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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Elsie has a crush on Ada, the only person in the world who truly understands her. Unfortunately, they've never met in real life and Ada lives an ocean away. But Elsie has decided it's now or never to tell Ada how she feels. That is, until her long-lost best friend Joan walks back into her life.In a summer of repairing broken connections and building surprising new ones, Elsie realises that she isn't nearly as alone as she thought. But now she has a choice to make…A lyrical contemporary story about falling in love and finding yourself in the process, for fans of THE BLACK FLAMINGO, THE FALLING IN LOVE MONTAGE and Alice Oseman."An epic fandom, a scavenger hunt for a lost love and an ode to cultural inheritance – this is a wonderfully heartfelt and joyously queer romance" - Lauren James, author of The Loneliest Girl in the Universe"If You Still Recognise Me is a poignant, perfectly formed debut about queer love, fandom and family." - Lex Croucher, author of Reputation"A beautiful and intricately layered tale of friendship, fandom and finding yourself – I absolutely adored it." - Sophie Cameron, author of Out of the Blue"Exploring the bonds of friendship, family, fandom, culture and queer community, this is a story about finding who you really are at the heart of all the things you love." - Sera Milano, author of This Can Never Not Be Real"A celebration of fannish glee, queer joy and family in all senses of the word. If You Still Recognise Me asks what it means to find yourself, when we are all more than a single story. I adored it." - Kat Dunn, author of Dangerous Remedy"Beautifully written with moments of sheer lyricism. A must-read for humans of all ages and walks of life. I loved it so much!" - Wibke Brueggemann, author of Love is for Losers"If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So is just so SO perfect. Refreshing, relatable and raw in its honesty, this is the book I wish I'd had as a queer teen discovering my identity." - Sarah Underwood, author of Lies We Sing to the Sea"If You Still Recognise Me is a moving and heart-warming story about queer love, family, culture and fandom and So's has a uniquely poetic style that sees beauty in the everyday and makes the familiar feel fresh and new" - Ciara Smyth, author of Not My Problem"This wonderful book is both a tender coming-of-age romance and a tapestry of queer identity that spans oceans, generations, and stages of life ... Suffused with queer wistfulness and the ache to be known, So's debut is as intimate and revelatory as the first touch of a first crush's hand." - Riley Redgate, author of Seven Ways We Lie"A lyrical, complex tale of friendship, family, and all the stories we tell ourselves – true and not – about what it means to love" - Kelly Loy Gilbert, author of When We Were Infinite"Cynthia So deftly weaves a story that explores queerness, love, and relationships across distance, both geographical and time. An accomplished debut with shades of Nina LaCour, If You Still Recognise Me is the perfect summer-time read." - Lizzie Huxley-Jones, author and editor
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Praise for If You Still Recognise Me
“An epic fandom, a scavenger hunt for a lost love and an ode to cultural inheritance – this is a wonderfully heartfelt and joyously queer romance”
Lauren James, author ofThe Loneliest Girl in the Universe
“A poignant, perfectly formed debut about queer love, fandom and family”
Lex Croucher, author ofReputation
“A lyrical, complex tale of friendship, family, and all the stories we tell ourselves – true and not – about what it means to love”
Kelly Loy Gilbert, author ofWhen We Were Infinite
“Suffused with queer wistfulness and the ache to be known …as intimate and revelatory as the first touch of a first crush’s hand”
Riley Redgate, author ofSeven Ways We Lie
“Refreshing, relatable and raw in its honesty, this is the book I wish I’d had as a queer teen discovering my identity”
Sarah Underwood, author of Lies We Sing to the Sea
“Beautifully written with moments of sheer lyricism. A must-read for humans of all ages and walks of life. I loved it so much!”
Wibke Brueggemann, author of Love is for Losers
“So has a uniquely poetic style that sees beauty in the everyday and makes the familiar feel fresh and new”
Ciara Smyth, author of Not My Problem
“A celebration of fannish glee, queer joy and family in all senses of the word. If You Still Recognise Me asks what it means to find yourself, when we are all more than a single story”
Kat Dunn, author ofDangerous Remedy3
“A beautiful and intricately layered tale of friendship, fandom and finding yourself – I absolutely adored it”
Sophie Cameron, author of Out of the Blue
“Vivid, touching and romantic – the perfect summer read. This delightful love story heralds the arrival of a brilliant new talent in YA.”
Cat Clarke, author of Girlhood
“Exploring the bonds of friendship, family, fandom, culture and queer community, this is a story about finding who you really are at the heart of all the things you love. Absolutely stunning.”
Sera Milano, author of This Can Never Not Be Real
“A delight to read; warm as the last days of summer and overflowing with heart”
Tom Pollock, author of White Rabbit, Red Wolf
“Luscious writing that leaves you aching with feelings! Cynthia So deftly weaves a story that explores queerness, love, and relationships across distance, both geographical and time.”
Lizzie Huxley-Jones, author and editor
“Cynthia So is an exciting, fresh and much-needed new voice in YA”
Simon James Green, author of Gay Club!
