“That’s the plan.”
There’s a brief silence, broken only by the slurp of noodles on Zoe’s end and the thud of footsteps outside my room. Then Zoe sighs and asks, in a tone far too concerned for my liking, “Are you doing okay at your new school, girl? Like, are you … settling in?”
“What?” I feel myself stiffen immediately, my muscles tensing as though anticipating a blow. “Why—why would you say that?”
“I don’t know.” Zoe jerks a shoulder, her ponytail bouncing with the motion. “Just … vibes.”
I’m saved from having to answer when Ma calls down the hall at a volume one would usually reserve for search-and-rescue missions. “Ai-Ai! The driver’s here!”
Ai-Ai is my Chinese nickname, which translates directly tolove. Fictional relationship aside, I can’t quite say I’ve lived up to it.
“I’m coming!” I yell back, then turn to the screen. “I assume you heard that?”
Zoe grins, and I relax slightly, relieved whatever heart-to-heart conversation she was trying to have is over. “Yeah, I think the whole planet heard it. Tell your mom I said hi,” she adds.
“Will do.” Before I shut my laptop, I make a cheesy heart sign with my fingers; something I wouldn’t be caught dead doing around anyone else. “I miss you.”
Zoe blows a dramatic kiss at me in response, and I laugh. “I miss you too.”
The hard knot in my stomach loosens a little at the familiar words. Ever since I left LA two years ago, we’ve ended every single call like this, no matter how busy and tired we are, or how short the conversation is, or how long it’ll be until we can talk again.
I miss you.
It’s not as good as the sleepovers we used to have at her place, where we’d sprawl on the couch in our pajamas, some Netflix show playing on her laptop, a plate of her mom’s homemade rice balls balanced between us. And it’s nowhere near as good as our weekend trips down by the beach, the California sun warming our skin, the breeze tugging at our salt-tangled hair. Of course it isn’t.
But for now, this small, simple ritual feels enough.
Because it’s ours.
•••
Our driver has parked his car just outside the apartment complex, under the dappled shade of a willow tree.
Technically, Li Shushu isn’t so much our driver asMa’s driver—one of the many perks of being an executive at a super-prestigious global consulting company, and part of the sorry-for-asking-you-to-uproot-your life-almost-every-year! package— which is why he rushes out to greet her first.
“Yu Nüshi,” he says, opening the door for her with a little bow.Madame Yu.
This kind of treatment always makes me uncomfortable in a way I can’t articulate, even when it’s not directed at me, but Ma just smiles at him through her sunglasses and slides gracefully into the front seat. Looking at her now, with her pale, unblemished skin and custom-made blazer and razor-sharp bob, you’d never guess she grew up fighting for scraps with six other siblings in a poor rural Chinese town.
The rest of us squeeze into the back of the car in our usual order: me and Ba beside the windows, and my nine-year-old little sister, Emily, squashed in the middle.
“To your school?” Li Shushu confirms in slow, enunciated Mandarin as he starts the engine, the smell of new leather and petrol fumes seeping into the enclosed space. He’s been around me long enough to know the extent of my Chinese skills.
“To the school,” I agree, doing my best to ignore the pinch in my gut. I hate going to Westbridge enough as it is, but whatever the school, parent-teacher interviews are always the worst. If it wasn’t for the fact that Emily goes to the same school as me and also has her interviews this evening, I’d have made up a brilliant excuse to keep us all home.
Too late to do anything now.
I lean back in my seat and press my cheek to the cool, flat glass, watching our apartment complex grow smaller and smaller until it disappears entirely, replaced by the onrush of the inner city scene.
Since we moved back here, I’ve spent most of our car rides plastered to the window like this, trying to take in the sharp rise and fall of the Beijing skyline, the maze of intersections and ring roads, the bright clusters of dumpling restaurants and packed grocery stores.
Trying to memorize it all—and trying to remember.
It kind of amazes me how misleading the photos you tend to see of Beijing are. They either depict the city as this smoggy postapocalyptic world packed full of weathered, stony-faced people in pollution masks, or they make it look like something straight out of a high-budget sci-fi movie, all sleek skyscrapers and dazzling lights and dripping luxury.
They rarely capture the true energy of the city, the forward momentum that runs beneath everything here like a wild undercurrent. Everyone seems to be hustling, reaching, striving for more, moving from one place to the next; whether it’s the delivery guy weaving through the traffic behind us with dozens of takeout boxes strapped to his bike, or the businesswoman texting someone frantically in the Mercedes on our left.
My attention shifts when a famous Chinese rapper’s song starts playing on the radio. In the rearview mirror, I see Ma remove her sunglasses and visibly wince.
