CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In Shanghai, everything felt like it was sped-up.
The crowds streaming out of the subway station at five-minute intervals, swiping through emails or talking rapidly on their phones. The delivery workers rushing down the streets to drop off their next order while the food was still steaming hot. The baristas snatching empty cups from the marble counters and filling them up in a single streamlined movement. Even the elevators in our hotel were shockingly fast, the doors dinging open almost the instant you pressed the button.
That relentless rhythm eased slightly in Anhui, but when we travel from Huangshan City to Guilin, everything slows all the way back down.
There’s time to stroll along the emerald banks of the rivers, to watch the cormorants soar leisurely over the karst mountains, to buy cool sugarcane juice from the spread-out stalls and shop for jade earrings. Time for the medicine Cyrus gave me to kick in, and for the swelling around my eyes to fade; by the third day, I don’t really need his sunglasses to hide my face anymore, though I keep them on for a day longer.
The competition reaches a lull too, and it’s nice just to wander through the trees and go rafting without having to worry about winning anything.
On our way down to the bamboo rafts, an old woman approaches us with flower crowns hanging around her arm. She’s not the first person I’ve seen selling them, and most people in our group walk right past her, but I slow my steps. The crowns are beautifully woven by hand, with bursts of yellow daisies and waxflowers and camellias.
“We’ll take one,” Cyrus says, passing her the money.
I turn to him in surprise. “I was just looking.”
“I know,” he tells me, and takes his time choosing the crown with the brightest, fullest flowers, before setting it down gently on my head like this is my coronation. “My grandmother used to sell these for a living before we moved to America. It’s a tough business. I would’ve bought myself one,” he adds, following me to the edge of the water, “but I think it looks better on you.”
“You have to stop being so nice to me,” I tell him as I climb onto the raft, one hand holding the flower crown in place, the other grabbing the back of the bamboo chair for support.
He hops on after me, sitting gracefully down on my left. “Why?”
Because then I might not want to be enemies with you anymore , I answer silently inside my head . Because then it’s going to be much harder to go through with my plan, when everything I’ve done so far is to get my revenge. “I’m not used to it.”
Something shifts over his features, like the sunlight rippling off the Li River. “What are you used to, then?”
“You know. Being childhood enemies.”
His smile feels like a warning, but it’s not the kind that precedes a prank. It’s too sincere, his voice dropping low as he says, “I’ll keep being your enemy, if that’s what you’d prefer.” His eyes drop down too, drifting to my lips with such weight and intent that I can almost feel the ghost brush of his gaze. “I can be whatever you want me to be.”
Our raft lurches off the shore, and I can’t tell if the swooping in my stomach is from the rocking motion of the waters as we drift downstream, or from the way his words settle inside me.
Bamboos lean their bodies out from either side of us, their leaves skimming the surface, and the river is so clear it resembles liquid glass, reflecting all the other rafts up ahead, their shapes merging together at the edges. I can see Oliver and Daisy laughing over something; two of the girls risking everything to snap pictures, shrieking when their fingers slip and their phones almost tumble into the water; Sean leaning against his teammate’s shoulder, both of them staring out at the scenery as if mesmerized.
When joy arrives, it catches me off guard.
It sneaks up slowly through my rib cage like poppies pushing through soil after the rain, and then it’s there, everywhere, warmth beating in my chest, spreading down to my fingertips as I sink back in the sunlight. It’s like I’m thawing. I’ve always been used to happiness in snatches—happiness that felt stolen, happiness that was hard-won, happiness because . I was only happy when someone said I was pretty, when I booked a new job, when a stranger approved of me, and then I would go home and feel the happiness seep out again, leaving behind a hollow pit in my chest.
This happiness though—it’s new. It stays without asking for permission. It simply exists, like the water and the sky.
“What are you smiling at?” Cyrus asks me.
Nothing , I want to say. Everything.
I just shake my head, the breeze flowing past me with the river. In my peripheral vision, I can see the sun lighting up wild strands of my hair, turning it a brilliant fire-gold.
When I agreed to the trip, all I’d wanted was to run away: from the threat of the future, from everyone who expected something more from me, from the grave in my backyard where my potential had been buried, from the sadness that had leaked through my bedroom walls.
