12
My head jostles against a muscled chest.
I open my eyes into darkness. I’m walking down a hallway, passing doors and brass doorknobs. No, not walking. My legs dangle. I’m cradled in someone’s arms. Someone who smells yummy: like grass, sweat, freshly chopped wood.
Someone with a firm-footed gait.
“Where’s Sophie?” I stir, panicked. I have a vague memory of pulsing lights, writhing with Xavier . . .
“Hey. It’s me. Take it easy.”
Rick.
I groan. My head pounds like dragon drums. I become aware of the regular pulse of his heart against my cheek.
“I can walk myself.” I struggle, push against his hairy chest.
But when my feet touch ground, the world spins. Rick’s arm goes under my knees again and he lifts me as if I weigh no more than a feather pillow. The warmth of his bare skin heats my cheek. Where’s his shirt?
He chuckles, his voice soft and furry in the darkness. “If you’re going to drink, you need to set limits. Didn’t anyone ever tell you?”
“Nobody’s told me anything about anything,” I say, belligerent, then another wave of shadows crashes down.
I wake in my bed. Moonlight slants through my double-paneled window.
Rick’s face appears beside me, leaning in from a chair. I hadn’t noticed before how full his lips are.
“I found your key in your pocket.”
A sudden suspicion dawns and I glance down. I’m wearing his canary-yellow polo shirt over my black chiffon skirt. The coarse fabric slides over my stomach as Rick pulls my blanket to my chin.
“Don’t worry. Sophie took care of you at the club.”
I blush, mortified he read me so easily. A paper cup of water presses into my hand. “Here, drink this.”
“Did you carry me home?” No way could he have carried me over the catwalk. He must have come in the front gate.
“It was either that or drive around in the cab until you woke up.”
Like a drunk date, when I wasn’t even his date. I moan.
He grips my shoulder. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ve sprained my dignity.”
His grip loosens. Then he laughs, so long I grow suspicious he’s more drunk than I am. He’s so weird, yo-yoing mood and all. Is something wrong?
Finally, he says, “Where the hell did you learn to dance like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you belong on a stage.”
“So you were watching my moves?” I imagine Rick’s eyes following my body through the pulsing lights. It gives me a curl of pleasure.
“And here I thought you were just a big brain,” he teases.
“Who’s the brainiac?” I mumble. My big brain’s floating in fog. My scalp hurts.
He takes my cup back. “Your hair’s twisted under you.”
His fingers brush my cheek. They slide into my hair, pulling a lock free, relieving some of the tension. I should pull away, but I can’t remember why, and so I let myself enjoy this unfamiliar intimacy of his fingers in my hair, tugging a second bundle free.
“Doesn’t it get tiring, being so perfect?”
He laughs, but this time, there’s no smile in his voice. “I’m far from perfect.” Oh, yeah? Did he once earn an A-minus? Or—gasp—a B?
“Tell that to my parents,” I mutter, low so he can’t hear me.
“World Journal?” He heard me.
“I wrote you a letter when I was eleven. My parents made me do it. To get homework advice.”
“Did I reply?”
“Nope. Bastard.”
“Is that why you hate my guts? Well, let me guess. You figured out your homework problem on your own.”
“They wanted me to get general advice. Start a correspondence.”
“I am sort of every immigrant Chinese parent’s dream guy.”
“I burned your photo in effigy after.” My eyelids are mudslides; I can’t keep them open.
“Good thing I already have a girlfriend.”
“Yes, the poor girl. You’re probably the tree that sucks up all the nutrients from the soil. Nothing else can grow around you.” A yawn nearly swallows the last of my words.
But through the growing darkness, I feel him shrink away. I’ve struck a chord.
Sorry, didn’t mean it, I want to say. But the effort feels titanic.
And then the darkness claims me.
“Wake up, Ever! Wake up! We overslept!”
Curtains screech on their rails. Sophie’s voice along with blinding rays of sunshine pierce my fragmented dreams. I’m lying on my stomach on my bed, sheets tangled in my legs, arm numb from dangling over the edge. My head throbs as if all my arteries have migrated into my skull.
“How’d I get here?” I mumble.
