CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At first I think I’m imagining it.
The soft hiss through grass. I’ve imagined plenty of things already, stranded here in the dark; the whisper of voices or the sound of footsteps approaching, only to look up and find nobody there.
Maybe it’s just wind , I think hopefully, helplessly, even as the hissing grows louder, more distinct than anything my brain could create on its own. God, please let it just be wind.
But then the grass rustles, and a long, dim shape slithers closer toward me, and everything in my body boils down into one silent scream. I’m frozen, which feels almost ironic because my heart has never moved so violently inside my chest before, pushing against my rib cage like it’s struggling to break free. Pure, raw fear cuts through my core as the snake stops within a few bare feet of me. A terrible mass of black scales and cold, empty eyes, its body so long I can’t see where its tail ends. If I run, it might strike. If I stay, it might strike too. Every possibility seems to lead to the same horrific outcome: snake fangs piercing through my flesh, my body cold before they can find me.
They always say that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die. I’d figured that they meant the highlights: birthday parties and major coming-of-age events and rite of passages, like kissing your crush or learning to drive or the snowy Christmas you spent with your family at a cabin in the woods.
But the memories that flicker to life in my mind have no logic behind them, just a fast, confusing blur of moments I thought I’d forgotten, hurtling forward to the present …
History class at the second school I transferred to. A girl’s called up to write something on the board, and as she brushes past my seat, her bony elbow rams into my side, hard enough to bruise. I flinch back, more from shock than pain. Oops, sorry , she says, but I can see in the cold lines of her face that she’s not, that she’s been waiting for the opportunity to do this, that she’s heard the rumors already. Bile fills my mouth. I pretend nothing happened—
That’s her, they whisper at lunch. I stab my fork through the soggy spinach in my bowl without lifting it, hide my face behind the black veil of my hair. I just have to make it through these next ten minutes. My lips quiver. And then the next ten. And the next ten. Then it’ll be class, and then school will be over at last, and then—
Everyone’s gathered around the table, laughing so loudly that the paintings left on the drying rack quiver. My stomach turns when I see what they’re laughing at. The clay dragon figurine I’d made during our last pottery class. I’d been so proud of it, so happy while I was making it, but now all I can see is how crooked the figurine’s head is, how comically large the eyes are—
Cyrus holding my lunch high over his head in the playground . Give that to me, I snap, but he just grins, black eyes glinting, and steps back, out of reach—
Cyrus chasing me across the oval, the warm, momentary press of his palm between my shoulder blades. Tag. You’re it. I run after him, but the grass is still wet from the rain yesterday, and my feet slip—
Cyrus reading in the bus seat next to me, only a few days ago. He arrives at a line that makes him pause, reads it again as if to savor the words, save them for another day, and he turns around to point it out like he’s just come across a rare natural phenomenon. I know that no art can be perfect , he says, but have you ever read something that so perfectly captures everything you’re feeling—
Cyrus, sitting alone at dinner last night, the way I used to at school. He’s in one of those moods I’ve come to recognize, where he retreats somewhere deep into his own brain, lost in an endless spiral of thoughts he’ll never share with anyone else. He stiffens when I go to join him, then his eyes soften when he realizes it’s me—
A brilliant beam of light burns through the darkness, accompanied by footsteps. Real, solid, drawing closer.
I blink fast into the sudden glare, my heart pounding.
The light sways, catching the thin silver edges of the leaves overhead, and then the snake bare inches away from me.
“Don’t move,” Cyrus calls out softly, the concern creasing his brows illuminated by the flashlight in his hand. His eyes find mine. “It won’t attack. Just stay where you are.”
I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I stand as still as I physically can, tensing muscles that I never knew existed before. My breath is clogged in my throat, my lungs contracting uselessly as I try my best not to hyperventilate. The snake slides another inch toward me, so close I can feel its scales brush against my shoes, and just when I think this is really it, these will be my final seconds on earth, and at least I won’t be dying alone, not with Cyrus standing there, the snake slithers away, disappearing somewhere behind the bushes in the other direction.
“Leah?” Cyrus says, raising the flashlight. “Leah, are you—”
I don’t let him finish the sentence; I rush up to him and wrap my arms tight around his body, one step short of crashing straight into him. He stiffens in surprise, but I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t even think past the relief melting through me, the warmth of his jacket and his breathing against my skin. He’s found me. He promised he’d find me and he did. The fear that’s been building in my bones is cleared away so suddenly I’m lightheaded as I latch on to Cyrus, a sob escaping my lips. After half a heartbeat of silence, he draws me in, anchoring me to him, his hand rubbing slow, gentle circles over my back, and maybe it’s because I’d been half-certain I was about to die that I feel so wonderfully, vividly alive right now.
