about the Chin boys.
Soon the neighbors even forgot which Chin brother was missing.
The next few disappearances came in quick succession. The thin boy who
worked as a sweeper at the graveyard, who Cecily was convinced stole the owers
that families left on gravestones and sold them at the market. The plump boy
For More Read Download This Book
EPUB