CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
From morning all the way to the evening, I contemplate the great Cyrus dilemma.
The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. How could he have been in love with me this entire time? It feels like a fabricated tale, a myth on par with Santa or unicorns—or worse, like a practical joke.
And yes, sure, he’d looked and sounded sincere when he was making his sweet declarations. Maybe even he believes he means it. But the same thing has happened with a lot of guys in the past, and without exception, they turned around and proved themselves to be liars, or changed their minds about me. How can I trust Cyrus not to do the same?
I’m so distracted that I can’t even bring myself to admire the scenery. I know, objectively, that it’s gorgeous: the Sun and Moon Pagodas shine side by side over the waters, glowing gold and silver, perfect twins in structure. But there’s a difference between knowing something and caring about it, and right now, I could hardly care less where we are, if we were in a literal empty room or standing before one of the Wonders of the World. All my thoughts are narrowed in on the boy beside me.
“Why?” I ask Cyrus as we stroll along the lakeside. It’s the first time we’ve been alone since the kiss in the alley, and during that time, I’ve created a questionnaire to help determine if his feelings are real. It’d be preferable if I could inspect his thoughts with a microscope, but until technology catches up, this will have to do.
He looks over at me, the waters glittering behind him. “Hm?”
“Why do you even like me?” I ask him, striving to keep my voice light, cool, nonchalant. It’s just a question. Just something that’s been eating away at me for the past, oh, I don’t know, six and a half hours. No big deal.
Cyrus’s voice is serious and deep as gravity when he slides his long fingers through mine, intertwining them like a vow, and says, “Why not? It’s very easy to fall in love with you, Leah. The easiest thing in the world.”
I feel the throb of my heart, the movement reverberating throughout my whole body. How desperately I want to believe him. To accept the words without hesitation.
“I’m not really sure when, exactly, it clicked,” he continues, his thumb grazing over the underside of my wrist, gently leading me around a crack in the pavement. “I don’t think I even realized I liked you until later. I just knew that I noticed you a lot from the beginning. Like how you would wear a different scrunchie every day of the week, or how you’d always pick out the tomatoes from your sandwiches, or how you were far from a teacher’s pet, but you still made sure to thank the teachers at the end of the lesson. I found it fascinating, because you had this very intimidating face, but then you would laugh,” he says softly, “and it was like you were glowing.”
I bite my tongue, overwhelmed by a riot of sensation, inside me and all around me: the breeze riffling my hair, the distant laughter eddying around the banks, the firs bathed in green lights, the bright smattering of stars in the sky above. Every word he’s saying.
“You really mean that?” I ask him, searching his face carefully for lies, warning signs, any damning evidence that might suggest otherwise.
“Yes,” he says, with infinite patience. “Of course.”
“You actually like me?” I confirm again, just in case. I’m aware that I’m being annoying now, but I can’t help myself. “As a person.”
“I do. Why is that so hard to believe?”
“I mean, it wouldn’t be, if you said you were attracted to me. I’d totally get it. But you’re saying you had this huge crush on me,” I emphasize, raising my brows with incredulity. “Since seven years ago .”
He shakes his head, and my heart stops. I knew it , the cruel, ever-present voice in my head declares at once, the voice that sounds like every kid who’s ever bullied me. I knew it was a lie. He doesn’t love you after all. Nobody ever will.
But as tourists squeeze forward to take photos of the shining lake, he turns away from the scenery to face me. “Do you know the Mandarin word for crush ?”
I frown. “No. What?”
“Anlian,” he says. “ An for ‘darkness.’ Lian for ‘love.’ I always thought it was poetic—that when you secretly have feelings for someone, you love them in the darkness. But there’s this other word. Minglian. Ming for—”
“‘Light,’” I finish for him, recognizing the character. It’s the same word for bright, or luminous, the way the twin pagodas glow against the night sky.
“So it’s not anlian,” he says, his eyes dark and intent on me, and though the rest of his sentence goes unspoken, I hear it as clearly as if he had whispered it into my ear: I don’t love you in the darkness; I love you in the light.