“It’s okay,” he tells me, his voice low in my ear. “You’re safe.”
And despite reason, despite our history, I believe it. If someone were to ask, I wouldn’t be able to name anywhere safer than the arms of my childhood nemesis, in a remote bamboo forest far away from everything I’ve known. I would cling on longer, for as long as he’d let me, but as my pulse settles down, some sense returns.
I quickly drop my arms. Step back, angle my face to the left so he can’t see my expression. I don’t realize how hard I’m shivering until he unzips his jacket and wraps it around my shaking shoulders, the soft fabric falling over my body like a ghost of his embrace. It smells like him: that familiar combination of sage and sandalwood, as sweet and clean as fresh streams in spring.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “How did you even manage to find me?”
A strange sense of déjà vu hits me the second the words leave my lips, and my mind skips back years into the past, to when we’d play hide-and-seek around campus. No matter how well I hid—curling up in the suffocating space of the art supply closet, silently inhaling the sharp smell of acrylic; ducking behind the rosebush in the gardens; plastering myself to the wall behind the auditorium curtains—he had always been the first to find me. It reached the point where I accused him of cheating. There’s no way you didn’t open your eyes early , I would protest when he opened the door, brushed aside the thorns, pushed away the curtains. How did you find me that quickly?
“I almost walked right past this area, but then I saw the rock that looks like a sloth,” Cyrus says, lowering the flashlight. “I admittedly had my doubts, but the resemblance is uncanny.”
“Right?”
“I mean, let’s not give your rock descriptions too much credit,” he says. “You were also shedding glitter. It was like tracking down a fairy.”
I frown at him. “Shedding glitter?”
“Your top,” he explains, then shines the light on his own shirt. With great mortification, I notice the glitter shimmering over the fabric from where my body was pressed to his moments ago. “Who would’ve thought that your impractical fashion choices would save you from an eternity of wandering through the trees?”
I wince. “I’ll dust that off for you—”
“No need.” His features are serious, but his eyes gleam with private amusement. “I’ll just tell people that I ran into a fairy. Come on,” he adds, before I can say anything else. “We should really go back before Wang Laoshi combusts from stress. He’s probably getting ready to call the police—or hand in his resignation letter.”
He turns around in the direction he came from, the flashlight throwing the patch of trees up ahead of us into clarity, and for a brief second, he stretches his hand out, his fingers flexing. I stare, unable to tell if he means for me to take it. If this were anyone else, it would be obvious to me. I’ve never had trouble reading signals before; I would know in an instant, just from how a boy looked at me, how his gaze flitted to my lips, how he walked next to me, exactly what he was thinking. But with Cyrus, everything seems to be written in Morse code. I’m still trying to decipher his body language when he slides his hand back into his pocket, the gesture quick, casual, as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had, and I’m just imagining things now, the way I’d imagined footsteps. Out of desperation. Out of fierce, foolish hope.
***
“I’m so glad you’re not dead,” Daisy tells me over the roar of the blow-dryer. It’s the twentieth time she’s uttered some variation of this sentiment since I returned to our hotel room approximately half an hour ago, and she’s sounded fully earnest each time. When she’d flung open the door to greet me, she’d looked ready to burst into tears of relief. “We thought you’d been eaten by a bear.”
“I’m really glad I’m not dead either,” I say, running my fingers through the damp ends of my hair to make it dry faster. I still feel a little shaky, but only in the way where you’ve already woken from the bad dream and can be sure that you’re safe in your bed. The warm shower has helped wash away most of the dirt and leftover adrenaline. “Sorry to make you guys worry.”
“I think Cyrus was more worried than any of us,” Daisy says, drawing her knees to her chest on the couch. “He was the first person to notice you were gone.”
I turn the blow-dryer off, and in the sudden silence, I hear myself swallow. “He was?”
She nods. “Honestly, he looked like he was about to lose his mind if anything happened to you.”
I remember that moment when he found me, how his arms had tightened around my body. It’s so easy to sink into the memory—to relive every detail, from the sweetness of his scent to the hitch in his breath—that when my phone chimes from the counter, it feels like being hauled up from somewhere deep underwater. I set the blow-dryer down, then hastily pat my hands dry on a towel and open my phone to the newest message.
It’s Cyrus.
can you come to my hotel room?
I stare down at the words, and my heart betrays me by skipping a stupid beat.
