I move through the requests quickly after that.
As I do, my life changes shape, fits into the mold of a new, bizarre routine: I spend my mornings going through new Beijing Ghost messages and choosing the most feasible tasks, lunchtimes developing a plan of action with Henry and sometimes Chanel, and classes only half paying attention to the teacher as I wait anxiously to turn invisible.
And on the days when I do turn invisible, and make that same mad dash out the classroom door, I always make sure to come back with a stolen, forged note from the nurse’s office, explaining a fictional chronic health condition I have that unfortunately makes me puke my guts out from time to time. It’s enough to get the teachers off my back about my sudden, spontaneous absences—that, and the fact that I haven’t fallen behind on any schoolwork.
Because when all my Beijing Ghost tasks are finally done for the day, I trudge back to my dorm, exhausted, and study, cramming lecture notes and slides and graphs into my brain until five or six in the morning, just in time to watch the watery sunrise through the window. Only then do I allow myself to be human and nap for about an hour. Two hours, max.
By the time November rolls around, I can’t remember the last time I woke up without bloodshot eyes and a terrible, pounding headache, like someone has taken to squeezing my skull for fun. The trick to working through the pain, I’ve discovered, is by forcing myself to conjure up worst-case scenarios, to picture a future where I don’t make enough money and have to leave Airington. It’s like the reverse of guided meditation:
You’re walking into the classroom of your new local school. You’re sweating visibly, a heavy bag of books you haven’t read gripped to your chest. All the students and teachers stare at you. The bell rings, and you take your first pop quiz: twenty-five pages of tiny Chinese characters you can hardly understand, much less answer. You feel sick. The test results are posted for everyone to see the next day. You push through the crowd, heart pounding, and find your name at the very bottom of the list…
Compared to that, staying up all night feels almost like a luxury.
But despite everything, I’d be lying if I said some part of me didn’t enjoy the constant stream of tasks, the new notifications lighting up my phone. No, maybe enjoy is the wrong word. It’s not about happiness; it’s about power. It’s the thrill of being needed, of knowing things other people don’t.
In the space of two months, I’ve learned more about my classmates than I have in my five years here—like how Yiwen, daughter of a billionaire, has been stealing entire plates of cupcakes from the café before school every day; how Sujin, another billionaire’s daughter, runs her own karaoke bar and spends all her money funding global warming research; how Stephen from Year Ten and Julian from Year Eleven have actually been making out behind the koi ponds when everyone thinks they’re busy taking photos for the yearbook; or how Andrew She and Peter Oh’s parents are running for the same global director position at Longfeng Oil, and in fear of their latest campaign ideas being stolen, have advised their children to stay far away from each other.
Secrets, I’m realizing, are their own kind of currency.
But even better is earning real currency, the satisfaction of seeing the numbers in my new bank account rise:
70,000 RMB.
100,000 RMB.
120,000 RMB.
More money than I’ve ever seen in my life. But even then, I know I could still earn more. I have to earn more. I still need another 130,000 RMB if I want to stay at Airington until I graduate.
Ten more tasks, I tell myself, and I’ll be able to make that much. Twenty more tasks and I’ll be able to pay for not just Airington, but an entire year of college.
It’s addicting. Intoxicating.
Who cares if I’m so busy I can barely breathe?
“Maybe you really are a ghost,” Chanel jokes to me one morning, when she sees me in the exact same position at my desk as the night before: head bent over my Chinese textbook, shoulders almost hunched to my ears. “The kind of invincible ghost that like, doesn’t need to eat or sleep or pee or anything, just runs on willpower alone. Seriously though,” she adds, peering at the tiny annotations and Post-it notes covering my textbook page. “How the hell are you keeping up with all your subjects?”
I don’t reply to her at the time, but the answer comes almost two weeks later, like some sort of sick joke.
And the answer is: I’m not.
When I hurry into history class on Friday, I freeze.
All the desks and chairs have been rearranged. Spaced out around the classroom in neat, single files, instead of the usual messy clusters that are meant to inspire “group work.”
Most of my classmates are already sitting down, zipped-up bags tucked away under their seats, faces set in solemn lines as they methodically place their pens out in front of them. Someone sighs. Someone else mimes slitting their throat.
There’s a palpable tension in the air.
