CHAPTER SIX
There are plenty of things I can settle for, but a quick shower before a night out is not one of them.
In our lavish hotel room, I blow-dry my hair and straighten it, even though it’s technically already straight, because there’s a crucial difference between naturally straight hair and flat-ironed hair. Then I unpack three bags of makeup products, letting them spill onto my side of the marble counter. Daisy’s side is almost empty in comparison, and much neater: just her toothbrush standing in a plastic cup, a small tube of sunscreen, and moisturizer.
Even on days when I’m not adjusting to a new country, there’s something comforting about doing my own makeup. It’s familiar. Requires just enough focus to keep me preoccupied without turning my mind all the way on. There’s a rhythm to it too: the tap of the brush, the slow squeeze of the eyelash curler, a quick swipe of glitter here and there. And it ’ s effective . I’ve devoted what must be hundreds of hours to figuring out the best shade of eye shadow for my skin, the most effective contouring techniques for my jaw and nose, little magic tricks for me to hide my many shortcomings and highlight my nicer features.
I’m dabbing blush onto my cheeks when I catch Daisy staring in the mirror. Her entire shower took less time than my skin prep routine, and she’s already changed into a faded pink cotton shirt and sweatpants, her hair tied into a loose braid that trails over her shoulder.
“Do you always do this before you go out?” she asks me. “Like, the whole—” She gestures to her own bare face.
“Pretty much, yeah,” I say with a faint stab of self-consciousness. She probably thinks I’m super vain, or that I’m one of those girls who can’t leave the house makeup-free—which is exactly what I am. I don’t think anyone at my current school has ever seen my face without some kind of product plastered on it. Even on the plane ride here, I had my perfectly glued lashes and trusted black eyeliner for support.
“But … doesn’t it take a long time?” Daisy asks in a tone of wonder, watching as I apply my favorite cherry-colored tint next. I smudge the line on my upper lip to make it look fuller, before layering a darker red shade onto the bottom, all of it done with a surgeon’s precision.
“About an hour,” I confirm, reaching for my lip gloss for the final touch. The sweet, artificial smell of strawberries drifts up to my nose as I swipe it on. “Sometimes two, if I want to also style my hair and look extra good.”
“Two hours?” Daisy repeats, looking aghast. “What if you have school?”
“I just wake up earlier,” I say, unsure if this conversation is headed toward some kind of damning judgment about how I choose to distribute my time. “Usually around five in the morning.”
“Wow,” Daisy says, though she doesn’t sound critical. More bewildered by my dedication and unsure about the necessity of going through such motions, the same way someone might react if you told them your morning ritual involves hiking up a mountain at dawn every day to pluck fresh berries. “And you don’t get exhausted?”
“No. Not at all,” I lie. Countless times, I’ve wished I could be naturally, effortlessly pretty, the sort of pretty that doesn’t require time or sacrifice. But since that isn’t an option, my only choices are to be high-maintenance pretty and liked as a result, or unpopular the way I was before.
Daisy looks like she’s about to ask something else, but she snaps her mouth shut and grabs her tote bag from the table.
“I’m almost ready,” I tell her. I scrutinize my reflection one last time, then set my lip gloss back onto the counter.
I feel more like myself when I head down the glass elevator with Daisy five minutes later, my face powdered smooth, my hair flowing soft over my shoulders, my black dress fitting snug around my waist and thighs. I always feel better when I look better.
“Wow,” Oliver says appreciatively the second he spots me across the lobby. “And I was so sure that I was the most attractive one here.”
There was a time, just after I turned pretty, when getting any kind of male attention was still a novelty to me, where I’d take Oliver’s words far too seriously and fantasize about what it could all mean . Would he fall in love with me? Did he want to start something? What would we name our future children?
Now I’ve learned that the most it could mean is that he wants to kiss you, and chances are Oliver’s used the same line a dozen times in the past week. So out of politeness, all I do is smile at him, which he returns at double the wattage.
In my peripheral vision, I notice Cyrus standing a few feet from the others. He’s showered as well and changed out of his clothes into a plain black button-down. He stares at me for a second, his face impassive, then abruptly turns to the abstract art on the wall. I’m not sure what philosophical meaning he could be uncovering in those two splotches of orange, but he keeps his eyes pinned on the painting.
