Page 6 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
So I cut my hair at a salon recommended by all the prettiest influencers. Learned how to do my makeup. Blasted songs aboutloving yourself as you arewhile working out to remold my body into something else. Poured my savings into completely revamping my wardrobe—out went the comfortable sweatpants and basic, faded shirts, and in came the suffocatingly tight dresses and crop tops that always left my stomach cold.
The shocking thing was that it worked. When I joined my current school mid-semester last year, I had already become the swan. Enough time had passed that the rumors about me no longer traveled faster than the transfer papers did, and being conventionally attractive changedeverything. I was still the same person, but only I knew that. Instead of being called cold and unapproachable, I was suddenly cool and unattainable. Instead of quiet, I was mysterious. Instead of weird, I was alluring. When Cate and her pretty, popular friends approached me on the first day of school, Cate’s first words to me were:Oh my god, I love your hair.
And when a model scout gave me her card outside a frozen yogurt shop just a month later, Cate had been even more excited than I was. Modeling, I realized, was the ultimate key to cementing my social status at my new school, the final stage in my transformation. It’s just one of those jobs where there’s something inherently shiny and interesting about the title. Something desirable. That’s why I held on to it for so long, even when it felt like I was holding on to a jagged cliff edge: because I’ve never been shiny or interesting on my own.
Then someone coughs—Cyrus—and I snap back to the present.
The wedding. The blessing.
The words I need to say, but now can’t remember.
“Zhu nimen xinhun …” Panic lodges itself in my throat. What was it? Yu? Yao? Yin? “Yiyu,” I say, which sounds about right. “And, um, zaosheng …” I do a frantic search through my sad vocabulary bank. What’s the word that usually comes aftersheng? “Shengbing.”
There’s a pause.
If the ballroom had been quiet before, it’s completely silent now.
Looks of horror travel swiftly from table to table. My aunt is frowning right at me, shaking her head in clear disapproval. Cyrus has a fist pressed to his mouth—either to keep from laughing, or maybe just to keep himself from making some kind of unhelpful remark. From across the room, I can see my parents: My mom is dragging a hand over her eyes, as if to shield herself from the scene, and my dad’s face is twisted into a sympathetic grimace. My cousin and cousin-in-law are frozen to the spot before me. They both appear stricken, their eyes wide.
A sinking feeling rolls over my gut, even though I still have no idea what went wrong. Only that something must have.
Then Xiyue’s face crumples, and the silence cracks as she bursts into tears.
I stare in stunned, confused horror as she flees from the room as fast as the tight fabric of her qipao will allow, her new husband chasing after her. “Xiyue! Xiyue—wait!” Then, as if my words have set off the world’s most chaotic game of tag, my aunt chases after them too, but not before she sends me the most withering glare I’ve ever received in my life. It stings like a slap, and I have no doubt that if I weren’t related to her, she would actually march over here to strike me.
“What … did I do?” I whisper to Cyrus.
“You really don’t know what you just said?” he asks, pulling me back down into the seat.
“No?” Ice fills my blood. My gaze flits from the guests’ appalled expressions to the open door where my cousin fled. It seems impossible that just seconds ago, she’d been happy and head over heels in love, and now, this might go down in our family history as the most disastrous wedding ever. Because of me. “No … What? I was just repeating the phrase—wasn’t I?”
“You weresupposedto wish them a happy marriage and healthy children. Instead,” he says, with the air of an executioner right before the ax drops, “you told them you hope they have a depressing marriage, and that they fall ill quickly.”
***
The wedding ends early.
Once it becomes apparent that my cousin isn’t coming back anytime soon, the guests scatter, murmuring to themselves and eyeing me on their way out like I’m the car crash that’s been blocking the freeway. Nobody’s even tasted the wedding cake, which is starting to melt, the clay figurines of my cousin and her husband sliding off the top.
If the floor weren’t made of absurdly shiny marble, I’d dig a ditch right this instant and lie in it forever.
My dad excuses himself to go to the bathroom, and my mom heads off in the same direction my aunt and cousin went, her heels echoing down the corridor. Then it’s just me and Cyrus left in the bloody aftermath, the crimson streamers and slowly dying flowers spilling out around us. I have no idea whyhe’sstill here, other than to watch me suffer.
And I’m absolutely suffering. While Cyrus has been standing by the entrance, I’ve circled the entire length of the room about a thousand times like a caged animal. My stomach won’t stop twisting in on itself, tighter and tighter and tighter until it feels like I might vomit. How could I have messed up everything with just a few wrong words? How do I keep messing things up?
“I think they’re talking about you,” Cyrus says quietly when I pass him on my thousand-and-second lap.
My heart clenches. I jolt to a stop next to him and strain my ears. Sure enough, through the closed doors, I can hear my aunt’s voice, rising over my mom’s softer, apologetic one. It’s like listening to a whole different person. Gone is the self-assured lawyer who addresses almost everyone—babies, businessmen, waiters, puppies, you name it—in the same clipped, no-nonsense tone. Right now, she just sounds like a chastened child. My aunt is probably the only person in the world who can have that effect on her.
I attempt to focus on the conversation, but I can’t understand anything either of them is saying, except for my name, which pops up at an alarming frequency.
“She says your cousin is having second thoughts,” Cyrus murmurs.
I turn to him, my wariness waging war against my need to know exactly what they’re talking about.
“She’s really superstitious, apparently,” Cyrus continues translating, his brows furrowed in concentration, his ear pressed to the door. “Won’t stick her chopsticks upright in rice. Hates the number four. She doesn’t even like to use four exclamation points in a row. She took a trip all the way to this sacred fountain at the top of the Yellow Mountain last month, just to pray for a happy marriage, but … she thinks her marriage is doomed now.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and wonder if it’s physically possible to die from guilt. Like, maybe the sheer weight of it will crush my organs. And if not that, then maybe my aunt’s disapproval will do the trick. I keep replaying the way she glowered at me before she chased after her crying daughter, like she was affronted by the very idea that we’re connected by blood.
