The photo is eerily beautiful: the bird on its side, as if asleep, its tiny beak outlined against the dirt, its feathered wing spread forward to modestly conceal its feet.
“Is it—?”
“Dead.”
My mouth goes dry. “What does it mean?”
“When we were younger, she used to bury every bird we found drowned in the pond behind our houses. She’d mark their grave with a rock and cry over them. She took this photo because she said it looked so peaceful.
“I was terrified she’d do something . . . irreversible. And I realized it was stupid to have tried to take care of her on my own. I called her mom and told her everything. She had no idea.
“Then both her parents called me. Her dad was in Hong Kong, so I made arrangements to fly out to meet him in person. Jenna had booked a ticket to Taipei, and switched her plane ticket there. I agreed to wait for her, but she didn’t end up coming. She tried three times over the week, and just couldn’t step onto the plane.”
I can’t help feeling a swell of compassion for her. I don’t know what it means to feel that helpless. That frail.
“I can’t believe . . . all these weeks, these years.” Not the Boy Wonder I’d imagined and hated, but a scared kid, trying to do right. “Did you come to Taiwan for space?”
His eyes widen. He looks sick. “Sort of horrible, isn’t it? She’s terrified of flying and so I went where she couldn’t. She told me once that I had no soul. Maybe she was right.”
I once thought the same thing, and it shames me now. “You stayed with her because you have a soul. More than most. But you never—” I break off. “Does she have a counselor?”
“She saw one a few times. Hated him.”
To struggle with all this on her own—no wonder she’d clung to Rick. “It takes time to find the right counselor. My dad’s a big fan of counseling, maybe because of Pearl’s dyslexia.”
“Her dad said he’d do everything he could to find the best one.”
I stand and cross to the doorway, facing the courtyard. The wind sweeps the dry grasses all the way to the jagged rock labyrinth by the entrance. I don’t ask why he didn’t tell anyone else. I know the philosophy: you don’t tell on your family to outsiders. Police and authorities aren’t to be trusted—what if they took you away? But he’s been so trapped. This is why he was as hell-bent on breaking out as I was.
Jenna wasn’t the only one wearing a suit of stones.
I sense rather than hear him approach from behind.
Without turning, I ask, “So you don’t think of me . . . like a little sister?”
His hand falls on my shoulder and I pivot slowly to face him.
I don’t know who moves first. But then I’m in his arms. His fingers grip the back of my neck. His other hand fists in the silk at the small of my back and his morning shadow scrapes my chin as his mouth comes down on mine.
His kiss hits deep in my chest. The rightness of his lips, his warmth, his arms holding me tight. There’s nothing gentle or tender in this kiss—he’s strong enough to snap me in half and my fingers slide into his coarse hair as I pull myself to him. He tastes clean, like spring water and mint, and his tongue sweeps my mouth and stirs something deep inside me that I’ve glimpsed only when I’m lost in a dance. It scares and thrills me.
But at last, we both come up for air. He rests his forehead on mine, holding my gaze. Panting gently, matching me breath for breath. His lips are pink, kiss-swollen. His hands slide to the insides of my elbows. His amber eyes have darkened with a desire, a hunger that buckles my knees.
“What are you thinking?” I whisper.
“The timing makes no sense.” His voice is hoarse. “I shouldn’t want to be with anybody—after everything—”
His mouth takes mine again. My blood pounds through my veins. I want to slam the doors shut and tackle him to the dirt and let him quench all his hunger on me.
Then I put my hand to his and gently pull free. I shiver in the vacuum left. But I need to say this.
“You just broke up,” I say with difficulty. “From a really hard relationship.”
His hands return to my arms. “I’m not on the rebound, Ever. If I’d never met you, I wouldn’t have known, but now I do. I want to be with someone like you. I want to be with you.”
I believe him. Boy Wonder always knows what he wants . . .
“I don’t want to lock you into another relationship. You need time.”
“It wouldn’t be a lock.” His grip tightens. “Ever, I’ve never felt as free as when I’m with you.”