“Took you all long enough,” Wang Laoshi barks, raising his blue flag over his head in a somewhat menacing manner. “We’re running two-and-a-half minutes behind schedule. Remember, this is not a family trip; you can’t just choose to show up whenever.”
“No, because if this were a family trip, my dad would have disappeared into the casino, and I’d already be drunk,” Oliver says, loud enough for the whole group to hear. “Just kidding,” he amends hastily when Wang Laoshi shoots him a stern look. “Not kidding in the slightest , ” he whispers to me out of the corner of his mouth as we push through the revolving doors.
The smile that twitches at my lips is a little more genuine this time.
The temperature seems to have dropped a whole season within the span of an afternoon, the cool air fanning my bare arms. The city itself is transformed by the darkness. Shanghai during the day was bright, bustling, vibrant, polished; Shanghai at night is glittering, expansive, everything dialed up and eager to show itself off, like any fashion icon swapping her blazer and sunglasses for a bold red lip and shimmering dress when the sun goes down.
We walk past vendors selling roasted sweet potatoes from the back of their carts, placed strategically at the entrance of a subway station, their honeyed fragrance chasing us for yards down the busy street. There are tea shops and cafés on every block: lanterns swaying over the patios; hand-painted ceramic cups molded into the shape of cats and ducks; glass displays of butter cookies and strawberry cakes; fishbowls sitting on mahogany counters; translucent tents set up on neat blocks of grass like giant versions of the fishbowls, happy couples huddled up inside them.
Then it’s a steep climb up the overpass. Tianqiao , Wang Laoshi says, translated literally to “sky bridge,” and I can’t help thinking about how pretty the name is, how fitting, because it really feels like we’re crossing through the dark sky itself. An old woman sits by the railings, tiny hair clips and sparkling trinkets stretched out on a faded mat, the traffic rushing beneath her.
Everything starts to become recognizable once we reach the Bund—not from memory, but from photos and posters. Thousands of white and gold lights glint off the waterfront like stars, the reflection of the ferry swimming over the river. We board one at a time, with Cyrus and me falling to the end of the line.
“Lukewarm warning: Be careful of your foot,” I read out in bemusement from the sign nailed to the pier. The questionable English translation is printed right under the Chinese characters.
“That sounds like what you’d say when you’re extremely reluctant to help someone,” Cyrus remarks just over my shoulder. I startle. I hadn’t realized he was standing so close behind me. “Like if your enemy was approaching a cliff.”
I can’t muster a reply at once; the gap between the swaying ferry and the edge of the pier is severely testing my ability to move around in high heels. I manage to put one foot over, wishing there was a railing I could cling to for support. But then I think of something even better. “A lukewarm warning,” I say, struggling a little more visibly than I really need to, “that if I don’t hold on to something right now, I’m going to slip and take you down with me.” And that’s the only excuse I offer before I grab tight on to Cyrus’s arm, using him to steady myself before I can tumble through the gap into the Huangpu River.
I can sense Cyrus’s surprise, feel the way his muscles bunch and his body stiffens. But he doesn’t pull away until I’ve finished crossing over onto the ferry and both my feet are firmly planted to the deck.
“A lukewarm warning to you,” Cyrus says, jumping aboard easily after me, “that as flattering as the dress is, you should consider bringing a jacket next time. It’s going to be windy.”
It’s already windy, the dark waters rippling below us. I have to keep patting my bangs to keep them in place. “If you can survive an entire plane ride without a blanket, I think I can survive a cruise without a jacket. But thanks,” I add, flashing him a quick, subdued smile that makes my insides turn, but—my nausea aside—has the effect I’m going for.
Cyrus stares at me for an extra beat, like he’s not entirely sure what’s happening.
The beginning of the path to perfect, crushing humiliation , I vow in my head. Enjoy.
While the outside of the ferry is designed with neon signs and the carved head of a dragon, its scales glowing yellow, fangs closing around a pearl, the ferry’s interior is laid out like a restaurant. Rows of round tables stretch from one end to the other, with just enough chairs to be filled by our group. The only two remaining empty chairs are by the open windows in the back.
