Chances for Serendipity

by Natalie Chung

  The scraping of chairs as students got up put a hold on my thoughts. Was it time for a break already?

  “Where’s Greg?” someone yelled out.

  Nope. They were just finding their randomly assigned partners.

  I scrolled back up on my laptop to look for my own partner’s name.

  Group 16:

  Harrison, Jeremy

  Tsang, Serendipity

  Uh oh. It was one of those confusing surnames that could be first names. I hoped I wouldn’t accidentally call him Harrison.

  “Are you Seren…”

  My head jerked up.

  A guy towered over me. He was cute, with the kind of boyish face that looked like it could belong in those teenage boy band magazines Liz used to read. His fringe fell just above his eyes, a hesitant expression on his face. He glanced down at his phone. “Serendipity?”

  “Uh, yeah. Are you Harrison—I mean, Jeremy?” I bit my tongue at the exact slip up I’d feared making. What was wrong with me?

  “Yeah.” He grabbed the chair from behind him and dropped into it. “You have a long name.”

  I winced at the reminder. “Just call me Serena.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “But that’s not your name.”

  “Call me Sere then.”

  “Sere,” he repeated. “That’s funny. Everyone calls me Jere. We rhyme.”

  Sere and Jere. We did indeed. What were the chances of that?

  “It must be fate, hey?” His lips parted into a wide smile. “So, how do you want to start this assessment?”

  I pursed my lips. We could go about this like everything was normal, but it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t share the truth with him first. “I might quit,” I said.

  He blinked at me. “Already? Do you really not want me as a partner?” He chuckled, but I could hear the nervousness behind it. Maybe his last group had let him down, and he was scared I was about to do the same.

  “Uh, no.” My cheeks heated under his gaze. “I mean, I might drop out of this course. I’ve been thinking about it.” The cut-off to drop without the penalty of a withdrawal fee was tomorrow. “I’ll let you know tonight.”

  We exchanged mobile numbers and then the lecturer continued on with the slides.

  “See you if I see you,” Jeremy said when class ended. “I hope you don’t quit.”

  At least one of us knew what to hope for. I didn’t even know myself anymore.

  Tunnel lights blurred by as the express train surged full speed ahead. My eyes drooped and my head swayed. I was on the brink of dozing off when a sudden, persistent vibration in my hand jolted me wide awake. My eyes shot open, and I blinked blearily at my screen. Gor Gor, the caller ID read.

  Prickles of apprehension made their way up my arm. Max never called me. Ever. Unless I didn’t answer his texts, and those were usually requests for specific food items when I was out shopping. I hit the answer button and held the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Sere!” Max’s panicked voice blasted from the phone, making me flinch. The last time he’d called me Sere instead of Dippy was probably when we were kids, a sure sign that things weren’t normal.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Ma—” Static screeched in my ear, cutting off the rest of his sentence.

  “Ma what?” No answer. “Hello? Max? Helloooo?”

  Fuzzy sounds were my only response, and the call abruptly ended.

  He called again a few seconds later. My heart thundered in my chest as I answered. “Hello?”

  “Can you hear me now? Ma fainted and she hit her head.” This time, his voice rang clearly on the other end. “God, I—” He let out a strangled noise.

  I tried to process his words. Mum fainted? She’d hit her head? “Is she—is she okay?”

  “She’s still unconscious and—I don’t know. The paramedics are taking us to the hospital.”

  Paramedics. Hospital. The two words never sat well in my mind, particularly hospital. I normally avoided going to hospitals at all costs, intent on burying the bad memories of Dad far into the deepest depths of my mind.

  But there was no other choice now.

  “Which hospital? I’m on my way.”

  Chapter 7

  Mum’s pale face peeked out above the covers of a white blanket, her eyes peacefully closed. It didn’t help ease my anxiety though. Fear dug painfully into my ribs as I recalled what the doctors had said.

  Stable. They’d said she was stable for now. We would only know the extent of the damage when she woke up and they did a scan on her head. Stress had been the most likely factor in her fainting. “She needs a calm, stress-free environment,” the doctor had advised us.