“What’s going on?” I say aloud.
Mr. Murphy, who’s handing out a thick stack of papers, pauses and gives me a small, odd smile, like he thinks I’ve just made a bad joke. “The thing you’ve been waiting for all week, of course.”
I blink at him. “The thing…?”
The smile slips from his face. He frowns. “Surely you haven’t forgotten about today’s test, Alice? I mentioned it in class a week ago.”
At the word test, panic seizes my chest with such intensity I almost stagger back a step. A stone forms in my throat.
“What? But I didn’t—I—” I swallow, hard. People are starting to stare at me now, Henry amongst them. My face heats. My fingers fumble for the planner in my bag, for proof that there is no test, there can’t be, that this must be a mistake. I have a perfect, color coded system, developed over my five years of school here. Foolproof. Red for important things and events, blue for homework and assignments, green for extracurricular activities.
But when I flip open the pages to last week’s entry, there’s red everywhere. Almost all of it is Beijing Ghost stuff, but squeezed right in between the lines find out if Vanessa Liu’s been bitching about Chung-Cha behind her back (waste of time tbh—Vanessa bitches about everyone) and find Daniel Saito’s locker combination, written so small I have to squint to decipher my own handwriting, are the words: Chinese Rev history test: next Friday.
The stone sinks to my stomach.
No.
“Alice?” Mr. Murphy looks at me, making very little effort to hide his surprise. His disappointment. I want to cry. “The test is starting soon…”
“Y-yes, of course,” I choke out, forcing myself down into the closest empty seat. I duck my head and search for my pencil case with shaking fingers, but not before I catch the expressions on my classmates’ faces: variations of pity, amusement, smugness, and most pronounced of all, shock.
A few summers back, some director at LinkedIn was invited to our school to talk about the importance of “personal branding” in the twenty-first century, and I’ve devoted the past five years to developing and strengthening mine. I’m Alice Sun, the type A, straight-A student, the sole scholarship recipient, the perfectly programmed Study Machine, the girl who will help you get full marks on your group project. I do everything that is expected of me and more. I never underperform in important unit tests, much less forget when they’re taking place—until today, that is.
My gut roils.
So much for personal branding.
Just when I think I couldn’t possibly feel any worse, Mr. Murphy comes around to my desk, hands me a blank test paper and says, very quietly, “Even if you forgot about the test, Alice, you’re a smart girl. I’m sure you’ll still do well.”
He’s wrong.
Because even though I’m smart, I’m not that smart. Not the kind of prodigy-level smart you would expect to find at Harvard, the kind that would allow me to skip all my classes and still rank first in every test, that would make everything come easily. I don’t say this in a self-pitying way, either; I’ve long acknowledged and accepted my limitations, and done my best to compensate for them with sheer willpower and hard work.
But without hard work, I doubt I can scrape so much as a B+ on this test. Even if I could, I’ve never been able to perform well when I’m panicked. And I’m panicking hard right now. My heart feels like it’s about to explode in my chest, my fingers shaking so badly I almost drop my pen.
No. Focus, I urge myself. I look up at the ticking clock. Seven minutes have passed already, and my test paper is still blank.
Normally, by this point, I’d have written enough to cover two entire pages.
I attempt to answer the first question (“To what extent did the Warlord Era prove a turning point in the development of the revolution in China?”), but all that’s running through my head is fuck fuck I’m so fucked in a maddening, highly unhelpful loop.
When I check the time again, another minute has already passed. And all around me, people are writing, answering each question perfectly, scoring every mark, and I—
I can’t do this.
Oh god, I can’t do this.
I take a deep, shuddering breath that fails to fill my lungs. Another. It sounds like I’m hyperventilating. Fuck. Am I hyperventilating?
“Alice?” Mr. Murphy crouches down beside me. He’s whispering, but it’s pointless. Almost comical. With the whole room silent, everyone can hear him. “You look a little ill. Do you need to go to the nurse’s office again…?”
More eyes turn to me. Pin me down in place.
All while I’m trying to remember how to breathe like a normal person.
I don’t trust myself to speak—I’m not sure I’m even allowed to, under test conditions—so I just shake my head. Force myself to write a few sentences, slowly, shakily, over the printed lines.
