If You Could See the Sun (11)

But my relief is quickly cut short by the realization that I’m standing far too close to him. I scramble backward, nearly banging my leg on the corner of his bed.

He makes a movement as if to help me, then seems to think better of it. “Are...you all right?”

I straighten. Fold my arms tight across my chest, trying to shake the feeling that I’ve just woken up from some disorientating dream. “Yeah. Perfect.”

There’s an awkward silence. Now that the immediate issue of my invisibility is resolved, neither of us knows what to do next.

After a few more seconds, Henry rakes a hand through his hair and says, “Well, that was interesting.”

I focus on the pale expanse of sky stretching beyond his window, on anything but him, and nod. “Mm-hmm.”

“I’m sure it was a one-time event,” he continues, now adopting that voice he always uses when answering a question in class, his accent coming in thicker and every word enunciated to make him sound smarter, more convincing. I doubt he’s even aware it’s something he does. “An oddity. The equivalent of a freak storm, only made possible under a very specific set of circumstances. I’m sure,” he says, with all the confidence of someone who’s rarely ever contradicted, who has a place in this world and knows it, “everything will go back to normal after this.”



* * *



For what might be the first time in his life, Henry Li is wrong—and I can’t even gloat about it.

Because despite all my prayers, everything most definitely does not go back to normal.

I’m in Chinese class when it happens again, just two days after the awards ceremony. Wei Laoshi is drinking from his giant thermos of hot tea at the front of the room while everyone around me is groaning about the in-class essay we’ve just been assigned: five hundred words on an animal of choice.

From what I’ve heard, the advanced First Language class—mostly for the mainland kids who attended local schools before coming here—have to dissect the Chinese equivalent of Shakespeare and write short stories on weirdly specific topics like “A Memorable Pair of Shoes.” But my class is full of Westernized Malaysians, Singaporeans, ABCs and people like me, who can speak and understand Mandarin just fine but don’t know many idioms besides renshan renhai: people mountain people sea.

So what we get instead are essays about animals. Sometimes seasons, too, if the teacher’s feeling particularly sentimental.

I stare down at my gridded notebook, then up at the classroom walls, hoping they might offer some form of inspiration. There are the couplets we wrote up for Chinese New Year, the characters peace and fortune wobbling over the crimson banners; the intricate paper cuttings and fans pasted over the round windows; and a series of Polaroids from last year’s Experiencing China trip, featuring what seems like way too many shots of Rainie and not nearly enough of the actual Terra Cotta Warriors—nor of any animals.

Frustration bubbles up inside me. It’s not as if the task itself is hard; I’m willing to bet most people will just pick the panda or one of the twelve zodiacs. But that means I need to do something different.

Something better.

I rub my temples, trying to ignore the sound of Wei Laoshi’s tea sipping and Henry’s furious scribbling three seats away. This is to be expected—Henry’s always the first to start and first to finish for all our assignments—but it still makes me want to stab a hole through the desk.

After five more torturous minutes of me racking my brain for something full-marks worthy, I finally write down the rough beginnings of a first line: The sparrow and the eagle both can hunt, can fly, can sing, but while one soars free, the other...

Then I pause. Stare down at my wonky Chinese handwriting. Read the line over and over again until I decide it’s pretty much the worst combination of words anyone has ever come up with since the dawn of time.

A low hiss escapes my gritted teeth.

God, if this were English, I’d be flying through the second page already, all the right words pouring out of me. I’d probably be done.

I’m about to scrap the whole thing and make a new essay outline when that terrible, unshakeable cold I first felt in the auditorium begins to creep under my skin.

My pen freezes over the page.

Not again, I beg silently in my head. Please not again.

But the cold deepens, sharpens, pours into every pore of my body as if my clothes have been soaked in freezing water, and through it all my brain registers the alarming fact that either I’m running a high fever, or I’m about to turn invisible before a class of twenty-two people.

I stand up so abruptly that Wei Laoshi jumps, almost spilling his tea. Twenty-two pairs of eyes snap to me, all while the cold continues seeping, growing like some terrible rash, and any second now—

“I—um—I have to go the bathroom,” I blurt out, and bolt out of the room before Wei Laoshi can even respond. Humiliation floods through me as I sprint down the corridor, my old leather shoes pounding over the gleaming floors. Now everyone in my Chinese class probably thinks I have chronic diarrhea or something.

But better that than the truth. Whatever the hell the truth is meant to be.

By the time I reach the closest bathrooms on the second floor, I’ve already turned invisible. There’s no shadow attached to my feet, and the reflection in the floor-length mirrors doesn’t change when I step in front of them, only showing the faded pink door swinging wide open on its own. If anyone else were in here, they’d likely think this place was haunted by ghosts.