  Guilt tugged at me hard. Had I been the direct cause for Mum fainting by stressing her out? Please let her be okay. Please, please, please. It was a mantra I recited for well over an hour while Max stared at Mum, sighing loudly every few minutes. I could sense what he was thinking without him saying it.

  We’d lost Dad. We couldn’t lose Mum too.

  Seeing the hospital again after all this time didn’t help either. The stark white bed sheets, walls, and drapes…everything the same way it’d been since my last visit here. The ghost of these memories haunted me, like I was a tightly wound ball of yarn ready to unravel. All it would take was the small pull of that beginning thread, the one I’d always hid. I thought before coming here that if I tried hard, I could hold the memories all in and hide that thread.

  I was wrong. The thread had been yanked on as soon as I’d set foot inside the hospital and the heavy fumes of disinfectant assaulted my nostrils. Even now, that smell wouldn’t let up. I saw Dad everywhere here—like I saw him in the house, but the house was different. The house had good memories. The hospital had bad ones.

  Dad lying on the bed headrest sluggishly, his eyes half open. Dad opening his mouth to speak, the words a breathless struggle. And in the final stages… Dad, unable to breathe, strapped to a ventilator.

  My breathing thickened, a lump forming in my throat. It was a near-impossible feat to dislodge those memories from my mind.

  Soon, voices and squeaking wheels told me dinner was here. The food trolley lady left Mum’s meal sitting on the bedside table—a metal dome on a tray, with a popper of orange juice and small yoghurt.

  My stomach let out a low growl at the sight of the food. “We should get something to eat.” Or do anything to take our mind off the gloom and doom.

  Max glanced at me with tired eyes but didn’t say anything.

  “Come on, Gor Gor.” I got up and pulled his arm. He reluctantly stood. “When was the last time you ate?”

  “This afternoon. I didn’t get to eat dinner when I came home because—” He shook his head.

  Because Mum had fainted before then. He’d told me he’d been chilling in his room after coming home from work. He sensed Mum wasn’t feeling well and told her not to worry about cooking, but she insisted. Then he heard a thump and rushed to find her on the floor of our kitchen.

  Thank goodness Max had been home. If he hadn’t…

  I pulled on his arm again. “You must be starved. I’m starving, and I haven’t eaten since lunch either.” I dragged him with me to the door. “Let’s go eat something. There’s nothing else we can do here but wait anyway.”

  About half an hour later, we trudged our way back to Mum’s room from the hospital cafeteria with full stomachs. Max hadn’t said much to me, but I didn’t expect him to. He probably took things a lot worse than me, having spent more time in the hospital with Dad. More time here meant more bad memories. While I’d been stuck at school at sixteen, Max had already started uni, so he’d had a bit more freedom to visit Dad. Lucky or unlucky? Who knew how he saw it now.

  When we got to Mum’s room, I came to an abrupt stop. Soft, incandescent lighting shone from behind the curtains around Mum’s bed. My heart sped up as I hurried to pull apart the white drapes.

  Familiar warm brown eyes met mine.

&nbs
p; “Mum!” I yelled out at the same time Max said, “Ma!” I resisted the urge to crush her in a hug, and instead grabbed her hand and gave it a small squeeze. “You’re awake.”

  “How are you feeling?” Max asked.

  “Not too bad, sweetie.” She gave us a small, tired smile. “Sorry for worrying you both.”

  I stayed with Mum in the hospital that night. She’d convinced Max to go home and bring back some things for her tomorrow. He probably wouldn’t have left otherwise. After Mum did all her scans, the doctors told her to take it easy. There wasn’t much more we could do. We needed to wait for the results and rest, but I sensed Max felt guilty for not being able to help Mum more.

  She relaxed now in a hospital gown, the head of the bed raised so she could sit up. “Can you pass me the remote, sweetie?” As I handed it to her, a brief image flashed—Dad asking if we could watch the Aus Open on TV. My stomach did somersaults as Mum pressed the power button and the TV screen flickered on.

  “—stunning win at the Indian Wells yesterday. Tell us all how you’ve been feeling after the victory.”

