be a long journey south: four hours to Kuala Lumpur, then an overnight sleeper of eight hours to Singapore. A total of about 345 miles—farther than I’d ever been in my life.
As the train slowly pulled out, everyone began to wave frantically in some unspoken semaphore. Even my stepfather, usually so undemonstrative, raised a hand, though I couldn’t tell whether it was directed at Shin or me. At the last moment, my mother ran up alongside the train. I was filled with sudden panic. Was she going to denounce us? But she simply pressed the palm of her hand against the window. I fit my hand against it, all five fingers. Then she was gone, blown past by the gathering rush of the train.
Goodbye, I thought, as their figures shrank, left behind by the steady clack of the wheels, the humming of the track. Goodbye to my old life, and hello to the rest of it, whatever it might bring. Excitement and melancholy knotted my stomach, and I thought once again of Yi, that small boy left behind on a railway platform. Had he really gone away? I had the odd certainty that the ties binding all of us had been remade in a new and different pattern. I’ll never forget you, I promised. My fingers curled around the letter in my pocket. I’d missed my chance to drop it in the post box, but I’d do it when we stopped in Kuala Lumpur.
* * *
The outskirts of Ipoh flew past—coconut palms, wooden kampung houses on stilts, a skinny yellow Brahmin cow—until green jungle pressed in on both sides.
“I’ll have to find a place to stay in Singapore,” I said, recalling how we’d lied about a hospital dorm.
“That’s easy,” said Shin. “I’ve got some money saved up.”
“But that’s your savings. I don’t want to use it.”
“Why’d you think I’ve been working? I wanted to bring you to Singapore.”
“Really?” My heart skipped a beat. All those long, lonely months when I’d waited for Shin’s nonexistent replies to my letters.
“Though I didn’t know if you’d come. You were stuck on Ming for years. I was afraid if he changed his mind, you’d go running to him. You’ve given me more trouble than all the other girls combined.” His mouth twitched. “We need to keep you busy. Perhaps you can sit in on lectures.”
“I’d like that.”
Shin shook his head ruefully. “Why do you look so much happier about this than a ring? Please don’t ditch me for a surgeon.”
I shuddered. “No more surgeons.”
“I’ll borrow your class notes every night,” he said with mock seduction. My stomach gave a little flip. If Shin kept looking at me like that, I was going to make a fool of myself, and he knew it.
“Shin.” I took a deep breath. This was going to be difficult to say.
In answer, he traced the palm of my hand delicately with his finger.
“We can’t get married.” I stared straight out of the window. His finger stopped. “At least, not now.”
He was silent for a long time. “Because of your mother?”
“No, we ought to think things through properly—it will be hard for you at school and work. People will talk. And I want to live on my own for a bit. Find a job, take care of myself. I don’t want you to be responsible for me, when you’re still studying. And I’m not ready to get married right away.”
“How long?”
“I’m not sure.”
“A year,” he said without looking at me. “In a year and a day, if you haven’t made up your mind, then you’ll be mine.”
“I told you there’s no such thing as belonging to anyone!”
But he only said maddeningly, “There has to be a time limit. Otherwise we’ll just go on and on like this. I refuse to play at being twins anymore.”
A year and a day. It sounded like a dark path strewn with thorny vines and unknown beasts. Were we out of the jungle yet, Shin and I? I’d no idea of the terrain ahead, but perhaps that was all right. I had a sudden vision of high-ceilinged rooms, long sunlit hallways, and quiet libraries. The King Edward Medical College, of which I’d heard so much. Shin laughing across a table with a group of fellow students. Myself, getting on a crowded bus while balancing a box full of books. Frying rice in a cramped apartment kitchen, listening for familiar quick footsteps on the stairs. Shin and me, walking by a river in the cool evening air,