CHAPTER TWELVE
For the first time in a while, I wake up smiling.
I can still see yesterday’s comments projected across the darkness of my eyelids. Feel them settling beneath my ribs, taking root and blossoming into warmth.
Your voice is soothing …
Thoughtful … Humble … Fun …
Everything you touch turns beautiful.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were describing somebody else, but the compliments were written for me . Maybe—and it’s a little easier, a little less embarrassing to let myself believe in the quiet of the hotel room, my blankets snug around my body—they’re genuine. Maybe I’ve finally done it. Shed my past selves and emerged, skin raw and new, into a life where I could be happy and make real friends …
But then I open my eyes, and I realize something’s wrong—mostly because I can’t quite open them all the way. The skin around them feels swollen and tight, and as my head spins and the early-morning light drips in through the hotel curtains, the itch creeps in. And, with it, the beginnings of panic underneath my sternum.
I flip the blankets off my stomach and shuffle into the bathroom, heart beating and blinking fast as the lights flicker on. Then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, and I have to stifle a scream.
My hands fly to my mouth as if I’m in a tragicomic Shakespearean play: the skittish housewife who walks in on her husband kissing his decade-too-young mistress in their own bed.
Except this is infinitely worse.
A mosquito or some kind of demonic bug must have bitten me in the mountains yesterday, because there are two formidable, bright red bumps on my face—both smack in the middle of each of my eyelids, puffing them up like balloons. They’re so inflamed that my features look like they’ve been put through a distorting filter. I haven’t been this appalled by my own reflection since the days before my dramatic makeover.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, touching a careful finger to my left eye, then my right, as if I can somehow wipe the hideous bumps away like a mascara stain. “Oh. My god.”
“Leah?” Daisy’s voice floats out from the other side of the bathroom door. “Are you brushing your teeth?”
I take a deep breath. Force my panic to stay put for a little longer, even as reality comes crashing in, all my old insecurities overriding my brief moment of peace this morning. The compliments from yesterday suddenly feel so insubstantial in comparison. “Yeah, I’m almost done—just give me a few minutes …” To think. To escape this hotel before anyone can see me. My eyes swing to my reflection again, half-hopeful that it might not be as bad from a certain distance or angle, but if anything, the bugbites only seem to be swelling up further, rendering my face nearly unrecognizable.
My stomach sinks. Even though I know that it’s completely irrational and the world isn’t going to end simply because I don’t look super hot at present, I still have to fight the embarrassing, overwhelming urge to cry. It’s the same as when Cate would post a group of us where I wasn’t sucking in, or my smile was too stiff, or my hair was falling in the wrong way. That powerless, turned-inside-out feeling, the ever-present reminder that I’m not always pretty, that other, uglier versions of me exist, and nobody would ever want them.
Stop freaking out and think of solutions , I scold myself. If not an emergency exit, then at least find a way to cover up your eyes —which are itching so badly I’m tempted to scratch them out just to make it stop.
“Hey, um, Daisy?” I call out. “Do you have a pair of sunglasses I could borrow?” I should’ve brought my own pair, but I never usually wear them, because up until this morning, the lower half of my face was the weaker half.
“I’m so sorry—mine are broken,” she calls back. “They fell just the other day when I was bending down to help this really sweet old woman pick up her apples …”
Of course that’s something that would happen to her.
“Okay, that’s—yeah, don’t worry about it.” I rub my eyes as hard as I can without damaging any vital nerves and sit down on the edge of the bathtub and try to think. As with any time I’ve been sick in the past, whether it was a mild sore throat or a stomachache or a scraped knee, the first person I want to call is my mom. Even if she can’t give any proper medical advice, there’s just something comforting about her telling me I’m okay, I’ll get better, she’ll look after me. But I’m too far away for that, and I remember the uncharacteristically enthusiastic voice messages she sent me yesterday night.
I spoke with your aunt today and she says she’s heard some good things about your progress on the trip! Keep it up!