It’s complete bullshit, of course. I have no dates memorized, no key events that I can recall. I’d turned invisible for half our class on the Warlord Era, and must’ve missed the important points.
After a few seconds of excruciating silence, in which Mr. Murphy seems to confirm that I’m not going to faint or throw up at his feet, he stands up and returns to the front of the room.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks on like a bomb.
“Please put your pens down.”
I glance up from my test paper, where my writing crawls over the page like spiders, nearly illegible in my frenzy. Evie Wu and I are the only people left in the class; the test was short enough that everyone else turned it in early. Henry left the classroom before half an hour had even passed, his stride confident, his face calm.
Evie’s face, on the other hand, must look a lot like mine: bright red and shiny with sweat, as if she’s just finished running a marathon. When she hands her test to Mr. Murphy, I notice that the entire back page is empty, save for one or two hastily scribbled words.
“Thank you very much, Evie,” Mr. Murphy says. Then pauses. “I hope you didn’t find this test too difficult. I’d hate to have to give your mother another call…”
Again, he’s whispering, and again, it serves absolutely no purpose when I’m sitting less than five feet away, close enough to catch every word.
Evie’s eyes dart to me, clearly mortified, and I feel a swell of sympathy. Evie is the only student at Airington who’s had to repeat a year, but it’s not her fault. Even though she has a Canadian passport, she was never actually taught any English growing up. Once, I caught a glance of Evie’s history textbook, and saw Chinese translations and annotations written in the margins for almost every word, little question marks drawn over certain phrases, entire blocks of text highlighted to mark out parts she didn’t understand. I could almost feel the frustration pulsing out of those carefully marked lines.
The worst part is that Evie’s a genius, and not just in math and physics, but languages too. She’s in the most advanced Chinese class, and Wei Laoshi always gushes over her poems and essays and suggests not-so-delicately how he’d be happy if we could write with a tiny fraction of her skill, even goes so far as to compare her to Lu Xun—one of the most famous writers in modern China.
So, really, it’s only the English that’s the issue.
Maybe that’s why Mr. Murphy is whispering so loudly now. Why he’s speaking at half his usual speed, enunciating every syllable. He used to speak to me like that, too, when I first came to Airington, despite my insistence that English was my first language. Only after I aced five tests in a row did he seem to believe me.
Evie mumbles something back that I can’t quite hear, rises from her chair and quickly gathers up her things.
Once she’s left, Mr. Murphy turns to me.
“Can I have your test, Alice?”
I realize I’ve been gripping the paper to my chest like a lifeline, my knuckles almost white. I drop it. The pages flutter out like wings.
“Y-yes. Of course,” I say, pushing it across the desk. I know the wise thing to do would be to just leave it at that, scrape up the little dignity and self-esteem I have and walk away, but instead I blurt out: “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry—it’s really bad, I know it is, but I swear I don’t usually—I’d never—”
“Don’t stress about it,” Mr. Murphy interrupts, with a little chuckle. “Besides, I’ve taught you for almost five years now, Alice. Your definition of ‘bad’ is rather different from that of your peers.”
But rather than reassure me, the kindness in his voice—so sincere, and so unearned—only makes something inside me fissure. To my absolute horror, a pressure begins to build in my chest, climb up to my throat. My eyes blur.
Mr. Murphy looks alarmed. “Hey—”
It’s as if someone’s turned on a switch.
When I start crying, I can’t seem to stop. Short, violent breaths rock my entire body, a disgusting amount of tears and snot flowing down my face even as I try, desperate, to wipe them away. I cry so hard my chest physically hurts. My head feels light. I sound unhinged, like an inconsolable child, a tortured animal.
I sound like I’m about to die.
“Hey,” Mr. Murphy says again, lifting a hand as if to pat my shoulder, then thinks better of it. Fear creases his bushy brows, and I wonder, dimly, if he’s scared I’ll sue him for psychological damage or something. Two years ago, a student in Year Thirteen did just that when he failed a major chemistry test. His parents were both lawyers; the student won in the end. “It’s okay.”