It feels like there’s light in my very veins, blazing through my chest and burning away all the years of loneliness before him. And for just a few seconds, my skepticism takes a break, and the voices in my head go quiet.
“Leah. Do you have a moment?”
I glance back over my shoulder, squinting past the tides of people to find Wang Laoshi waving me forward. There’s a woman I’ve never seen before standing next to him—too old to be a student, too young to be a teacher, one of those bulky, professional cameras hanging around her neck. Her makeup is so perfect that it looks photoshopped, and when she smiles at me, I can’t help noticing how well her shade of lipstick suits her complexion. It’s a dark cherry tint, no gloss, sophisticated but not overdramatic.
“This is Pei Jie,” Wang Laoshi introduces us, raising his voice to be heard above the crowds. “She’s a photographer for Sima Studio. She noticed you earlier and is offering to take a few free photos of you as part of a promotional campaign they’re doing—we would also be able to use them at Jiu Yin He to promote our Journey to the East program for future students.” He clears his throat. “Now, it’s entirely up to you whether you agree to it or not. I thought it might be a worthwhile experience, and you should have enough time before we gather for tonight’s show, but I know not everyone enjoys—or is used to—getting their photo taken …”
I almost laugh at the irony. If only you knew how many photos I’ve had taken of me.
“You’re very pretty,” Pei Jie tells me in Chinese. She goes on to gush about something I can’t entirely understand, but I hear the words model , and perfect , and beautiful , and it’s like she’s plucked them straight out of my old dreams for the future. But they’re old dreams for a reason. Abandoned, expired. Once upon a time, I would’ve jumped at this kind of opportunity to prove myself. Now, though, I hesitate.
Before I can respond, Pei Jie holds out her camera and starts scrolling through the photos she’s taken in the past. There are dozens of different styles—girls reclining on velvet couches in crimson qipaos, their lips painted crimson to match; smiling sweetly and hugging bouquets of flowers to their chests; leaning, bored, against a brick wall with lollipops in their mouths, their plaid skirts and button-down shirts designed for an alternate world where school uniforms are actually meant to be flattering; posing against an ice-blue backdrop in a stunning ball gown, pearls spilling down the sides. And though the girls themselves are all completely different from one another, she manages to capture their best features.
“Do you want to?” Cyrus asks me quietly, stepping closer to my side. “Don’t feel like you have to say yes.”
I squeeze his hand, my gratitude too deep to be arranged into words. Even though he couldn’t possibly know the real reason for my reluctance, he still sensed it. “I think it’s fine,” I tell him. “I want to give it a try.”
He scans my face for another beat. “Are you sure?”
I nod and turn to Pei Jie. “Okay, let’s do it.”
“Amazing. I promise it’ll be quick—these photos are going to turn out great .” She starts to usher me forward down the street, waving for Cyrus to follow. “Your boyfriend can watch,” she adds, and then, in a whisper just to me, like we’re gossiping at the back of a classroom: “Zhen shi ge shuaige ya.” Thanks to my exchange with the lettuce seller, I understand the word for handsome in an instant.
“I guess he is handsome,” I allow, neither confirming nor denying the boyfriend comment.
She nods discreetly to the girls in the crowd as they pass Cyrus, many of them doing double takes or elbowing their friends when their eyes land on his face. “You often see girls who are much prettier than their boyfriends, but he’s the perfect fit for you.”
I wonder what she’d say if she saw the girl I was before walking on the street next to him. If she’d still think we were a perfect fit, or if she’d assume, like my classmates had, that I was the one obsessed with him and he was only tolerating my presence.
We turn the corner near a cluster of shops selling jade pendants and grilled squid. Then she guides me down a short flight of stairs, through a somewhat sketchy, dimly lit corridor that opens up to the cornflower-blue walls of a makeup studio. It’s instantly familiar to me: the clothing racks bursting with satin and tulle and silk, the vanity mirrors set up in rows of three, the eyebrow pencils and lipstick-smeared cotton swabs lying out on dressing tables, the dolled-up girls assessing their glossy reflections with varying degrees of satisfaction and scrutiny.
