Chapter 6 Chanel
Chanel
Step one: Learn more about him (his family, interests, dreams).
I finish applying a fresh coat of lip gloss and scroll through the contacts on my phone.
Hundreds of names blur past. Assistants from past events and girls I’ve befriended inside nightclub bathrooms or danced with
at parties and boys I’ve exchanged a few flirty messages with, then never spoke to again. Half the names I don’t even remember
anymore.
Finally I land on Jamie. The dial tone blends together with the incessant honking outside the tinted car window. Typical Beijing
morning traffic.
“Qin, what’s up?” Jamie’s sweet, lightly Australian-accented voice comes over the speaker. Jamie likes to call everyone qin—a kind of alternative to darling—including her private chef and strangers in shopping malls.
“Are you busy?” I ask.
“Nope. Just heading out of dance practice.” Some light shuffling in the background, music fading with the click of a door. “And you know I’m never too busy for you.”
I laugh. “Oh my god, stop it.”
“You know it’s true.”
“Love you,” I say. “Okay, there’s someone I want you to help me search up. . . .”
“Oh,” she says with instant interest. “Who is this? A new man in your life?”
“Something like that,” I say vaguely, because it’s easier to just go with that. It’s not as if I could tell her the truth
anyway. No, he’s my new enemy, and according to a bizarre vision in a lake, I have under three weeks to find out everything I possibly
can about him to stop him before my house burns down.
“What’s his name?” she asks.
“Ares Yin,” I say, and wait for her to work her magic.
Last summer, Jamie Lai joined an idol survival show and managed to sing and self-promote her way through to the end, where
she was thrown into a girl group very misleadingly named The Eight. There were ten of them. (“A logistical nightmare,” she complained to me. “At every event, we’re always two seats short.”)
They released a total of two singles, neither of which did well critically or commercially, and it seemed they were on the
verge of disbanding when a clip of them from the show’s earlier episodes went viral just this winter. No actual music was
involved in the clip; they were heating a beef sandwich in the back of the dance studio using a regular clothing iron. This
raised many questions—was it safe? Was it hygienic? Was it really kind of genius? Was it a sign of immense privilege, that they were willing to risk ruining both the beef and the iron just for one meal? Were
they being denied proper food? Did beef sandwiches need to be heated? Were beef sandwiches even good?
The impassioned debates threw them into relevancy for long enough that all the members gained tens of thousands of followers.
Then, quick to capitalize on the trend, the group rush-released a song with weirdly suggestive sandwich-themed lyrics, which
was so horrible that people listened to it ironically, and soon the cafés in Beijing and Shanghai started playing it, and
that was when The Eight really gained traction.
Now they’re being invited to galas and award shows, and they even have a small but dedicated fan club.
But outside of being an idol, Jamie Lai is more commonly known in Beijing’s young, elite circles for her impressive stalking
skills. I’ve seen her locate a friend’s ex using nothing but the sliver of his elbow in a blurry photo from ten years ago.
There was a particularly desperate time when I’d considered asking her to find out if my father was cheating, but I couldn’t
bring myself to do it. And now I’m glad I didn’t, because she would have had a front-row seat to my family’s drama.
“Huh,” Jamie says a few moments later. “He’s not very active on social media, is he?”
“Yeah, I tried looking him up last night, and I couldn’t find any accounts,” I say.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find something,” Jamie reassures me. “Give me maybe five business days to work on it. How urgent is this?”
Extremely. My-whole-life-is-kind-of-riding-on-this urgent. “Let’s just say I’m . . . very interested in this boy,” I say, hating myself, hating the world, hating Ares Yin for forcing these words to leave my lips.
“Damn, girl.” I can almost hear her eyebrows rising. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that about a guy before. Just
how hot is he?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose as delicately as I can without smudging my concealer. “He’s . . . a special case.”
“Two days then,” she promises. “I have to pop into the studio tomorrow to record this new song—it’s about cheeseburgers instead
of sandwiches this time, and like, to be so real with you, I have super mixed feelings, but the team’s confident it’ll go
viral—but after that, I’ll get on to it.”
“Okay, you’re a lifesaver, oh my god. I’ll treat you to malatang after.” I lean against the back seat, watching the cars crawl
along the highway, exhaust fumes spreading through the air like smoke from a fire. Two days. That’s enough for me to carry out step two of the plan while I wait. “And good luck with the cheeseburger song.”