I manage to suppress my sobs long enough to stammer out: “S-s-sorry, I wasn’t”—I hiccup—“I wasn’t even planning to cry…or I’d”—I hiccup again—“I’d have l-let you know in advance…”
Mr. Murphy’s lips twitch slightly at that, like he thinks I’m trying to be funny. I’m not. I’ve just never cried at school before, not even when I broke my arm during an intense dodgeball game in PE, or that time when Leonardo Cruz called the prom dress Mama made for me cheap-looking in front of everyone. I never wanted any of my classmates or teachers to see me like that—distressed. Discomposed. Weak.
But I guess today is a day of firsts for everything.
“You know, in all my years of teaching,” Mr. Murphy says, when my sobs have quietened a little, “I can’t remember the last time anyone reacted so…violently to a bad test experience.” He’s not smiling anymore. “Is there something going on, Alice? Issues at home? Relationship drama? Friendship troubles?” His expression grows more uncomfortable with every question. “Because you know, there are…resources at Airington for that.”
When I look at him, confused, he clarifies, “We have excellent school counselors who’d be more than happy to—”
“N—” The unspoken word lodges in my throat. I shake my head instead, violently, to get my point across. I don’t need someone to recommend meditation apps and listen to all my problems. I need to get my shit together. Pull my grades back up. Make more money.
I need to get out of here.
“I—I think I’m fine now,” I say on a shaky breath. “And I have to get to class. So I’ll—” My voice threatens to crack again, and I gesture to the door.
Mr. Murphy purses his lips. Studies me for a beat.
“All right,” he says finally, with an awkward smile. “Well…just. Just take it easy, okay?”
“Okay,” I lie, already turning around to go.
Mr. Murphy means well, I know, but his words play over in my head like a taunt. What he doesn’t understand—what most people here don’t understand—is that I don’t have the luxury of taking it easy.
If I’m not swimming as hard as I can, feet thrashing at the waves, I’m drowning.
Henry is waiting for me outside the classroom.
This, in itself, is not unusual. I can’t pinpoint when exactly it started, but Henry and I have gotten into the habit of walking to our classes together. It’s a simple matter of practicality. Necessity. We share the same classes for almost every subject, after all—a fact I used to deeply resent—and we always put those extra four or five minutes to good use, strategizing and fine-tuning and outlining the next Beijing Ghost tasks under our breaths as we walk. Sometimes I’ll even pull out my planner, or a clipboard.
But something’s different today.
I notice it in the way Henry looks at me when I walk out, the way he flinches as I draw near. It’s such an odd sight I’m almost convinced I’ve imagined it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Henry Li flinch before.
Yet even odder is the expression that settles over his features like a shadow:
Concern.
Concern for me, because… I was hyperventilating during our test just now? Because it’s clear I’ve been crying? Because he overheard my conversation with Mr. Murphy?
There are so many possibilities. All of them make me want to run far away in the opposite direction.
But before I can turn around, he steps toward me.
“You forgot about the test,” he says. Not are you okay? or how did it go? or do you want to talk about it? Maybe he isn’t that concerned after all.
I run my tongue over the sharp edges of my teeth. “Yeah, I know. And I swear, if you’re going to rub it in—”
“No,” he says. Quickly. “That was not my intention.”
And even though it’s the last thing I’d expect myself to do, especially when I still feel like my world is about to end, I can’t help it: I snort.
He frowns. “Is something funny?”
“No, no, nothing,” I say, shaking my head—then stop abruptly, when the motion makes pain spike through my skull. At this rate, I can’t even tell if the migraine is from sleep deprivation or from bawling my eyes out.
Henry says nothing, but his frown deepens.
“Okay, fine, you really want to know? It’s just—you just sound so posh all the time, oh my god.” I straighten my posture to match his and mimic him with an exaggerated British accent. “That was not my intention.”
“I do not sound like that,” he says, affronted.
“You’re right. You sound even posher. Why are you still here, anyway?” I ask, looking over his shoulder to scan the emptying hall. “Shouldn’t we be getting to class or—”
“English is canceled for the day. Mr. Chen was invited to deliver a lecture at Peking University.” He hesitates. “The email came a few minutes ago, when you were…”
When I was having a mental breakdown.