Which is how I find myself sitting next to Cyrus once again.
I glance over at the papers already set in front of us. I’m really hoping it’s a menu—I haven’t eaten anything today except the stale bread rolls handed out on the plane—but then I realize it’s actually—
“A test?” Oliver demands from the table next to ours. “We’re on this cruise to take a test ?”
Not just any test. It’s written entirely in Chinese, most of its meaning obscured by all the lessons I skipped over the years. And here I thought I had found a way to escape anything academic-related.
Wang Laoshi claps his hands. “Listen up,” he says, raising his voice over the whispered complaints. Well, most are complaints. One of the girls—Lydia—looks genuinely excited by the prospect of schoolwork on a ferry. She’s already whipped out a sharpened pencil and eraser and has her curly hair scraped into a bun, as if she’s been training her whole life for this. I’ve never related to anyone less. “The test is to help gauge the extent of your Chinese abilities, including your reading and writing proficiency. I’ll give you half an hour to finish. And if you have any questions,” Wang Laoshi adds, “please do hesitate to ask me. It’s best you work it out yourself.”
***
I end up stuck on the first question.
We’re meant to construct sentences using different vocabulary words provided at the top of the page, but I barely know enough words to string together a sentence to begin with. The only characters I can write with reasonable confidence are I , horse , mother , you , have , and a few numbers. This works out well enough for a couple sentences, but I run out of variations pretty quickly:
I bought ten horses.
The horses have fruits.
I have a horse in my sink.
The horse is suspicious of my mother.
My mother is a horse.
The horse is my mother.
“What do you mean by despite the horse, my mother can still have ten sinks ?” Cyrus asks, shifting forward to read my answers.
I quickly hide my paper with my elbow, but it’s harder to hide the heat flooding my face. “No cheating,” I tell him.
“I don’t think you have any reason to worry about me copying you,” he says, resting his head on the table like it’s the perfect pillow, his face angled toward me. He put his pen down before I’d even flipped the page. “Though I definitely couldn’t have thought of that sentence by myself. The teacher should give you bonus points for creativity.”
“You can stop now.”
He regards me with an expression of well-feigned innocence. “Stop what?”
“Talking,” I say. Looking at me , I add mentally. Breathing.
“I really enjoy the implication that the horse poses an obstacle to sink ownership,” Cyrus continues like he didn’t hear me, his mouth curving with quiet amusement. “And that the mother can only have ten sinks, specifically. Eleven would just be too many.”
I put my head down, committed to tuning out his existence. But the next few questions are even harder than the first, almost impossible for me to decipher. Out of desperation, I start drawing wonky circles in place of characters I don’t know, hoping I might remember them later, but then it just looks like I’m doodling eggs all over the page. Before Wang Laoshi comes up to collect our tests, I already know that I’ve failed mine.
Well, the good thing is that it’s over , I comfort myself. Until we get the results back anyway.
Most of the other group members have left their chairs to walk back and forth along the ferry, chatting and taking photos of the stunning night scenery, their voices rippling over the rhythmic splash of water. Shanghai lies before us in all its magnificence, with its laser lights and soaring skylines. It’s still hard to believe that I’m here , when only a day ago I’d been packing my pajamas in my bedroom, with my familiar view of the cherry tree and picnic table in the backyard. Now my views include the Huangpu River, curving out for miles and miles like a giant serpent, and, farther down the banks, the gleaming domes and rooftop bars and art museums and cinemas, the places where the city’s past clashes with the present in a jigsaw of neoclassical architecture and ancient bell towers and soaring skyscrapers. Animated hearts pop up over screens that stretch wide across the sides of buildings, beckoning to tourists. Welcome to Shanghai , the massive text reads, appearing for seconds at a time, then vanishing like an enchantment . I Love Shanghai.
I take it all in from my seat, massaging my sore fingers.
It’s been an embarrassingly long period of time since I last attempted to write anything in Chinese. At this point, I have to wonder if it’s too late for me. If I’m a lost cause. Everyone says that there’s an ideal period of time in your life to pick up or retain a language, and I stumbled past that deadline ages ago. Maybe I’ll never be fluent like Cyrus. Never speak my mother tongue without it getting tangled in my mouth. Maybe my aunt was right, and I’ll never be anything more than a foreigner in this city.