I’d hate to spoil her mood so soon, or admit that I’m almost considering skipping out on today’s competition because the sight of my face disgusts me. No. I have to solve this on my own.
A few minutes later, I’ve come up with a less-than-ideal course of action. There’s a mall just down the street from the hotel. If I can slip past Daisy and get to a store to buy myself a pair of sunglasses, then hurry back before everyone starts heading down for breakfast, I should be safe. After that, it’ll be a matter of making sure the sunglasses stay plastered to my face until the bugbites go away.
I change quickly into the outfit I’d picked out for myself and left on the towel rack last night, zipping my jacket as high up as it’ll allow and lowering the hood over my face. Then I slip through the bathroom door. I become a human shadow, the world’s stealthiest spy, moving so fast across the room in three strides that I barely catch Daisy’s words before I dash out into the hotel corridor.
“Leah, where are you—”
“Be right back,” I yell over my shoulder in a rush. “You can get breakfast first.”
I manage to make it all the way down to the lobby without bumping into anyone. But just as I’m about to flee toward the entrance, I catch sight of a familiar figure nestled in one of the plush sofas by the receptionist desk. He’s reading. One leg crossed over the other, a metallic bookmark balanced between his fingertips as he flips the page slowly. He’s always carrying a book with him, and never the same book twice. I glimpse the cover from a few feet away. It’s a somber midnight blue, minimalistic, a translation of a Chinese text, judging from the title running down the center and the red-crowned cranes in the design. The kind of book that proclaims itself to be Very Serious—and by extension, whoever is holding it.
I try to muffle my next footsteps and slip around him, but I’m too late.
“What are you doing down here so early? And … why do you look like you’re about to rob this hotel?”
My muscles bunch with dread. God help me. I consider acting like I haven’t heard him, but Cyrus is already snapping his book shut and striding over toward me.
“What are you doing down here?” I ask before he can interrogate me any further.
“Oliver snores too loudly,” he replies with a shrug. “Couldn’t concentrate on the book up in our room.”
“Or you didn’t want to turn on the lights to read and wake him up, because as much as you hate to admit it, you’re considerate like that,” I counter. I can tell from the way his dark brows scrunch like I’ve just engaged in character assassination that I’ve guessed correctly.
“You still haven’t answered my question, which leads me to believe that you are in fact about to commit a robbery—if so, all I ask is that you give me advance warning to avoid becoming an eyewitness. And if not, then you’re hiding something,” he says.
My gut tightens, a thousand flimsy lies falling apart inside my head before they can even reach my lips. Screw Cyrus and his incredible observational skills. When I don’t reply, he takes a step closer and has the audacity to reach for my hood—
“Stop it,” I hiss. The elevator rattles open behind me, and as the sound of English cascades toward us, panic erupts in my stomach. Desperate, I seize Cyrus by the arm and drag him around the closest corner with me. It’s the only spot in the lobby that’s empty—there’s just a stall selling overpriced antiques that even the owner must have given up on. Nobody seems to have bothered dusting the shelves in months.
“Wow, this is all, like, really suspicious,” Cyrus remarks. “Are you … hiding drugs under that hood or—”
“I got bitten by something, happy?” I tell him, twisting my head away from him.
“What? Is it poisonous?”
I freeze. Honestly, I’d been so worried about how the bumps look that I hadn’t even given thought to the actual medical implications. As if determined to validate my new fear, the itching in my eyelids intensifies to an unbearable degree. “I mean, I hope not,” I say, keeping my tone as breezy as possible while I clench my fist tight to stop myself from clawing at the (possibly lethal, but whatever) bites. “I was just on my way to buy …”
“Medicine?”
“No. Sunglasses.”
He takes a moment to digest this. “Okay. Okay, I’ll judge you for that later—let me take a look first. I brought a few different creams with me in case of emergencies—”
I lurch back as far away from him as I can without knocking over a million-dollar porcelain vase from the Tang dynasty. “That’s super generous of you to offer, but I’m not taking this hood off.”
