Chapter 1

That year was 1998.

It was a time when people had little and everything moved slowly, from travel to the mail. For a poor student like me, Grant Walker, real dignity didn't mean name-brand sneakers or a Walkman. It meant being able to stand up straight and eat white-flour buns at every meal.

Back then I was poor, flat broke. I was so hungry my head spun, and I had even started thinking about dropping out and going home to herd sheep. That was when my desk mate, Rose Harper, came along like an angel sent down from heaven and found one excuse after another to give me two big white buns every day.

She always said she was on a diet, or that her mom had packed too much for her to finish. She kept sharing them for three whole years.

Eighteen years later, I stood at the top of the city as a corporate CEO everyone respected and feared. I rode in luxury cars and wore designer clothes from head to toe. I searched for her for a long time but never found a trace.

Then one day, during a company hiring session, I walked past the interview room. In a corner where she'd been brushed aside, I saw a figure who was familiar and worn down by hard years.

At that moment, I pushed the door open. With everyone staring in shock, my eyes red, I said to her, "I'll conduct this interview myself. It's time I paid back what I owe for those buns, with interest."

The winter of 1998 seemed colder than the years before it.

The northwest wind howled like a whistle as it poured through the cracks in the classroom windows. They were pasted over with newspaper but still full of holes. The wind made our heads ache, and there was nowhere to put our hands and feet to keep them warm.

My name is Grant Walker. My parents gave me a name that sounded strong because they hoped I'd grow up to stand tall and protect my family and my country. But back then, forget standing tall. I could barely stand up straight. I was five foot ten and as skinny as a beanpole, and I probably didn't even weigh a hundred and twenty pounds.

I had tested my way out of a poor mountain hollow called Black Creek Hollow.

In our village, getting into the county's top high school was the kind of blessing people said meant the ancestors were smiling down on the family.

To pay for my schooling, my dad led our old ox, which had worked for us its whole life, to the market and sold it. When he came home, that man, who had never shed a tear in his life, crouched in the corner and smoked hand-rolled tobacco all night. My mom stitched shoe soles and wove baskets day and night until she ruined her eyes.

Even with the whole family tightening their belts, once I got to the county seat, I was still the poorest student there. By the end of every month, my pockets were emptier than a clean slate, and I couldn't scrape together enough money for lunch tickets.

We boarded at school back then, and everyone carried food from home. A sack of cornbread or sweet potato flour cakes, maybe some white-flour buns if your family was a little better off, plus a jar of homemade pickles. That was a week's worth of food. Winter wasn't so bad, since the food kept. In summer, if the cornbread was wrapped up too tight, it grew mold in two days.

It was the second semester of my junior year, the age when a growing boy could eat his parents out of house and home. My stomach was a bottomless pit, and nothing I put in it was ever enough.

That day was a Thursday, a full two and a half days before we got to go home Saturday afternoon. While no one was in the dorm, I quietly checked the mesh bag under my bed, and my heart sank. All that was left was half a loaf of dark bread as hard as a rock, covered in a layer of green fuzz that made my skin crawl.

I swallowed hard and broke the half loaf into pieces. I didn't dare go to the cafeteria for hot water, since hot water cost a two-cent lunch ticket. Instead, I forced it down with ice-cold water straight from the tap in the washroom. My stomach cramped at once. The cold, hard crumbs scraped my throat raw and burning, and then my stomach started churning miserably.

Back in the classroom, I slumped over my desk and moved as little as possible. Old folks always said lying still helps you hold off hunger, and I figured it would save me a few calories.

But my stomach wouldn't cooperate. Not even halfway through first-period math, it started growling, loud as thunder, and in the fairly quiet classroom the sound was especially jarring.

The students around me were still focused on James Bennett, our teacher, as he worked through a complicated function problem. No one seemed to notice me. Still, my face felt as hot as a red-hot iron, my ears were burning, and I wished the floor would open up and swallow me.

A poor person's pride is sometimes thinner than the paper over those windows. One poke and it tears, and once it tears, the wind gets in and chills you right to the heart.

I buried my head deep in my arms and pressed my elbow hard against my stomach, trying to hold down the hunger churning inside me. Just as I was so hungry that my vision went dark and I started seeing and hearing things, until even the bits of chalk on the teacher's podium looked like bread crumbs, someone gently nudged my elbow.

A faint, pleasant scent of cold cream, mixed with an even more tempting smell of pure, fresh-baked bread, drifted into my nose.

It was my desk mate, Rose.

Rose was known in our class for her sweet temper. She wasn't the kind of stunning beauty who caught your eye at first glance, but she was the kind you never got tired of looking at, like the girl next door on a calendar from those days. She had a round face, fair skin, big eyes, and when she smiled, two shallow dimples appeared. Just looking at her made you feel warm inside.

Her family was fairly well off compared to the rest of the class. I'd heard her dad ran the county food co-op in town and her mom was a clerk at the general store. In those days, when everyone wore patched clothes or hand-me-downs from older brothers and sisters, she always wore clean polyester shirts without a single patch. In winter she had a red knit scarf and a new padded coat that looked warm just to look at.

Even though her family had money, Rose wasn't spoiled at all. She was cheerful with everyone, spoke softly, and had never once quarreled with anyone.

I could feel her nudging me, but I didn't dare look up. I was afraid that if I did, I'd see mockery in her eyes, or worse, the kind of looking-down pity that I could stand even less. I might have been poor, but I had my pride. I didn't want anyone's pity.

"Grant? Grant?"

Her voice was tiny, barely more than a mosquito's hum, as if she was terrified of drawing the attention of Mr. Bennett, who was writing on the board.

I pretended to be asleep and ignored her, though my stomach was cramping with pain.

After a while, I felt something warm and soft being quietly, hesitantly pressed into my palm.

That feeling... was that... a bun? A hot bun, fresh out of the steamer?

My head jerked up, and I looked straight into Rose's eyes, as clear as mountain spring water. She was turned sideways, holding up a textbook in one hand to block the teacher's view, while the other hand pushed a big, snowy-white bun, still steaming, into my hand.

"Take it, quick. Eat it while it's hot," she whispered, barely moving her lips, a flicker of worry in her eyes.

I flinched as if I'd been burned and instinctively tried to pull my hand back, nearly dropping the bun on the floor. "I... I'm not hungry. I have food."