It’s not like her parents are home and I can ask to borrow one of Auntie Yingfei’s Hermès business suits. I assume both Uncle Dai and Auntie Yingfei are at work because whenever I wake up, they aren’t home.
“What are you doing?” Ruby demands when she sees me dressed in her garb from her regular day-to-day closet. I was hoping that she’d remember that we sort of bonded before her parents told her that I would be going to Europe with her mom. I’ve put on one of her jumpsuits that looks and feels exactly like a dramatic poof of pink cotton candy, and I look and feel fantastic. I can see why Ruby wears this garment as her everyday costume. Even though my stomach is cramping nonstop, new clothes can make me feel better. The jumpsuit is exceptionally tight around the waistline, but it doesn’t matter. At least I can half squeeze into Ruby’s baggiest outfit.
I am too exhausted to respond. Instead, I stir more sugar into my coffee.
My phone buzzes. A WeChat message pops up.
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: You’re wearing my dress! wtfff
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: Take it off
Iris: I don’t have any wearable clothes
Iris: Can I wear it until we get to the mall?
Iris: You wrecked mine, remember?
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: Just stop!
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: Isn’t it enough that both my parents are taking care of you and sending you to Europe?
Iris: ?
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: I was supposed to go with my mom
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: We go every year
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: This was supposed to be our summer
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: They are using you to punish me, can’t you see? They never think i’m good enough
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: You’re not better than me
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: My parents just feel sorry for you. They can’t see that you just take everything for granted. You actually don’t care about anything. I actually try really hard.
Iris: What are you talking about???
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: That’s what i mean. You just don’t get it. I can’t believe you’re so dense.
Iris: Get what?
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: Everything. just go home!!!
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: No one wants you here
Iris: Ruby, I’m so sorry
Iris: I’ll talk to your mom and dad
SuperPrincessQueenRuby8421: Like you care
Across the kitchen table, I glance up from my phone. Ruby’s face reddens to the color of a sour Caesar—my least favorite cocktail but my dad’s favorite drink. Ruby’s messages make me feel more nauseous and angry. How is any of this my fault? Why does she think that I’m deliberately ruining her life? I feel humiliated for repeating the words “I’m sorry” so many times in a week. “Sorry” isn’t resonating with Ruby at all. “Sorry” to Ruby is like trying to teach me how to find x in an algebra equation. It won’t work.
Then, to make matters worse, I sneeze unexpectedly. A wad of snail-gray snot lands on my borrowed dress.
Ruby’s mouth drops and for once she doesn’t roll her eyes. My cousin makes a choking sound as I scrub at the stain frantically with a napkin. My allergies have been getting worse, and my nose, throat, and ears feel congested. The morning smog is particularly overbearing. I sneeze violently again. More gray snot. What is happening to me? In America, my snot was white or yellow, but in Beijing, it has become the same prison color of all this sprawling concrete. Like a mutant, is China somehow changing me biologically on the inside, as well as on the outside?
Mr. Chen escorts us to the car, barely looking up from a video of a meowing kitten on his iPad.
I expect that we’re going shopping again and I’m all prepared to buy a new outfit, but Mr. Chen drops us off at a hideous oyster-colored skyscraper building. It doesn’t look like a mall, but I’m instantly intrigued. Is this an illegal warehouse for cheap designer purses and shoes?
“Where are we?” I ask Ruby, who doesn’t even look at me. She seems nervous, even preoccupied.
Then I see a sign: HANYUAN LANGUAGE SCHOOL. Why are we even here? Does Ruby take English lessons? Are we picking something up?
Real slasher-movie fear overcomes me.
Since kindergarten, learning has always made me extremely nervous. I have never done well in a classroom setting, and I just don’t understand how I’m supposed to absorb so much knowledge inside my brain. If you think about it, the brain already has to be responsible for eating, sleeping, talking, and muscle memory, so how can I absorb various facts and multiple equations? These numbers are not applicable to real life. Languages are impossible to learn. Plus, I have a C-plus average in Spanish and French, and even though my parents tried to teach me Chinese all these years, I could never understand it.
I once told my guidance counselor at school that the SATs have way too many different sections, which expect one to be able to multitask efficiently. Afterward, she looked at me funny and asked me to list my hobbies and any alternate career paths.
“Sephora isn’t a hobby and Yale isn’t a job,” she told me, but of course, I wasn’t listening. I was too busy planning my valedictorian speech and searching for inspirational quotes on the internet. I was going to pretend that I was Mindy Kaling giving her brilliant commencement speech at Harvard.
Confused, I follow Ruby into the building and we walk into a long gray hallway. I start hyperventilating because we’re in an actual school. With classrooms, desks, lockers, and very few decent-looking male students.
“Ruby, Ruby, Ruby,” I whisper, trying to get her to stop walking. Sweat begins sliding off my fingers, and I can feel my Tiger whiskers start to sprout on cue. Just by being inside a school, my body is beginning its change for the worse. I could actually be turning into a mutant feline.
Still furious, Ruby ignores me until I grab her chicken-leg arm. She sees my panic-stricken face and pauses for just a millisecond.
“I honestly can’t be here,” I panic-whisper. “You won’t understand because you like learning, but I’m seriously terrified right now.”
The shock of failing senior year is suddenly raw, fresh, and real. I shoved the bad news into the back of my brain like an overdue credit card bill. I never wanted to deal with it again. In real life, failing high school actually means that I could be a permanent adult failure for the remainder of my jobless, friendless, boyless, no-fun, no-luxury-shopping life. The fear is too unmanageable, like the time that I accidentally used nail polish remover instead of eye makeup remover and burned my own cornea. At the emergency room, the doctor looked at my red swollen eyeball and said, “You need to be careful, young lady! You could have permanently blinded yourself!” That has always been my metaphor for my life: mixing up makeup removers and never wanting to deal with the terrible, unfixable consequences.
“What are you saying?” Ruby says, seeming distracted. “Iris, I never understand you! Speak English, please!”
Her Apple Watch beeps.
She’s apparently in a hurry to go somewhere.
“Please,” I say, clinging to her arm like an annoying child.
I can’t help it. I feel so useless in this sprawling LEGO city. I never understood Peter’s fascination with his models, and I somehow suddenly feel claustrophobic and queasier in this dense landscape than I was at breakfast. I feel like I’m inside a gigantic, rocking spaceship in Star Wars.