Then more messages pop up, sent in quick succession, like he’s also just realized how his invitation sounds.
for the photos
we still need to choose the photos from today
Either he’s thinking about the competition or it’s a cover for what he’s actually thinking about, an excuse to invite me over. I’m hoping it’s the latter. I glance at the clock—there are only ten minutes left until curfew, which is when Wang Laoshi transforms from a mildly disgruntled teacher into a deeply disgruntled security guard.
This could be the moment I’ve been working toward the entire trip. If all goes well tonight—if I’m charming enough, pretty enough, smooth enough—I might finally be able to secure my grip on Cyrus’s heart and crush it, just like I planned.
Because I definitely shouldn’t be softening toward him.
Because I definitely, absolutely still want to get my revenge.
“Do you need to go somewhere?” Daisy asks.
“Cyrus’s room.” I let the implication fill the air. “But, like, I don’t know how to get there without getting caught—I mean, it’s kind of late …”
“I’ll cover for you,” Daisy says quickly. “If Wang Laoshi asks, I’ll just lie and say you’re asleep.”
I pause in surprise. “Are you sure? Because—please don’t take this the wrong way—if you don’t feel comfortable lying …”
“Oh, I’m a great liar when I want to be,” Daisy assures me. “I used to lie all the time to get out of class presentations.”
I’m still making up my mind when one more message springs onto the screen.
it’ll be just us btw. Oliver was called to attend his father’s event across the city. he won’t be back until the morning.
“Okay, I’m going,” I decide. The fizzing feeling in my blood has raced upward, like soda when you shake it too hard inside the can. I smear some tinted lip balm—the one that tastes like strawberries—over my mouth, then glance down at my pale silk nightgown. It is, by most standards, a bit too flimsy to be worn out anywhere, which makes it perfect for what I’m about to do next.
“Thank you so much—I owe you,” I tell Daisy on my way out, all my photos tucked into the purse in my hand.
“Hey, um, aren’t you going to wear clothes?” she calls after me.
“I’m wearing them,” I call back, adjusting the straps of my nightgown to loosen them further. “These are clothes.” Kind of.
Cyrus’s room is on the other side of the floor. By the time I get there, my nerves have started to fray and my self-consciousness has kicked in, and despite everything I’ve promised myself, it’s not revenge that I’m thinking about. It’s just—him. The prospect of seeing him. Of being in the same room as him. I draw my damp hair down to cover my chest and ring the doorbell, then wait for him to answer.
When he does, his reaction is subdued, but there is a reaction. A flash of something across his face, a breath drawn too fast. He seems to take me in all within a second, then he pulls the door wider to let me inside, reaching down to fetch a pair of slippers for me.
“Wow, nice place,” I joke as I walk into an exact replica of my room in our new hotel, right down to the heavy yellow curtains and patterned carpet and two single beds.
“Thanks, I spent ages decorating,” he deadpans. “Feel free to sit.”
I lower myself onto the couch by the window and lean back against the crimson cushions.
His eyes widen. “Wait,” he says, his voice sharp, panicked. “Not there—”
Something hard digs into my spine. I frown, turning around, and spot the corner of a small box sticking out from between the cushions, evidently stuffed there in a last-minute attempt to hide it.
“Leah,” Cyrus is saying, close to pleading. “Leah, you can just leave that—”
I ignore him and pull the pastel-pink box all the way out, and for two seconds I don’t register what I’m holding in my hands. Then I do, and all at once, the color spreading fiercely through Cyrus’s face makes perfect sense. Silent laughter springs up inside me at the mental image of him scrambling to bury the box before I arrived, but I push it back. Raise my brows. Hold up the condoms. “What’s this?” I ask, feigning ignorance, just so I can have the pleasure of watching him struggle to explain himself.
And I’m instantly rewarded with his reaction. His expression seems to race through every emotion known to mankind in the space of an inhale. He steps forward, his hands out, like he has half a mind to just snatch the box from me and burn it. “That is—” He clears his throat. I’ve never seen him so visibly distressed before. “That is … an interesting question. I promise, it’s not what it—”
“Oh my god.” I draw upon all the acting talent I have in my body to open my mouth in shock as I read the product description on the side. “Cyrus, what the hell? I thought you called me over here to pick out the photos for the competition together. Were you planning on hooking up tonight?”
“What? No,” he says in a rush. “No, I swear—”
I lift the box higher between us. “Then?”
