Chapter 8 Chanel #2
My fingers brush over the Family Photos album.
I shouldn’t, it’ll only make me feel worse, but I flip it open to a random page, and my throat tightens painfully.
It’s a photo of the three of us right here, in this living room.
Sunlight shining through the curtains. I’m still a chubby-cheeked baby, cradled in my mother’s arms, and the house looks new.
Cardboard boxes are open around us, packing paper and pieces of Styrofoam on the hardwood floors.
Just moved in. My parents appear even happier than I remember.
Younger too. So in love I can’t fathom how it could’ve ended.
But this house—it had been around to witness that love.
It’s the last survivor of their marriage, the last physical, tangible reminder that I used to belong to an actual family, a holder of our best memories and brightest years.
To think of the house burning down, everything destroyed—
I swallow, and with a greater sense of urgency, I look through every single one of Cao Yunchen’s Business Photos. The images blur together: my dad clinking tiny baijiu glasses across banquet tables, standing somewhat stiffly in a row of
men his age. But none of them looks exactly like the man from the vision.
Had I gotten it wrong somehow? Only imagined that I’d seen him before? But I’ve always been good with faces and names. Kind
of have to be, to avoid offending new fake friends at parties. And my instincts have never failed me before. . . .
I turn to High School Photos next. I’d assumed they were my dad’s, but instead I find photos of my mother: enviably, irrefutably gorgeous even then. Raven
hair shorter and her face a little fuller. Somehow makes her old school uniform look stylish, her tracksuit zipped down so
that it hangs off one elegant shoulder. She’s surrounded by friends in every single one, and I’m about to return the album
to the cabinet when my gaze lands on a photo of her and a classmate—
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
It’s him.
The man with the scar on his cheek. Except it wasn’t yet a scar when the photo was taken, but a fresh gash, still healing.
There’s a kind of awkwardness to him, sitting on the bench of a basketball court next to my mother, who’s looking somewhere beyond the frame, mouth half open as if in mid-joke, not even noticing the camera.
But he clearly has; he’s staring right ahead, almost as if he can see through the lens to me right now, his face flushed.
Three inches of polite distance are left between them, his body angled in her direction.
Suddenly I can hear my own blood pounding against my skull.
It’s all connected somehow. The man with the scar. My mother. Ares. The teenage boy standing by the fire. But the few pieces
of information I’ve gathered float around haphazardly in my mind; separate moving points without any clear lines between them.
The more I discover about the vision, the more confusing everything becomes. And there’s this hot, shaky sensation inside
my stomach, the overwhelming feeling I’m missing something vital, but what?
The familiar chime of my WeChat notifications sounds from the other room.
I startle, my heart beating even faster as I drop the photo album and seize my phone. Ares has double texted. Well, I’m not
sure it counts as a proper message—it’s a single question mark, sent almost an hour after my last message.
But it still feels like a mini victory.
this bracelet, I tell him, and send him the photo I’ve preselected just for this. It’s a selfie taken in a hotel bathroom, my hair wet from
the shower, the lights turned low to enhance the shadows under my collarbones. I’m wearing my tightest tank top, posing with
one hand against my cheek like I have a stylish toothache, my Van Cleef bracelet dangling around my wrist.
Then I wait.
Half an hour passes, then an hour, then two, giving me more than enough time to search through every album for any other photos of the man.
There’s only one—a school photo taken of the entire year level, with every student’s name and class printed in tiny font in the caption below.
The man with the scar is standing on the farthest left, his shoulders hunched and his arms held stiffly as if he’s trying to disappear from the frame.
I trace my finger over the list until I find the corresponding name.
Long Ge. Carefully I extract the high school photo and hide it underneath my jewelry box, then move the photo albums back into their
original place, all while Ares leaves me on delivered.
At the five-hour mark, something flashes over the screen. I click into it, triumphant, disgustingly relieved. Finally. It must be a reply from him, it has to be—
A social media alert pops up instead.
Sixty thousand people have liked your post
I can’t remember the last time I was so disappointed to be liked. Right now, it doesn’t matter if a hundred thousand people
like me when Ares Yin, the boy who holds my future in his hands, can’t even be bothered to type out a reply.
“Oh my god.” If it weren’t for the vision, this would never be a problem. I don’t obsess over boys. I don’t give them power over me,
don’t even need to resist checking my phone for messages, because the temptation isn’t there to begin with. I never think
about them at night, never lose my cool. I only take calculated risks, but I guess there’s a reason I keep failing my math
classes.
Eventually I fall into a restless sleep with my phone on my pillow, dreaming of replies that never come and houses erupting
into flames.