Never Thought I'd End Up Here

by Ann Liang

FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WE MEET IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

It doesn’t matter how often I hear it—I still want the confirmation that I can be beautiful. Crave it, chase it, like an adrenaline junkie seeking their next high.

No. My gaze catches on the person next to me, the only boy here who’s also seventeen, and I feel my heart drop. It can’t be him. It shouldn’t be.

I never thought I would hear it again. I prayed I would never have to.

And I might dislike a number of people, or disagree with them on multiple points, but I don’t hate anybody— Except for the boy sitting down beside me. Cyrus Sui.

“I remember you very well, Leah. Nobody else has left such a strong impression.”

“but you just seem really …” Gorgeous? I fill in. Elegant? Well-adjusted? Sophisticated? Glamorous? “Worn out.”

I’m still fuming over Cyrus’s choice of words. Worn out. As if even the four layers of makeup can’t conceal my exhaustion. As if he can tell from one glance that I’ve been buckling under the pressure, pouring my tears into an industry that couldn’t care less if I disappeared—and so I did. I have.

How could I have messed up everything with just a few wrong words? How do I keep messing things up?

“She says … your mother should be ashamed of herself for raising such an ignorant foreigner.” An ignorant foreigner.

“You said love you, dude at the end.” “What’s wrong with telling her I love her?”

Although my memories of China are flimsy, stretched almost translucent over a total of five summer breaks from my childhood, I always have this feeling that my bones will know the place, even when I don’t.

Even if it’s purely out of spite, I’m going to have the time of my life.

“If by very well you mean that I have dreamed of murdering you,” I mutter. Cyrus’s gaze flits to my face. Lingers an extra beat. “So you’ve dreamed of me?”

Back when the future felt endless, expansive, and all the options delighted rather than terrified me. Back when I still wore my heart on my sleeve, instead of carefully concealed in ten layers of Bubble Wrap.

Cyrus was the only one who agreed to join in on my game, just to ruin it for me. He had made me a ring of thorns, a castle of clay, and stolen the school’s infamous cat, Evil Whiskers, to be our royal pet.

At this, the muscles in his face relax enough for his mouth to twitch. “I had no idea that you watched me.”

Just because you’re not naturally good at it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue. But what’s the point in continuing something if you aren’t naturally good at it?

Cyrus frowns, as if I’m asking a trick question. “Why wouldn’t she have liked you?” A pause. “Why wouldn’t everyone like you?” Maybe because I have nothing of value to offer? Because I care too much about my appearance, and I overthink everything, and I can be annoying and dumb and indecisive, and I don’t have the slightest clue what I’m doing with my life? Because I have no personality outside of my flaws?

But it still feels like the world is careening in the wrong direction. It’s felt a little like that ever since the wedding. Ever since I saw Cyrus again.

I can sense Cyrus’s surprise, feel the way his muscles bunch and his body stiffens. But he doesn’t pull away until I’ve finished crossing over onto the ferry and both my feet are firmly planted to the deck.

“A lukewarm warning to you,” Cyrus says, jumping aboard easily after me, “that as flattering as the dress is, you should consider bringing a jacket next time. It’s going to be windy.”

“I don’t believe that books are the cure to everything, necessarily, but it’s like—when you’re feeling unwell, and you receive a diagnosis, and you’re so relieved because now you realize that it wasn’t all in your head, that there’s a name for what you’re experiencing.

On a bad day, books offer a language for your pain, and on a good day, books remind you just how precious your life is.

“I don’t remember ever telling you I became a model.” “I mean, it’s all over your social media,” Cyrus says like it’s obvious. I blink. “You follow me?”

He simply nods, expressionless, then leans his head against the window, his back turned to me. But in the reflection spilling over the dark glass, I think I see the faintest of smiles tug at his lips.

Cyrus eyes the chair warily, like he thinks it might be pulled out from under him at any second, but then he catches me staring and sits, rolling up the long sleeves of his white hoodie. “Good morning,” he tells me, his voice quiet and still slightly thick with sleep. Oliver’s eyebrows shoot up. “He didn’t say good morning to me, and I greeted him, like, twenty times.”

Cyrus lets out a high-pitched, Oscar-nominated-horror-movie scream.

