This Time It’s Real

The mood doesn’t last.

As soon as we pull up beside the Westbridge school buildings, I realize my mistake.

Everyone is dressed in casual clothes. Cute summer dresses. Crop tops and jean shorts. The teachers didn’t specify what to wear this evening, and I naively assumed it’d be standard uniform, because that’s what the expectations were at my previous school.

My family starts getting out of the car, and I push down a swell of panic. It’s not like I’ll get in trouble for wearing what I’m wearing—I just know I’ll look dumb and stand out. I’ll look like the Clueless New Kid, which is exactly what I am, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

“Ai-Ai.” Ma taps the window. “Kuaidian.” Hurry.

I say a quick thanks to the driver and step outside. At least the weather’s nice; the wind’s quieted down to more of a gentle, silky breeze, a welcome reprieve from the heat. And the sky. The sky is beautiful, a blend of pastel blues and muted pinks.

I inhale. Exhale.

This is fine, I tell myself. Totally fine.

“Come on, Baba,” Emily is saying, already pulling Ba toward the primary school section of the campus, where all the walls are painted bright colors. Obnoxiously bright colors, if you ask me. “You have to talk to Ms. Chloe. I told her how you were a poet, and you do signings and stuff at big bookstores, and she was soooo impressed. She didn’t believe me at first, I don’t think, but then I made her search your name, and then …”

Emily looks actually fine, because she is. No matter where we go, my little sister never has any trouble fitting or settling in. We could probably ship her off to Antarctica and find her just chilling with the penguins two weeks later.

Ma and I walk in the opposite direction, where the senior classrooms are. The wide gray corridors are already pretty crowded with parents and students, some heading in, some weaving their way out. Just as I expected, a few people’s eyes slide to my stiff skirt and too-big blazer, a mixture of pity and amusement flickering over their faces before they avert their gazes.

I lift my chin high. Walk faster.

This is fine.

We couldn’t reach my homeroom fast enough.

It’s loud inside. Classmates everywhere, teachers waiting behind rows of desks. None of them say hi to me, and I don’t say hi to them either.

Even though school started almost a month ago, I haven’t really gotten to know anyone. All the names and faces and classes kind of just blur together. The way I see it, we’ll be graduating in less than a year anyway. There’s no reason to put myself out there, as my past teachers all loved to recommend, and get attached to people only to grow apart months later. With Ma’s job moving us around all the time, it’s already happened too many times for me to keep track: that slow, painful, far-too-predictable transition from strangers to acquaintances to friends back to strangers the second I leave the school behind me.

I’d be a masochist to put myself through it again.

Besides, there are fewer than thirty kids in my whole year level, and everyone’s clearly formed their own cliques already. To my right, a group of girls are squealing and embracing like it’s been years since they last saw one another, not hours. And somewhere behind me, another group is deep in conversation, switching between three languages—English, Korean, and something else—within every sentence as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Pretty on-brand for an international school, I guess.

“Ah! Look who it is!”

My English and homeroom teacher, Mr. Lee, waves me over, his eyes bright behind his thick, oversized glasses. He’s been cursed with this round baby face and unruly gray-streaked hair, which has the combined, disorienting effect of making him look like he could either be in his early thirties or late fifties.

“Have a seat, have a seat,” he says briskly, motioning to two chairs on the other side of his desk. Then his attention goes to Ma, and his expression grows more benevolent. The way someone would look at a cute kid in the park. “And this is … Eliza’s mother, I’m assuming.”

“Yes. I’m Eva Yu,” Ma says, instantly easing into the chirpy Work Voice she uses around white people, her accent flattened to sound more American. She extends a manicured hand. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

Mr. Lee’s brows furrow a little as he shakes it, and furrow farther when he realizes how strong her grip is. I can tell he’s trying to match up his impression of Ma with whatever preconceived idea he had of her, just based on the non-Western surname.

Ma lets go first, sitting back with a small, self-satisfied smile.

She’s enjoying this, I know. She’s always enjoyed surprising people, which happens often, because people are always underestimating her. Part of the reason she got into consulting in the first place was because a friend joked that she’d never survive in the corporate world.