But this doesn’t feel like I’m escaping—it feels like I’m returning. Like I’m reaching back in time for the person I used to be, before the tears stained my pillow and the blisters split my feet. The little girl who didn’t wince at the sound of her own laughter, who plucked wild daisies and braided them in her hair, who saw a secluded garden and imagined hidden realms, who wore sparkly tiaras and waved around heart-shaped wands, picked out dresses because she loved the color pink and not just because she liked how the material clung to her body. The girl I was, the girl I had forgotten. Not an ignorant foreigner, but someone wandering through new, familiar cities.
I’m here , I think to myself again, yet what I really mean is: I’m home.
***
The longer I stay in this country, the more words I collect.
It happens naturally, as if they’ve been hidden in the corners of my mind this whole time, waiting for me to brush away the dust. I’m staring out at the mountains beyond the city, their highest peaks painted indigo and softening with distance, when I remember the character shan , followed by the characters for rivers and lakes . When a stray dog comes bounding up to us in the streets and I crouch down to stroke the soft, dappled fur on its belly, the word keai forms on my lips, containing within it the same character for love. I learn how to say tao yan , for “annoying,” when Cyrus bumps against my shoulders on the escalator or steals the mango jelly from my bag at lunch, and I say it to him so often that soon it’s as familiar to me as his name. I learn how to pay by zhifu , with a tap of the phone, and how to ask for more space by shouting rang yi rang in every crowd, and how to ask for more time. I learn the difference between hai shui , for “seawater,” and he shui , for “drinking water,” when I accidentally ask for the former at a restaurant and the waitress offers me nothing but a bewildered look in response. I learn that shui itself can be used as an insult, but only if there’s too much of it. I learn plenty of insults and curses, thanks to the boys at the back of the bus. Under Oliver’s unwanted influence, I learn a dozen pickup lines, all of which are so nauseating I do my best to forget them immediately after.
The word guimi —“best friend”—unfurls in my mind one evening while Daisy and I are making friendship bracelets on the carpeted floor of our hotel room, the shiny beads she’d bought at the market scattered between us. The word kaixin— “happiness”—trickles sweetly down my throat like the snow pear and rock sugar soup we were given for breakfast during our last day in Anhui.
And the word mei , for “beautiful,” finds its way to me as we wander deeper and deeper into a bamboo forest. It’s the kind of beautiful that sneaks up on you. One moment we’re batting away leaves from the overgrown shrubbery, grumbling about the wet grass and the mud and the steep, uneven paths, and the next moment I gaze up and my breath catches. The late-afternoon light prickles through the foliage, and thousands of bamboos curve elegantly forward over a lake, their reflections blurred and distorted like watercolor. The lake itself is such a vivid, crystal blue it hardly seems real.
It feels like a scene straight out of the wuxia films my dad loves to watch after work. It wouldn’t even surprise me if someone in billowing robes were to leap out from the clouds right now, sword swishing in hand; this place seems made for assassins and empresses and heroes from legends.
“You’ll each be given an instant camera for the next activity,” Wang Laoshi tells us, speaking at only half his usual volume, like he doesn’t want to disrupt the peace. He sets his duffel bag down on the forest floor and begins unpacking the cameras, passing them from one person to another. “Feel free to wander around and take photos, but don’t walk too far from the group. We’ll all meet back here in …” He glances at his watch. “Let’s say an hour. Once you’re done, you and your teammate will need to pick out five photos to submit to me by tomorrow morning. The team with the best photo will win—and they’ll get to keep their instant cameras as the prize. Got it?”
Quick, eager nods from the group. Compared to all the contests so far, this one actually sounds pretty relaxing—or at least there doesn’t seem to be a significant risk of tumbling off a cliff.
The second Oliver gets his camera, he holds it up and turns it around to take a selfie. There’s a soft whirring sound as the photo rolls out.
“What?” he says when he catches everyone staring at him, our judgment pronounced in the silence. Wang Laoshi appears one impulsive move and forgotten Teacher’s Code of Conduct away from snatching the camera back.