  My whole body stiffened as the view panned from the reporter to the interviewee at her side.

  On the screen, Aiden Andale grinned. “It means the world to me. It’s one of the biggest tournaments around. Everyone dreams of achieving something like this.”

  The interviewer asked more questions while my mind reeled at the news. Aiden had won the Indian Wells? I’d seen him advance through the second round, but after that… I’d gotten distracted by uni and Mum.

  “He won a tennis tournament? He looks so young,” Mum said.

  “Yeah, he’s my age. He was born in the same year as me.” He was about six months older than me, according to Wikipedia. Yes, I’d Googled him after I’d spilled my guts to him that day and realised I’d known next to nothing about him. Now I knew more about him than he knew about me. If he remembered me at all, that was.

  “Is he a new Australian player?” Mum asked. Unlike me, she didn’t follow tennis. She’d only held a mild interest whenever Dad rambled on about it, so I wasn’t surprised she didn’t know about him.

  “He’s been around for the past two years. He’s won four titles so far.”

  “Wow.”

  “He made it into the fourth round of the Aus Open this year,” I went on, “but his best run is quarterfinals in the US Open. Even though he lost that match against a top-ten player, he took it to five sets.”

  Mum squinted at me. “You sure know a lot about him. Do you like him?” She said the last part in Cantonese, like it was a secret she wanted me to divulge.

  “No!” My cheeks burned. Maybe I’d spoken too much like a proud mum. Oops. Sure I still admired him, but that was more as a tennis player, not as a romantic love interest.

  Mum chuckled, and I was relieved to see that her fainting episode hadn’t dimmed her spirits further. “Why do you know so much, then?”

  “I—I know a lot about many tennis players.” Somewhat the truth, but I didn’t know a lot, to the extent of birthdays and the number of titles won, about most players. I paused, feeling guilty for the lie. “Well, actually… I met him before—at the sports centre.” Nobody else except Liz knew, mainly because I didn’t think anyone else would care since they didn’t watch tennis.

  “Really? You met a celebrity?” She gawked at me, then shifted her gaze to the TV, probably assessing Aiden’s looks. She nodded her head slowly as if to approve. “Did you ask for his autograph?”

  “I didn’t know who he was until after.”

  “Aww. Your baba would’ve been jealous.”

  I sucked in a breath at the thought. He’d always cheered for the Aussies when we’d seen live matches at the Aus Open. “Yeah, he would’ve.”

  Our thoughtful silence was filled by the voices on the TV. Mum had considerately turned the volume down, but I was right next to the TV, allowing me to hear everything clearly.

  “Lately, we’ve noticed you use a new catchphrase after you win your matches. How did you come up with your tagline ‘embrace the unknown’? What’s the meaning behind it?”

  “It means to go for it,” Aiden said. “Follow your dreams even if you don’t know what’s waiting for you next.”

  “What advice do you have for people who want to follow their own dreams?”

  “Persevere,” he said. “Do what you want. Go for it with everything you’ve got.”

  What should I do if I can’t do what I want, Aiden? What do I do if what I want is to quit my law degree, but it goes against my own mum and hurts her in the process? What if I don’t want to stress her out and risk her health? Those were the words I wanted to ask him.

  But Aiden Andale only continued smiling at me from the TV screen. My phone rumbled in my jean’s pocket, and I pulled it out to see a preview of a message from Jeremy Harrison. I unlocked my phone.

  Hey Sere, did you make up your mind? Are you dropping out?

  My hands shook as I typed my answer.

  Hey Jere. Yep, I made up my mind. Not quitting. Let’s work hard to get a high distinction.

  Chapter 8

  Two years later (21 years old)

  My hands burned under the heat of the fish and chips box I held. After setting it onto a table full of condiments, I grabbed the tomato sauce, its nozzle splattered in leftover bits of dried red. I squeezed the bottle, producing a pathetic squirt of sauce that barely covered the chips. Squeezing harder, the bottle let out a hollow burble, releasing nothing but air.

