Never Thought I'd End Up Here

by Ann Liang

I’d love to, but I can’t, I text back. My mom’s signed me up for this trip to China and I’ll be gone two weeks. You guys have fun though!!! Her reply is immediate. oh my god, you poor thing. why on earth would they send you to that place? I stare at the screen, my muscles tensing. I can easily imagine her petite nose scrunched up in pity, her bleached brows knitted together—just like I can imagine that if I were to tell her I was going on a trip to Paris, or London, or Italy, she’d be expressing a very different sentiment. Why not? I respond. It’s going to be fun.

“Do you two know each other?” “No,” I rush to say. “Not at all.” “We know each other very well,” Cyrus answers just as quickly. “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?”

“Don’t worry, bro,” Oliver says, punching Cyrus’s other arm. “There are other girls here. We’ll have you forgetting about—Leah, right?” He looks to me for confirmation. I beam. “Yeah.” “We’ll have you moving on from her in no time,” he says with a wink. “Who said I wanted to?” Cyrus says flatly. “Oh.” Oliver blinks. “Uh, I mean, feel free to mope around to your heart’s content if that’s what you prefer …” “I will, thanks,” Cyrus says in the same flat, hostile tone designed to end any conversation. And it works.

The first, unexpected thing that comes to mind is: “Do you still play piano?” Even though the sky is swaying drunkenly outside the windows, the blue horizon tilting upward with sickening speed, he pauses for a moment, some of his fear dissolving into surprise. “You remember that?”

“And,” I go on, skipping right over his correction, “as long as there was a piano in the general area, you would rush over to play it like it was your own private concert.” At this, the muscles in his face relax enough for his mouth to twitch. “I had no idea that you watched me.” “Like, once.” Or a dozen times. It was one of the only occasions when he wasn’t pestering me at school. When he wasn’t causing any trouble at all, but completely focused, his boyish features serious, his fingers elegant and swift over the black and white keys. He played piano like it was obvious, like every note belonged together in their exact arrangement the way stars belonged in constellations, and mistakes didn’t exist. He made it look so easy.

“All right,” I say. “Let’s do this.” 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.

“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.”

“See what I have to put up with?” he asks me, pointing at Cyrus with a piece of bacon. “I don’t know how you hooked up with him. He doesn’t even seem like he’d be open to a high five, much less a fling.” I feel my brain malfunction for three solid seconds before I remember my little white lie from the airport. With feigned calm, I reply, “Well, his attitude was a lot better when we were making out.” Cyrus chokes on his water.

“We’re meant to wear these when we enter, apparently,” he says. “These?” I raise a skeptical brow as I assess the thin scraps of fabric in his hand. “Will they even do anything? I swear I have dresses made from this exact material and those things are, like, fully see-through.” Cyrus blinks fast. “Why do you own dresses that are see-through? Does that not defeat the very purpose of clothing?” “The same reason I own anything in my closet: because it looks good,” I say. Then, unable to resist a chance to fluster him, I add in an offhand tone: “I even brought one of the dresses with me. Want to see me wear it?” He freezes, blood rushing to his face, the look in his eyes almost panicked. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing until I burst out laughing. “Don’t worry, I won’t show you just yet. I can’t have you going into shock before the competition is over.” “I—” He clears his throat. “I wouldn’t go into shock—” “You almost went into shock just now at my mere suggestion. Also, wait, can you help me put this on?” I nod at the blindfold. “Yes. Sure,” he says, moving behind me. I expect him to be quick with it, the way the others are—out of the corner of my eye, I see Oliver tying the blindfold so carelessly that it ends up sliding down to Daisy’s chin—but Cyrus’s movements are like him: deliberate, precise. As the world goes dark, I feel his fingers in my hair fastening the ends of the blindfold, taking care not to mess up my bangs.

It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t usually pay attention to if I were lectured about it in a classroom, but there’s something compelling about Cyrus’s voice that draws you in and keeps you hooked. I’m almost disappointed when he finishes reading the last note.

“Oh my god, we are so good at this,” I say, grinning wide as I spin around and lift my hand in the air for a high five. He blinks in surprise. Then he high-fives me back, and for only a moment, I see an alternative history sprawled out between us, where we might have been childhood friends instead of enemies, playing made-up games under the shade of an old oak. Where he hadn’t devoted his life to making mine miserable. Where he hadn’t lied and destroyed everything.