“There must’ve been a gross misunderstanding—I don’t believe the teacher was asking for photos of you ,” Cyrus says, voice flat. He’s grabbed two cameras, and without a word, he walks over to me and presses one of them into my hand. “It’s meant to be a photography contest. A form of art.”
“My face is art,” Oliver counters without missing a beat, shaking the photo in the air. “It deserves critical acclaim. Don’t you agree?”
Cyrus’s brows rise. “Well—”
“I wasn’t asking you; I was asking Leah.” Oliver turns to me. “Don’t you think my face is art?”
I search between them for the best response, my eyes flicking from Cyrus’s unimpressed scowl to Oliver’s expectant grin. “Art is subjective,” I say diplomatically.
“So: no,” Cyrus tells him.
“So: yes,” Oliver says, and moves closer, his white sneakers crunching over the fallen leaves. When he’s only a foot away, he lowers his head a little and winks at me. “Feel free to take a closer look if you aren’t convinced.”
I hold up my camera to block the space between us. “You’re getting in the way of my shot, Oliver.”
“You wound me.” He presses both hands to his chest and gasps, as if he’s really suffering from a fatal strike to the heart. “Does our love mean nothing to you? Don’t you know how I feel about you?”
I snort as if he’s just told a horrible joke—and it might just be that, but sometimes I find it hard to tell with Oliver. Is he flirting out of habit or boredom, or is there a chance he actually likes me? “Are you sure you’re talking to the right person?”
“Certain. As certain as I am that we’d be great together. I mean, I’m hot, you’re hot. Can you think of a single reason why we shouldn’t—” He cuts himself off, his eyes widening at something behind me. I whirl around, but all I see is Cyrus, whose expression is perfectly neutral. “Just kidding,” Oliver says in a rush, backing up so fast he almost crashes into one of the bamboos. “That was a really stupid thing to say. I’m, uh, going to continue taking pictures of my face now. See you two around.”
“What was that?” I mutter to Cyrus, watching in bemusement as Oliver runs off to the other side of the clearing like he’s being chased by a wolf.
“A rare moment of self-awareness, perhaps,” Cyrus says with a shrug.
“Maybe,” I say, raising the camera higher and squinting into the viewfinder. My experience with photography has always been limited to other people taking photos of me, telling me where to go, how to stand, how to be prettier, suck in, breathe out, stare to the side, laugh without laughing too hard, stop holding back your laughter, stop, stay still. It’s a strange relief, in a way, to be totally in control for once, to see the world inside the lens without worrying how the world might see me. I snap a photo of the bamboos kissing the lake’s glowing aquamarine edge, the lone pavilion waiting across the waters, a sparrow soaring through the brilliant blue of the sky at the perfect time, and slide the developed film into my pocket.
Then, as I’m adjusting the composition of my next shot, Cyrus moves into the frame.
He’s straightening the collar of his jacket, even though his outfit is already perfect, not a single wrinkle to be found, and he’s focused on something in the trees. His eyes are luminous under the long silk strands of his hair, so bright they could make the stars feel insecure, his mouth soft and sullen, the sharp angles of his profile stark against the deep, perennial greens of the forest. Another kind of beautiful that sneaks up on you.
I don’t mean to take the photo. Or maybe I do. Maybe I want to collect this moment the way I’ve been collecting words throughout the trip, in case I might need it again.
I make sure to walk out of his line of sight, the photo pressed warm between my palm and my shirt like a secret, my heart beating unsteadily, before I let myself study it. The hazy, vintage quality of the instant film makes him look even more dreamlike, his hair even darker, his skin even softer and impossibly flawless. And while I doubt Oliver’s selfies could ever pass for art , it doesn’t seem so ridiculous at all to call the photo of Cyrus exactly that.
Art.
You’re meant to be taking photos of nature , I remind myself, tucking the photo deep into my other pocket, knowing I’ll never show it to anyone else. Focus on the contest. If you lose this one too, you’re never going to be able to fully prove to your aunt how much you’ve changed.
But as I scan my surroundings, I quickly realize that everyone’s photos are going to turn out very similar. They’re meandering around the same few trees, their cameras pointed toward the bamboo leaves or the wildflowers growing on the banks of the lake. If I want my photos to stand out, I need to get a little more creative than that. I need to go somewhere higher, with a clearer view of the forest.