I draw on every ounce of self-control to keep from flinging myself at him. But I can’t, I won’t.
I pull free of his arms.
“Is it Xavier? He was your artist. He—”
I put my finger to Rick’s lip, silencing him. “We can hang out, okay? The Tour Down South is in a few days.”
Those bear brows contort with a frown. “So we’ll be tour buddies?”
I grimace. “Tour Buddies might be worse than Little Sister. But better than Fake Girlfriend, which wins worst idea on the planet.”
“It was yours.” His half smile almost makes me reconsider. A trill in the rafters explodes as two birds swoop down in an effortless dance of flight.
Why am I resisting?
Then it hits me. “I have an idea. I just hope it’s not the second worst idea on the planet.”
He looks apprehensive, suddenly. “What?”
“How about we be Dance Partners? For my talent show performance.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Let me guess. A hippo in a tutu? Fantasia? I’ll do it, of course, but I don’t want to spoil your show.”
I laugh. “No.” I let myself hug him, fast, then let go. “Will you do a bo fight with me?”
30
“Ever, I love you, but this is a terrible idea,” Debra says flatly.
She crosses her arms and leans against the basin of the carp fountain, whose never-ending spout of water splashes merrily. It’s nearly nine o’clock, after my dance team’s first run-through with Rick. The other dancers have left, but four of us—Debra, Lena, Rick, and I—are still in the back courtyard. Overhead, stars speckle the night sky.
“I’m expanding the definition of dance.” I spin my bo staff, then raise it fast to block a lazy swing from Rick. “Mulan does it.” I’m giddy from our hour of nimble-footed experimenting. Another guy might have frozen up jumping in cold, but Rick’s rolled with it and we’d lunged at one another like a pair of tigers, brandished our bos, circling, filling in the space between the dancers. And the flow, the current between us, the crackle of energy—
“Not the stick fight. It’s awesome. But you two.” Debra points between Rick and me. “Someone has to say it. This is Loveboat. If you break up—”
“We’re not dating.” I dodge a jab from Rick aimed at my midriff.
“And my blue hair isn’t growing out. You guys have a falling out, that’s the end of this show we’ve all worked our asses off for.”
“Come on, Deb.” Lena the peacemaker tosses an arm around my neck, the other around Debra’s. “It’s perfect now, you said so yourself.”
“And we’re not having a falling out.” I spin my staff as fast as I can, making my hair fly with its wind.
Debra turns on Rick. “What are you going to say when the guys rag on you for dancing with a bunch of girls?”
“Marc already did.” He spins his bo, drops it. “For six miles up and down the Keelung River.”
“Really?” I lower my staff, dismayed.
“I told him to go find his own dance team if he was so jealous.”
I laugh, but Debra slings her bag onto her shoulder, still frowning. “Bed check time, Ever.”
As Debra and Lena head off, I look up at Rick, still laughing. “This was exactly what the dance needed. Like snapping the last gear into a clock.”
Rick spins his bo staff again, and it slips again. “I’ll get this,” he vows.
I w
hirl mine in another 360. “You’re so competitive.”
We start toward the dorms and he tosses the staff and catches it. “I don’t want to ruin your show.”
“You won’t.”
His arm sweeps wide and he pulls me into the dampest hug in history.
“Ug, you’re soaked!” I shove him off and he grabs my arm and shakes his sweaty hair at me while I shriek, “Rick! Stop!”
The lobby doors open with a soft squeak. Xavier steps out, moving from lamplight into the shadows of night. His eyes are downward focused, on the sketchpad in his hands. The wind ruffles the wavy black hair falling into his face, his black shirt.
Then his eyes rise to meet mine and I jerk free from Rick.
“Xavier—”
The sketchbook drops as he pivots on his heel.
“Xavier, wait!” I call, but he’s gone.
“I’m sorry.” Rick’s staff has stilled. “That was my fault. I’ll go get him for you.”
My hands shake as I recover Xavier’s sketchbook and try to uncrush its corner. “No, it’s my fault. I should have talked to him sooner.”