“Now …” Mr. Lee clears his throat. Turns to me again. “Since you’re new to this, let’s just go over the rules real quick, yeah?” He doesn’t wait for me to respond. “In the next ten minutes or so, I’ll be talking to your mother about your academic performance in your English classes so far, your learning attitude, possible areas for improvement—yada yada ya. No interrupting, asking questions, or drawing attention to yourself until the very end, when I call on you. Is that clear?”

And people wonder why teenagers tend to have authority issues.

“Ah, I see you’ve already got the hang of it,” Mr. Lee says cheerfully, waving a hand at my stony face.

I let my gaze and attention wander.

Then, across the room, I spot one of the few people here I do recognize.

Caz Song.

For all my lack of effort, it’d be hard not to have at least some idea of who he is: Model. Actor. God—if you were to go by the way everyone gushes over him and follows his every move, despite him never actually doing anything apart from standing around and looking obnoxiously pretty. Even now, in this depressing, heavily supervised setting, a substantial crowd of students has already gathered around him, their mouths agape. One girl’s clutching her side in hysterical laughter at a joke he probably never made.

I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

I’ve never really understood the hype around him, unless it’s from a purely aesthetic perspective. There is this certain elegance to the cut of his jaw, the slight pout of his lips, the sharp, lean angles of his frame. His dark hair and darker eyes. It’s not like his features are inhumanly perfect or anything, but together, they just work.

Still, I get the sense that he’s every bit as aware of this as all his adoring fans, which kind of ruins it. And of course the press loves him; just the other day, I stumbled across some article that deemed him one of the “Rising Stars of the Chinese Entertainment Industry.”

He’s leaning against the back wall now, hands shoved into pockets. This seems to be his natural state: leaning on something—doors, lockers, tables, you name it—as if he can’t be bothered standing upright on his own.

But I’ve been staring too hard, too long. Caz looks up, sensing my gaze.

I quickly look away. Tune back into the interview, just in time to hear Mr. Lee say:

“Her English is really quite good—”

“Yeah, well, I did learn English when I was a kid,” I point out before I can stop myself. Years of getting vaguely condescending comments about just how good my English is and how I don’t even have an accent—almost always spoken with a note of surprise, if not confusion—have made this a natural reflex.

Mr. Lee blinks at me. Adjusts his glasses. “Right …”

“Just wanted to put that out there.” I lean back in my seat, suddenly unsure if I should feel triumphant or guilty for interrupting. Maybe he really had meant it in your typical she-sure-knows-her-conjunctions kind of way, rather than an I-don’t-expect-people-who-look-like-her-to-speak-any-English way.

Ma clearly seems to believe the former, because she shoots me a sharp look.

“Sorry. Carry on,” I mutter.

Mr. Lee glances over at Ma. “So what I’m curious to know, if you don’t mind, is a bit about Eliza’s background before she came here …”

Ma nods, well prepared for this, and launches into the usual script: born in China, moved when she was five, went to this school and that school and moved countries again …

I try not to fidget, to flee. Being talked about this way makes my skin itch.

“Ah, but the best thing about having lived everywhere is that she belongs anywhere.” Mr. Lee stretches his hands out wide in a gesture that I’m assuming represents “anywhere”—and knocks over a tissue box in the process. He pauses, flustered. Picks it up. Then, unbelievably, continues right where he left off. “You should know that Eliza is not a citizen of one country or even one continent, but rather a—”

“If you say citizen of the world, I’m going to throw up,” I mutter under my breath, low enough for only me to hear.

Mr. Lee leans forward. “Sorry, what’s that?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head. Smile. “Nothing.”

A beat.

“Well, since we’re on the topic of Eliza’s circumstances,” Mr. Lee says delicately, hesitantly, and I have a terrible feeling I know what’s coming. “I do worry that Eliza is having a hard time … adjusting.”

My throat tightens.

This. This is why I hate parent-teacher interviews.

“Adjusting,” Ma repeats with a frown, though she doesn’t look too surprised. Just sad.

“She doesn’t seem to be close with anyone in her class,” Mr. Lee elaborates. The trilingual group waiting for their parents in the back choose this time to burst into loud laughter at whatever it is they’re chatting about, the sound banging against all four walls. Mr. Lee raises his voice, almost yelling, “That is to say, it’s somewhat concerning that she still doesn’t have any friends here.”