So I follow the stone steps leading up the mountain, taking two at a time. It’s not long before I lose sight of the group amid the dense greenery, but I can still hear their footsteps and voices somewhere down below. They probably won’t even notice I’ve wandered off. I keep walking, my camera out and ready, stopping every few feet or so to take a photo. The more I climb, the rougher the path becomes, twisting up and down, the blocks of stone fading into the dirt or strewn sporadically along a slope, like the people in charge of construction ran out of materials halfway through the process. In some places, the steps come to an abrupt stop, leaving me to pick my way alone through the grass, my muscles burning, sweat prickling my hairline. I have to focus most of my energy simply on not slipping.
And then I notice the silence.
I freeze, straining my ears for the sound of Oliver’s loud, obnoxious laughter or Wang Laoshi scolding someone in the group for bringing too many snacks. Yet the only thing I can hear now is my own heartbeat, thudding faster and faster in my eardrums.
“It’s okay,” I tell myself out loud. I’d thought my voice would help steady me, clear away any fear, but it comes out small and hollow and uncertain, lost to the cool mountain air. I couldn’t have gone that far , I finish inside my head.
But when I try to retrace my steps down the mountain, my feet falter. I don’t remember the paths branching out on the climb up. There aren’t any signs to help me determine where I should go, which path will take me back and which one will only take me farther away from the group.
Suddenly, the forest feels too vast, too deep. All the bamboos look identical, and there are thousands and thousands of them, towering over my head and expanding endlessly in every direction.
The beginnings of panic buzz along my scalp with the high frequency of a fire alarm.
It’s like taking a multiple-choice test, and I’ve never been good at those. I would always choose one of the answers at random, then doubt myself and change it, then wait ten minutes and come back to it, and change it to my original answer again. Make an educated guess if you’re stuck , the teachers would say, but that was on the bold assumption I was educated enough to make one. Compared to algebra, I’m even less educated on the subject of navigating one’s way around a forest alone.
After hesitating for a solid minute, I choose the path farthest on the left, a vaguely remembered poem about roads in a yellow wood playing over and over in my head. It’s the sort of thing I’m sure Cyrus has memorized.
And at first, I’m hopeful that I’ve made the right choice—the path winds slowly down, and the bamboos appear to thin, offering glimpses of blue that could be the sky or the lake. But the path makes a sharp twist up again, then disappears entirely, and my stomach plummets as I find myself trapped in a labyrinth of trees. Shadows stretch out from all around me, darkening and sharpening their claws as the sun sinks behind the mountain.
I swivel my head to the left and right in desperation, but I can’t even see where the steps are anymore. This part of the forest has been left to sprawl into complete wilderness.
Panic scrabbles deeper in my gut until it unearths raw, teeth-chattering fear.
Don’t panic, think , I advise myself. You still have your phone on you, right? If I can’t reach the group, then maybe they can reach me. Yes, it would mean confessing that I made the incredibly stupid mistake of wandering off by myself without telling anyone, and that I made the even more stupid mistake of walking in the wrong direction. Yes, I might disintegrate from embarrassment and never show my face to anyone in the group again. But I suppose it’s better than dying by starving or freezing in a forest. The air is already noticeably colder, the day’s warmth leaking out through the leaves.
I yank my sleeves farther down my wrists and pull out my phone, squinting at the dim screen. There’s only one pathetic bar of signal, and it keeps appearing and disappearing like it’s planning to abandon me at any moment.
Then I notice the missed calls. Seventeen of them, all from Cyrus. I don’t even have time to think. I call him back at once—or try to. The reception is so flimsy that it takes three tries before the line actually connects. My fingers tremble as I press the phone to my ear.
“Leah? Where—are you?”
At the sound of his voice—so familiar, despite the static cutting into the line—an unexpected rush of emotion fills my throat. I clear it before speaking. “I think I’m lost,” I tell him.
I wait for him to scoff or laugh at me or question my common sense.
