I shake my head, bewildered as to why anyone would put themselves in such a position. What is this—some kind of new extreme sport? A gang initiation?
A midlife crisis?
The man catches me staring and gives me a cheerful little wave, as if he isn’t one faulty wire or loose knot or particularly aggressive bird away from plummeting down the side of the building. Then, still ever-so-casual, he pulls out a wet cloth from his pocket and starts scrubbing the glass between us, leaving trails of white foam everywhere.
Right. Of course.
My cheeks heat. I’ve been away from China for so long that I completely forgot this is how apartment windows are cleaned—the same way I forgot how the subway lines work, or how you’re not supposed to flush toilet paper, or how you can only bargain at certain types of stores without coming across as broke or stingy. Then there are all the things that have changed in the twelve years that my family and I were overseas, the things I never had the chance to learn in the first place. Like how people here apparently justdon’t use cash anymore.
I’m not kidding. When I tried to hand a waitress an old one hundred yuan note the other week, she’d gaped at me as though I’d time-traveled straight from the seventeenth century.
“Uh, hello? Eliza? Are you still there?”
I almost trip over my bed corner in my haste to get to my laptop, which has been propped up on two cardboard boxes labeledELIZA’S NOT VERY IMPORTANT STUFF—boxes I haven’t gotten around to unpacking yet, unlike myVERY IMPORTANT STUFFbox. Ma thinks I could afford to be a bit more specific with my labels, but you can’t say I don’t have my own system.
“Eli-za?” Zoe’s voice—achingly familiar even through the screen—grows louder.
“I’m here, I’m here,” I call back.
“Oh, good, because literally all I can see is a bare wall. Speaking of which … girl, are youevergoing to decorate your room? You’ve been there for, like, three months and it looks like a hotel. I mean, anicehotel, sure, but—”
“It’s a deliberate artistic choice, okay? You know, minimalism and all that.”
She snorts. I’m a good bullshitter, but Zoe happens to have a great bullshit detector. “Is it,though? Is it really?”
“Maybe,” I lie, turning the laptop toward me. One side of the screen has been taken up by a personal essay for my English class and about a billion tabs on “how to write a kiss scene” for research purposes; on the other side is my best friend’s beautiful, grinning face.
Zoe Sato-Meyer’s sitting in her kitchen, her favorite tweed jacket draped around her narrow frame, her dark waves smoothed back into a high ponytail and haloed by the overhead lights like a very stylish seventeen-year-old angel. The pitch-black windows behind her—and the bowl of steaming instant noodles on the counter (her idea of a bedtime snack)—are the only clue it’s some ungodly hour of the night in LA right now.
“Oh my god.” Her eyes cut to my worn polka-dot sweatshirt as I adjust my laptop camera. “I can’t believe you still have that shirt. Didn’t you wear it in eighth grade or something?”
“What? It’s comfortable,” I say, which is technically true. But I guess it’s also true that this ugly, fraying shirt is one of the only things that’s remained consistent throughout six different countries and twelve different schools.
“Okay, okay.” Zoe holds up both hands in mock surrender. “You do you. But, like, still, shouldn’t you be changing? Unless you plan to wear that to your parent-teacher conferences …”
My attention snaps back to the skirt in my grip, to the foreign-lookingWESTBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF BEIJINGlogo embroidered over the stiff, plasticky fabric. A knot forms in my stomach. “Yeah, no,” I mutter. “I should definitely be changing.”
The window cleaner’s still here, so I yank the curtains closed—but not before I catch a glimpse of the sprawling apartment complex below. For a place called Bluelake, there’s very little that’s actuallyblueabout the neat rows of buildings or curated gardens, but there is plenty of green: in the man-made lake at the heart of the compound and its adjoining lotus ponds, the spacious mini golf course and tennis courts by the parking lot, the lush grass lining the pebbled paths and maidenhair trees. When we first moved in, the whole area had reminded me of a fancy resort, which seems fitting. After all, it’s not like we’ll be staying here longer than a year.
While I wriggle into my uniform, Zoe snaps her fingers and says, “Wait, you’re not getting out of this—tell me again why you’re writing about a nonexistent boyfriend for your essay?”
“Not writing.Written,” I correct, pulling my shirt over my head. “I’ve already turned it in. And it’s not like Iwantedto make up a story about my love life, but I didn’t know what else to write …” I pause to free a strand of my long, inky hair from one of the shirt buttons. “This thing is due tonight, and it counts as part of our coursework, so … you know. I had to get a little creative.”
Zoe snorts again, so loud this time her microphone crackles. “You realize personal essays shouldn’t be made up, right?”
“No,” I say, deadpan. “Personal essays should be personal? Totally news to me. Shocking. My life is a lie.”
The truth is, I chose to turn my serious nonfiction assignment into what’s essentially a four-thousand-word romancebecauseof how personal it’s meant to be. The topic itself is bad enough, inspired by this sappy book we studied in the first week of school:InWhen the Nightingales Sang Back,Lucy and Taylor are described to have their own “secret language” that no one else knows. Who do you share a secret language with? How did it develop? What does that person mean to you?
Even so, I might’ve held my nose and gone along with it, written an only lightly exaggerated piece about either one of my parents or my little sister or Zoe … except we have to post our finished essay on the Westbridge school blog. As in, a very public platform that anyone—any of my classmates who know me only as “the new kid” or “the one who recently moved from the States”—could see and comment on.
There’sno wayI’m sharing actual details about my closest personal relationships. Even thefakedetails are embarrassing enough: like how I’d traced the lines of this pretend boyfriend’s palm, whispered secrets to him in the dark, told him he meant the world to me, that he felt like home.
“… not even remotely concerned that people at your school might, I don’t know, read it and be curious about this boyfriend of yours?” Zoe’s saying.
“I’ve got it covered,” I reassure her as I tug the curtains back open. Light floods in at once, illuminating the tiny specks of dust floating before my now-empty window. “I didn’t include a name, so no one can try and stalk him. Plus, I wrote that I met this fictional dude three months ago while I was apartment hunting with my family, which is a pretty plausible meet-cute without revealing what school he might go to.And, since our relationship is still pretty new and everything’s kind of delicate, we like to keep things private. See?” I step in front of the camera and make a grand gesture toward the air, as if the entirety of my essay is written right there in glowing letters. “Foolproof.”
“Wow.” An intake of breath. “Wow. I mean, all this effort,” Zoe says, sounding exasperated and impressed at the same time, “just so you don’t have to write something real?”
