We reach the hotel by 10:30 p.m.
By 10:48 p.m., I’ve unpacked all my luggage and told Chanel I’ll be going over to Henry’s. She winks at me and makes a not-so-subtle remark about protection. I let her believe what she likes; besides, in the worst-case scenario, at least I’ll have a decent alibi.
By 11:00 p.m., I’ve visited both the twentieth and ninth floor, taking the stairs to double-check for any hidden security cameras and measuring precisely how long it takes to get from one place to the other.
By 11:15 p.m., I’ve sought out Henry’s room, still fully visible, and slipped through the door when no one’s around.
By 11:21 p.m., I’ve officially started panicking.
“Am I invisible yet?” I demand as I pace in front of Henry, even though I know it’s unlikely. I haven’t suffered through that telltale rush of cold yet, and if anything, I feel too hot, my skin burning, the room stuffy and suffocating despite its vast size.
“You are most decidedly not,” Henry says, crossing his legs over the plush bedside sofa, the gesture so casual I want to scream. How does he manage to maintain such calm in a time like this?
“What about now?”
“No.”
“Now?”
“No.”
“How about—”
“Do you intend to keep this up for the rest of the night?” Henry interrupts, lifting an eyebrow.
“Well, what else are we supposed to do?” I snap. “Netflix and chill?”
His brows rise higher.
And suddenly my face is burning too. Hastily, I add, “I meant in the literal sense, of course.”
“Of course.”
The conversation settles into silence for a moment, save for my frantic footsteps on the carpeted floor and the low, persistent hum of the mini fridge. Then—
“Okay, fine, That’s it.” I press a hand to my throbbing temples. This is the third stress headache I’ve had since we left the night market. “If you can think of any way to distract me from my sense of impending doom, go right ahead. Entertain me.”
Henry seems to take this as a challenge. He sits up impossibly straighter, dark eyes pensive, and says, “There’s actually something I’ve been meaning to ask for a while now…”
“No, I wasn’t the one who sabotaged your science project in Year Nine,” I tell him automatically. “Though, if we’re being honest here, I did consider it for a while—only because you were acting so smug about getting advice from Jack Ma himself.”
“That…is not at all what I was going to ask, but good to know,” Henry says. Clears his throat. “What I’d really like to understand, though, is why you hate me so much.”
I blink at him in surprise.
“For the record,” I begin slowly, my mind struggling to assemble a proper response. “I don’t hate you anymore.”
A flash of a smile, so quick I almost miss it. Still, he doesn’t let the question go. “But you did before.”
I nod once. Sigh. “Do you remember that Scholars Cup competition we both entered in Year Eight? The one they held in front of the whole school?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, I remember it vividly.” The press of the warm auditorium lights against my eyelids, the weight of everyone’s gazes on me, the loud buzzing in my ears as I fumbled over my last question. The triumphant look on Henry’s face when he answered his; the look of someone born and destined to win. “After I lost the final round to you…after you went to collect your trophy and soak in all the teachers’ praise, and I was ushered away offstage… I fled to my room and just—just sobbed. I didn’t even eat anything that day, I was so angry with myself…”
I swallow, hard. The memory still brings a lump of shame to my throat.
“And I know it sounds ridiculous because it was—I mean, let’s be honest, it was Year Eight, and the competition wasn’t even compulsory. But there was a cash prize, 500 RMB, and I’d spent months preparing for that thing. Yet right before we got on stage, I overheard you talking about how you’d entered it last minute, on a whim, how you had more important things to do than study for it anyway and—I don’t know. Everything was always so easy for you.” I draw in a tight breath. “Being around you just made me feel awful. It made me hate myself, and over time… I guess that hate grew so big it had nowhere to go but—”
“—toward me,” Henry finishes, a strain in his voice. “Right?”
“But I don’t feel that way anymore,” I say, feeling an inexplicable, overwhelming need to make this very clear. “I promise. Swear on my heart.”
Some emotion I can’t name passes over his face. He reaches out, his fingers forming a warm circle around my wrist, and I stop walking. Stop everything. “Then tell me,” he says, very quietly. “What exactly do you feel toward me now?”
“I—” Confusion tangles my tongue, speeds up my pulse. Dimly, I think: He really is good at this whole distraction thing. “Why does it matter?”
“You really don’t know?”
I stare at him. Something is happening, I can sense it, but just like his expression, it’s impossible for me to decipher. “Know… Know what?”
