“You are an idiot,” Sammy muttered under his breath. He dodged a puddle only to step in another one. Water splashed all over his shoes and pant legs. “Dammit!”
He had to leave his phone in the auditorium tonight of all nights, when the biggest storm of the year rolled into town. He didn’t realize he didn’t have his trusty electronic sidekick until after he changed for the dance.
Sammy checked his watch. He had half an hour to get to the auditorium, find his phone, return to his room, and change before the buses left for the dance.
FEA paid good money to reserve a hotel ballroom for the semester sendoff, and the money-minded Wang laoshi made it clear: anyone who missed the bus would have to find their own way to the hotel. On a normal night, he could take a taxi but trying to find an empty cab on a night like this? Good luck.
Olivia’s going to kill me.
Sammy had the auditorium in his sights when he noticed a figure lurking in the bushes nearby.
His pace slowed; his heart rate quickened. No one in their right mind would linger outside in this weather. The figure was either a crazed murderer or just plain crazed. Either way, Sammy had no interest in being that evening’s homicide news item.
Lightning streaked the sky and illuminated the figure, who wore a familiar gray T-shirt and jeans. They rifled through the foliage like they were looking for something.
Sammy’s pulse returned to normal. “Blake?”
Blake’s head snapped up. He didn’t have an umbrella or raincoat on, and his shirt was so soaked it looked black. “What are you doing out here?”
“I left my phone in the auditorium.” Sammy stepped closer and raised his umbrella so that it covered both of them. “What are you doing out here?”
This was their first real conversation since Blake and Farrah’s breakup. Sammy nearly fell over when he heard about their split. It didn’t make sense. He’d seen the way Blake looked at Farrah. There was no faking that kind of emotion.
There had to be more to the story than Blake was telling them. But it didn’t matter. If Blake wanted to tell them the truth, he would. Otherwise, it was best to let Farrah grieve and move on instead of trying to fix things and making them worse.
“I’m looking for my contacts.”
“I didn’t know you wore glasses.” Sammy was sure Blake didn’t wear glasses. The guy could read a menu posted outside a restaurant from twenty feet away.
Blake shrugged.
A sad smile crossed Sammy’s face. If only Farrah knew how much Blake still loved her.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Thunder crashed outside, followed by the loud pitter-patter of raindrops splattering against the windows. Flashes of lightning illuminated the skies with an eerie light. It was the worst storm they’d experienced in Shanghai, and it matched Farrah’s mood to a tee.
She reached for her necklace before she remembered she didn’t have it. Hope of finding it before her flight tomorrow morning dwindled by the second.
Farrah should be looking forward to this summer. She won the design competition—the one she’d dreamed of winning since she found out about it years ago. She received the email while waiting to board her flight after FEA’s spring semester trip to Chengdu, and her resulting scream nearly got her arrested by airport security.
Yes, she was excited about potentially interning in New York with Kelly Burke (final internship placement pending). But she also mourned what had to end for the next chapter of her life to begin.
Farrah curled her hand into a fist and rested it at the base of her throat as she meandered down the fourth-floor hallway. Group photos of every class since FEA Shanghai’s inception in the 80s lined the walls. The groups started small—there’d only been a dozen students in the first class—before expanding to the current size of seventy-plus undergrads.
It was surreal, looking at the photographs and realizing how many people had walked these halls before them. Members of the first class would be in their fifties by now. Yet there they were in their photo, immortalized behind glass, forever nineteen and twenty and twenty-one. Farrah detected a shadow of her friends in all of them—a hint of Sammy’s good-natured grin, a trace of Kris’s regal haughtiness, a mischievous twinkle in the eye that would make Courtney proud.
The superficial resemblances were there, but she wondered if they laughed as hard and loved as deep, if they had their hearts broken and if they found family here, or if they were just ships passing in the night. Did they keep in touch decades later? Did Shanghai change them, or was it a mere footnote in the stories of their lives?
Inexplicably, her heart ached for these strangers. She would never know their stories and secrets, but she knew them. She was, after all, walking in their footsteps.
Farrah skimmed her hands over the glass-encased images until she reached the end of the series. This year’s class photo, taken yesterday and already mounted on the wall like the dozens before them. They’d arranged the students by height. Farrah stood in the middle row with Olivia and Nardo, while Kris and Courtney sat cross-legged in front of them. Luke, Sammy, and Leo towered in the back.
Farrah’s gaze strayed to the blond next to Luke. Blake’s dimples were out in full force, but there were shadows beneath his eyes and a furrow in his brow.
She fought the urge to over-analyze the minutiae of his expression. Instead, Farrah tore her eyes away from the photo and focused on the stretch of blank wall following it. Next year, there’d be another picture. Then another, and another, until Farrah’s class was just one of FEA’s many memories.
The sound of heels clacking against linoleum echoed in the stairwell. Only one person in FEA who wore heels that made that noise.
“Hey.” Kris stopped beside Farrah.
“Hey.”
The two friends examined the wall in silence. Kris smelled like her usual mix of Chanel perfume and expensive shampoo. Farrah breathed it in, letting the familiar scent comfort her.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Kris touched their class photo before pulling back like it burned her. “This year flew by.”
“Yeah. I can’t believe it.”
“It won’t be the same.” Kris looked at Farrah. There were no tears, no overt emotion except for the wistfulness in her voice. “Even if we all come back to Shanghai, it won’t be the same.”
Farrah dropped her hand from her throat and wrapped an arm around Kris’s waist. “I know.”
Kris rested her head on Farrah’s shoulder in an uncharacteristically vulnerable gesture, but neither girl acknowledged its strangeness.
Instead, they stood there, soaking in their last moments together in this place, while the storm raged outside.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The lights dimmed. The music swelled. The air filled with giddiness and nostalgia.
Within an hour, the FEAers transformed the program’s staid dance into a rave reminiscent of their heady first days in Shanghai, only this time, it was a last hurrah instead of a kickoff.
Blake leaned against the wall and sipped his drink. A few months ago, he would’ve been right there with them on the dance floor. Now it felt wrong. Were soon-to-be dads allowed to dance like that? The parenting e-books he downloaded didn’t cover party etiquette for parents.