Picture Us In The Light(74)
If she says yes, though she doesn’t know it, it will spell your end. She has a week before your father’s paperwork is due to decide. The arguments of whether to leave you behind play out every moment in her mind. She imagines going; she imagines staying. She wishes her parents were here to offer advice.
In the end, though, isn’t every lengthy decision just a way of contorting reality to fit whatever one wants it to be? If history has shown anything, it’s that humanity is rotten at its very core. There is a screaming emptiness where goodness might reside; instead of empathy and principle there is fear and greed and stunning, breathtaking hypocrisy. People will believe themselves good in the face of all evidence to the contrary; people will smile and cling to their own respectability in the face of atrocity. You should have expected no better from your mother, perhaps. But there was a time, that time when your fate was in her hands, that you did.
In the end you are no match for their ambition. The future they constructed in their minds was built too strong and rigid, so that when they tried to slip you into it the structure toppled.
Your mother assents. Your fate is sealed. Your father accepts the position and purchases plane tickets, just two, and they will go to the United States. You will never join them.
March seventh, the anniversary of the day Sandra died, falls on a Thursday this year. You can feel it going to sleep the night before, and I text Regina around ten to see how she’s doing. She starts to type something (I get that ellipsis) and then stops, and two hours later finally writes back:
I’m beyond tired, at that stage of sleep deprivation where you start to feel more like a limbed id than a real person, but I lie awake most of the night. My dad’s sleeping here, which I’m grateful for in spite of myself—I don’t think I could handle being alone tonight. I try to sleep and try not to think about anything; my mind is too tired. It doesn’t work, and all the thoughts I try to box out come stampeding by, taunting me.
It wasn’t just Ahmed who said something to me. There were two separate times, right after she died, when I walked up at lunch and everyone went quiet. I knew what that meant. And you can’t say I swear I actually liked her, I swear it wasn’t like that because no one will believe you; they’ll think it’s cheap for you to say it. And maybe it is.
In the morning I stumble out of bed and shower in the hottest water I can stand to try to wake up. Thursdays are late-start days and it’s light out already when I wait for the bus, but even so I’m so tired my head feels stuffed with helium. The whole ride to Cupertino, I feel sick. It’s early still when I get to campus, but the newspapers are here, stacked outside each classroom like sentries. I don’t pick one up.
The first person I see this morning is—thank God—Noga, who gives me a sad smile and then—I think she debates it with herself first—a hug.
“I’m glad I know you,” she says. “I told myself today I’d tell everyone I care about that they matter to me.” Her face starts to crumple, but she catches herself. “I can’t believe it’s been a year.”
I hug her back and tell her I’m glad I know her, too, that it won’t be the same next year without her, and then I lie and say I need to go make up a quiz, because my eyes are welling and there’s a greater than zero chance I might just lose it. I text Harry to see if he’s at school yet. He doesn’t answer, which means he’s probably driving. It’ll be better when he’s here—the frenzy I feel locked into will settle.
A cluster of freshmen I walk by on the way to my locker are reading the paper. At my locker, I borrow my mom’s ritual when she feels a panic attack coming on—long breaths, inhaling as far as your chest will expand. I’m getting books from my locker, my lungs mostly normal again, when someone says, “Hey, Cheng.”
I turn around. It’s Ahmed standing there, the paper in his hand. My heart dive-bombs into my stomach. But whatever I’m feeling, I know it’s so much worse for him, so I force myself to say, as kindly as I know how, “Hey, man, how you doing?”
He holds up the paper. “You drew this, right?”
I shouldn’t have. I should’ve just told Regina to use a photo. But it’s useless to deny it. I’ve had pictures in the paper every month for the past three years, and anyway, there’s not another person on campus, probably, who could’ve drawn that. I think I might throw up. “I did.”
“Nice picture.”
My face must go blank for a moment. “Uh, really?”
“Yeah, it looks good.”
“Oh.” I can feel my expression trying to rearrange itself, failing. “Well—thanks. You doing okay today?”
“Kind of. Yeah, I mean—” He reaches up and pushes back his Yankees cap. “I kind of didn’t want to come to school today because people would be all weepy, or people who didn’t even know her would act like they had some right to be sad. But then I was like, okay, the administration pretty much made sure no one’s allowed to talk about it, right, so I thought it would be fine. And then I saw the paper, and I thought I wouldn’t want to see anything, but—”
He kind of chews on the inside of his lip. I reach up and wipe my forehead.
“I’ll be honest, I know you guys had your deal with each other, but she also talked about you sometimes like she missed you. I think she wanted you guys to be cool again. And when I saw the picture you drew of her—I guess it’s nice to know that there was actually something there, you know what I mean? Like that she meant something to you all along. Because if she thought that and she was just fooling herself, that would be pretty fucking sad. Maybe she knew she was right. I hope so.”