“Ah,” I say, suddenly far too aware of the damp patches on my blazer from when I used it to wipe my face. The puffiness in my lips and cheeks. The dry, uncomfortable ache in my eyes. I turn my head, feigning interest in the glass display to my left. Glossy certificates catch the artificial light of the hall, the golden, italicized text gleaming like magic: Rachel Kim: First Place in IGCSE History. Patricia Chao: Best All-Rounder Award. Isabella Lee: Perfect Score in IB Geography.
All legends. All names that continue to adorn our halls, remind us of their greatness, long after the students themselves have graduated.
The sound of crinkling paper pulls me from my thoughts. I glance back to see Henry reaching for something in his bag. “Do you want—”
“Oh, it’s fine, I can just get some from the bathroom,” I say, assuming he’s about to offer me a tissue.
But then he’s holding up one of those White Rabbit milk candies I saw him eating in his dorm, the creamy white wrapper smooth, almost the same shade as his outstretched palm. Confusion flickers over his features when he hears the end of my sentence.
We both pause. Catch our mistake.
God, why does everything have to be so awkward when I’m around him?
“Uh. Never mind.” I hold out my hand. “Guess I could do with some candy.” As he passes it over, his fingers brush against mine. Just once, briefly, there and then gone. So warm and light they could be confused for the flutter of birds’ wings.
It feels nice. Too nice.
I retract my hand as if I’ve been burnt.
“Thanks,” I mumble, busying myself with peeling the wrapper and bringing the candy to my lips. Immediately, the thin, papery outer layer melts on my tongue, and the rich, mildly sweet taste fills my mouth.
It tastes like my childhood. Like the long, luxurious summers in Beijing before I left for America, before my nainai passed away. Mama rarely let me have sweets, saying it was a waste of money and bad for my teeth, but every morning during the holidays, Nainai would hobble out to the local grocery store and buy little packets of White Rabbit milk candy, hiding them inside her handkerchief. Whenever Mama wasn’t looking, she would sneak one to me with a wink.
But my memories of her more or less end there.
She only called on my birthdays after we moved across the sea, said she didn’t want to inconvenience us as we tried to settle in, that she knew we were busy. Then, sometime after I turned nine, she died alone at home. A stroke. Preventable, if only she had the money to pay for a proper checkup and medical treatment, to ask for help when she wasn’t feeling well.
Baba and Mama didn’t even tell me she was gone until the day of the Qingming Festival.
My throat burns at the thought, at the injustice of it all, but this time, at least, I manage to force the tears back before they can form.
I don’t know why I’m so emotional today.
I sneak a quick glance at Henry to see if he’s noticed, but he seems suddenly fascinated by the awards display too.
“It’s been ages since I last had one of these,” I say, more to break the awkward silence than anything. “They were my favorite childhood treat.”
He turns to face me, his expression impassive. “Mine too.” He says this almost reluctantly, with great caution, like he’s disclosing some kind of confidential business information. “My mother used to give me one whenever I had a bad day at school.”
“Really?” Surprise leaks into my voice, and not just because I can’t imagine him ever having a bad day at school. Not even a subpar day. “I thought you’d have grown up eating all that fancy, expensive stuff.”
His eyebrows arch. “Fancy, expensive stuff?”
“You know what I mean,” I say, annoyed. I recall the lavish feast spread out before Chanel’s father and the young woman, the delicacies arranged in their clay bowls and tiny crystal plates. The food of emperors, of kings. “Like bird’s nest soup or sea cucumber or something.” As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I realize how ignorant I must sound. How painfully obvious it must be to Henry that we were raised in two separate worlds, that I’ve only witnessed but never experienced the casual luxuries he must take for granted in his life.
I wonder if he feels sorry for me, and anticipatory anger rattles in my stomach like a snake as I imagine him tiptoeing around the subject, trying to play down the obvious discrepancies between our childhoods: They weren’t that expensive, or We only had those once a week.
But in reality, he just shrugs one shoulder and says, “I never really liked sea cucumber, actually. They used to creep me out when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, well, they do look a bit like slugs,” I mutter, and he laughs.
I stare at him, taken aback by how his entire demeanour seems to change: the sharp, regal lines of his face softening, white teeth flashing, his shoulders slipping forward from their usual stiff posture. He’s so closed off all the time that I didn’t even think Henry was capable of laughing. For a moment I wonder what we might look like from an outsider’s perspective: just two teenagers joking around and sharing candy and chatting together after class. Friends, maybe. The thought startles me.