“I have good and bad news,” Sophie says, as her hairdresser lathers a mountain of shampoo into her dry hair. “Which do you prefer first?”
My own scalp is getting massaged off my cranium, and it feels amazing. Shampoo parlors like this one are another Taiwanese specialty we’re cramming in to celebrate the end of classes, and our last night before the Tour Down South.
As for good versus bad news, bad news makes me think of that last still-missing photo. Even with Rick and my girls helping me, no one knows who has it, or if anyone does.
“The good news,” I say.
“Your dress is almost ready for your solo. The tailor agreed to take half the payment in ad space so it’s completely affordable. It’s red, like we talked about—you’re going to be so sex-ay.”
Maybe my photos are on my mind, but I don’t want to be sexy onstage. Not with all those eyes on me. I wish I could monitor the costume-making myself, but between dance practice and wrapping up classes, all I’ve been able to do is send internet pictures I liked with Sophie.
“Is it low-cut? How short’s the skirt?” I sound like Mom. But it’s not her talking this time, it’s me.
“I’ll make sure it’s not too much. Promise.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“The National Theater is booked solid. Uncle Ted’s trying to get us added onto a matinee performance as the warm-up show, but it’s not looking good.”
I’m more disappointed than I expected. Three tiers of 1,498 velvet seats—the National Theater would have been the biggest thing I’ve ever done. The crowning moment for the last dance of Ever Wong.
“Anything we can do to convince them?”
She shakes her head. “I asked Uncle Ted if we could do a weekday. He said we might be able to get a Monday slot, but it will just be us. No audience, besides Uncle Ted and Aunty Claire.”
I bite my lip. “Do they know I choreographed the dance?” Would they support us if they did?
“I didn’t tell them,” Sophie says, and we both fall silent.
Our hairdressers rinse our hair with warm water from a handheld showerhead, somehow managing to keep the rest of us dry. As they towel off our hair, I say, “If we did Monday, we could host the whole talent show there. The Dragon would jump at the chance.”
“The whole show?” Sophie purses her lips. “No Chien Tan talent show has ever performed at the Theater.”
“Well, maybe they should. Mike Park’s doing a stand-up comedy routine that aired on his local channel. Debra met a guy that played piano at Carnegie Hall. There are five hundred kids here to mine for talent!” My smile feels tight. Xavier should showcase his work. I have his sketchbook, more masterpieces, but many more blank pages. I tried to catch him in Mandarin and Calligraphy, but now he’s the one slipping out ahead of me. He won’t speak to me, not even to let me know he passed his final exam yesterday, which I saw when the Dragon posted our grades. Twenty percent was based on a conversation in Mandarin, which he must have aced, and which I passed thanks to his tutoring.
We were building a friendship, now I’ve lost it.
“I’ll talk to Li-Han. And the Theater.” Sophie frowns. “We’ll need the Dragon’s okay. I mean, she should be okay with it, but coming from us . . .”
“She can’t turn it down if it’s good for all Chien Tan.” But I’m worried, too. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get there.”
We break to thank and tip our hairdressers, then start back toward campus. “You know, you’re good at this,” I say. “This making-things-happen business.”
“You think so?” Sophie tucks her clipboard into her bag.
“Must run in your family.” Rick and his bazillion competitions, championships, even his trip to Hong Kong. “You’re as happy doing this as trying on dresses. Or getting good deals.”
I smile but she doesn’t laugh. “My mom or Aunty Claire, they’d tell me—” Her mouth quirks. “Nice girls aren’t bossy.”
Will we ever be free? I hug her a fierce one. “Nice is so overrated.”
The Tour Down South runs at breakneck speed.
Rick and I share a seat at the back of Bus A, one of eleven luxury buses porting all Chien Tan around the island. Our caravan navigates highways raised on long concrete stilts, putting us on eye level with the leafy canopies of treetops. A plume of smoke rises from skylines of neighboring cities, with modern buildings accented by those swallowtail roofs and Chinese architecture. The cityscape gives way to farmland, glass-roofed greenhouses. Concrete dikes dam silvery-blue waterways. The mountains are giant scoops of green leaves.