“It was there when we first checked into the room.” He winces. “I just didn’t want you to see it and assume—I wouldn’t even dream of …”
I let him suffer for a while longer before it becomes physically impossible to maintain my fake shock. “You can relax, Cyrus,” I say, cackling as I drop the condoms on the bedside table. “I was only messing with you. It’s kind of cute that you felt the need to hide this from me.”
His face turns an entire shade redder. “You should—we should throw them away.”
“Why?” I cock my head. Grin up at him, taunting. “What if you end up needing them? Better safe than sorry, right?”
“Do you talk to all guys this way?”
“No. Just you,” I say casually, sitting back down on the cushions, but I’m not teasing him. It’s the truth. If he were any other guy, I would be too wary, too cautious to joke about something like this. It’s almost always there, in every interaction I’ve had with guys since I turned pretty: the uneasiness in the pit of my stomach, the prickling dread that the conversation could take an uncomfortable turn at any second, the suspicion that while I’m thinking about them, they’re thinking about my body. But with Cyrus, it’s different. I might have felt tempted on numerous occasions to shove him or slam a door in his face, yet I’ve never felt unsafe. Somehow, I know that if I were to move closer to him right now, to press my lips to the most vulnerable spot on his neck and draw his hands down to my waist like I really, truly wanted him, he would still step back at once if I had a sudden change of heart.
Then I’m wondering how it would feel to actually do it— to kiss him. How his expression would change. Whether he would kiss me back soft and slow, or fast and urgent and breathless, if his fingers would tangle themselves into my hair or if he’s the kind to touch the back of my neck …
Oh my god.
Don’t be so weak and disgusting, Leah , I urge myself with a stern mental slap. Having feelings was not part of the plan. I should only be focused on making him want me—not wanting him .
“Let’s look over the photos,” Cyrus says, and practically leaps away from me to grab three photos from the counter. Even when he comes back and dumps his photos on the couch between us, he sits down on the farthest end of it, two feet braced firmly on the floor like he’s acting out one of those in-flight safety videos. I’m not sure if I should be worried that he somehow looked inside my head just now and was scared off by the images playing there.
“You only took three photos?” I ask him. They’re all of trees—not even very distinct or interesting trees, but of the planted-everywhere-in-the-suburbs variety—and they’re so blurry I wonder if he’d pressed the shutter button by accident while he was walking around.
“Well, I would’ve taken more, but I was kind of sidetracked when my teammate disappeared in the forest,” Cyrus says, examining my photos while I examine his. “Though it looks like you were busy even while you were disappearing. This one’s beautiful,” he adds.
I look up, and he holds the photo out to me. Birds flit between the Polaroid frame, their white wings stark against the wash of blue sky, gliding one after another over the mountains.
“This one’s beautiful too,” Cyrus says, pushing another photo toward me. “And this one of the lake. You know what, I think we should just choose from your photos.”
“We can choose one of yours too,” I tell him, just to be a good teammate.
He snorts. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?” I say innocently.
“Deny the fact that my photos could give the average citizen car sickness,” he says. “It’s fine. Photography isn’t really my forte.”
“You don’t need it to be,” I say. “You already have so many things.”
“As in … materially? Because I believe that’s Oliver. Did you know he has a backup Porsche for his backup Porsche?”
“That’s deeply upsetting. But I mean what Oliver was talking about on the train.” I collect the five chosen photos in a neat pile and bind them together with the hair tie on my wrist. “You found your thing—your calling, your passion, whatever you want to call it—years ago. You know what you’re good at, and you know what to do with it.”
His expression turns thoughtful. “Maybe that’s your problem.”
“You’re a problem,” I say automatically. “Sorry. Reflex. Do go on.”
“I feel like you always do things for the sake of something else,” he tells me. “Am I wrong?”
“No,” I say slowly. “But isn’t that everyone? Isn’t that, like, the point?”
“I don’t love literature because I think it’ll make me famous or rich somewhere down the line, or because it’ll be an interesting point of conversation at a party one day,” he says, and it’s as if he’s reciting my internal dialogue from when I was modeling, all the reasons I gave myself to keep going. Reasons that had once sounded perfectly valid to me. “I love literature because it’s meaningful to me.”
“Just that?” I ask in disbelief.
“Just that,” he says.
“I don’t really know what I like these days,” I admit, except that’s not entirely true. There’s want bundling in my nerves, thrumming through my blood when I lock eyes with him, and I can imagine a number of things I would like to do right now.
He looks away first, twisting in the direction of the front door. “Did you hear that?” he asks.
“Hear what?”
“I think that was Wang Laoshi,” he says, standing up and striding toward the entrance to peer through the peephole. “He’s already patrolling the area.”