“What do the words say?” I ask Cyrus, relieved to be able to hear my own voice again. Then, because he’s taking too long to respond and it seems like I’m kind of on a roll with the Chinese, I add, “Wo wen ni ne.” His complexion changes color, as if directly absorbing the light of the scarlet lanterns above us. “Do you realize what you just said?” “Yeah? I said that I’m asking you a question.” “No.” He raises his brows. “You said that you were kissing me.”

“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. “So the words here are: lipstick, strawberry, wedding dress, and wine.”

“Who would dump you?” Cyrus asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s mocking me; he sounds like he’s genuinely baffled. But for all I know, it’s a trap.

“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. “I—I do believe you,” he says. “We should look for the key. It can’t have hopped out of the room on its own.”

“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.” There are a number of things I would like to tell him that are less flattering and far more menacing, but I need to act fast while I still have the boy’s attention. “Cyrus.”

He hesitates. Sighs. “It’s shuaige,” he says, as resentfully as if the information had been tortured out of him. Then, in a lower voice, “I can’t believe I’m helping you flirt with this guy.”

“This should be our strategy,” I tell him. “Just charm the vendors, and we might be able to buy things for a cheaper price.” “I’m not sure I’m a fan of that strategy,” he says, walking faster.

jealous jealous

“You know, I actually kind of want that shampoo now …” 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, sweet and pliant, his lashes enviably long, his eyes so dark that someone less careful would go tumbling straight into their depths, never to resurface again.

“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 suggested he might not be a wholly horrible person, because then it was too confusing. It made hating him too difficult.

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

“What is this, Cyrus?” I demand, unable to take it anymore. “What are you trying to achieve here?” He blinks up at me with perfect, pretend innocence. “Preventing you from limping the rest of the trip? You’re welcome, by the way.” I grit my teeth. I have no idea how to talk to him when he’s like this.

“Well,” Cyrus says casually, locking eyes with me, “if you’re ever searching for shampoo, we know just the place.” 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. “Uh, what?” Oliver asks, looking lost. “Ignore him,” I say, but I’m talking more to myself. Ignore Cyrus, don’t trust him, don’t let yourself laugh at his remarks. Only one person is going to get their heart broken at the end of this trip, and it’s not going to be you. I look down at the Band-Aid on my heel and make a mental note to rip it off as soon as I can.

the joke is giving me and abe HELLO

vital. “Oh my god, what is it called again?” I ask. “The name of our winery?” Oliver says, confused. “No, that word for when you feel bad for someone but also, at the same time, can’t bring yourself to feel that sorry for them at all.” Cyrus releases a breath of laughter, then immediately hides it by pressing a fist to his lips. “It’s okay, you only need to feel slightly sorry for me,” Oliver tells me, unbothered, and grins. “Just sorry enough to go out with me.” I raise my brows. Every time I let myself entertain the idea that Oliver and I could become actual friends, he’ll say something like this, leaving me to try and figure out just how serious he’s being, and whether he’ll join the list of guys who stopped being nice to me the second they realized I wasn’t going to hook up with them. It

“Leah, you have to show them your cloud drawings.” I freeze. “Oh, I mean—I didn’t bring any with me. They’re in my special cloud sketchbook—” “You can draw them right here,” Cyrus says, smiling still, his features positively angelic, concealing his diabolical schemes. It’s middle school all over again. He just wants to see me make a complete fool of myself and laugh at my expense. “It’s not like we’ll be getting off this train anytime soon.” “But I don’t have my art supplies,” I counter, smiling back through clenched teeth. Never mind the dormant mind-control powers. I’d give anything for the power to kill with just my eyes. “You can use this,” Cyrus says at once, reaching into his bag and pulling out a black ballpoint pen with our last hotel’s brand name on it. “And you can draw on my hand. I’d be honored.”

“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.

I’m about to say yes, but Oliver turns away with a look of complete disinterest, and Daisy has already returned to her knitting. I bite my tongue, feeling stupidly self-conscious at being the only one so eager to try out a bunch of likely overpriced snacks. 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.

“This is so good,” I say, closing my eyes with a blissful sigh. Still, I can just imagine the look on Cyrus’s face when he says, “Maybe I should give you two some time alone.” I take another slow, luxurious bite as if I’m one of those upper-class people partaking in a wine-tasting competition to prove how cultured my taste buds are, inhaling deeply and letting the marshmallow dissolve on my tongue. “You sound jealous.” “I definitely am.” “I can tell you’ve been single too long,” I remark, matching his dry tone. “Just so we’re clear, this isn’t enough to get you a pity kiss from me either.”