“Rick took you home.” Sophie flies about the room in various states of undress. “Good thing, too! Grace Pu was rolling around like a drunken walrus in the parking lot. Her so-called friends considered leaving her there! Oh my God, Ever, I have so much to tell you but we’re late!”
I sit up, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Sunlight gleams off Sophie’s bare stomach as she snaps on her black lace bra. My black shirt and corset top that never even saw the club lights hang from the back of my chair, ribbons dangling, wrinkled from a wash and squeeze.
A vague horror closes off my throat as my night rushes back. Rick witnessing messes that should never be witnessed by any living breathing creature, let alone him. His shirt I will launder—twice—before returning it, if he even wants it back. And . . . right here, had I said things I shouldn’t have? So you were watching my moves . . . You’re probably the tree . . . I need to find him and explain. Apologize. Except that I can never face him again.
“Did Rick say—”
“Move it!” Sophie flings my green dress onto my stomach and shrugs into a striped tank top. “The Dragon’s making rounds. If she finds us here, we’re stuck, and Yannie’s booked solid the rest of the summer. We won’t get another chance with her.”
“Yannie? Who’s Yannie?”
Once again, Sophie’s urgency’s contagious. I shrug out of Rick’s shirt.
“Our photographer! For our glamour shots! Didn’t I tell you last night? Yannie’s the best. All the slots were taken but I got us in on a cancellation—we’ll just have to skip Mandarin.”
“If you told me, I can’t remember,” I groan. My head is splitting into four pieces—the morning of my first hangover is not the day I’d have picked for glamour shots. How is Sophie flitting around like a moth on crack?
“Well, it’s your lucky day! Once the boys start leafing through your album, no guy here will be able to resist you!”
I start to laugh, but it hurts my head. “No one’s looking at my photos, least of all guys-who-von’t-be-able-to-ree-zeest-me.” Though posing for sexy glamour shots might be the perfect way to quit dressing like a nun, since that’s all I seem capable of. I yank off my crumpled chiffon skirt. As if in protest, a napkin flutters to the floor, flashing like the cream-and-blue wings of a butterfly.
There’s a drawing on one side.
“What’s this?” Mystified, I lean over to retrieve it.
A pastel sketch.
Of me. Dancing.
A side shot, my head thrown back, inky hair streaming, nose tipped toward the ceiling. One arm is raised. I remember that song, that move—in a few strokes, the mysterious artist has captured the tension and energy in the lines of my body. And tucked it into my pocket.
“What’s that?” Sophie draws her brush through her damp strands of hair and comes over, then gasps. “It’s amazing!”
“I have no idea who drew it.”
“You have a secret admirer!”
“Maybe.” I blush. That would be a first. Is Boy Wonder also a Michelangelo? The thought surprises me—just because he took me home doesn’t make him an admirer. Quite the opposite.
“More than an admirer.” Sophie points to the lips, my lips,
delicate and sensual. The artist has even captured the precise contours of my chest and shadowed the spaces around my legs, the trapezoid in between, in satin red. “This guy wants you, Ever.”
Who? I can’t deny how naked the drawing makes me feel.
A rap in the hallway, a fist on wood, makes me jump. Sophie presses her ear to our door, while I hide the sketch in my purse.
“The Dragon,” she hisses. “She’s next door. Quick. Let’s get out of here.”
The moment the Dragon steps into our neighbor’s room, Sophie and I yank open our door together, shoot down the hallway, and take the stairs two at a time. We sweep past a blue flyer advertising the talent show, then under the demerits board, with its new smattering of check marks. Three red marks follow my name. My stomach tightens.
I tiptoe on Sophie’s heels past the narrow door windows revealing classrooms already full of students—clubbers now ready to study, avoiding demerits. “If the Dragon’s on the fence about calling my parents, skipping class might seal my fate,” I whisper.
“If we don’t do the glamour shots now, we’ll never get to do them.”
I heave a breath. I’m in this far already. “Fine.” But I peek through the classroom 103 window. Anyone else sleeping in, braving the Dragon’s wrath?
Only one seat besides ours is empty—Xavier Yeh.
