Page 24 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
“I wouldn’t need to count petals to guess whether someone loves me. I’d know that they do,” I say, the haughty coolness of my tone masking the heat in my cheeks. I immediately feel stupid for making the suggestion. This is one of the reasons I stopped answering questions in any of my classes—because most of the time, I’d say something silly and irrelevant without realizing it, and I’d want to shrivel into a ball while the teacher fought to keep their expression professional.You don’t even try, the same teachers accused when it came time for feedback, but I had. I simply wasn’t very smart, notschool-smart, which is the only kind of smart that seems to matter at our age.
Cyrus pauses. “Well, you’re right, it could be related to the flowers,” he says slowly. “I’m not sure if it’s a number that we’re looking for though. I haven’t seen anything in the room that would require a passcode.”
“Hey, there’s something here,” I notice, pointing to a piece of paper tucked underneath the screen.
He bends down right away and picks it up, flattening it out on the closest table so we can both read the characters scrawled over it. Or so he can read it, and I can stare at it. I’d expected it to be a message, but it looks more like a riddle: The words are listed one by one down the page.
“What is it?” I ask.
“A riddle,” Cyrus replies unhelpfully.
“Yes, I figured as much, Cyrus,” I say, squinting harder at the note as if it’s my vision that’s the problem here. “I didn’t think it was a love poem you’d composed for me.”
“I would never compose a love poem this bad,” Cyrus says with a scoff. “There isn’t even any rhythm to it.”
“Okay, but there has to be some—” My words are drowned out by the incoherent shrieking of the ghosts as they charge forward again, waving their pale fingers right in our faces, their eyes rolling back dramatically, blood dripping down their chins. I try again, louder:“There has to be some—”
One of the ghosts breaks from the ranks and starts circling me like a shark in water, his features contorting with so much effort I worry they’re going to end up permanently altered. He lets out another pitch-perfect horror-movie scream as he claws at the air.
I raise my hand like I’m hailing a taxi. “Can you please just let us talk for a second?” I say, first in English, then in Chinese: “Deng yi xia.”Wait.The only words I can remember on the spot.
But they’re the right ones, because the ghost clamps his mouth shut mid-scream.
“Xie xie,” I say, smiling at the ghost.
He smiles widely back at me before his ghost colleague elbows him.
“What do the words say?” I ask Cyrus, relieved to be able to hear my own voice again. Then, because he’s taking too long to respond and it seems like I’m kind of on a roll with the Chinese, I add, “Wo wen ni ne.”
His complexion changes color, as if directly absorbing the light of the scarlet lanterns above us. “Do you realize what you just said?”
“Yeah? I said that I’m asking you a question.”
“No.” He raises his brows. “You said that you were kissing me.”
This is very much news to me. But rather than letting any of my embarrassment show on my face, I decide to lean into it. “It’s an innocent mistake. And I mean, isn’t that what happens in your secret little fantasies about me?”
It works even better than I thought. He goes rigid for a second, his eyes widening as if someone’s started reading his actual fantasies out loud through a speaker, and then he quickly busies himself studying the piece of paper again. “So the words here are: lipstick, strawberry, wedding dress, and wine.”
“Those are all things you’d get at a wedding, right?” I say. “Maybe not necessarily the strawberries, but the bride could have … strawberry wedding cake? Or chocolate-covered strawberries? Sidenote: Now I’m really craving chocolate-covered strawberries.”
Cyrus makes a face. “I used to enjoy chocolate-covered strawberries until I witnessed a couple sharing one.”
“One? Asinglestrawberry? For two people?” I say, echoing his disgust.
“A single, extremely small strawberry,” he confirms with a grimace. “Both their mouths were on it. I’ve been traumatized ever since.”
“Some things just shouldn’t be shared. I almost broke up with one of my exes after he suggested that we try out theLady and the Trampnoodle thing. Like, yeah, it’s cute when dogs do it, but that’s because thedogsare cute. For some reason, he didn’t get it.”
Cyrus’s brows crinkle. “You almost broke up with him? I would’ve asked to break up on the spot.”
“I didn’t get a chance to, because he dumped me first,” I tell him, then wish I’d just lied. You don’t go running to the enemy to point out the wound on your back, even if the wound itself is more aggravating than fatal. Especially not when there’s an older, deeper wound inches below it from when the enemy pressed in with a knife.Thatone had felt fatal.
“Who would dump you?” Cyrus asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s mocking me; he sounds like he’s genuinely baffled. But for all I know, it’s a trap.
I shrug. “It’s whatever. I don’t even remember his name.” His name was Brian. He had been sweet on our first date, the perfect gentleman, complimenting my hair, my outfit, my smile. But with every date we went on after, I could feel his interest slipping away as he slowly realized, like other guys did, that I didn’t have much to offer other than my appearance. I didn’t have any passions, and I didn’t always understand his jokes right away, and I would ask the dumbest questions when I wanted to sound smart, like,What year was this restaurant founded?As if he would know or anyone would care.
“We should get back to the riddle,” I say, a little too loudly. “Do we think it’s wedding related somehow?”
