Back in her room, Mali knelt on the floor mat and reached under her cot. From beneath it, she pulled out a square wooden box which was faded at the corners and the lid was wrapped in cotton twine to keep it shut.
She gently opened it and placed the math textbook she’d been reading onto the right side.
This box had once belonged to her mother. For Mali, it was her treasure chest and everything important in her small world lived inside it.
The most precious things of all were the textbooks. Her mother had used them to study for something Mali barely understood, her father once muttered about it while drunk. Something big, he said, something that could take a poor girl to university in Bangkok if she passed.
Mali didn’t fully know what "university" meant, only that it must be far, far away and full of dreams her mother never got to chase.
So, she treated the books like sacred things. Without them, she wouldn’t even know what to do during the long, lonely nights.
Ever since she’d hit her head in that fall years ago, Mali had changed. No one could explain it properly, not even the village healer. She didn’t need sleep anymore. Not really. Her body lay still at night like everyone else’s, but her mind wouldn’t turn off. No matter how tired she was, sleep never came.
At first, she thought everyone was like that. It wasn’t until her father slapped her for “faking it” that she realized staying awake at night was something wrong.
So every night, she’d lie in bed and wait for his snores. Then she’d quietly get up, open her little box and enter a world where no one hurt her for being awake.
In the beginning, she was scared. What if spirits came in the dark? What if someone saw her?
But nothing ever happened.
Then something strange began: her brain changed. She could read faster and remember more. She began to understand the numbers and words in her mother’s books.
She taught herself everything her second grade teacher hadn’t yet explained. When she finished that material, she stared at the ceiling for days until she remembered the other books in the box. Her mother had left a whole stack of them.
They were harder. The language is more complicated.
Still, she tried. The more she read, the more curious she got.
One year, she and her father went to her uncle’s for the Songkran holiday. Her older cousin who was almost seventeen had left a math book open on his bed. Mali flipped through it and gasped. Right there, on page twenty something, was an explanation that cleared up something she hadn’t understood in her mother’s books.
In that moment, she realized: it wasn’t that her mother’s books were too hard. It was that she’d skipped too much. She needed a foundation.
Her cousin kept his textbooks neatly arranged in a wooden cabinet. Every time they visited, Mali would pretend to be bored with adult talk and slip into the back room. Sometimes she sat there for hours, quietly reading.
Her cousin didn’t mind. He thought she was reading his comics. He only warned her not to smudge the pages.
Little by little, she read through every single book in that cabinet.
Science, social studies, Thai grammar, geometry.
And when she’d finished all of them, she went back to her mother’s books and this time, she understood them all.
Now, she gently placed her current math book back into the treasure chest. Then she reached beneath the cloth lining and pulled out a yellowing photograph from the secret slot underneath.
In it, a young woman smiled brightly in a floral blouse, her arms raised mid dance. She looked so happy, like music was playing somewhere in the background and she didn’t care who was watching.
Behind her stood a grand building with pillars and a giant flag waving in the wind.
Mali had seen a drawing of the building once in a school book. It was the Parliament House in Bangkok. Her mother had been there.
She stared at the photo for a while.
This was the only picture of her mother she had left. The rest had been torn up or burned by her father years ago, back when his anger was more intense than his sadness.
He never spoke of her. Never let Mali bring her up.
“She was selfish,” he’d once muttered, slurring over a bottle of rice whiskey. “She left me and she left you. You need to forget her, she's not worth remembering.”
But Mali knew. She knew her father missed her.
She knew it from the way he sometimes called her name in his sleep.
She carefully tucked the photo back into its hidden slot.
In the top corner of the box sat a rectangular black radio. Its surface was cracked and scarred, glued together more times than she could count.
Once, it had been the pride of the village. A “big city radio,” her mother had said, gifted by a friend who worked in Bangkok.
For one short season, neighbors had gathered at their house to hear news broadcasts and luk thung songs.
But one night after too many drinks and too much anger her father had thrown it against the wall.
It never worked again.
Mali had tried many times to fix it herself. She’d opened it carefully, stared at the strange maze inside and poked around with a needle.
But it was too complex and way beyond her understanding.
Still, she couldn’t bear to throw it away.
She held it for a moment now, tracing the old scratches, then put it back in the corner and closed the lid.
She wrapped the cotton twine around it and pushed the treasure chest back under her bed.
Then her stomach grumbled.
She headed to the kitchen.
The morning air was still cool and the light outside had just begun to shift from silver to gold.
Her father wouldn’t be awake for hours, not after how much he drank last night.
So, as always, she’d cook.
She reached for the rice pot, then checked the basket of sweet potatoes and pulled out three. She peeled them with a dull knife, set water to boil and added a pinch of salt from a tiny jar.
For someone so small, Mali ate a lot—more than most kids her age. No one knew why.
Maybe it was the energy her brain burned through at night, learning faster than her teachers could teach.
Maybe it was just the hunger that comes from missing someone you love.
Breakfast was thin rice porridge, boiled sweet potatoes, and pickled greens.
But Mali ate like it was the best thing in the world.
When she was done, she left some in the pot. Just in case her father woke up hungry later.
Then she washed the bowl, wiped her hands on her skirt, and stepped outside.
The sun had finally risen, spilling golden light across the hills.
She squinted up at it and whispered softly:149Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2lhaDRgbrs
“Mae, I’m still trying. I’m still learning. I haven’t stopped.”
And with that, she turned toward the school, books tucked under her arm, hair tied back with string...149Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfR1cLWOVoj
and then Add to home screen.