At the Taroko Gorge, our bus drops us off between the two sky-high cliffs, covered with emerald mosses and cut through by a river that swirls aquamarine, turquoise, sapphire. Rick and I race ahead at a mile-eating pace. I can hardly believe it—this otherworldly blue water, my feet dancing-leaping over the rocks and Rick loping beside me—is all real.
“Everything there is to Ever Wong, lightning round,” Rick says. “Answers only. Game?”
A dam’s opened for him. We’re talking nonstop.
“You have to answer, too,” I say.
“Sure. Favorite book?”
“Harry Potter.”
“American Born Chinese.”
“Oh, I love that one!”
“Favorite food?”
“Mangoes.”
“Country fried steak. With gravy.”
“Seriously? So bad for you.”
“No commenting!”
“Right, sorry.”
“Marshmallow test—did you make it?”
“What?”
“You know, that test when we were, like, five years old. You can eat one now, or wait and get two, which is better.”
“Er, um, I ate the one. You?”
“My mom got called away for ten minutes. I waited the whole time.”
“Show-off.”
“Yep. Greatest fear?”
“Getting injured so I can’t dance.” I frown. “Let’s not go there.”
In the night markets, we sample street food, from griddled mochi cakes to shaved snow to pig ears on sticks. Rick makes me try deep-fried stinky tofu. I retaliate with duck tongue. We fold grasshoppers out of bamboo leaves. He buys a miniature grandfather clock for his mom, who collects dollhouses; I buy a stuffed platypus for Pearl—and at every turn, he finds excuses to touch me, pushing money into my hand, running his palm down my back, around the curve of my waist.
“Tour Buddies, remember?” I swat at him, pretending to scowl. “Just Tour Buddies!”
“Sorry, I forgot again.” He hides his hands behind him and grins like Cookie Monster. He’s wearing that canary-yellow shirt I wore home from Club KISS, and even though it still makes him look jaundiced, I can’t help wanting to grab those hands back.
Our buses pass through the Tropic of Cancer on our way to the southernmost tip
of Taiwan, which is shaped like a swallow’s tail. Rick’s fingers linger on my arm as we walk dirt paths between deep green fields of vegetation to peacock-colored waters, stand at the juncture of three seas, which looks simply like the sea, with no recognition of the human divisions assigned to its ebbs and flows. I taste salt on the wind and we laugh as the enlarged Gang of Four—now the Gang of Five—Sam, David, baby-faced Benji, Peter, and Marc—line up with their fingertips together, in prayer before a rock shaped like Nixon’s head.
“What are you now?” I ask, as a friend snaps photos. “Which stereotype are we taking back this time?”
“Five Wise Asian Sages,” Marc answers without opening his eyes.
“We Asians,” Sam intones. “Are so wise.”
I feel a warm surge of affection. I’m not the only one taking charge of my identity this summer.
I lift my phone camera. “Smile for the Take-Back-the-Trope photo collection!”
Five wise sages bow deeply to me. “Well spoken, our daughter.”
Time for dance practice has grown tight. With tombs and caves and temples to explore, our buses arrive later at each new five-star hotel, then we search out a space to practice away from the Dragon’s eyes.
In a basement ballroom of our Kenting National Park lodging, reflected in a wall-length mirror, Debra plugs speakers into her phone and the sixteen of us run the whole routine. Spencer and Benji, recruited by Sophie, cart in wooden drums as big as themselves.
“Wow, where’d you find those?” I dance my fingertips over the leather drumskin, making them sing.
Spencer grins. “The night market sells all.”
My dancers form up again, and Spencer and Benji rain down whole arm beats that echo off the walls, punctuated by the crack of Rick’s and my staves. Locked in battle, Rick and I swing, dodge, feint. He misses a step, then tosses down his bo with a groan and I throw a jump-kick at his stomach and he grabs my foot and makes me hop wildly, fighting for balance, and my dancers beat him with their ribbons, and then he’s laughing, and I’m laughing, and we’re all laughing.
Loveboat, Taipei Page 24