Page 2 of From Beijing, With Love

You and your rules. Taylor’s words sprang up in his head, and he shrank into himself. Taylor was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about Daniel’s life being made up of a thousand rigid rules.

Daniel was breaking all of them by being on this trip.

His fingers twitched against the scratchy airline blanket. Craning his neck, he got a glimpse of the Beijing skyline through the window—cloudless but hazy. The air in the cabin smelled of stale coffee and exhaustion.

The seat belt sign dinged off at the same time that Poppy’s name popped up on his phone screen. The text equivalent of the other shoe dropping.

Four words: We need to talk …

“Let me get this right. One, you are not in Beijing. Two, you won’t be here for another week. Three, I’m stuck in a foreign country all by myself,” Daniel rattled off, dread pooling in the bottom of his stomach. The luggage carousel creaked with each leisurely rotation like it had all the time in the world.

“Does it count as a foreign country if you’re half Chinese?” Poppy asked unhelpfully before meeting Daniel’s death glare. She switched tactics and widened her eyes to puppy-dog level on his phone screen. “One, I didn’t expect you to actually buy the ticket. You’re the one who said never shop drunk! Two, how could you possibly have gotten a visa in two days?”

“Because I … Well, I applied for it when you first moved,” he said with a sigh.

The baggage chute spat out an oversized rucksack wrapped in duct tape that was barely holding it together. Kind of like how he’d felt when he helped Poppy pack her bags for her yearlong work placement, organizing her chaos-demon life into manageable parcels. A twenty-page application and sixty euros later, he’d been the proud holder of a Chinese tourist visa, which he now very much regretted. Everything had lined up for the single time in his twenty-five years of being alive that he’d chosen to be spontaneous.

“Three, sorry that I’m not there right now.” Poppy’s voice softened.

“It’s fine.” He flashed her a smile as he adjusted the strap of the duffel bag digging into his tense shoulder. He was good at pretending to be okay.

“It’s very much not fine!” Poppy called his bullshit with an arched brow, as if challenging him to contradict her.

Okay, maybe he wasn’t that good at pretending to be okay.

While Daniel had always been a worrier, Poppy was his warrior, ever since they’d first met as teenagers. The awkward Canadian boy who’d just moved to Europe and the Chinese American girl who had a knack for getting into fights (and winning). Two little displaced North Americans in Amsterdam finding home in their friendship.

“Danny, are you going to be okay?” Poppy called him Danny only when she was particularly sentimental (not often) or when she was particularly worried about him (quite often).

Daniel forced himself to meet Poppy’s eyes. “It’s just a week, then you’re back.” He smiled again, bigger this time. “I promise I’ll be fine.”

Daniel was not fine.

Despite his promise to Poppy, he—a grown adult, in possession of a working credit card, a passport, and actual money in the bank—was very much not fine. Given his history, he’d known he might land in not-fine territory at some point. He just didn’t expect it to be this soon.

Each time a new piece of luggage landed on the carousel with a thunk, his clammy hand twitched in anticipation. After the parade of baggage dwindled to the battered suitcase whose last wheel was hanging on by a thread, he had to admit that maybe, just maybe, his luggage was missing.

“Black. Hard shell,” he said as he drew a large rectangle in the air to represent his rolling suitcase, his stomach in knots. He was met with a head tilt from the baggage claim agent, who, as it turned out, spoke as much English as Daniel spoke Mandarin.

Pretty much none.

In return, the agent drew her own rectangle, smaller. It took his tired brain way too long before he figured out what she meant and handed over his boarding pass. She held it up and compared the piece of paper to Daniel’s face with a look he knew well.

“Chinese?” she asked, her pastel-pink nail pointing to his last name on the boarding pass—Wu. Narrowing her eyes, she studied him, as if reconciling the mismatch between his name and his face.

“Yes. Well, half yes. My dad was Chinese, but my mother’s Dutch,” Daniel rambled on, which was always helpful to do in front of someone who didn’t speak the same language.

The confusion grew on the agent’s face until she lifted a hand in the universal gesture for stop talking. She typed away on the keyboard, the keys clacking under her nails. Her brows scrunched together as she leaned closer to her monitor. Then she held up her phone. After fixating on the smudges on the screen and wondering how they got there, he realized she was trying to communicate with him.

LUGGAGE MISSED FLIGHT. IT WILL BE PUT ON THE NEXT FLIGHT. WE WILL DELIVER IT TO YOUR HOTEL TOMORROW AFTERNOON, the translated text shouted at him in all caps.

Daniel wanted to argue, then he met her apologetic smile. She’d done her best. What would arguing achieve, anyway? It wasn’t going to magically fly his luggage here faster. His suitcase was back home while he was stranded in Beijing. Frankly, he envied the suitcase.

If this is how the trip starts, how will the rest go? He was on another continent without a plan, a change of clothes, or his best friend.

He shook his head to dislodge the intrusive thought as he stepped through the sliding glass doors. The afternoon sun was searing, and the air hung heavy with a suffocating humidity. It smelled faintly of diesel mixed with the scent of cigarettes. Stepping onto the scorching pavement, he took a long breath.

For what it was worth, he’d managed to travel halfway across the world. By himself. Spontaneously (the cursed word). This was nothing like the short hops he did around Europe, all of which were planned months in advance and organized down to the nanosecond (spreadsheets were involved). However reluctantly, he was standing on Chinese soil. That was something, right? The trip was going to turn around. It had to. Daniel was going to manifest it.