“A book that will make your emotions sing”
Sinéad O’Hart, author of The Eye of the North
“An absolutely beautiful and dreamy love letter to Queer Love across years, distance and through generations. Utterly phenomenal.”
Lily Fae, children’s book blog
Content Warning
If You Still Recognise Me contains content that some readers may find triggering, including references to emotionally abusive relationships, racism and homophobia.
5
CONTENTS
8
VOLUME I
CHAPTER ONE
Ritika lets out a whoop when we emerge from the stuffy air of the building where we just had our last exam, and she’s not the only one. The school playground fills with cheers, the sounds bursting like fireworks around us. Ritika chats with Mara and Delphine, her friends from orchestra, while I hover by the gates. I gaze up at the school, its cluster of brown buildings smaller today than they’ve ever seemed before. It wasn’t long ago that they loomed.
I think about standing in front of these gates with Joan, under the tree that has always stood watch by the entrance. I was showing her the school I’d be going to for what seemed like the rest of my foreseeable future at that point. The school I’d be going to without her because she was moving to Hong Kong, where both of our families are from. Her dad’s job taking her away from me. 11
“Do you think I’ll make another best friend?” I asked her.
“Of course you will. But don’t forget me, OK?”
“I won’t. You’ll still be my best friend even if I make another one. I can have more than one best friend, right?”
“Sure. You can have as many as you want.”
I haven’t forgotten her. The reverse doesn’t hold true, though. I wonder where she is now. Even back then, we were already talking about which university we wanted to go to. She liked the idea of college in the US, the sound of Yale or maybe MIT. “Science sounds cool. I hope I’m good at science when we start secondary school.”
I got into Cambridge to study English like I always wanted, and, if I get the results I need, I’ll be starting there this October.
Time feels strange and malleable, as though my future – university and life beyond that, adulthood – is suddenly so close and blazing in front of me that it has burned a hole right through to my past. As if I could walk through those gates, leaving school forever, and arrive seven years ago, under that tree, where eleven-year-old me is standing with eleven-year-old Joan, and I could pull Joan into the present with me. Drag her by the hand into whatever’s coming next.
I step outside the school gates, but I don’t go anywhere. I’m still here. Still eighteen. The noon sun warming my skin. And, behind me, my best friend Ritika is still talking to her friends. 12
Half an hour later, Ritika and I are sitting in an All You Can Eat, eating all that we can.
Spring rolls and prawn toasts soggy with grease, various meats indistinguishable from each other, crunchy stir-fried vegetables doused in a glossy sauce. The food isn’t actually that good, but I’m enjoying it, anyway, just being in this dimly lit and mostly empty restaurant with Ritika. An ancient fan slowly spins its arthritic joints, blowing warm air in our faces. Our hands get stickier as we wipe our orange mouths on paper napkins and laugh about nothing, about this giddy feeling that rises in us like bubbles in a champagne glass, this feeling called end-of-exams.
But we’ve promised that we aren’t going to talk about them. We’re done with those. No use realising now that we’ve made a mistake on question 3b or whatever. I’m never going to think about maths again.
So we’re talking about the summer. The Summer: capital T, capital S. The one big summer of our lives, between school and uni.
“We’d better start booking stuff for our trip soon,” Ritika says, spearing a piece of broccoli with her fork. “It’s all getting super expensive already.”
I groan. I’ve only just finished worrying about exams, and now Ritika is bringing up another thing to stress 13about. “You know my mum says I have to get a job first before I can think about going on holiday with you.”
“Right.” Ritika points the broccoli at me. “So get a job.”
“Is it really that easy?”
“Elsie. It’s not going to get any easier if you keep putting it off.”
“You sound like my mum.”
We make faces at each other. Ritika eats the broccoli. “Why don’t you try that comic shop?”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. But I don’t know… The guys who work there don’t seem that friendly to me? Like, I’ve never had a bad interaction with them, but I’ve also never had a good one, either. I’ve seen them chat with other customers but they never talk to me. Which kind of puts me off the idea of working there.”
“But you’ve still been thinking about it.”
“Yeah, I guess. I might head over there after this. I’ve got a copy of my CV with me. It was so hard to write! I didn’t really have anything to put on it. Anyway, I’m not a hundred per cent sure I’ll actually hand it over.”
“You do love your comics.”
“Only Eden Recoiling, really.” I can’t help but smile because I really, really do love Eden Recoiling.
“I haven’t read a lot of other things. But I want to use this summer as an opportunity to read more.”
Ritika grins. “I bet they have a staff discount.”
“Oh! I didn’t even think of that.” 14
“How are you smart enough to get into Cambridge, but too stupid to even realise that staff discounts are a thing? It’s not fair.” Ritika flicks my arm with a finger.
“Ow.” I flick her back. “Hey, what’s Jake doing this summer? Are you sure you don’t want him to come with us on this trip? Doesn’t he feel left out?”