“It’s an innocent mistake. And I mean, isn’t that what happens in your secret little fantasies about me?” It works even better than I thought. He goes rigid for a second, his eyes widening as if someone’s started reading his actual fantasies out loud through a speaker, and then he quickly busies himself studying the piece of paper again.

“Who would dump you?” Cyrus asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s mocking me; he sounds like he’s genuinely baffled.

“Oh my god, Cyrus, I don’t have the key,” I interject, raising my arms above my head like I’m walking through airport security. “If you still don’t believe me, you’re welcome to feel me up. Go on. Check my back pockets. See if the key is there.” He flushes. Turns away.

“What can I say? We make a good team.” I’m not totally convinced that we make a good team—I just feel like good teamwork shouldn’t involve such frequent thoughts of murder—but with our first win secured, everything is working out according to plan.

Nobody spoke to me the entire day, I sobbed. I—I don’t know why. Even when I tried to be friendly and ask questions, they just … ignored me. All of them.

It should be proof, if nothing else, that I made the right choice to leave, and I should be searching for something new by now. Another purpose, another dream, something just for myself. But I’ve only ever known how to want what other people want.

“Quick. How do you say handsome in Chinese? Like, in a colloquial way?” I ask Cyrus under my breath. “You don’t have to tell me I’m handsome in Chinese,” he replies, cocking his head. “English is fine.”

Then, in a lower voice, “I can’t believe I’m helping you flirt with this guy.”

“I’m not sure I’m a fan of that strategy,” he says, walking faster. “Yeah, okay, but you’re not a fan of anything.” His gaze slices up to my face. “That’s not true.”

He's a fan of yoh

Caz Song.

He disappears behind one of the shelves, and reemerges seconds later with a small pack of Band-Aids. For me? I wonder to myself. It’s the only explanation for why he brought me here, and it’s surprisingly thoughtful. Suspiciously thoughtful.

But the rest of my sentence screeches to a halt when Cyrus bends down before me and reaches for my left heel, his hand hovering an inch away from my bare ankle. “Let me help,” he offers, his face angled down,

“I know you like your high heels, and I’m not here to get in the way of that,” he says, “but do you have to wear them everywhere you go? Don’t you own a single pair of comfortable walking shoes?” “It’s a habit,” I tell him. “But it’s hurting you,” he says. As if you actually care.

My pain has never meant anything to him before—it’s all just for show, it must be. But whatever his real motive is, he’s more committed to this act than I expected. I can only stare as Cyrus Sui peels the pink Band-Aid and presses it over my broken skin, smoothing it out with his thumb, his touch shockingly tender.

And for just a few seconds, I remember him from the time before he ruined my life. When he was only a boy who’d picked up a wounded bird after it had slammed into our classroom window, cradling its tiny, shivering body in his palms, insisting on caring for it even when everyone else told him to let it go. I remember the look in his eyes, concern and fear and stubborn hope. I’d done my best to banish those memories, to destroy any evidence that sug...

My confusion only deepens alongside my suspicion when he helps me slide my shoe back on like it’s a glass slipper, chivalro...

Laughter springs out of me before I have time to stifle it. It’s my real laugh—an embarrassingly loud, honking sound that would be put to better use as a fire alarm. I clamp my mouth shut, my skin heating at the slip in my composure, but Cyrus is grinning at me.

“Your art holds such potential,” he tells me. “If you just added horns to it, you’d have a sheep.” If I just added horns to you, we’d have your true form, I can’t help replying inside my head.

Cyrus’s gaze flickers in my direction, and then he tells the attendant something in Chinese. Apparently, he’s asked to buy half the trolley, because she brightens and starts handing over a packet of almost every item, until Cyrus runs out of room on his lap and has to spread the mini mountain of snacks out on his tray. “Here,” Cyrus says, tossing one of the Choco Pies to me. He doesn’t make any move to eat the food himself.

“You sound jealous.” “I definitely am.”

“You don’t owe me anything. You never will.”

Because while I’ve been discovering new Chinese words on this trip, Cyrus Sui has discovered a new little emotion called guilt. Anger rushes down my throat, vicious and stronger than the taste of chocolate. He doesn’t get to do this. He doesn’t get to ruin my life and then attempt to assuage his conscience by offering me a few free snacks and vague sentences. Not after all those times I sobbed myself to sleep after I was expelled, all the dirty looks my classmates shot at me across the room, all the lunches I spent eating alone.