If You Could See the Sun (16)

“...you to stay, but, well, I didn’t have enough to lend to your Mama at the time,” Xiaoyi says, moving the dumplings around with her chopsticks to stop them from sticking.

The clink of plates pulls me from my thoughts, and it takes a moment for my brain to register the rest of Xiaoyi’s sentence. My heart seizes. “Wait. Mama...came to you for money? Why?”

Xiaoyi doesn’t reply right away, but deep down, I already know the answer: For my education. My school fees. My future.

Me.

But Mama is even prouder, even more stubborn than I am; she once worked a twenty-hour hospital shift with a sprained ankle just because she didn’t want to ask for a break. The thought of her bowing her head to ask for money from her own little sister makes my chest ache. Mama and Baba would really do anything just to make my life easier, better, no matter the cost.

Maybe it’s time I do the same for them.

“Xiaoyi,” I say, and the urgency in my voice gets her attention at once.

“What is it?”

“There actually is something I came here for... Something I need to tell you.” I push my bowl aside. Take a deep, steadying breath. “I can turn...” I pause, realizing I’ve forgotten the Chinese word for invisible. Yin shen? Yin xing? Yin...something.

Xiaoyi waits, patient. She’s used to these abrupt gaps in conversations with me by now, sometimes even tries to fill in the words I don’t know. But there’s no way she could predict what I want to say next.

“People can’t see me,” I say instead, settling for the closest translation and hoping she’ll understand.

Her tattooed brows knit together. “What?”

“I mean—no one can—my body becomes—” Frustration boils inside me as the words jumble around in my mouth. There’s no correlation between fluency and intelligence, I know that, but it’s hard not to feel dumb when you can’t even string together a complete sentence in your mother tongue. “No one can see me.”

Understanding dawns upon Xiaoyi’s face. “Ah. You mean you turn invisible?”

I nod once, my throat too constricted for me to speak. I’m suddenly afraid I’ve made the wrong decision by telling her. What if she thinks I’m hallucinating? What if she calls Mama, or the local hospital, or someone from one of her many WeChat shopping groups?

But all she says is, “Interesting.”

“Interesting?” I echo. “That—that’s it? Xiaoyi, I just told you—”

She waves a hand in the air. “Yes, yes, I know. I can hear perfectly well.” Then she falls into silence for what feels like eons, her large earth-brown eyes thoughtful, her lips moving soundlessly.

I can’t help squirming in my seat as I wait for her verdict. It feels like the buns in my stomach have turned to stone, and in hindsight, I realize I probably should’ve told her all this before we started eating.

Finally, Xiaoyi glances up and points to some spot behind me. “Yan Yan, can you fetch me that statue of the Buddha over there?”

“What?” I twist around, and locate the little bronze statue sitting atop an old bookshelf. Old worn copies of classics like Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber are stacked beside it. “O-Oh. Yeah, sure.” I nearly trip over my chair in my haste to grab the statue for her, my fingers trembling as they close over the cool surface. I’ve never been the super religious type (when I was five, Mama told me that all humans are just a clump of cells waiting to decompose) but if I can lose all visible shape and form without warning, who’s to say a mini bronze Buddha can’t give me the answers I need?

I hand it over to Xiaoyi with both hands as you would a sacred artifact, heart hammering in my chest, watching intently as she unscrews the Buddha’s foot, reaches inside and pulls out...

A toothpick.

“Um,” I say, uncertain. “Is that for—”

Using one hand to cover her mouth, Xiaoyi slides the thin wooden stick between her teeth with a loud sucking sound. She snorts when she sees the expression on my face. “What, did you think this was for you?”

“No,” I lie, the rush of heat to my cheeks giving the truth away. “But, I mean, I was kind of hoping you could...”

“Offer you guidance? Explain to you what’s going on?” Xiaoyi offers.

“Yes.” I plop back down on my chair and look pleadingly across the table at her. “That. Anything, really.”

She considers this for a moment. “Hmm... Then you’ll have to tell me how it first began.”

“If I knew how it began, Xiaoyi, I wouldn’t be having this problem right now,” I point out.

“But how were you feeling at the time?” she presses. “What were you thinking?”

I frown. The first memory that surfaces is Henry’s smug, disgustingly pretty face as he moved to join me onstage. I quickly shake it away. My hatred toward that boy might be all-consuming and powerful enough to keep me up at night, but it’s not so intense as to trigger some freakish supernatural reaction.

And besides, I didn’t notice anything weird until after we both got our awards and our photos taken, or after it occurred to me that...

“I would be leaving,” I murmur. My hands go still on the table. “That without Airington, I’d be—”