Page 2 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
Out for four.
Good.
You’re good now.
Or I’m supposed to be. But when I walk through the doors, the noise drops away.
It’s like I’m back at my old school again, the very last place I’d ever want to return to.
The stares. The raised brows. The exchanged glances. Even though the people here don’t have a reason to dislike me the way my classmates did, there are still way too many of them, filling up almost every single table in the ballroom. Countless faces turn, assessing me, and I get that pit-in-my-stomach feeling I’ve always hated, this sense that I’m looming over everyone like a dark cloud, a giant in the metaphorical and, at five feet ten, literal sense, unable to blend into any crowd, incapable of fitting into any room. I can only stand here and let them stare as my face grows hot and my fingers go clammy.
There are times when I agree with my mom that maybe Iwascut out to be a model, when I’m convinced that it’s the only thing I can ever be cut out for—standing still and looking pretty— and I’ve wasted that, played my cards wrong. Then there are times when I’m convinced I was never suited for it, that it was ridiculous I ever believed otherwise. That the past two years were the true waste, because how can you be a model if you loathe the feeling of being looked at?
“Leah!”
More eyes flicker up as Xiyue strides over to us. The wedding poster really didn’t do her justice. She’s glowing. Gorgeous in her joy and in her qipao, which seems to have been designed just for her. Each delicate silver thread gleams as she moves, weaving together images of peonies and phoenixes that wrap around her shoulders and waist. She’s everything you’d imagine a happy bride to be, with her red dress and rosy cheeks.
I open my mouth to tell her that I’m sorry for being so late, but the only Mandarin words I manage to recall on the spot are: “I’m sorry.”
This comes out much more ominous than I’d hoped.
“Sorry?” She frowns slightly.
My mom jumps in with what I’m assuming is an explanation, and then she spots Xiyue’s mother behind her. Her face tightens for just a second before her already-wide smile stretches further, into a beam so beatific it can only be fake, her arms stretching out with it.
“Jiejie,” she coos, pulling my aunt into a polite hug, neither of them really touching.
I stay quiet as they exchange loud air kisses and step back to study each other. My aunt hasn’t changed since I last saw her at the Spring Festival dinner a couple years ago. Same expensively coiffed, pitch-black hair, same stern, thin brows, same powdered skin pulled taut over high cheekbones. I actually don’t think she’s changed at all since Ifirstsaw her when I was a baby. The woman is walking proof that genes can only get you so far when it comes to anti-aging, because while she looks like she’s been sipping from the Fountain of Youth every morning, I was helping my mom pluck out the white hairs near her temple just the other night.
The bizarre thing is that in almost any other family, my mom would be the favorite child. The success story you brag about at events like this one. Good grades, good house, good career, happy marriage. Unfortunately for her, my aunt just happens to be one of the youngest and most esteemed professors in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford and a Grammy-nominated composer on the side, because being good at justonething is too primitive. The family legend goes that she’s so accomplished she caught the attention of NASA, who wanted to send her into space, but she declined because she was too busy. Like, too busyfor the moon.
“Hey,” I say when my aunt turns toward me with an expectant look.
My mom tugs at my wrist harder than she typically would. “You don’t sayheylike you’re bumping into a friend at the mall.You sayxiaoyi hao,” she hisses.
“Xiaoyi hao,” I amend, but I seem to have already failed some kind of test. And I fail it again when my aunt asks me something in Chinese. I look helplessly over at my mom, who answers for me in a strained, high-pitched voice, then waves me off to a table in the corner.
It’s the kids’ table, I realize. Piles of candy have been laid out around the crimson rose centerpiece: chocolates in the shape of hearts and peanut brittle and strawberry swirls and pink marshmallows. There’s even the corn-flavored jelly candies I remember from my childhood, as artificially sweet as they are bright yellow, yet so good I could never stop eating them.
A few of the kids have started digging into the sweets already, the shiny wrappers crinkling in their little fists. As I sit down in the only empty chair left, I recognize two of them as my very distant cousins, but everyone else at the table is a complete stranger—
No.
My gaze catches on the person next to me, the only boy here who’s also seventeen, and I feel my heart drop.
It can’t be him. Itshouldn’tbe.
Yet there he is, with his dark hair falling like silk over his forehead, the angles of his face so finely rendered it’s almost a taunt to contemporary sculptors, the softness of his lips a lie. He looks like he hasn’t smiled once in the two years since I last saw him. He’s definitely not smiling right now. His eyes are pinned on me, and though they’re the exact same shade of brown—the kind that turns to liquid amber in the light, and black onyx at night—there’s something different about them. Something heavier and melancholy.
“Hello,” he says, and his voice is different too. Low. Leveled.
I never thought I would hear it again.
I prayed I would never have to.
“Hi,” I say. Or I attempt to say, the effort of that single word exhausting. My whole body is numb. The moment doesn’t seem real, but I can feel moisture gathering over the bare nape of my neck.
I like to consider myself a reasonably amiable person. I’ve never gotten into a heated argument or physical altercation with anyone before. I have a healthy number of friends, and though we’re not exactly drive-across-the-country-at-midnight-to-help-you close the way I wish to be, at least we’re you-can-borrow-my-sunglasses close. And I might dislike a number of people, or disagree with them on multiple points, but I don’thateanybody—
