Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,48

I wasn’t surprised, but I had never needed to hear those words more.

I retreated to my hideaway for the saddest, slowest dance session Mr. Porter had ever seen.

Incoming text from Darren

Konichiwa

Me

Ni hao

Someone told me today that at MIT the odds are good but the goods are odd. Do you think that refers to guys or girls?

after an hour of hemming and hawing

There’s only one odd good I’m interested in . . .

immediately

I’d say your odds are good there.

CHAPTER 19

CLASH OF CULTURES

AN ENVELOPE JUTTED OUT OF my dusty mailbox—a red flag. I never got mail.

My Chinese and English names were scrawled in calligraphy on the front, revealing what was inside without my opening it.

I slipped my finger beneath the flap and tore it open quickly before I could convince myself otherwise. The paper sliced through my flesh, and a drop of blood soaked into the ebony cotton. It’s a cautionary sign from the ancestors, Nǎinai warned in my head. Previously, I would have laughed, but in this moment, her words sent a tremor through me.

The wedding invitation was red and gold (the Chinese celebratory colors) with half the text in English, half in Mandarin. I ran my fingertips over the embossed characters. My parents’ names were glaringly absent.

How far we had come from my childhood days, when my father would run around the house with me on his back as the xiao jī, Xing and my mother chasing behind as the laoyīng, the eagles trying to catch the little chicken. I would squeeze my father close, especially when he rounded the corners at full speed. Xing would squeal as he ran, one of the few times he didn’t have to be the responsible eldest son.

My chest ached with a mix of nostalgia, longing, and pain, and I had to remind myself to breathe.

For the first time at Chow Chow, I didn’t notice the stinky tofu smell. I was too focused on the sweat pooling in my pits and hands. There was too much weighing me down. Death by secrets or death by my parents.

A vaguely familiar middle-aged Chinese woman approached our table. My mother took over pleasantries, bowing and gushing over the friend’s haircut and outfit. “Goodness, we haven’t seen you in ages. When did you move back to town? Mei, you remember Joyce Āyí, of course.”

Joyce smiled at me. “Hello, Mei. It was a pleasure to see you that day at dim sum.”

With the words “dim sum,” I realized she had been the “stranger” staring at me from across the restaurant. Before I could protest, she continued, “I waved to you and Xing, but you must not have seen me.”

My father’s rice bowl, which had been against his lips moments before, fell to the table. If he were a cartoon, steam would have been coming out of his ears.

Joyce backed away slowly, then scampered back to her table.

My parents began yelling at the same time, their words mixing into chaos. I opened and closed my mouth a few times but couldn’t come up with a single thing to say.

Their voices crescendoed, each one trying to be heard over the other. I grasped my head with my hands, partly to cover my ears and partly because I felt like it was going to explode.

My father threw his chopsticks to the ground, and an eerie silence followed.

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. But sorry about what, I didn’t know. There was too much. Sorry we’re so different. Sorry you don’t understand. Sorry I hurt you when I didn’t mean to.

“Did Xing pressure you to see him?” my mother asked, her face so creased with distress I wanted to do whatever it took to fix it. “Did you need help with something and didn’t feel comfortable coming to us? Did you bump into him?”

I could lie. Say our meeting was an accident. Say he came looking for me.

I could agree to stop seeing Xing and Darren, try harder in biology, stop teaching dance. . . . Except I couldn’t. I had already tried. And failed. If I lied, the real me would disappear. I’d become that hollow shell, nothing but the emptiness I saw in Dr. Chang.

I couldn’t keep the secrets anymore. They were already exploding around me. And now that one was out, it felt like the rest of the biānpào were set to blow regardless of what I wanted, regardless of what I did.

I gripped my glass so hard my knuckles turned white. “I saw Xing. On purpose. I reached out first.”

My