thirteen #2
he couldn’t do it, then how could I? We were of the same stock, and I was the lesser one in every way.
“College didn’t kill him,” Alan said.
“The drugs did. I know.” But it was easier said than believed, given what I’d experienced. College had changed him. That much
I knew.
I straightened and shook it off, pulling back from the brink. Alan was watching me intently as I carefully tucked the messy
and dark parts of myself out of sight again. These were not things I wanted to share with him. And there was still more he
didn’t know—that no one knew. My grief was the loneliest grief there was. I deserved that.
I loosened a wry smile. “So there you go. You’re not the only one hiding things at home. You’re vegan. I’m afraid college
will kill me,” I joked. “Normal things, right?”
He looked at me very seriously. “You should tell your parents that.”
“Sure I will. I’ll tell them when you tell your parents everything.”
“Your parents aren’t like my dad,” he said gently. “They will care about this. They won’t want you to suffer.”
Even in the same house, we all wandered around in our own ghostly worlds.
It was hard to share my suffering with people who were also suffering.
Whose suffering counted for the most? Alan wasn’t there for the aftermath.
He couldn’t comprehend the level of wreckage Sam left in his wake.
We were all barely alive anyway, but for what it had been worth, we were still alive.
There was nothing to do but move forward.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ll get over it. That’s what this trip is for, isn’t it?” I refused to look at him. Instead,
I crumpled up the wrapper on my burger and pointed at the clock in the corner. “We have to go. We’re going to be late for
our tour at USC.”
How had I found myself back in this situation, orbiting around Alan’s gravitational pull? It was years ago when he had betrayed
me, but if I were to be honest, I had never really let it go.
That summer, the long days wound down until school was finally around the corner. Alan was nervous, because it would be his
first time going to school in America. I couldn’t fully assuage his concerns. Public school in Mount Pierce could be a brutal
place. I survived only by keeping my head down and my mouth shut as much as possible.
He did have one advantage over me. His English, although mildly British, was more fluid than my own. Mine was getting a lot
better, but first impressions were hard to overcome. He would probably set a better one than I did.
A few nights before school resumed for the fall, he came over to my house with his tiao qi set.
We played several games quietly in my room, both consumed by our own thoughts.
Perhaps we could sense, even then, that things were about to change.
The summer had been a capsule, and there was a gentle waft of melancholy in the air.
I had felt, briefly, transported back to the days of Da Ji Cun, where I could be myself.
But I was comforted by the notion that at least this time, I wouldn’t be going back to school alone.
“Don’t bring tea leaf eggs for lunch,” I told him. “Or anything that has a strong smell.”
“I’ll just buy hot lunch. I already asked my mom for money.”
I nodded in approval. “It doesn’t taste very good, but at least you won’t have to explain yourself.”
“We don’t have the same teachers,” he said anxiously. “Do you think we’ll have the same lunch period?”
“We will,” I assured him. “I double-checked.”
We went through other suggestions I had for him, like not sitting too near the front of the classroom, if he had a choice,
especially in math classes.
He stayed for dinner, not wanting to go home, maybe. We watched television for a bit, and then at last, he had to go home
for bed. Right before he left, he gave me a hug.
“Thanks for being my friend,” he whispered.
Over the next few days, I contracted a scratchy throat that turned into a full-blown fever and chills.
It was one of those fierce late-summer flus.
The unfortunate timing meant that I missed the entire first week of school.
I didn’t see Alan in that time to keep him from catching what I had.
I had no idea what his first week was like.
In time, I would think about that week and wonder, endlessly ruminate, on whether everything would’ve been different if I
hadn’t gotten sick. How much a small, serendipitous event could so radically change the course of two people’s relationship.
Because I refused to believe that when he had left only a few nights ago, he had said thank you with the intention of letting
me know it was goodbye forever. What kind of person would do that?
When I returned, I felt disoriented. I had missed only a week, but people had already begun to settle into their routines.
I was slotted into the only remaining seats left in each of my classes and asked to play catch-up on assignments.
By the time I got to lunch, I was already feeling weighted down by the heaviness of returning to a life I had managed to break
free from over the summer. As I went down the line to collect my food, I caught a glimpse of Alan.
He was sitting at a table with a group of boys I’d never talked to. He seemed relaxed. I was surprised and then a bit envious
that he had already found people to surround himself with. I had sat alone for weeks on end before clinging to a group of
outcasts.
I wasn’t sure whether I should wave to him, or what the right thing to do was in this situation. He hadn’t been looking around
for me. He seemed perfectly content.
As I passed his table, I must’ve paused for a moment, just briefly. Maybe our eyes met. For once, I saw nothing in them.
One of the boys piped up, “Do you know her?”
“He has to. They’re both Asian, so they’re probably related,” another one said before bursting into laughter. He nudged Alan.
“Lighten up, buddy. It’s just a joke. We tell jokes here.”
Alan shook his head and laughed in response, like a puppet, jumping for his puppeteer. My heart sank. My skin burned so hot
that if it were a flame, it would’ve been the blue kind.
I looked at him, hoping he would say something but already knowing that it was too late.
“But you came from China too, right?” the first boy asked.
He nodded. “I came from Shanghai.” He pronounced it in an exaggerated American way. Shang, like orange Tang. Hai like hi.
“I heard she came from some village in the middle of nowhere.”
It was funny hearing him say that. Mount Pierce was more like a village in the middle of nowhere than Da Ji Cun, which was
at least on the outskirts of Xi’An, a city four times the size of Chicago. Not that any of these boys, who probably had barely
left the state, could ever imagine.
