Page 41 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
It’s the kind of thing any girl would dream of hearing, but it’s useless, because it isn’t true. I shake my head. “Don’t make such bold declarations when you haven’t seen my face yet.”
“It’s still the same face, and I’ve seen your face a hundred times before,” he says, unfazed. “I know what you look like.”
And the strange, mortifying, incredible thing is that he does. He knows what I look like with my hair styled and my lashes curled, my skin glowing from the dozen different serums I slather on at night. But he also knows what I look like from the Before times, when I would show up at school in haphazard pigtails and braces and baggy, garish shirts that would’ve gotten me banned from the parties I was invited to at sixteen. He knows what I look like angry, shouting across the school’s oval; dozing off in the middle of class, my nose pressed against my textbooks; triumphant, eyes blazing, at the top of the world, and crawling home in defeat; sobbing and laughing until I can’t breathe; hopeful, humiliated, happy. He’s the only person on this trip—no, the only person I know, other than my own parents—who’s seen every single form I’ve shape-shifted through in the past few years. He knows, and right now, it’s more of a relief than anything.
I swallow. This time, when he reaches for my hood, I let him slide it back down over my head. To his credit, he doesn’t laugh or scream. His expression remains subdued as his gaze roams over my face, and I wrestle away any impulse to cover myself up again, to scrutinize my own reflection in the darkness of his eyes. A beat of silence passes between us.
“Looks like a pretty typical mosquito bite,” he says finally. “I’ll get the cream from my room—and sunglasses—for you,” he adds, the corners of his lips twitching.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Just give me a minute to run up, okay?”
All I manage to do is nod. While I wait for him in the abandoned mini museum, my hood fastened tight around my swollen face again, doubt creeps into the corners of my mind. What if this is another prank? What if he comes back not with sunglasses, but with a group of people from our trip, so they can gather around and laugh at me? It’s exactly what the kids at my old schools would have done.
My heart thrums uneasily, the tension rippling down to my stomach. Maybe I should just make a run for it before he returns. Buy my own cream and my own sunglasses … I glance out in the direction of the lobby entrance. I have some time; I could escape if I hurried—
“Here you go.”
Cyrus appears around the corner, alone, a pair of sunglasses and small white tube in his hand, extended out toward me. Just as he promised.
“What?” He laughs quietly as I take the sunglasses first, my movements slow, cautious. I’m reminded of this documentary I once watched of this horse whisperer approaching a wild mare; he’d held out an apple and stayed very still, the way Cyrus is now, afraid to scare the creature away. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“No reason,” I say as I push the sunglasses up the bridge of my nose, still on the alert for the catch, the fine print, the open-trapdoor moment that’s surely going to teach me a lesson for trusting him, but nothing comes. And I’m struck by the growing evidence that I might have been wrong before. This wholebeing kind to mething isn’t a ploy, a demonic scheme to ruin my life a second time. Cyrus Sui might not have any ulterior motive at all. As impossible as it sounds, as painful as it is to admit … he might actually, simply be offering me kindness because he wants to.
Cyrus grins all of a sudden, like he can’t help himself. “Hey, my sunglasses look good on you.”
I turn my head a fraction and see myself in the glass display. The sunglasses are bigger than anything I would’ve picked out for myself, the frames a little on the thicker side, the color solid black, more functional than fashionable. But privately, I like the way they look too.
In Shanghai, everything felt like it was sped-up.
The crowds streaming out of the subway station at five-minute intervals, swiping through emails or talking rapidly on their phones. The delivery workers rushing down the streets to drop off their next order while the food was still steaming hot. The baristas snatching empty cups from the marble counters and filling them up in a single streamlined movement. Even the elevators in our hotel were shockingly fast, the doors dinging open almost the instant you pressed the button.
That relentless rhythm eased slightly in Anhui, but when we travel from Huangshan City to Guilin, everything slows all the way back down.
There’s time to stroll along the emerald banks of the rivers, to watch the cormorants soar leisurely over the karst mountains, to buy cool sugarcane juice from the spread-out stalls and shop for jade earrings. Time for the medicine Cyrus gave me to kick in, and for the swelling around my eyes to fade; by the third day, I don’t reallyneedhis sunglasses to hide my face anymore, though I keep them on for a day longer.
The competition reaches a lull too, and it’s nice just to wander through the trees and go rafting without having to worry about winning anything.
On our way down to the bamboo rafts, an old woman approaches us with flower crowns hanging around her arm. She’s not the first person I’ve seen selling them, and most people in our group walk right past her, but I slow my steps. The crowns are beautifully woven by hand, with bursts of yellow daisies and waxflowers and camellias.
“We’ll take one,” Cyrus says, passing her the money.
I turn to him in surprise. “I was just looking.”
“I know,” he tells me, and takes his time choosing the crown with the brightest, fullest flowers, before setting it down gently on my head like this is my coronation. “My grandmother used to sell these for a living before we moved to America. It’s a tough business. I would’ve bought myself one,” he adds, following me to the edge of the water, “but I think it looks better on you.”
“You have to stop being so nice to me,” I tell him as I climb onto the raft, one hand holding the flower crown in place, the other grabbing the back of the bamboo chair for support.
He hops on after me, sitting gracefully down on my left. “Why?”
Because then I might not want to be enemies with you anymore, I answer silently inside my head.Because then it’s going to be much harder to go through with my plan, when everything I’ve done so far is to get my revenge.“I’m not used to it.”
Something shifts over his features, like the sunlight rippling off the Li River. “What are you used to, then?”
“You know. Being childhood enemies.”
His smile feels like a warning, but it’s not the kind that precedes a prank. It’s too sincere, his voice dropping low as he says, “I’ll keep being your enemy, if that’s what you’d prefer.” His eyes drop down too, drifting to my lips with such weight and intent that I can almost feel the ghost brush of his gaze. “I can be whatever you want me to be.”