We both check the time. It’s already five minutes past curfew.
“Maybe you should sneak out now,” Cyrus suggests. “Before it gets too late.”
“What if he catches me?” I counter, which feels like a totally valid reason for me to stay in his room. To buy myself more time with him. “He’s probably going to have a heart attack if he sees me leaving your room like this.” I gesture down to my little silk dress, and Cyrus very deliberately shifts his gaze up to some point over my head. “And we’ll both be in trouble.”
Cyrus clears his throat. “Then—”
“Let’s just wait it out until he leaves,” I tell Cyrus, squinting into the peephole again. Then I stifle a yawn with the back of my hand. Now that all my adrenaline has leaked out of me, exhaustion has started pressing in on my eyelids and my brain, pulling my body to the nearest, softest thing: which happens to be the bed in the middle of the room. “Do you mind if I take a nap while we wait?” I ask Cyrus.
He blinks. “Yes. I mean—no, I don’t mind. That bed’s mine. Feel free to …” He waves toward the bed, having seemingly forgotten the English language for a few seconds.
The blankets are luxuriously soft when I slip inside them, my head sinking back against the pillows. Cyrus switches off the main lights, leaving on only the floor lamp. Then he grabs a thick, battered book from his suitcase, flipping it open to the bookmarked page, and settles down on the carpet beside me, his shoulders level with the bed.
Xindong.
Another new word I’ve picked up on the trip. It means, literally, that the heart is moved by something—or more often, someone. A sensation firmer than butterflies in your stomach but more fleeting than love. Throughout the trip, I’ve felt my heart move multiple times, and they were all because of Cyrus.
I felt it when he bent down to help me slide my heels off and apply the Band-Aid, the warmth of his fingers so gentle on my skin. I felt it when he stretched his palm out to let me draw over it. I felt it on the race up the Yellow Mountain, in those moments when he’d shielded me like it was instinct. I felt it when he offered me his sunglasses, and when he set the flower crown on my head. And again, only earlier tonight, when I saw him in the trees. But those were all light movements, small fluctuations, easy enough to dismiss.
Yet now, watching him in the soft orange light, his head bowed as he turns the page, the shift inside my chest feels permanent. It’s a movement so deep it sends shock waves through my system, making my very bones ache. I’m gripped by the overpowering urge to do something reckless, to reach across the space and run my fingers through his hair.
For revenge. The old thought pushes itself forward out of habit, but it sounds weaker by the second, more like an excuse than a true plan. It’s too hard to summon anger, too hard to remember why I came here and why I should want to ruin this boy’s life when really, really I just want to touch him.
I shift forward, letting the blankets drop to my stomach. When my fingertips brush the space between his shoulder blades, he freezes. For a few moments, neither of us speaks. I can hear my heart thrumming faster and faster, the blood rushing through my ears, pulsing at my fingertips in the places they skim the thin cotton of his shirt, just once, lightly, before I retract my hand again.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, even though he’s so obviously reading.
Very slowly, he flips another page. “Practicing gymnastics,” he says, his voice sarcastic as usual, but hoarser.
I lie back on the bed, my head angled toward him. “Can you read the book out loud to me?”
“What, like a bedtime story?”
“It might help me fall asleep,” I say, kicking my feet out to get comfortable. “I’d always doze off in class the second the teacher started reading something.”
His laugh is quiet enough to go unnoticed, if not for the shake of his shoulders. “All right …” He clears his throat. “As the train disappeared into the mist, he vowed he would never allow himself to feel any happiness again. Look what had happened to Caiyun, to Zhuji, before the fall, to him. Joy had made him mindless, complacent, disgustingly weak; it had shaken loose his heart from his bones and sold him the illusion that there could be something else for him in this life. There was nothing else. Not anymore. He shoved the blood-splattered letter deep into his coat pocket. The stars looked terribly brittle that night …”
My eyelids fall shut. I don’t pay attention to the story, only to the cadence of his voice filling the room. He could be reading poetry, a classic, a eulogy. If he’s the one saying it, anything could sound lovely. Nestled in the warmth of the blankets, with my eyes still shut, I tell him, “You have a nice voice.”
He pauses. “You must be tired.”
“What?”
“When you’re tired,” he says, “you forget to hate me.”
“I forget to hate you a lot of the time,” I whisper. It slips too easily from my tongue, without warning, turned by the darkness into a confession.
He says something else then, but before my mind can latch on to it, sleep drags me down into its depths. The last thing I remember is the sound of his breathing, as soft and calming as the rustle of orange blossoms outside my childhood home.