He lets go of my wrist, dragging a hand through his hair instead. “Good god,” he says with a little laugh. Shakes his head. “For one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, you can really be quite oblivious sometimes.”
And maybe it’s the way he’s gazing up at me, somehow tormented and tender at the same time, or maybe it’s the weird half compliment, or maybe it’s every small, subtle moment I’ve missed along the way, now catching up to me in an adrenaline-induced burst of clarity, but all of a sudden—
“Oh,” I breathe.
Oh. Wow.
I sit down on the carpet, dizzy with comprehension.
After a few minutes of pure, unadulterated silence, I realize Henry’s watching me, sharp-eyed and tight jawed, waiting for my response. This might be the most nervous I’ve ever seen him.
“Good,” I manage at last. “It’s good. For me as well.”
I don’t expect him to get anything out of my ridiculous jumble of words, but he does.
He moves so our knees are close to touching, and I ask without thinking, “Is this the part where you kiss me?”
He leans closer, and even in the dim hotel lights, I can make out the silent laughter in his eyes. “That was not my intention.” A pause, teasing. “Why? Did you want me to?”
“What? N-no, of course not,” I stammer, twisting away at once. Then, because I’m physically incapable of keeping my mouth shut, I babble on, “It’s just—you know, in the movies…when it gets to this kind of scene, with this kind of lighting—”
There’s a sharp rap on the door.
We both freeze.
It almost gives me whiplash, how quickly the mood changes, like having your emotional, family-friendly farm animal movie interrupted by a cheery ad from McDonald’s.
Another knock. Even louder than the first.
The irrational, already terrified part of my brain is convinced the police have found us somehow, that they’re waiting to arrest us right this second, that it’s over, my life is ruined—
But then I hear a girl’s giggle. Someone else whispers something I can’t quite catch, and the giggle turns into a muffled shriek of laughter.
Henry and I exchange a quick, silent look, and from the grim set of his jaw, I know we’ve arrived at the same conclusion. The room’s lights are on; there’s no point pretending he isn’t inside.
“Who is it?” Henry calls.
“Guess!” a voice that’s obviously Rainie’s replies.
Henry moves toward the door in slow, careful strides, hands held up, the way you’re meant to approach an animal in the wild. “Er… Rainie? What are you doing here?”
“To see you, of course,” she says, the same time another person shouts:
“We heard you got the best suite, dude! Let us in—we want to check it out!”
At this rate, they’re going to wake up the entire hotel.
And to make everything so much worse, at least two others—god, how many people are there outside the door right now?—start chanting: “Let us in! Let us in! Let us in!”
Henry glances at me in a there’s-nothing-we-can-do kind of way, and despite the stone in my stomach, I nod.
“Okay—just be quiet you lot,” Henry says as he pulls the door open. Immediately, Rainie Lam, Bobby Yu, Vanessa Liu, and Mina Huang stumble into the room in a giggling heap, bringing with them the strong, unmistakeable scent of alcohol.
“Wonderful,” Henry mutters under his breath.
But even in their intoxicated state, our four unwelcome guests stop and stare when they realize I’m here as well. Vanessa almost drops the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s in her hands. Bobby’s mouth opens so wide I’m tempted to ask if his jaw hurts.
Rainie actually gasps. “Alice?”
“Hi,” I say.
After the four of them have recovered from their initial shock and voiced their suspicions that Henry and I are secretly dating, they make themselves at home, lounging on the plum-colored sofa and the king-sized bed. They show zero sign of planning to go back to their rooms anytime tonight.
I want to vomit.
I want to scream and shove them all back out the door.
But instead I just smile and smile as Vanessa fumbles through the mini fridge for a packet of Pringles chips and Rainie pulls out a speaker and starts playing one of her mother’s hit singles, swaying and belting out the lyrics as if we’re in a karaoke bar, and Bobby Yu starts doing pushups on the carpet.
The smile remains frozen on my face. Only my eyes move, checking my reflection in the window, tracking the time. The neon alarm beside Henry’s bed flashes: 11:59 PM.
I’m still not invisible yet.