Unfortunately for me, the noise levels happen to die down again halfway through his sentence.

And of course, everyone hears every last word. There’s an awkward pause, and about thirty pairs of eyes burn holes into my skull. My face catches fire.

I rise from my seat, wincing inwardly when the chair legs squeak against the polished floor, scraping against the silence. I mumble something about using the bathroom.

Then I get the hell out of there.

In my defense, I’m generally pretty good—an expert, even—at pushing my feelings aside and disconnecting myself from everything, but sometimes it just hits me hard: this horrible, crushing sense of wrongness, of otherness, regardless of whether I’m the only Asian kid at an elite Catholic all-girls school in London or the only new kid in a tiny cohort at a Chinese international school. Sometimes I’m convinced I’ll spend the rest of my life this way. Alone.

Sometimes I think loneliness is my default setting.

To my relief, the corridor is empty. I retreat into the farthest corner, bend down into a half crouch, and take my phone out. Scroll through nothing for a minute. Feel intuitively for the rough string bracelet around my wrist, a gift from Zoe, let it comfort me.

This is fine, I’m fine.

Then I head onto the Craneswift website.

I discovered Craneswift a few years back, when I picked up one of their newsletters at a London train station, and I’ve been reading their stuff ever since. They don’t have a massive readership, but they more than make up for it in quality and reputation. Basically anyone who’s ever been lucky enough to publish their writing through Craneswift has gone on to achieve the kind of success I could only dream of: journalism awards, prestigious nonfiction writing scholarships in New York, international recognition. All because they wrote something beautiful and profound.

Words just move me. A beautiful sentence will sneak under my skin and crack me open the way a phrase of music might, or a climactic scene from a movie. A well-crafted story can make me laugh and gasp for breath and weep.

As I settle into one of Craneswift’s recently posted essays about finding soul mates in the unlikeliest of places, the familiar blue website banner glowing over the screen, I can already feel some of the weight on my shoulders easing, the tension in my body dissolving—

A door creaks open and noise spills into the hallway.

I stiffen, squint down the corridor. Caz Song steps out alone, his gaze sweeping right past me like I’m not even here. He looks distracted.

“… all waiting for you,” he’s saying, a rare crease between his brows, an even rarer edge to his voice. Caz has always given me the impression of someone pulled straight out of a magazine cover: glossy and airbrushed and digestible; marketable and inoffensive. But right now he’s pacing in an agitated circle, his footsteps so light they barely make any sound. “These are the parent-teacher interviews. I can’t just do it alone.”

For one confusing moment, I think he’s talking to himself or trying out some weird acting technique, but then I hear the muffled female voice coming out through his phone’s speakers:

“I know, I know, but my patient needs me more. Can you tell your teacher something came up at the hospital? Hao erzi, tinghua.” Good child. Behave. “Maybe we can reschedule for next week—that worked last time, didn’t it?”

I watch Caz breathe in. Out. When he speaks again, his voice is remarkably controlled. “No, that’s fine, Mom. I—I’ll tell them. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“Hao erzi,” the woman says again, and even from this distance, I can hear the odd commotion in the background. Slamming metal. The beep of a monitor. “Oh, and just before I go—what did they say about those college applications?”

Applications.

I turn the unexpected snippet of information over in my head. This is news to me. I’d figured someone like Caz would skip the college route, go down the acting path instead.

But at present, the Rising Star himself is rubbing his jaw and saying, “It’s … fine. They reckon that if I can pull off a really great college admission essay, it should be able to make up for my grades and attendance record …”

A sigh hisses through the speakers. “What do I always tell you, ya? Grades first, grades first. Do you think the college admissions team cares if you play lead role in campus drama? Do you think they even know any Asian celebrities other than Jackie Chan?” Before Caz can reply, his mother sighs again. “Never mind. Too late now. You just focus on that essay—are you almost done?”

It might be a trick of the low corridor lights, but I swear I see Caz wince. “Sort of.”

“What’s sort of?”

“I—” His jaw clenches. “I mean, I still need to brainstorm and outline and … write it. But I will find a way to write it,” he adds quickly. “Promise. Trust me, Mom. I—I won’t let you down.”