“Thank you,” she says seriously.
Step two: Grab his attention.
The most obvious strategy here would be to wait until my first peer mentoring session with Ares, but he hasn’t reached out
about a time and place yet, and I want his attention to be on me, not how badly I’m struggling with basic calculus. So instead I resort to my usual tricks.
In the cafeteria, I make a huge show of struggling to open my water bottle, and hold it out just as Ares is passing. “Ares, can you help me with this?” I ask, smiling innocently up at him.
He just stares at me, those unnerving black eyes roaming from my face to the water, like it might be poison. I stare back,
and notice the bruise blooming over his cheek. As if sensing my attention, he abruptly turns his head away. “My hands are
occupied,” he says, his hands in his pockets.
“I can help you with that, Chanel,” someone calls out from the cafeteria line.
“No, let me help you,” another guy from science offers, almost lunging for the water bottle in his eagerness to prove himself.
“I’ve got it—”
“Looks like you don’t need me for that anyway,” Ares says, and walks right off, while four guys make a collective effort to
twist open a water bottle cap.
In the library, when we’re all meant to be studying, I move into Ares’s line of vision and stand on my tiptoes before a bookshelf,
stretching and straining to reach a book I’m never going to read in my life. After a few minutes of this, I turn toward him.
“Would you mind getting that book for me?” I ask.
He glances at the book above me. “That’s the one you’re looking for?”
I nod.
He still doesn’t move but reads the title out loud. “How to Avoid Stray Turkeys and Other Birds. This is the book you plan on reading?”
“I’m scared of turkeys,” I improvise. “I would very much like to know how to avoid them and . . . other birds. Can you . . .”
Before I’ve even finished talking, he starts walking away.
“What the—” I twist around in indignation. “Where are you going? Hey. Hey—”
But he’s already gone.
In the corridors, I deliberately drop my wallet right by his feet and wait for him to pick it up for me. He doesn’t. He merely
glances down at my wallet, then up at me, his expression unimpressed.
“I know you’re rich, Chanel, but I still wouldn’t recommend throwing your money around. At least donate it to a charity or
something.”
By the time we head into gym for basketball, I’m desperate and more convinced than ever that Ares has been sent to destroy
my life, with the fire or without it.
There’s only one tactic I haven’t tried yet, but clearly, I need to do something drastic—and soon.
I time my next step well. I wait until Ares has the ball in his hands—then I run up to him, arms lifted in defense, and in
the half second before he aims to shoot, I knock my shoulder hard against his and pitch myself onto the gym floor.
I make sure to fall on my hands first. There’s no cute way to land flat on your back, and the chances of actually hurting
myself or gaining an unflattering bruise are too high for me to risk it. Once I’m down, curled up elegantly on my side in
fake pain, I let out a dramatic yell, like an animal whose tail has just been stepped on.
Ares misses his shot and twists around.
Everyone else freezes. And then they all crowd forward, their concerned voices echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
“Chanel?”
“Oh my god, are you okay?”
“Wait, what happened?”
“Yeah, holy shit—that sounded painful.”
“Look at her. She’s shaking.”
“Should we call an ambulance?”
Maybe my acting’s too convincing. I quickly dial it down just a notch, restrict the trembling to just my lower lip, but make
a mental note that I should really look into more acting opportunities, leverage my existing platform the way Rainie Lam has.
I already know a number of up-and-coming C-drama actors, and some of them have so clearly only landed their roles because
their parents are funding the drama or friendly with the director. . . .
“Chanel.” The teacher’s voice. “Chanel, can you sit?”
“I—I can try,” I mumble, wincing as if in brave effort.
“Here. Hold on to me.” Rainie grabs my elbow to help pull me up into a sitting position. I’m careful not to rise too fast,
to make small noises of protest like it hurts just to move. Someone else—Bobby, I think—starts fanning me with his arms, which
isn’t super helpful from either a medical or an emotional standpoint, but the guy’s heart is in the right place.
As I pretend to catch my breath from a nonexistent injury, clutching at my right ankle, more classmates gather around me like
a funeral mass, their faces grave, their whispers somber.