My face burns and I hurry down the hallway after Sophie. Last night, dancing with Xavier had seemed like a brilliant idea, but now I want to crawl back under my covers and hide. I’ll have to see him in class every single day, knowing I gave him a boner, and him knowing I know.
Sophie swears under her breath. We’ve reached the lobby. At a table with Li-Han and two other counselors, Mei-Hwa slams down three ivory tiles. “Pong!” They’re playing mah-jong. Their Hokkien accents remind me again of my parents. Except my parents don’t play games, they go to work, come home exhausted, bad-tempered. Mei-Hwa flexes tiny muscle-man arms and does a sassy dance in her chair. Li-Han drinks from a can of Mr. Brown coffee, and says something that makes Mei-Hwa punch his shoulder. She’s Taiwanese Aborigine, it turns out; her parents from the Plains and Puyama tribes, part of the indigenous peoples who’ve lived on this island forever. Strange how she isn’t much older than us, but she’s our counselor.
“We’ll have to go around them,” Sophie says.
Then Mindy steps out of a phone booth, still clad in rumpled pink pajamas. Since catching her with Xavier the first day and her booting me off the computer terminal the next, I haven’t seen much of her. She knots her greasy hair into a ponytail and rubs eyes red-rimmed from crying. Her splotchy face looks scrubbed raw.
Her gaze falls on us and tears spring from her eyes. “Bitch!” she cries, and pelts up the stairs and out of sight.
Flooded with guilt, I stand rooted to the floor. I’ve always been on the other side of pining after a guy, never in this position.
But I’m not after Xavier. I was just—dancing.
The counselors are glancing up from their game. Sophie hustles me out a side door into the courtyard, still damp from a morning storm.
“Sophie, maybe I should talk to her—”
“It’s not you, it’s me,” she whispers. “You’re just guilty by association. Come on. Hurry.” Not until we’ve jogged past the lily pond, does Sophie lean into me and whisper, “Xavier and I hooked up. Last night.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “Hooked up? As in—?”
“We did it.”
“Last night?”
“And this morning!”
She links arms with me, prattling on with far more detail than I need or want: how they’d made out the whole cab ride home, fumbled down the darkened hallway, tumbled into a spare bedroom on the first floor.
“And oh my God, Ever! Now I know why all those girls were after him.”
I hadn’t noticed before, but Sophie’s lips are puffier, a darker shade, even without lipstick. A pink, quarter-sized hickey graces her neck. I can’t imagine sleeping with a guy after knowing him only a week. Mom’s judgments, of girls who spread their legs for boys, echo in my head. But none of her words apply to Sophie, who glows as though she’s swallowed the sun.
“You’re not mad, too?” Sophie asks. “I mean, I know you were dancing with him . . .”
“No. Of course not.” Even if a rebellious part of me wishes I’d gotten grazed, I’ve dodged a bullet. Dancing with Xavier was one thing—hooking up something else.
“You barely know him!” I say.
“Are you kidding? Every day here’s like a week.” Sophie waves. “It’s Loveboat, and Xavier’s a keeper—in my book, at least,” she amends, as though half the Chien Tan girls aren’t drooling enough to drown him. “You wouldn’t believe the stories my aunt’s told me about his family. The Yehs practically own half the island, they’ve built an electronics empire—they own Longzhou!”
“Longzhou? Wow.” We’d dropped by the twelve-floor department store on our hunt for clothes, but it was light-years beyond my budget—crystal chandeliers, endless escalators, Hermès, Chanel. Look-but-don’t-touch.
So Xavier is an heir to an empire.
And Sophie knew that before coming into the program. But she’d kept the information to herself, after sharing a classified report’s worth of intel all week: Marc’s dad owns a laundromat in Los Angeles and he wants to be a starving journalist—too bad because he’s adorable. Chris Chen’s headed to Berkeley and comes from decent money.
I’m most surprised by the competitive streak she’s revealed. Xavier means more to her than she’s let on.
“But what about Mindy? Doesn’t it bother you—?”