“But I will pay you back for the pie,” I add, opening my eyes and dabbing the corner of my lips. “How much did it cost?” “Three million yuan,” he answers right away. I stare at him. “Okay, I’ll be honest: I always figured you’d become a scammer, but I didn’t think it would happen quite so soon.” “You don’t have to pay me back, Leah,” he says, shaking his head. The train rattles through a tunnel, the darkness briefly transforming the window into a mirror, so I can see the reflection of his profile even with his face angled away from me, his gaze heavy and almost sad. “You don’t owe me anything. You never will.”

“In fact, I would argue that we understand each other a bit too well.” “So do I,” Oliver tells me. “I could take a whole trivia quiz on him and ace it. Like how he’s allergic to small talk, and refuses to drink anything except boiled water, and how he can’t stop talking about you—” Cyrus cuts him a look I’m unable to decipher, and Oliver goes quiet. I sober up at once, leaning forward with a kind of morbid curiosity, my heart beating oddly in my chest. “He talks about me?” I ask. “What does he say? Bad stuff?”

“No, good stuff.” Surprise dances through me. My attention swings to Cyrus, but he’s rooted to the spot, wearing such a brilliant poker face that he could win any game of cards. “Like what?” I ask. Oliver’s gaze flickers to Cyrus as well, then back to me. “Yeah, uh, he’d kill me if I told you.”

“Don’t look at them too long.” “Why?” “They’re my ugly shoes.” He raises his brows. “You have designated ugly shoes?” “I have a designated ugly everything,” I tell him. “You should see my designated ugly pajamas—and by that, I mean, if you ever actually saw me in them, I’d have to bury you.” “Well, now I’m really curious. Though I doubt it’s possible for anything to look ugly on you,” he adds in the same offhand tone. He could be making a passing comment on the rain. I stare at him. It feels like my body’s internal system is malfunctioning, the wires in my brain whirring and overanalyzing those few simple words.

“Everything I did was pointless,” I say, shortening my strides as the mountain path cuts sharply up. “But it’s all behind me now, so it’s—” “Leah, careful—” I don’t even have time to react when Cyrus pushes me to the side, the movement so sudden that my stomach swoops low, my back slamming against the trunk of a tree. It all happens in a disorienting flash of color and sound: the branches scraping my hair, the gray sky spinning above me, and Cyrus’s body curving around mine, his hands firm on my shoulders. Rocks clatter sharply onto the path like shrapnel where I had been seconds before—where Cyrus stands now, facing me, taking the brunt of the impact. Yet he doesn’t flinch once. Doesn’t move away. Not until all the rock shards have finished falling from above. My heart is thudding so hard I can feel the vibrations in my throat, my mind scrambling to process the facts. A fact, however improbable: He pushed me to safety. He shielded me, even though he had only half a second to react.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his face bent toward me, his expression shrouded by shadows. “Am I okay?”

I echo, feeling as if part of me is stuck in another timeline, one that made infinitely more sense than this. “Yeah, I’m completely fine— But you—” “Good,” he says, his relief audible.

His hands are still braced around me like he’s scared I’ll slip out of reach, and he leans closer, burying his head against the crook of my neck. His scent is stronger than the pine leaves hanging around us, or maybe I’m just more sensitive to it; all I can breathe in is the fragrance of sage. “Leah, I really … I really …” One of his hands lifts from my shoulder and braces itself against the bark of the tree behind me, his fingers clenching, nails sinking in, like it’s the only thing holding him upright. His voice is hoarse. “I really …” He doesn’t say more than that. It’s as though he won’t allow himself to, as though he’s warring with himself on something, and to lose would cost him everything. He just repeats the words over and over, ...

Leah. You remind me of the greatest sculptors, who can turn marble into the impression of billowing silk, the coldest stone into something soft. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that everything you touch turns beautiful. The world becomes beautiful, as long as there’s you.

“Oh, I don’t think you’re going to laugh.” I tug my hood even lower. “I think you’re going to run screaming.” “That’s not going to happen. Really, Leah,” he says, gentler, more serious. “At least let me look at it to ascertain that you’re not dying.” “But I look so ugly right now,” I whisper, my skin burning. “Impossible,” he says firmly. It’s the kind of thing any girl would dream of hearing, but it’s useless, because it isn’t true. I shake my head. “Don’t make such bold declarations when you haven’t seen my face yet.”