Then Henry catches me staring, registers the visible shock on my face, and sobers up at once, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. The curve of his ears turn pink slightly.
“Well, anyway.” He slides his hands into his blazer pockets. “I should probably go. Study. Our midterms are soon.”
“Oh. Okay.”
But he makes no immediate move to leave. “Will you be all right? After…” He trails off, once again leaving it to me to fill out the rest of his sentence. “Either way, it’s not as if a bad grade would bring your average down so much, right? So long as you do well in the midterms, you could still be ranked second in the class.”
I bristle, the remnants of that brief, tender moment we shared earlier vanishing like smoke. We’re not friends, I remind myself. We’re competitors. Enemies. Only one of us can win in the end.
“I don’t want to be ranked second.” I surge forward until I’m standing right in front of him, hating that I have to crane my neck just so we’re at eye level. “If I’m not first, I’m nothing.”
He merely looks amused. “Is there really such a substantial difference? I doubt your report card—”
“It’s not just about how my report card looks,” I interrupt. “It’s about losing my winning streak with the Academic Award next year. It’s about what people will think of me.”
“It doesn’t matter what people think—”
“Bullshit,” I say hotly. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Perception is everything. Money would just be colored paper if we didn’t all think it was important.”
“Cotton, actually.”
“What?”
“Contrary to popular belief, money is mostly made out of cotton,” he says, as if this is life-changing information. “Just thought you’d want to know. But do go on.”
The idea of murdering him flits through my mind.
“My point is,” I say through gritted teeth, “when a large enough number of people collectively care enough about something—no matter how superficial or arbitrary or inherently worthless it is—it starts to carry value. It’s like when people say it doesn’t matter where you get your education, but watch how fast they change their attitude, their tone when you tell them you go to Airington.” I suck in a breath, curl my trembling hands into fists. “Even just now. Mr. Murphy was already looking at me differently because I—” I swallow. “Because I fucked up on that one test.”
Surprise flashes across Henry’s face. I don’t think anyone at Airington has ever heard me swear out loud before. It’s kind of liberating, really. Cathartic. It even makes me feel a little better—
Until one of the classroom doors down the hall swings open, and Julie Walsh steps out.
Her narrowed eyes instantly land on me, and she comes marching straight over, thin heels clacking, sleek blond hair bobbing with every step, her lips pressed into a tight line. As she draws closer, the strong, sickly sweet scent of her perfume hits my nose. I try not to choke.
“Such foul language,” she hisses, shaking her head. “Honestly, after everything we’ve taught you here at Airington, is this really how you wish to conduct yourself?”
A mixture of embarrassment and annoyance snake under my skin. I’m tempted to tell her about the number of Chinese and Korean swear words students have used right in front of her face in the past week alone, but because I still have somewhat of a will to live—and because I’d never throw the other kids under the bus like that—I decide against it.
“Sorry, Ju—” I catch myself just in time. “Dr. Walsh.”
“Hmph. You certainly should be.” She sniffs. “Don’t let me catch you swearing again, Vanessa Liu, or there will be consequences.”
I look up at her, stunned. Like Mr. Murphy, she’s been teaching me for five years—surely she must know who I am? My name, at least? Besides, Vanessa and I don’t even look remotely alike; her face is sharp and long whereas mine is wide, her nose petite while mine is round, and her skin is at least five shades paler thanks to all her Korean skincare products. Anyone with eyes should be able to tell the difference between us.
I wait for Julie to realize her mistake, to correct herself.
She doesn’t.
Just stares me down with those cold blue eyes like she expects me to apologize again.
But instead, all I say is, “It’s Alice.”
Her face goes blank with confusion. “What?”
“I said, my name is Alice. Not Vanessa.”
“Huh. Is it now?” she finally says, unconvinced, looking for a second as if she actually believes I might’ve mixed up my own name. When I nod, she gives me a tight-lipped smile that isn’t much friendlier than a glare. “Well, pardon me, Alice. But my earlier point still stands, of course.”
“Of course,” I echo.
Satisfied, she spins around on her noisy heels and leaves. As soon as she’s out of earshot, Henry mutters, “Charming, isn’t she?”
On this, at least, we can agree.