  Ugh, forget it. It was as empty as my stomach. Giving up, I swiped a few napkins, cupped my fish and chips box with them, and strode off to find Liz.

  The outside of Ken Rosewall Arena bustled with activity. Everywhere I looked, people milled about, some holding giant tennis balls waiting to be signed.

  I made a beeline for an area packed with lawn chairs, my sneakers squelching on the grass. Cutting through a mass of people queuing in front of a food truck, the undeniably delicious scent of cinnamon doughnuts wafted into my nose. Yum. Maybe I’d get some later.

  Thankfully, the rest of my way was relatively clear of people and didn’t involve any more mouth-watering scents. I caught sight of Liz waving at me and hurried over to her.

  “Good thing the match is delayed for another fifteen minutes,” she said as I relaxed onto the lawn chair beside her.

  “Yeah.” Just as well so we could eat first. I dug into my fish and chips, swirling a piece around my tongue. Mmm.

  In between bites of my meal, I glanced at a giant LCD screen towering in front of us. On screen, they played a repeat of the women’s finalists receiving their trophies.

  In the distance, partially obscured by the LCD screen, stood the gate doors that led into that very arena. The plain grey outside was rounded with jagged upside-down steps that expanded outwards. It wasn’t the same as Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, but it was the biggest tennis arena in Sydney. And when the next tennis match started…

  “I can’t believe we’re seeing Aiden Andale live,” Liz said, as though she’d read my mind. “Seems like yesterday when we met him at the sports centre.”

  My stomach did a wild flip, and I found myself unable to respond. Stupid. It was just a stupid reaction from my body. I blamed it on Liz. She’d given me a ticket to these finals as a Christmas present. I’d been all too happy to go with her—before I’d known who would be playing. Last night when I found out who’d made it through, I’d called to cancel on her.

  “Cancel on me, and I’ll message Aiden Andale on his social media all about your crush on him in high school,” she’d said. “I have plenty of photos of that cute scrapbook page you had of him—the one with the adorable red hearts you drew all over.”

  I’d mentally face-palmed at the reminder. Why, after all these years, had Aiden Andale decided to create social media accounts? Did he look at his private messages? Probably not, but I still didn’t want Liz to message him that embarrassing photo. I’d done that shameful scra
pbook page in secret in Year Eleven. Liz had found it hidden between the pages of an old chemistry textbook on my shelf a few years ago. My seventeen-year-old self’s fangirling was like a hardened piece of bubblegum under a school desk. Gross and impossible to pick off.

  And so here we sat, waiting for the match to begin.

  “So how’ve you been, girl?” Liz offered me some of her gravy-smeared chips, but I declined with a shake of my head. She raised her brows as if to say, Your loss. “Feel like we haven’t hung out for ages.” Pulling a particularly long chip from the pile, she ate it whole.

  “What are you talking about? I went to your place last month.”

  She leaned closer to me, hand braced on the edge of her lawn chair while she chewed and swallowed her food. “That doesn’t count,” she said sternly, pointing at me with her plastic fork. “Jerky was there. I don’t like being a third wheel.”

  “Jere,” I corrected, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. I couldn’t understand for the life of me what she had against him. Judgy Liz would always be judgy. “How’s your family doing?” I asked, intent on steering the conversation away from me.

  Liz lay back, resting her arms behind her head. “Okay, I guess. Same old, same old. Glad I could come out today and take a breather.”

  “How’s Ellie?”

  “Ellie,” she muttered, “is so damn selfish.” She avoided my eyes as she said this, tilting her head up to look at the slowly darkening sky.

  Selfish? “How—”

  “Our men’s finals match will begin in approximately ten minutes,” a voice proclaimed on the speakers.

  Crap. I cut into my fish and shoved a large piece into my mouth. After several minutes of us devouring our food, Liz’s last remark swam back into my head. Ellie is so damn selfish.

  That couldn’t be right… A vision flashed in my mind—Ellie, with hollow cheeks and a wan smile. “She’s in remission, so please be gentle,” Liz’s mum had whispered in my ear, as though speaking loudly about it would somehow physically hurt Ellie.