Cyrus grins all of a sudden, like he can’t help himself. “Hey, my sunglasses look good on you.” I turn my head a fraction and see myself in the glass display. The sunglasses are bigger than anything I would’ve picked out for myself, the frames a little on the thicker side, the color solid black, more functional than fashionable. But privately, I like the way they look too.

an old woman approaches us with flower crowns hanging around her arm. She’s not the first person I’ve seen selling them, and most people in our group walk right past her, but I slow my steps. The crowns are beautifully woven by hand, with bursts of yellow daisies and waxflowers and camellias. “We’ll take one,” Cyrus says, passing her the money. I turn to him in surprise. “I was just looking.” “I know,” he tells me, and takes his time choosing the crown with the brightest, fullest flowers, before setting it down gently on my head like this is my coronation. “My grandmother used to sell these for a living before we moved to America. It’s a tough business. I would’ve bought myself one,” he adds, following me to the edge of the water, “but I think it looks better on you.”

“You have to stop being so nice to me,” I tell him as I climb onto the raft, one hand holding the flower crown in place, the other grabbing the back of the bamboo chair for support. He hops on after me, sitting gracefully down on my left. “Why?” Because then I might not want to be enemies with you anymore, I answer silently inside my head. Because then it’s going to be much harder to go through with my plan, when everything I’ve done so far is to get my revenge. “I’m not used to it.”

“What are you used to, then?” “You know. Being childhood enemies.” His smile feels like a warning, but it’s not the kind that precedes a prank. It’s too sincere, his voice dropping low as he says, “I’ll keep being your enemy, if that’s what you’d prefer.” His eyes drop down too, drifting to my lips with such weight and intent that I can almost feel the ghost brush of his gaze. “I can be whatever you want me to be.”

“Please never—get lost again.” “I have no plans to,” I reassure him. “But, like, what am I supposed to do now? Describe more rocks to you?” “Stay there. I’ll come find you—” And then the line breaks.

“Leah?” Cyrus says, raising the flashlight. “Leah, are you—” I don’t let him finish the sentence; I rush up to him and wrap my arms tight around his body, one step short of crashing straight into him. He stiffens in surprise, but I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t even think past the relief melting through me, the warmth of his jacket and his breathing against my skin. He’s found me. He promised he’d find me and he did.

The fear that’s been building in my bones is cleared away so suddenly I’m lightheaded as I latch on to Cyrus, a sob escaping my lips. After half a heartbeat of silence, he draws me in, anchoring me to him, his hand rubbing slow, gentle circles over my back, and maybe it’s because I’d been half-certain I was about to die that I feel so wonderfully, vividly alive right now. “It’s okay,” he tells me, his voice low in my ear. “You’re safe.”

“Sorry to make you guys worry.” “I think Cyrus was more worried than any of us,” Daisy says, drawing her knees to her chest on the couch. “He was the first person to notice you were gone.” I turn the blow-dryer off, and in the sudden silence, I hear myself swallow. “He was?” She nods. “Honestly, he looked like he was about to lose his mind if anything happened to you.”

My eyelids fall shut. I don’t pay attention to the story, only to the cadence of his voice filling the room. He could be reading poetry, a classic, a eulogy. If he’s the one saying it, anything could sound lovely. Nestled in the warmth of the blankets, with my eyes still shut, I tell him, “You have a nice voice.” He pauses. “You must be tired.” “What?” “When you’re tired,” he says, “you forget to hate me.” “I forget to hate you a lot of the time,” I whisper. It slips too easily from my tongue, without warning, turned by the darkness into a confession.

Cyrus is waiting there on the stone pavement, and as our gazes meet for the first time since I snuck out of his hotel room this morning, he smiles at me, sincere and almost shy. It’s the kind of smile that makes you forget everything. The sun. The sky. Gravity. Every major and minor hurt I’ve ever endured. Every name that isn’t his.

“I never wanted you to hate me,” he whispers. “I never wanted you to leave. I only meant to tease you until you truly noticed me. I would wait every day for the moment you walked into class with your polka-dot socks and your cute sweaters and pigtails—it was like my day didn’t even begin until I saw you. I loved the games you invented and the stories you came up with and your laugh, how it bubbled out of you and you could hear it from down the corridor. All I could think about was you, all the time, and how funny and sweet and beautiful you were—”