Sophie rolls her head along with her eyes. “Look, all guys play the field—at least the non-nerds. She’s the girl who slept with him once. I’m the girl he found afterward. And all those codes about dating—honestly, the only one that makes sense is ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ Even if they were betrothed from the cradle, it’s not over until they tie the knot.”
I frown. I don’t know about codes, but I’ve always assumed a guy with a girlfriend is off limits. Like Dan and Megan. Rick and Jenna.
“Do you trust him?”
“Why do I have to?” Sophie smiles. “‘Go in with your eyes wide open,’ that’s what Aunty Claire told me. Besides, I know his type. He needs a girl strong enough to meet him head-on. Look.” She pulls back her hair to reveal Xavier’s opal stud, gleaming on her earlobe—a slap on my mommy-like wrist. Who am I to judge when I’ve the experience of a junior nun?
“Just—be careful, okay?” I say, then start forward again, with no idea where I’m headed next.
13
We ride the Taipei Metro red line south to a stop whose name I can’t read, then rise on a very long escalator into a street filled with a funny mix of shiny high-rises, three-story rows of buildings, and those colorful Taiwanese rooftops—jumbled together like three different sets of children’s blocks. The photographer’s studio is on the second floor of a narrow building beside a Daoist temple, where smoke from incense sticks rises from a brass burner.
I’m thankful to arrive, if only for the break from Sophie’s incessant chatter about Xavier. A brass bell chimes overhead as I follow her into a perfumed room of polished wooden floors accented by red silk rugs and velvet ottomans. Citrus-scented candles flicker on a mantel.
A middle-aged woman in a plaid beret turns from a tripod facing a white backdrop curtain that unfurls in a room-sized square. “Ah, xiǎo mèimei dàole!” Her royal-blue button-down flutters in the AC as she lifts her camera to her face.
Poof! Poof! Poof!
White lights swim in my vision. I blink against them. I’d expected a simple mall portrait studio like Mom brings us to every year. Not this fancy boudoir. Life-sized portraits paper the walls: a girl fingering a wide-brimmed hat, a guy slinging a ruby jacket over his shoulder, couples pressed cheek to cheek.
“Will she really make me look—like those?”
“Even better.�
�� Sophie helps herself to a piece of candy from a crystal bowl, as at ease as if we were in her own home.
I’m afraid to even sit down. If I were home, I’d be eating potato chips at the public pool with Megan, hiding my one-piece under my striped terry towel. I don’t belong in an extravagant studio like this, lining up to get air-brushed like a movie star. My head throbs from my hangover. I feel like a total imposter.
Sophie chats with Yannie, who speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese, but not English. They are moving to a cash register on a glass counter and I kneel by a coffee table littered with traditional vinyl photo albums and an iPad displaying digital ones. I flip through the iPad: girls in backless dresses lying on lacy bedspreads with their heels kicked up, or golden beaches at sunrise—the colors sharp and bold. I trace the sweeping train of a lemon chiffon gown and try to imagine myself in it.
Then I sort through the albums. I come across one devoted to an acrobatic troop from Shanghai, dressed in fun costumes like green-and-pink flowers, glowing stars, scaly sea creatures, posing on trapezes and as awe-inspiring human jungle gyms.
An idea strikes, and I set the album down. “Sophie, does Yannie shoot for other theater or dance companies?”
Sophie interrupts herself to translate for Yannie. “Yes, she has some in the albums over there.” She points to a shelf in the corner.
I pull out several leather-bound albums—a kung fu master class, a dragon drum troupe, a dance last spring by an expensive studio in Taipei I’d found online. But I’m looking for one I haven’t run across yet.
At last, I come across a modest album labeled, “Szeto Ballet Studio.” I bend over the costumed casts: Cinderella, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty. Coppélia last August—I’ve danced in all of them at Zeigler’s. The same girls pose season after season, a year older each time. It’s as small a dance studio as they come. With a jolt of excitement, I run my fingertips over the address embossed on the back. I can drop by when we finish, but will they have space?
“Āiyā! Wǒ fēicháng xǐ huān tā, dàn wǒ fù bù qí.” Sophie lifts her hands to her temples and shakes her head. I love it so much but I can’t afford that!
Loveboat, Taipei Page 9