“Leah,” he says, regarding me with what could either be affection or exasperation, as if we’re playing hide-and-seek the way we used to as kids, and I’m still crouching in the corner after he’s obviously already spotted me. “Come on. I promise I won’t laugh.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re going to laugh .” I tug my hood even lower. “I think you’re going to run screaming . ”
“That’s not going to happen. Really, Leah,” he says, gentler, more serious. “At least let me look at it to ascertain that you’re not dying.”
“But I look so ugly right now,” I whisper, my skin burning.
“Impossible,” he says firmly.
It’s the kind of thing any girl would dream of hearing, but it’s useless, because it isn’t true. I shake my head. “Don’t make such bold declarations when you haven’t seen my face yet.”
“It’s still the same face, and I’ve seen your face a hundred times before,” he says, unfazed. “I know what you look like.”
And the strange, mortifying, incredible thing is that he does. He knows what I look like with my hair styled and my lashes curled, my skin glowing from the dozen different serums I slather on at night. But he also knows what I look like from the Before times, when I would show up at school in haphazard pigtails and braces and baggy, garish shirts that would’ve gotten me banned from the parties I was invited to at sixteen. He knows what I look like angry, shouting across the school’s oval; dozing off in the middle of class, my nose pressed against my textbooks; triumphant, eyes blazing, at the top of the world, and crawling home in defeat; sobbing and laughing until I can’t breathe; hopeful, humiliated, happy. He’s the only person on this trip—no, the only person I know, other than my own parents—who’s seen every single form I’ve shape-shifted through in the past few years. He knows, and right now, it’s more of a relief than anything.
I swallow. This time, when he reaches for my hood, I let him slide it back down over my head. To his credit, he doesn’t laugh or scream. His expression remains subdued as his gaze roams over my face, and I wrestle away any impulse to cover myself up again, to scrutinize my own reflection in the darkness of his eyes. A beat of silence passes between us.
“Looks like a pretty typical mosquito bite,” he says finally. “I’ll get the cream from my room—and sunglasses—for you,” he adds, the corners of his lips twitching.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Just give me a minute to run up, okay?”
All I manage to do is nod. While I wait for him in the abandoned mini museum, my hood fastened tight around my swollen face again, doubt creeps into the corners of my mind. What if this is another prank? What if he comes back not with sunglasses, but with a group of people from our trip, so they can gather around and laugh at me? It’s exactly what the kids at my old schools would have done.
My heart thrums uneasily, the tension rippling down to my stomach. Maybe I should just make a run for it before he returns. Buy my own cream and my own sunglasses … I glance out in the direction of the lobby entrance. I have some time; I could escape if I hurried—
“Here you go.”
Cyrus appears around the corner, alone, a pair of sunglasses and small white tube in his hand, extended out toward me. Just as he promised.
“What?” He laughs quietly as I take the sunglasses first, my movements slow, cautious. I’m reminded of this documentary I once watched of this horse whisperer approaching a wild mare; he’d held out an apple and stayed very still, the way Cyrus is now, afraid to scare the creature away. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“No reason,” I say as I push the sunglasses up the bridge of my nose, still on the alert for the catch, the fine print, the open-trapdoor moment that’s surely going to teach me a lesson for trusting him, but nothing comes. And I’m struck by the growing evidence that I might have been wrong before. This whole being kind to me thing isn’t a ploy, a demonic scheme to ruin my life a second time. Cyrus Sui might not have any ulterior motive at all. As impossible as it sounds, as painful as it is to admit … he might actually, simply be offering me kindness because he wants to.
Cyrus grins all of a sudden, like he can’t help himself. “Hey, my sunglasses look good on you.”
I turn my head a fraction and see myself in the glass display. The sunglasses are bigger than anything I would’ve picked out for myself, the frames a little on the thicker side, the color solid black, more functional than fashionable. But privately, I like the way they look too.