Page 16 of This Time It's Real
Emily snorts. “Su-ure.”
“Well, I don’t think he’sthathot,” I grumble, pulling my blanket up to my chin. On-screen Caz is stroking the girl’s cheek now with one thumb, and I can feel my own cheeks growing warm. “It’s probably just makeup. And filters.”
I know for a fact that it isn’t makeup or filters, because Caz looks like that every time I see him at school, but there’s no way I’m admitting he’s attractive out loud, to my family.
“Your standards are way too high, Jie,” Emily says.
“She’s right,” Ma agrees, patting my knee. “You’ll never find a boyfriend if you don’t even want someone like him.”
Emily opens her mouth as if to make a correction, and my heart almost stops. But then she winks at me and mimes zipping her lips shut. I read somewhere that sisters develop their own kind of telepathy, which must be true, because I’m one hundred percent sure I know what silent message Emily is sending me:Remember the Pocky.
Of course I remember, I send back with a glare.Just keep quiet.
Got it, she replies.By the way, can you get me some water?
I roll my eyes, but I get up and pour everyone a glass of warm water from the kettle, then cut up a mango just to be nice. As I sit back down, I can’t help reading over Sarah Diaz’s email on my phone again. It’s still there, still real, tangible evidence that Craneswift wants me to work for them—but also that I can’t possibly keep up my lie on my own. My eyes fasten on one of the internship requirements:
It would be wonderful if your posts could share more details about your relationship, and provide photos of you two together . . .
Where the hell am I supposed to getphotos? Do I hire someone from those dodgy rent-a-boyfriend sites? Photoshop some random guy into a selfie? But no, neither option sounds reliable. And with how fast the internet moves, I’m pretty sure everyone would find out the truth within a day. It has to be somebody I actually know, somebody convincing . . .
“Jie, are you even watching?” Emily calls.
“Huh? Oh—yeah. Of course.” I snap my head up just in time to see on-screen Caz Song invite the female lead onto the back of his motorcycle. As I watch the two of them ride through the city, the artificial sunlight moving over them, I’m struck by an idea.
A ridiculous, absolutely laughable idea. An idea that might complicate everything further.
But an idea that might just work.
Later that evening, when everyone’s asleep, I turn on my laptop. Suck in a deep breath. Then, feeling weirdly self-conscious and almostnervousfor some reason, I search “Caz Song” on Baidu.
The results come up at once.
There are even more relevant articles and interviews than I expected, because—to my slight dismay—Caz Song is somehow even more popular than I expected. He has over five million followers on his official Weibo account alone, a ridiculous number of fan pages declaring their undying love for him, and a whole series of professional photo shoots and special campaign shots with sponsored brands. In each one, he’s so beautiful he looks fake. It’s almost offensive how perfect he is, a teen fantasy made flesh.
There’s something bizarre about the idea that this one guy in my class, who I see around the lockers and cafeteria and suffer through math pop quizzes with every day, is known by millions of people across the country. Not only known, butliked.Adored to the extent that someone left a six-paragraph comment under a video of him, asking him to sleep well and stay hydrated and take care of his houseplants.
Then I remember thatmywriting has been viewed by millions of people too, that all those people now know me by extension, and my head just about implodes. Which brings me back to why I’m doing this in the first place.
Why I need to do this.
Before I can lose my nerve, I start with the basics: Caz’s Baike page.
It’s basically the equivalent of Wikipedia, in that it’ll give you all the biographical information you want on a famous person, divided up into nice, neat categories.
Some of the stuff I’ve already been made to know against my will, just from overheard conversations at school. Like how he was born in America but moved to Beijing when he was nine; or how his parents are both doctors, both originally from a tiny town in South China; or how he’s professionally trained in martial arts, about ten different instruments, horse riding, and archery.
But there are other details listed too, important things I’ve definitely missed—
Like the fact that he lives in my compound.
My heart leaps. It’s perfect. It’s almosttooperfect, as though designed by fate, or maybe God himself, if God were interested in the petty drama of awkward teenagers.
I scroll further, faster, moving on to the more gossipy, fan-made sites.
The most viewed article dates back to only a couple weeks ago. Apparently, there’d been something of a scandal at a huge awards ceremony, all because Caz Song had failed to help an older, well-respected actress into her seat. The comment section below is, of course, a war zone. Some are so enraged by his behavior one would think he had shoved the actress down the stage and laughed in her face or something.I’m sorry, but I simply can’t stand him any longer, one user wrote.I used to imagine he’d be the thoughtful, chivalrous, perfect-boyfriend type, but clearly he doesn’t have even the most basic manners. Goodbye, Caz. It was good while it lasted.Other hard-core fans have jumped out to defend him:But maybe he didn’t see her!Or:If he’d helped her, all the antis would’ve blamed him for not respecting her personal space. There’s literally no winning.
The whole thing’s absurd, yet what’s wilder is that a massive cosmetics brand actually dropped Caz Song after the backlash, claiming that all their ambassadors ought to be “thoughtful” and “sensitive” and “courteous,” and demanding an explanation for his behavior. Someone’s even made a video analyzing the situation, which I click on. It’s followed by another video, titled “All of Caz Song’s Interviews Pt. 1” . . .