“Sit here,” Pei Jie says, pulling me toward the empty table in the middle. She yells something to one of the makeup artists, who’s testing out brushes on her wrist, then pats my shoulder. In the mirror, I lock eyes with Cyrus, who stands patiently off to the side, hands in his pockets. He offers me a small, encouraging smile, like he can detect the shakiness spreading through my muscles, and I breathe in. Remind myself that it won’t be the same as last time. If I need to, I can always leave.
“Have you ever tried on traditional clothing before?” Pei Jie asks. “I think it would look incredible on you; your features are so well suited for it.”
I don’t know how to answer her, if what I had worn for that awful photo shoot would even count. The memory rattles against the back of my skull like a monster in a closet, flashes of white-hot lights and bloodred tassels, the sick feeling pooling in my stomach. I draw in another tight breath. Shake my head.
“Well, now is the perfect chance.” Pei Jie waves at another woman and points to an elaborate set of scarlet-and-gold robes hanging over the dressing room door. “Prepare to be amazed,” she says.
***
Shortly after I made up my mind to turn pretty, I fell down the rabbit hole of makeover videos.
It was the closest thing to love at first sight I’ve ever experienced. I would sit cross-legged in my bedroom, the stuffed orange giraffe my mom had brought back from a business trip for me squashed against my stomach, and watch every makeover video I could find on the internet. I wasn’t just obsessed with seeing the results, which filled me with the same sense of wonder and awe as pulling back the window shades just in time to catch a brilliant sunset, but the process itself. How a few swipes of mascara, a flattering dress, and some nice hair extensions could transform a person into a completely new version of themselves. The girls were already beautiful at the start, but by the end of the video, you could tell that they felt it too.
That was the feeling I chased in the first few photo shoots I did. I wanted to be astonished by my reflection in the mirror, to see myself in a new way. I wanted to be completely, irrefutably happy with how I looked, even though it seemed an impossible task: You stare at your own face long enough and you’ll inevitably find something to hate about it.
But for every occasion where modeling succeeded in making me feel beautiful, radiant, valued, like the girls in the makeover videos, there were a dozen more occasions where it made me feel like I was nothing. I soon learned to lower my expectations, to brace myself for the moment the makeup artist stepped back, prepare for the possibility that I would have to redo my eyeliner myself because they weren’t sure how to work with the shape.
I brace myself now as I slowly open my eyes, the shadows from my false lashes skimming the very edges of my vision. I had been too nervous to look while the makeup artist brushed my face with powders and slid pin after pin into my hair, but I feel my chest expand, my jaw releasing its grip as I blink and blink again at the person in the mirror.
“You like it?” Pei Jie asks.
I nod fast, the amber beads in my headpiece rattling like music. I’ve never looked this way before, but I also look more like myself than I ever have in the past; the tiny gems glued below my lash line make my eyes that much brighter, more alive, the rose blush dusted along my nose and cheekbones blending naturally into my skin, the vermilion tint enhancing the bow shape of my lips. It’s makeup that doesn’t try to alter my features or hide them or exaggerate them to near-satirical proportions. And suddenly there’s an embarrassing knot in my throat, delight and gratitude and raw relief at being seen, and I have to swallow hard to speak. “What do you think?” I ask Cyrus, standing up and twirling before him, the fabric of my robes swishing past my ankles.
He doesn’t reply. He’s too busy staring, his eyes wide and transfixed, like he’s not sure I’m real.
“I think you’ve left him speechless,” Pei Jie says to me, laughing.
Cyrus flushes, and takes a tentative step closer. “You’re incredible,” he breathes.
“This is going to sound silly, but I feel like a princess,” I admit, touching the delicate silk sash around my waist. “Like, I want to drink from a fancy teacup and then take a bath filled with rose petals and walk very slowly down the stairs where my lover awaits below.”
