Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,56

uncharacteristic curve to his lips. And his eyes—they radiated love.

I was his baobèi.

And this baobèi was about to lose it. I snatched up my phone and ballet shoes, then retreated to Mr. Porter’s open arms.

Everything felt tight. Too tight, like a coffin. My muscles screamed at me as I dissolved into movement without any warm-up. And as stiff as I was on the outside, the inside was rigor mortis—still too soon after the death of my relationship with my parents.

There was a hole in my chest, a piece of me missing without them. When I thought about continuing down this path, trying to find my way, the crater grew. I folded my arms across my torso as if that could stop it, but the void swelled and billowed, laughing at me.

But then when I thought about making up with them, the hole in my chest closed as a cavity opened in my brain, a partial lobotomy. I couldn’t go through life as a shadow. If I gave in to them, I’d lose myself.

No matter how painful this was, I couldn’t go back. But just because I knew that didn’t make it any easier.

In the Chinatown supermarket, I dug through vacuum-sealed packages of pork jerky, jelly candies, and seaweed but couldn’t locate the dried squid. I had spent thirty minutes on the T, gotten lost twice, and now I couldn’t read the obscure characters on the product labels.

I grasped my head with both hands and held back a scream. First the Star Market hadn’t stocked the snacks I craved, and now this.

Okay, Universe, I get it. I just want some dried squid, damn it!

My breath rushed in and out of my nostrils noisily, and I focused on it to ebb the rush of emotions.

A voice behind me said, “Mei?” It was more of a question than a statement.

I turned to face a middle-aged Chinese woman I didn’t recognize. “Āyí hao.” My greeting was robotic; my mother had so many acquaintances I couldn’t remember their faces (and my poor vision didn’t help).

“You look just like your mother!”

“I do?”

She touched her hand to my chin. “Yes. Same bone structure and delicacy. Your features are obviously from your father, but your base is so clearly her.”

My chest tightened at the mention of my parents. I guess my tale hadn’t traveled too far down the grapevine yet.

She lowered her hand, then her eyes. “I was so sorry to hear about, you know.”

Guess I spoke too soon. My lips hardened into a line and I acknowledged her condolences with a brusque nod.

“I’m shopping with my sister. You remember her, I’m sure. She used to drive you and Hanwei to Chinese school.” She put her hand on the woman beside her, whose back was to us.

Mrs. Pan turned and dropped the vermicelli she was holding. “Mei! Oh! Uh, hello.”

I bent down to pick up the noodles at the same time she did, and when our fingers grazed, she snapped her hand back as if my disobedience were contagious. Pretending I didn’t notice, I scooped the package up and dropped it in her shopping basket.

“Āyí hao. How’s Hanwei?”

Mrs. Pan flinched when her son’s name came out of my mouth. “I’m sorry, Mei, but Hanwei has been spoken for. He has a girlfriend now, a good girl, so you should just forget about him. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

Her pinched lips and cold eyes told me she was lying, and even though I had never wanted Hanwei for a second, disgrace shot through me. They hurried away and left me, my limbs shaking, in the prepackaged food aisle.

I left sans squid. Back on the street, despite the cold, my feet wouldn’t listen to me. Go home, I told them, but they remained planted. You have no home, they reminded me.

I stood on the sidewalk, staring at the Chinatown archway, the gate into this other world. My body was inside, past the entrance, but it felt like the rest of me was outside.

The people around me morphed into a blur, and I eventually stopped registering their shoulder grazes as they pushed past me. They became a sea of black hair. . . .

But then I spotted a familiar shape. Two contrasting bodies—one tall and thick, the other short and petite—walking together yet apart.

I ran toward them, not thinking, not sure what I wanted, but I had to see them. My parents’ eyes met mine—my father’s hard and distant, my mother’s wounded and helpless—and they took a sharp turn into