At some point, Rainie gets tired of singing and turns the music down, and starts bitching about Julie Walsh instead. Everyone joins in enthusiastically, even Mina, who hardly ever talks, and Rainie does an impression of Julie that’s so accurate Vanessa falls back on the floor and cries real tears of laughter. Then the conversation turns to who they think might hook up by the end of this trip, then how much of an asshole Jake Nguyen is (“I can’t believe I used to like, like him,” Rainie laments, and Bobby complains that most girls have bad taste while Mina gives her a few sympathetic pats on the shoulder), then about what Drunk Henry would look like.
“It’s just funny to imagine,” Rainie says between giggles. She points to Henry, who’s been standing stiffly in the corner of the room beside me this whole time. “Because you’re so—so—what’s the word?”
“Aloof?” Vanessa suggests.
“Composed?” Mina offers.
“Hot?” Bobby says, and we all turn to stare at him. “What?” He scowls. “The dude is objectively good-looking. Don’t judge me for saying it aloud.”
But perfect is the term Rainie settles on.
“God, you’re so perfect,” she says with a little hiccup. Then, to my surprise, her eyes flicker to me as well. “And you, Alice. Both of you. King Henry and the Study Machine. Our perfect model students.”
I force myself to laugh along with them, but everything sounds off. The compliment burns on its way down like acid.
If only you knew what Airington’s two model students were up to tonight.
But beneath the panic, beneath all the guilt, there’s another emotion clawing at my chest. Resentment. Because if it weren’t for the school fees and Beijing Ghost and the terrible task waiting ahead, this night would be…everything.
I would be able to join in their silly gossip and laugh with Rainie and maybe work up the nerve to sit close to Henry, continue right where we left off, snake my fingers through his. I would be just a teenager, giddy in a fancy hotel in a beautiful new city, with old classmates and potential new friends: Rainie, who gave too much of herself to a boy who took too much; Mina, whose parents recently got back together after a messy divorce, and are working to patch everything up; Bobby, whose older sister ran away three years ago, but you’d never know it from looking at him now.
I would actually be happy with these people, carefree—not checking the cursed clock every two seconds and waiting for a strange wave of cold to soak through my body.
It makes me almost dizzy, thinking about the stark differences in realities, what will be and what could’ve been. But that’s the kind of difference wealth creates.
By the time I tune back into the conversation, the topic’s moved on to Beijing Ghost.
“…wonder who’s behind it,” Vanessa is saying. “Oh, come on, Alice, don’t act as if you haven’t heard of the app,” she adds irritably, misreading my stunned expression.
“I have heard of Beijing Ghost,” I say, choosing my words with care. My heart is pounding so hard I wouldn’t be surprised if they could all hear. “But I don’t know who’s behind it.”
“Well, obviously,” Vanessa says, rolling her eyes, and relief washes over me. “No one does. Though there’s plenty of theories going around.”
Bobby nods, then winces, as though the movement makes his head hurt. “Some people think the app’s run by, like, a top government spy who just wants to make a quick buck. Sorta makes sense, if you really consider it—they’d have all the right connections and the technology to make it work.”
“Bobby,” Rainie says, with the air of an adult speaking to a very naive child. “Top government spies don’t need to build their own illegal school app to get rich quick. That’s what bribery is for.”
“Who d’you reckon it is, then?” Bobby challenges.
“I don’t know,” Rainie says, grabbing the whiskey bottle from Vanessa and gulping down the rest of the brown liquid in one go. Then she wipes her mouth roughly with the back of her sleeve. “But whoever it is—they’re a hero.”
Hero.
Another compliment, and from Rainie Lam, out of all people, but the word only chafes my conscience. I can’t bring myself to meet her gaze.
“I’m going to do it,” Vanessa says abruptly, pushing herself onto her feet with surprising steadiness. Even though she’s had more alcohol than the rest of the bunch, she also seems the most sober—which, considering the fact that Bobby is now balancing the room service menu on his head like a hat, isn’t saying much.
“Do what?” Mina asks.
“Confess,” Vanessa says, and maybe she’s drunker than I think she is, because I have no idea what she means.
Rainie does, though. “Let her go,” she tells all of us as Vanessa staggers toward the door, fumbling twice to turn the knob. “She’s been crushing hard on this guy for ages.”
The menu slides off Bobby’s head with a loud flapping sound as he turns, eyes wide. “Who?”
But whatever the answer is, I don’t hear it. A chill has started creeping up my spine, and before I’m forced to prove Bobby’s government conspiracy theory incorrect firsthand, I leap up, mumble something about checking to see if Vanessa’s okay, and run.