The thought weighs heavier than I expected. It wouldn’t have bothered me as much in LA, yet it’s different to physically be here, surrounded by sights I should understand but can’t. I can barely read the advertisements flashing on the sides of buildings and the ships gliding by.
To his credit, Wang Laoshi finishes marking our tests before we’ve passed the Oriental Pearl Tower, cutting short the life cycle for my dread. After ushering everyone back to their seats, he stands up at the front of the ferry, holding the papers in his hand like they’re criminal evidence.
“A few of you did exceptionally well on this test,” he says, putting his grimace on hold to smile down at Cyrus, before switching back to it in a blink. “There were, however, some shocking answers—or rather, a lack of answers.” He doesn’t look my way directly, but I can feel his disapproval blowing toward me like the cold breeze off the river. “In the interest of fairness for the upcoming competition, I will be pairing you off into teams based on your scores. Those who received high marks will be put together with those who are struggling. With someone to help you, and your natural immersion in the environment, my hope is that by the end of the trip, you will all see remarkable improvement in your Chinese—even if you’re practically illiterate at present …”
He definitely looks right at me this time.
“As for the specifics of the competition,” Wang Laoshi continues, “it’ll be running throughout the trip in every place we visit: first in Shanghai, then in Anhui, then in Guilin. Based on previous student feedback and lively discussions among the coordinators behind Journey to the East, we’re changing it up a little this year to encourage more participation. You won’t just be sightseeing—you’ll be engaging, interacting, cooperating, absorbing. The first activity will officially begin tomorrow.”
“Excuse me, Wang Laoshi?” Lydia—the same girl who looked ready to perform happy cartwheels when the teacher handed out the tests—raises her hand high in the air, her voice climbing an octave with excitement. “Will there be a prize for the winners?”
“The ultimate prize, of course, is knowledge,” Wang Laoshi says very seriously.
Oliver lets out an audible snort.
“In addition,” Wang Laoshi says, “there’ll be a small prize for the winners of each activity. At the end of the competition, the team who performs the best overall will be selected to deliver a presentation about the trip at a special afternoon tea event held by Jiu Yin He. There, they’ll have the opportunity to meet Dr. Linda Shen, a renowned Stanford professor who’s helping oversee this year’s program. I’ll be emailing her updates for each activity, as well as the test scores from today so she can see where you’re at.”
At the mention of my aunt’s name, my stomach drops. If my goal is to impress her, I’m off to a horrible start. I can only pray Wang Laoshi doesn’t plan on sending her our test answers too; she might actually burn my name off the family tree if she reads my horse-and-mother series.
Beside me, Cyrus sits up straighter, and a faint suspicion stirs inside me.
“Don’t tell me you joined this program just for another chance to kiss up to my aunt,” I mutter to him out of the corner of my mouth.
“I was never planning on kissing up to her,” he mutters back, but I notice he doesn’t deny his motive. “I don’t need to. She just needs to speak to me to be impressed by me, and since her mood was ruined by someone at the wedding, this is my only other chance before our college apps are due. My last chance.”
“Seriously?” I realize I’m probably staring at him the way Daisy was staring at me earlier when I described my lengthy, multistep morning beauty routine. “You want a letter of recommendation from her that badly? You couldn’t just ask someone else?”
“You don’t understand. It has to be from her,” Cyrus says, his eyes blazing with rare emotion. Then, as if catching himself, he pauses. Dials back the intensity in his tone. “It’s just that a letter of recommendation from her would basically guarantee me a spot in Stanford’s Chinese Literature program—”
“You’re set on studying literature?” I ask. “What about piano?”
“I’d thought about it,” he says slowly. “I love both—I was actually really torn between the two, and all my teachers were trying to persuade me to do one or the other. But I don’t need to study piano the way that I need to study literature.”
What a nice problem to have , I think to myself, biting back a surge of jealousy. I’m just too talented at too many things, god help me. No matter which option he ended up choosing, he would have a dazzling career to look forward to.