“You should’ve spoken sooner about the rose petals; Oliver and I collected a whole basket of them at our last hotel room. I’m definitely free to wait below a flight of stairs though,” he says. “I can wait as long as you’d like.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling.
With the swift, determined steps of someone on a mission, Pei Jie leads us out into the night again, glancing behind her shoulder every few seconds to check that I haven’t tripped over the long layers of my skirts or gotten lost in the crowds. Instead of heading in the direction we came from, we walk farther down the street, where the architecture starts to draw inspiration from ancient China, designed with stone carvings and crimson pillars and curved roofs. It’s like existing in two time periods at once. Outside the noodle restaurants and pagoda-style art galleries are the cool white haloes of ring lights, where live-streamers are broadcasting themselves singing or talking animatedly about whatever makeup products they’re holding.
“This spot is good,” Pei Jie declares, fiddling with the lens on her camera as we stop outside a hotel that could pass for a palace. Crimson lanterns tumble from the gold-lit eaves, and scholar’s rocks pose artfully outside the double gates. “You stay where you are.”
The people are more scattered here, most of them also trying to get pretty pictures. A girl a few yards away is attempting to teach her boyfriend how to take photos of her, gesturing with increasing desperation for him to angle the camera higher, until she finally gives up, switches to selfie mode, and turns him into a human phone-stand while she records herself.
“Start walking toward me now,” Pei Jie instructs while Cyrus finds a safe spot behind the camera to watch. “Slowly. Move your left hand a little, like you’re brushing your hair but not actually brushing it. Look over there—you see that lantern on your right, by the door? Keep looking. Lower your shoulder. Your other shoulder. Keep your chin down. Okay, yes, good! Now hold—”
I stumble over some of the instructions at first, partly because it’s been a while since I had to do this, and partly because of my Mandarin skills. But I guess posing is a pretty universal thing, because even if some of her tips sail straight over my head and splatter on the ground behind me, I soon ease into the rhythm of it. I bring my hand to my cheek as if I’m suffering from a toothache, but in a high-fashion way. I tighten my abdominal muscles and arch my back. I wave my broad sleeves in the air and place one foot gracefully in front of the other and look up, look left, look pretty.
A few tourists stop to stare as they pass us, but I don’t get the same self-conscious, ready-to-hide feeling I used to. It’s like my brain has undergone a makeover too, those dark spots of doubt brushed away and replaced by almost obnoxiously optimistic thoughts. Maybe they’re staring because they also think this style suits me. Maybe they’re admiring how the pins glow in my hair. Maybe they too want to experience the thrill of spinning around in traditional robes. Maybe they’re trying to figure out how much a photo shoot like this costs.
“You’re doing such an amazing job,” Pei Jie calls out to me a few dozen different angles later, the camera clicking furiously. “Have you ever modeled before?”
I swallow. “No,” I say, but the lie worms its way down my throat and sharpens its teeth to gnaw at my stomach.
“Well, maybe it’s something you should consider,” she says, lowering the camera to inspect the last couple of photos. “All right, I think we’re finished here. Thank you so much for agreeing to this—I can’t wait for you to see how they turn out. We’ll do some retouching and send the final files through to Wang Laoshi—I’ve already added him on WeChat …” She starts going into what I assume to be the technical things, and that’s where my Mandarin fails me and I have to revert to smiling and nodding and hoping that she hasn’t slipped in a question about whether I’d be happy to sell her a vital organ.
But I understand exactly what she says as I turn to go, only because I’ve heard the same words from my friends and relatives before, always meant to be encouraging, to steer me toward the right place in life: “It’d be such a waste if you weren’t a model.”
Before, I would’ve given those words all the weight in the world. I would’ve let myself become convinced that, yes, being a model is the only way for me, if that’s what other people think. But a new, exhilarating thought pushes up in resistance: It’s not for them to decide . I could be a model, but I could be a thousand other things, lead other lives, follow new paths and find my way forward. I can’t know exactly where I’ll end up, but I don’t have to let them choose for me.
I walk without looking back. The farther I go, the lighter I feel.