Ringing up the hairdresser isn’t exactly a top priority for me right now, but I nod to placate her. “Okay, I’ll call Tony.”
“Not the Tony who cut off two whole inches when I asked for only one and a half—I wouldn’t trust him with my hair again even if every last salon on earth went into bankruptcy.”
“No, not him,” I agree quickly. “The other Tony.”
“The one in Sanlitun?”
“The otherotherTony.”
She nods, the little crinkle between her brows lightening, and I release a small inward sigh of relief. It’s all I can do these days—not make her happy, because nothing seems to make her happy anymore, but find and eliminate everything that might upset her further. Like purchasing business-class tickets for a long-haul flight; you can’t avoid the turbulence, or the jet lag, or the fact that you’re stuck in a metal tube, but you can at least make the ride a little more bearable.
I’m about to retreat to my bedroom, where I can freak out over the vision in private, when her gaze snaps from my hair to my waist. And just like that, her frown is back, her mouth puckering as if she’s taken a sip of expired mung bean milk. “Have you been eating?” With her, this question is never the conversation starter you so often hear over the phone in Beijing, the friendly equivalent of “How are you?” It’s an accusation.
My stomach twists. “Not much. I mean... I had some California rolls for lunch, but I only had like, two of them.” Ispeak faster, feeling like I’m pleading guilty in court. “And the serving was small to begin with.”
She repeats the same movement she used with my apparently damaged hair, except this time, it’s the flesh above my waistband that she pinches between two nails. It hurts a little, but I resist the urge to flinch away. Or shove her hand away.She’s going through an extremely difficult time,I remind myself.She’s grieving a marriage. She means well. She’s your mom.
She’s your only parent left.
But even though I’ve vowed to erase my father from the family portrait, and I absolutely should not be missing that lying, cheating asshole, I feel a twinge deep inside my chest. Before, whenever my mom slipped into a lecture about cutting out rice or trying some new, model-approved trick to suppress your body’s natural hunger cues, my father would jump in to defend me faster than my mom could push my food out of reach. “Aiya, just let our daughter eat what she wants,”he’d said one night, sliding a plate of pork potstickers across the table to me with a wink. I’d been eyeing them all dinner, my mouth watering through bites of cold cucumber. “She’s still growing.”
“If she eats whatever she wants, she’s not going to be able to take any photos,”my mom had protested.
“Now, Coco, my dear, that’s literally untrue. There’s no prerequisite to getting photos taken,”my dad had said. “Do you think cameras ask you to enter your body mass index before you’re allowed to use them?”
My mom had rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. I want her to eat well, but if she doesn’t look her very best, thosenetizens will tear her to pieces. I’d rather that I be the one to warn her beforehand than for her to have to suffer the consequences after.”
“Those netizens are bored, lonely strangers making meaningless comments about other strangers’ bodies on the internet. They won’t care if your daughter’s starving, but you should,” my dad had pointed out, with the air of authority he often employed to wrap up his big annual meetings. “Chanel,”he’d said, turning to me, his expression warm. “Eat.”
“...eat less,” my mom is saying.
I nod again. I can feel all the remaining energy in my body leaking out.
Finally, my mom releases me, and I make my escape down the hall, into the bathroom, where I splash ice-cold water on my face, as if I can simply wash the events of tonight away. But even with my eyes closed, the water running down my cheeks, I can still see the vision....
This house going up in flames, and everything I’ve ever known burning down with it.
There’s a brief, blissful lag in my memory when I wake the next morning: those colorless moments between sleep where all I know is the stiffness in my neck muscles and the soft, lavender-scented fabric of the blankets cocooned around my body.
Then I remember everything.
The lake and the fire and Ares Yin.
It doesn’t feel real, not when the moon is gone from the horizon and the buttery daylight is spilling over one side ofmy bedroom. Maybe itwasn’treal, I think hopefully, pushing the blankets off and stretching, my toes finding the fluffy pink slippers laid out on the floor. Maybe I imagined it.
I try to tell myself this on the ride to school, until I’m almost convinced. As I head off to math for first period, my panic from yesterday starts to feel like a silly overreaction. It hadfeltlike the world was ending in the darkness, with the eeriness of the park after midnight, the surreal quality of the moonlight falling over the waters. But it could all be smoke and mirrors, like the atmosphere of a haunted house on Halloween. Terrifying when you’re in it, yet so clearly fake when you’re out of it.
I breathe a little easier and lift my chin, remembering to smile at everyone who greets me in the corridors:
“Hi, Chanel!”
“Hey, girl.”
“Chanel, holy crap, your dress in your last post?Sogorgeous—”
“Did you hear about the party Jake Nguyen’s throwing at his place?”
“What outfit are you wearing to—”