Still, I have to admit that literature suits him. Actually, a program on ruining other people’s lives would suit him best. Second to that, though, he belongs in a world of quiet libraries and gold-soaked classrooms, tea steaming in his hands, books piled up on desks, the margins inhabited by scribbled epiphanies.
“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” he’s saying. “I don’t believe that books are the cure to everything, necessarily, but it’s like—when you’re feeling unwell, and you receive a diagnosis, and you’re so relieved because now you realize that it wasn’t all in your head, that there’s a name for what you’re experiencing. On a bad day, books offer a language for your pain, and on a good day, books remind you just how precious your life is. A program devoted entirely to books feels almost like the stuff of dreams …” He trails off, a hint of self-consciousness creeping into his voice. But there’s no uncertainty, no doubt. That is his future. It’s clear, tangible, achievable. He can see it lit up ahead of him, like the shining banks of the river, and now he just needs to take the necessary steps to reach it.
Meanwhile, I have zero idea what school I should be applying to, much less what program I want to do. The career counselor recommended that I try a process of elimination until I found the pathway that spoke to me , but I’d made my way down an entire list of possible degrees, and none of them spoke at all. None of them even spluttered at me. And at the end of the day it just felt pointless, silly, what with my horrible academic record, as if I were inspecting million-dollar castles and debating which one to move into when I couldn’t even afford to rent half a bathroom.
“What about you?” Cyrus murmurs. “I would’ve thought that with all the modeling you’ve been doing—”
I almost flinch out of my seat. “How do you know about that?”
“What?” he asks, confused.
“How do you know I …” Modeled. The past tense threatens to slip its way into the sentence. It’s bad enough that he’s the only person here who knows about my modeling career. I can’t have him finding out that my modeling career failed before it even properly took off. That as of now, I have no future plans, no known talents, no useful connections, no marketable passions, no projects in the works, not even a regular sleeping schedule. I have basically nothing except a nice wardrobe and a strong dose of existential dread. “I don’t remember ever telling you I became a model.”
“I mean, it’s all over your social media,” Cyrus says like it’s obvious.
I blink. “You follow me?”
Before he can reply, a shadow looms over the two of us, and we both look up to be punished with a terrifying angle of Wang Laoshi’s scowling face.
“While it’s nice to see you already bonding with your new teammate, it would be better to wait until I’m finished talking,” Wang Laoshi says.
“New teammate?” I repeat.
“Yes, and if you’d been paying any attention, Leah, you would have heard me announce all the teams based on your test scores,” Wang Laoshi says impatiently. “If you have any objections, I don’t want to hear it—all decisions are final. This trip is about opening yourself up to new places, new ideas, and new people. Most growth happens when we find ourselves in unexpected situations. And frankly,” he says, raising his brows, “your Chinese skills could really use some help from a much more fluent speaker.”
On that uplifting note, he walks off to another table, his hands behind his back.
“You should consider yourself lucky,” Cyrus tells me.
“Why?”
“I mean, I’m obviously your best bet at winning,” he says, arms folded across his chest, the wind tousling his hair.
He might actually be right, I conclude as I look around the ferry at the other teams: Oliver, who’s eagerly waving Daisy over to take photos of him pinching the Oriental Pearl Tower as if he’s a city-sized monster; Lydia, who can be heard very clearly saying, “Make sure we complete these fifty practice papers every day, and memorize this map of Shanghai …” to her teammate, who’s taking slow steps away from her the way you would from a bear in the wild; Sean, who’s dozed off so close to the edge of the ferry I’m concerned he’s about to fall into the river.
With Cyrus there to help, my odds of winning the competition will increase exponentially. If we do win, I’ll finally be able to prove to my aunt—and to myself—that I’m more than just her uncultured niece who ruined her daughter’s wedding. For a few seconds, I let myself imagine the shock on her stern, ageless face when she sees me delivering a speech in Chinese at the afternoon tea event.
And being on Cyrus’s team means I’ll have more opportunities to uncover and exploit his weaknesses. Better to have your enemies closer and all that, especially if you want to steal their heart in order to break it.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s do this.”
He simply nods, expressionless, then leans his head against the window, his back turned to me. But in the reflection spilling over the dark glass, I think I see the faintest of smiles tug at his lips.