Page 80 of This Time It's Real
“Um,” Emily says.
“Um, what?”
“The showers aren’t really . . . working right now,” she informs me. “I think something got stuck in the main pipes when it was raining. Ma and Ba went to find the wuye downstairs, but they said it’s, like, a whole-building issue. Might take them a while to fix it.”
And once again, the universe has managed to prove me wrong.
“Right,” I say, wrapping both towels tight around my soaked clothes. “Cool. Very cool. Well, then I guess I’ll just wait here.”
“I can wait here with you,” Emily offers.
I start to tell herNo,it’s okay,just go play, but my throat’s closed up again, and maybe I don’t want to be alone right now. Even if I already feel lonelier than I’ve ever felt.
We’re both silent for a long time, listening to the light tap of rain against the windows, the distant rumble of thunder, the steady drip of water from my hair.
Then, as if she can’t help herself, Emily blurts out, “Did you have a fight with Caz?”
The sound of his name sears like salt on an open wound. Swallowing hard, all I can think to say is “I’m sorry.” Though I’m not sure what exactly I’m apologizing for. Lying about my relationship with him to everyone, even now? Making my personal essay up in the first place? Introducing him into her life, when she knows just as well as I do how horrible it is to be pulled away from the people you care about, how rare it is to move to a new place and find someone there who can make it feel like home? There’s justso much. So many ways I’ve screwed up. So many things I’ve done wrong. “I know you really like him.”
“I do like him,” Emily says slowly. Then she looks up at me, and I’m struck by two things: First, how tall she’s grown without my realizing, her head now almost level with my nose. And second, that fierce, protective look in her eyes, like our positions have been switched andshe’sthe older sibling who’d tear down the world for me. “But if he was mean to you, I’ll stop liking him immediately. I won’t even invite him to my next birthday party.”
I choke out a small laugh, but the sound’s tinged by sadness. “No, no. It’s not that. If anything . . .”If anything, I’m the one who wronged him.
“Well, either way,” Emily continues, leaning back against the wall, “the main reason I liked him was because of how you act when you’re together.”
This surprises me. “What . . . what am I like around him?”
“Happy,” she says simply.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Caz doesn’t show up at school the next day.
Or the next day. Or the next. He doesn’t read any of my texts asking if he’s okay, or return my voicemails asking if we can make a plan for the interview, and I end up finding out through a dodgy media site that he’s requested a two-week break from school to finish filming his drama.
And I—
Well, I survive. I brush my teeth and go to class and take my notes. I even write up that longer, official article I promised Sarah Diaz—a much more serious one this time about the slow collapse of the tutoring center industry in China, to be printed in the spring edition of Craneswift—and email it to her, shoving down a surge of anxiety when she confirms receipt alongside the question:Are you all set for the interview?
I don’t know how to tell her that I’m not sure if Caz will even be coming. If we’ll ever speak again. That every time I remember the knife-bright flash of hurt—then anger—in his eyes, the sound of his footsteps in the beating rain, it feels like someone’s squeezing my heart inside their fist, like there’s no chance we can ever find our way back from this. But there’s too much riding on the interview: my career, Caz’s reputation, the public’s opinion of us, all our efforts so far. So instead I write, in the vaguest way possible,It’s all going just fine.
And maybe when everything’s over and done with and I’m lying alone in my bedroom, staring around at my four blank walls, I’ll think of Caz and a terrible, burning pressure will build in the back of my throat. Maybe I’ll imagine him shooting his dramas, laughing with Mingri, singing karaoke with his gorgeous costars, and dig my nails into my pillow. Maybe I’ll miss him and hate him and curse his name.
But other than that, I’m doing fine. Great.
There’s a new email in my inbox the next Saturday, barely two lines long:
I’ve just finished reading your piece. Please call me when you’re free. —Sarah
At first all I can do is stare at the screen, not really registering any of it. Then I read the email again, my heart kicking faster and faster against my ribs, dread rising to my throat like bile.
Don’t freak out, I scold myself.You don’t know that it’s bad.
But I don’t know that it’s good either.
I’m shaking as I retreat alone to the balcony and dial Sarah Diaz’s number, gripping the phone tight in both hands.
She answers on the first ring. Like she’s been waiting for me. “Eliza. How are you?”
