If You Could See the Sun (36)

Henry and I might share similar goals and grades, but at the end of the day, we will never be the same.

“Do you seriously hate me?” Henry says, a strange, unreadable expression on his face. And maybe it’s just the angle from where I’m standing, but his eyes look suddenly lighter in the sun, more gold than their usual coffee black. Softer, somehow. “Well?”

I cross my arms over my chest, weighing out my response.

Yes, is the obvious answer. I do hate you. I hate everything about you. I hate you so much that whenever I’m around you, I can barely think straight. I can barely even breathe.

But when I open my mouth, none of that comes out. What I say instead is, “Don’t you... Don’t you hate me too?”

Immediately, I regret it. What a ridiculous question to ask. He’s obviously going to laugh at me and say yes, the way that I should have just now, and whatever sense of comradery we’ve built over these past couple of weeks will collapse, which will then affect our efficiency in completing Beijing Ghost tasks. But it’s not just that. For some reason, the thought of him telling me he hates me—right here, out loud, in plain English—feels like a punch to the chest. Which is even more ridiculous, because—

“No.”

I blink. “Huh?”

“No, Alice.” The faintest movement in his throat. I still have no idea what his expression means, why his voice sounds so strained. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh.” My mind goes blank. “Well, that is... That’s something. For sure.”

That was not a legitimate sentence, Alice, I scold myself.

“A very good thing to know,” I try again. “Glad we spoke of it.”

Neither was that.

Thankfully, I’m saved from what’s shaping up to be one of the most awkward exchanges of my life by a new phone notification. I turn around and open up my Beijing Ghost messages. To my surprise, it’s from Rainie again:

i don’t know how u did it but...thank u.

you’re my hero.

I stare and stare at the message, read it three times over, and feel my heart lighten. Because this—this gives me a spark of hope. To know that I can live in a world where Rainie Lam would voluntarily call me a hero, even if she doesn’t know Beijing Ghost is me. To think that even the richest and most influential of Airington’s elite would thank me, need me, however briefly, and that my powers—my strange, inexplicable, unreliable powers—have actually been able to help somebody...

I hold the phone to my chest and inhale deeply. Never before has the summer air tasted so sweet.





8


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.