There’s a long pause. “All right. Well, listen, my patient’s calling for me, but talk soon, okay? And make sure you focus on those essays. If you put in even half as much effort into them as you do memorizing those scripts, then—”

“I got it, Mom.”

Something like worry briefly pinches his features as he ends the call.

Then, as he spins to leave, he sees me squatting like a fugitive in the dark of the corridor, caught staring at him for the second time this evening.

“Oh,” he says, the same time I stand up and blurt out, “Sorry!” and the rest of our sentences spill over one another:

“I didn’t see—”

“I promise I wasn’t trying to—”

“It’s cool—”

“Just about to head in—”

“You’re Eliza, right? Eliza Lin?”

“Yes,” I say slowly, and even I can hear the wary edge in my voice. “Why?”

He raises a dark brow, all signs of worry now wiped clean from his face. Fast enough to make me wonder if I’d imagined them there in the first place. “Nothing. Just trying to be friendly.”

An innocuous reply. Perfectly reasonable.

And yet …

She still doesn’t have any friends here.

“Did you … hear what Mr. Lee said earlier?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to retract them. Erase them from existence completely. There are certain things you simply shouldn’t draw attention to, even if both parties are well aware of the issue. Like a bad acne flare-up. Or your homeroom teacher declaring you friendless in front of your entire class.

The fact that I don’t really need new friends makes this no less embarrassing.

Caz considers the question for a second. Leans against the closest wall, so half his body is angled toward me. “Yeah,” he admits. “Yeah, I did.”

“Oh wow.”

“What?”

I let out a small, awkward laugh. “I was kind of expecting you to lie about it. You know. To spare my feelings or something.”

Instead of responding directly to that, he tilts his head and asks, his tone guarded, “Did you hear me on the phone?”

“No,” I tell him without thinking, then cringe. “I mean—well—”

“Very nice of you to care about protecting my feelings,” he says, but there’s a curl of irony to his voice that makes me want to evaporate on the spot. And then an even more horrifying thought materializes: What if he thinks I’m a fan? Or a stalker? Another one of those wide-eyed, overenthusiastic classmates who follows him everywhere like a disciple, who was waiting out here just to get him all alone? I’ve witnessed it happen myself a dozen times before: students ducking behind literal bins or walls and springing on him the second he rounds the corner.

“I swear I didn’t mean to overhear anything,” I say frantically, holding up both hands. “I didn’t even know you’d come out here.”

He shrugs, his face impassive. “All right.”

“Really,” I say. “Swear on my heart.”

He gives me a long look. “I said all right.”

But he doesn’t sound like he fully believes me either. My skin prickles, embarrassment and annoyance warming my cheeks. And then my mouth decides to make everything worse by saying the most ridiculous thing: “I’m not—I’m not even a fan.”

A terse second passes, his expression shifting briefly into something impossible to read. Surprise, perhaps. I can feel my insides disintegrating.

“Good to know,” he says at last.

“I mean, I’m not an anti-fan either,” I splutter, with that dreadful, helpless, out-of-body feeling of watching a protagonist inside a horror film: when you want to scream at them to stop, but they keep moving closer and closer toward their own doom. “I’m just neutral. Nothing. A—a normal person.”

“Clearly.”

I clamp my mouth shut, my cheeks hot. I can’t believe I’m still standing here with Caz Song, who apparently has a unique talent for making me feel even more self-conscious than I usually do. I can’t believe we’re still talking, and Mr. Lee’s still inside that crowded classroom with Ma, and both of them think I’m still in the bathroom.

This is a nightmare. Time to figure out an escape strategy before I can embarrass myself further.

“You know what?” I crane my neck as though I just heard someone call for me. “I’m pretty sure that was my mom.”

Caz lifts both eyebrows this time. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Yeah, well, she has a soft voice,” I babble, already moving past him. “Hard to pick out, unless you’re really accustomed to it. So, um, I should probably go. See you around!”

I don’t give him a chance to reply. I just bolt back into the classroom, ready to grab my mom and beg Li Shushu to come pick us up as soon as possible. After an ordeal this mortifying, I can never, ever talk to Caz Song ever again.