Page 40 of This Time It's Real
“We’re meant to learn ten new vocabulary words every week. For English. I also learned the worddichotomy.”
“Nice, nice.”
“Yeah. I’m not sure what it actually means, though.”
“You’ll get it when you’re older,” I reassure her. “Or . . . or at least you’ll get better at pretending you do.”
She blows a stray wisp of hair out of her face. “I hope so. Maybe I’ll find my Zoe.”
I pause. “What?”
“You know, like a best friend who’ll always be there for me, and stick by me no matter what happens. Like you and Zoe.”
“Oh. Um, yeah. Right.” But a sliver of doubt creeps through my voice, and it’s this—the doubt itself, the immediate squeeze in my chest—that worries me almost as much as the unusually brief texts we’ve exchanged recently, or how all her latest Instagram posts feature her and that new Divya girl hanging out together, or how she’s started tagging other classmates in those Facebook memes instead of me. I’ve been through this enough times with old friends from old schools to know how this tends to go. How those daily texts turn into weekly updates turn into sporadic once-a-month catch-ups turn into nothing.
But this isZoe. The one who’s stuck around longest. The one who knows me better than anybody. Since when did I start questioning the strength of our friendship?
Before my thoughts can spiral further, I get back to the point. “Hey, you will . . . tell me, won’t you? If anyone in your class excludes you, or says something mean to you.”
“If I did, what could you do about it?”
She doesn’t say this in a mean way, as a challenge; more in this very offhand, matter-of-fact manner that twists my heart into knots.
“I’d punch them,” I decide firmly.
“Really?” Emily eyes me with faint disbelief. “No offense, Jie, but you can’t even hit a cockroach without screaming.”
“Well, I mean, first of all—cockroaches are disgusting, and they have no right to make those crunching sounds when they die. And second,yes, really. I could do it.” And I would. For her.
She considers this, then hops onto the ground, dusting sugar off her palms. “Okay, then. I guess.”
Our conversation is cut short by the rumble of an engine drawing closer, the school gates creaking open to let our driver’s car in. He slows the vehicle when he reaches us—the only two students left on campus—his front windows rolled down, the blast of cold air and a snippet from some Chinese radio talk show escaping through the gaps.
“Sorry,” Li Shushu calls, sticking his bald head out. “I had to pick up your mother from a convention. Got stuck in traffic.”
“It’s fine,” I call back. As Emily runs over to heave our schoolbags off the grass, the canvas bottoms now stained with damp green patches and mud spots, I hold the car door open. Hold out my other hand.
“Come on.” I nod at her. “Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER TEN
Even though it’s the last thing I want to do after the ti jianzi game, I show up on time for our first official chemistry training session the next day. And as it turns out, Caz wasn’t kidding about hisalternate means of transportation.
“You ridethiseverywhere?” I demand, staring at the horse-sized motorcycle propped up by the compound gates. It looks like something someone in the Mafia would ride, or something a forty-seven-year-old billionaire might buy to keep up with the times. Most of the vehicle is coated a pure, glossy black, from the wheels to the leather seats, but with fire-red streaks running down the sides. Hardly the kind of transportation I expected to see first thing on a Saturday morning, or that I had in mind when Caz texted me about visiting his favorite jianbing stall.
“Beautiful, don’t you think?” Caz asks—a rhetorical question, clearly. I mean, he’s stroking the seats with more affection than I’ve seen him show anybody, including his costars in super-intimate scenes.
I stare at him, his winning smile, his casual stance. Unlike me, he doesn’t seem to remember the humiliating game at all. Which is just typical of him, really—ofus.Him, going about his day without a care in the world, whileIget to sit around and overthink my every exchange with him and wonder why things don’t ever come so easily to me.
“Wow,” I say flatly as I take a tentative step closer to the leathery, monstrous thing. It’s somehow even taller than I originally thought.
“What?”
“You’re . . . not the kind of guy who names his motorcycles, right? And refers to it asshe?” When Caz doesn’t reply right away, just laughs and rolls his eyes, I fold my arms across my chest. My horror is exaggerated, but not fake. “Youare, aren’t you?”
He climbs swiftly, easily onto the seat, brows raised at me. “Would that be a huge deal breaker for you?”
“Yes, I’m afraid that alone would be solid grounds for me to break up with you.Especiallyif the name is something like Black Beauty. Or Rebecca.”