The boys turned back to each other to talk about something else, and I was forgotten, just the butt of some guy’s joke that
day. I went to a table somewhere on the far end of the cafeteria. I couldn’t remember who I sat with, or what I ate. Whatever
it was, it probably tasted like ash to me.
All I could remember was the numbness. How it felt, to feel nothing at all.
At USC, I learned that there were thirty-nine fountains on campus, and that was the only fact I retained from Lakshmi’s tour, mainly because I did feel like we walked past a surprisingly large number of fountains. I had counted nineteen on our route.
The LA schools were starting to blend together in my mind. They were all palm trees and brick paths and cloudless blue skies.
I didn’t know that I could’ve distinguished one from the other, if you showed me a picture. Certainly not enough to have a
firm opinion about which school I preferred.
Alan suggested we go for boba milk tea after the tour was over, so I followed his lead to a popular chain. I ordered my drink,
half sugar, and took a sip. It was creamy, silky, and fresh. The boba had the right amount of bite, coated with a fine layer
of sweet syrup. It was, I had to admit, wildly delicious. Even better than anything I’d had when we made trips to Chicago.
So far, the food-tour portion of this trip was impressing me more than the main attractions.
We sat on a bench in the shade, resting our feet after walking all day.
Alan had been quieter and more pensive in the afternoon, after our conversation at lunch.
I caught glimpses of him out of my peripheral vision. His fingers tapering around the circumference of his cup. The particular
shape of his knees.
“I meant to thank you for this morning,” I said.
“For what?”
“For trying to take the fall with Uncle Wang.”
His eyebrows did a little jump. “Oh. Well, it didn’t really matter. All’s well that ends well.”
“Right, but you tried.” I glanced at him sidelong. “If I had said something first, it would probably have been to implicate
you.”
“That would’ve been fair. You didn’t owe me anything. And it was my idea to go to the party. My friend who I wanted to see.” He flinched slightly at the reference to Danny.
“But it was my choice to come with.”
He opened his mouth to push back again, but I interrupted him.
“It was nice, okay? That’s all I’m saying.”
He blushed. “Okay.”
“I didn’t expect that from you, if I’m being honest. It made me think—” I stopped abruptly.
“What?”
It still tasted bitter to me. The memory of before. My throat was tremulous. My pulse trembling. But I couldn’t leave it alone
anymore. Not if we were going to try to find our way back to each other again in any manner resembling forgiveness.
“Can we talk about it?” I asked. “I mean, the thing you don’t want to talk about.
What happened after that summer.” Everything around me seemed to flutter, like I was afraid of what would come next.
I had waited for so many years to hear what he had to say about it all.
I imagined confronting him so many times.
In all those scenarios, I was sticking it to him in some way, forcefully getting my revenge, making him feel sorry.
None of them were like this. Somehow, no matter what, I would always be the one trying to gain the upper hand on him, while he held the high ground.
At the end of the day, I was still my younger self, hoping that he would choose me.
He heaved a sigh, as though he had been waiting for this moment too. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. Yes, we should.”
“Why did you do it?”
“You know why. It wasn’t anything deep or complex. I was scared. Isn’t that why anyone does something horrible like that?
I was so riddled with fear that those kids would make me their target. I was willing to do anything for it not to happen to
me.” He couldn’t meet my eyes.
“You chose yourself over me.”
“Yes. I was wrong. I think back all the time to that moment and how I wished I could do it over again. I figured I would probably
never see you again. But then you ended up moving here. When your parents asked if I’d take you on a college tour trip, it
was an unbelievable thing. It felt like fate intervening to give me a second chance to make up with you.” He slumped forward
slightly. “I’m sorry, Stella. Do you wish I would’ve said no?”
Unable to speak, I shook my head. At the beginning of the trip, I did wish I had the option of doing the trip with anyone
other than him. But I didn’t feel that way now. I felt like I was finally being given a chance to let the bad parts of us
go. Maybe that was how it was for him too.
There was one more thing I needed to know. “Do you remember the last time you were at my house before school started?”
“I do.”
“Did you know what you were going to do then? Had you already decided?” I could hear my heart beating in the question, like
wings pounding against a wire cage. Tell me it wasn’t part of your plan, I thought. Tell me you couldn’t be so cruel.
He didn’t answer for a long pause. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know that night. I thought I was going to see you at school on
the Monday.”
I leaned back on the bench, relieved. It seemed that after so many years, I could finally put this persistent worry to bed.
I didn’t talk to Alan again after that day in the cafeteria. What was there to say? What could he have done to make up for
it? I wasn’t interested in being his off-hours friend. To his credit, he didn’t try to contact me either. At least he recognized
that what he had done was unforgivable.
Of course, our families still saw each other. But I went out of my way to keep from being alone with him when they were over.
Gone were the days that we would go to each other’s houses to play, even though we lived down the street.
A year later, his family moved again. This time to California. I didn’t say goodbye.
The sunshine boy who entered my life so easily, slipped away like a shadow. And that was the end of it. Except for one thing.
A few months after he was gone, I was reorganizing my room during one of my mother’s whole-house frenetic deep cleans, when I found it, tucked away in a back corner of my white bookcase, right next to Kit’s foot.
An orange marble from Alan’s tiao qi game.
I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers, admiring the delicate petal design encased in clear glass.
The orange set of marbles was unplayable now, with one missing.
It was a shame. A beautiful set, ruined by carelessness.
But then, how had it gotten there? It didn’t seem like it could’ve rolled there on accident. Maybe he had left it for me,
a single memento of our summer. A reminder of what could have been.
I kept it in my jewelry box with my family gold and Nai Nai’s jade rabbit necklace.