But there’s only a second of silence, like he’s drawing in a breath. “Okay. I’ll let Wang—know right—” The line won’t stop glitching, his sentences fading in and out of focus, leaving me to piece his fragmented words together. “… and we’ll figure—out. You can’t be—far away if you—mobile reception—can you … hear—”
“Sort of,” I say. “Not very well. And I don’t know if I’ll have a signal for long.”
“… any significant markers—can see?”
“I don’t know.” I scan the area, trying to identify something from all the yards of deep greens and burnt browns. “There are a lot of trees … There’s also a … a rock behind me that I’m pretty sure I passed earlier—”
“Not as helpful as—was hoping.” Even though half his words come out pixelated through the speaker, his sarcasm is as pronounced as if he were standing right next to me. I can practically picture him, his arms crossed, his head cocked to the side.
“Well, I’m sorry there are no giant neon arrows pointing to my head here, but it’s a forest , Cyrus,” I say, exasperated. “Its main characteristic is that it has trees.”
“Describe—the rock—then … Be specific …”
“Describe the rock?” My brows furrow as I turn toward it. If the situation weren’t so dire, I’d think he was playing a prank on me. “It’s pretty square, as far as rocks go. About the size of Prada’s straw tote bag from last season. When you stare at it from a certain angle, the surface looks shockingly like the face of a sloth.”
It’s hard to tell if the heavy static crackling through the phone is from the patchy reception, or just from him sighing. “Please never—get lost again.”
“I have no plans to,” I reassure him. “But, like, what am I supposed to do now? Describe more rocks to you?”
“Stay there. I’ll come find you—”
And then the line breaks.
“Hello? Cyrus?” Cursing, I start to call him again, but the signal’s gone. No matter how I angle my phone, the sign in the corner remains frozen at No Service.
Stay there , Cyrus told me. I couldn’t go anywhere else if I wanted to. Now that the cold really has set in, it has a way of amplifying every ache: the painful blisters splitting open on my heel, the sharp stitch knotting my side, the cramps squeezing my muscles. So I stay standing, too exhausted to do anything productive, too alert to rest. Every hiss of the leaves or tap of the branches makes my heart startle, then sprint faster. And as the last rays of sun wash away, doubt slithers in, twisting into my gut. What if a bear or a snake or a poisonous spider attacks me before anyone comes?
In my head, the news headlines are already writing themselves: Teen girl goes missing on trip in Guilin. Former model disappears in bamboo forest. Three-day search for high school student continues. The local news will interview my parents, my classmates from school. Of course we had no idea something like this would happen—we just thought it would be a fun educational trip to help her improve her Chinese , my mom will whisper, wiping at her eyes. There might be a comment from Cate, a deep, moving tribute to our years of friendship: I guess I liked going shopping with her. They’ll all say that I had a bright future ahead of me, since they don’t know any better. If I end up dying in a horrific enough way, maybe someone will even make a documentary about me. Getting invited to a movie premiere has been on Cate’s very public bucket list for years, right after kissing a royal, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if the movie happened to be about my disappearance.
I squeeze my eyes shut against that particular depressing thought, but when I open them again, it barely makes any difference—it’s as if the sky has closed its eyes too. Darkness falls over everything, sparing no inch of ground. I’ve never been bothered by the dark before, but I’m realizing that’s just because it was never truly dark in the city. There would be the soft blue glow of my alarm clock on my bedside table, or the headlights of a passing car filtering through the curtains, or the blink of the security alarm from the ceiling, or the neighbor’s porch light automatically flickering on when they returned home.
Nothing like this.
I rely on the flashlight on my phone to fend off the darkness until it drains nearly all of my battery. And then I’m rendered defenseless, shivering in the cold. My last remaining comfort is Cyrus’s words, echoing through my thoughts. I’ll come find you. It shouldn’t bring me much comfort at all, given his record of getting me in trouble versus getting me out of it. But somehow, he sounded like he meant what he said. Like he was prepared to crawl from one end of the forest to the other if he had to, and if I were stranded in the ocean, he would swim through the icy depths just to search for me and carry me back to shore by himself.
So I swallow the lump in my throat, pray all the wild animals out here have an aversion to human flesh, and I wait.