“Um,” Ritika says. “About that…”
The ‘Staff Only’ door opens with a distractingly noisy yawn, yielding an old Chinese man with a duster, humming something almost familiar. The woman behind the counter, probably his wife, barely looks up at him, too absorbed in an episode of a K-drama playing on her tablet. I know it’s a K-drama because Ritika knows it’s a K-drama. She recognised it instantly from the sounds of the actors’ voices and the background music. Apparently it’s a really tragic romance.
I watch the old man as he walks with shuffling steps, dusting the framed watercolours of lakes and mountains. Vistas of tourist spots in China, I think. Places I’ve never been.
I find myself staring at this man – his wrinkled forehead, his sagging face, his scrawny arms in that short-sleeved white button-down – and suddenly I’m overwhelmed. Like eating something you don’t expect to be so spicy, and it’s fine at first, positively bland, but then it sets your mouth on fire, singes your tongue, licks its flame all the way down into your stomach. 15
My throat hurts.
I feel a gentle touch on my arm. “Hey.” Ritika’s voice is soft. “You OK?”
I blink and turn back to her, hoping she can’t see the wet shine of my eyes. But she’s looking at the old man too.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Your mum’s back today, right?”
“Yeah.”
Her gaze shifts back to me, and she squeezes my arm, so I assume she has noticed my tears. “How are you feeling about seeing your grandma again? It’s been a while since you saw her, right?”
“Yeah. Eight years. I don’t know. I’ve been too busy with exams to really process any of it… But apparently I’m now crying at the sight of random old Chinese men, so yay?”
I fold my paper napkin this way and that, searching for a relatively grease-free patch to dab at my eyes.
“Here.” Ritika pulls out a tissue from a packet in her bag and hands it to me. “It’s OK. Better than bottling things up, which – if you want my honest opinion – you have a tendency to do.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah, you really do.”
I dry my eyes with the tissue. “I have no idea why I’m crying. It’s not like I’ve even seen my grandfather since I was ten. I do remember him, just a little, but it’s very 16foggy. I didn’t really feel anything when my mum told me he’d passed away. Which sounds awful. I mean, I was sad for my mum. But other than that…”
“Look, we just finished school forever. It’s all right to be a bit emotional.”
I give her a weak smile. “If you say so. Anyway I think I’ll get some ice cream. That’ll make everything better.”
The freezer in the corner has three big vats of basic flavours – that trio of white, brown and pink that evokes a childlike excitement in me every time – and fruit ice lollies individually wrapped in clear plastic. I bring a scoop of strawberry ice cream back to our table. Ritika frowns at me when she sees it.
“You don’t like strawberry ice cream.”
“I don’t? Are you sure?”
I put a generous spoonful of it into my mouth and grimace.
Ritika is right. I hate it. Cheap strawberry ice cream tastes like a child’s crayon drawing of a strawberry with no actual fruit involved.
I continue eating it, anyway. It’s something to focus on, the task of vanquishing this horrible ice cream.
Ritika rolls her eyes at me and reaches across the table to pat my shoulder. “You can just cry, you know. You don’t have to be so weird about it.”
“Shh. Let me enjoy my disgusting ice cream in peace.”
Ritika chomps on a delightfully noisy prawn cracker 17for a while. “Hey, do you ever wonder why your family hasn’t been back to Hong Kong in such a long time?”
It is a long time. When my grandfather’s illness took a turn for the worse, my mum went over there at last, the first time in eight years, and stayed for the funeral. She’s back today, and she’s brought my grandmother to stay with us for the summer because she doesn’t want her to be alone right now. But I haven’t been to Hong Kong since primary school, and all this time I’ve spent away from it seems more pronounced now.
“It is pretty weird. We used to go every year when I was younger.”
“Yeah, you know me and my fam go to India, like, every other year at least.”
“I used to ask my mum about it, but she always just gave such non-answers.”
After a while, I kind of got used to it. Mum’s strained face whenever I asked. Dad’s placid smile. Not this year. Maybe next year.
Ritika sniffs the air. “Smells like family drama to me.”
The old man has moved on to watering the potted plants that line the sill of the front window. He carries on humming. And I think, fuzzily, about how my dead grandfather used to sing to me.
18We leave the restaurant, squinting in the fierce light of the afternoon sun. Ritika tells me she’s catching a bus home. “Get a job,” she says. “Also, movie tomorrow?”
“You don’t wanna hang out with your boyfriend?” I tease. “You barely spent any time together while we were revising for exams.”
Ritika waves her hand dismissively. “You and I are going to be tragically torn apart in three months. I’ll have plenty of time to hang out with Jake.”
After her bus arrives, I start walking to the comic shop. As I’m crossing Hythe Bridge back into central Oxford, I pause, looking over the blue railing down into the green stream below.
Crossing the bridge always unearths shards of memory, like an archaeologist digging up bits of pottery, but the memories get a little more washed out every time. Maybe the bits of pottery were vividly painted in the beginning, but now they’re faded, smudged, their colours and lines fainter and fainter.
My ex-boyfriend rarely held my hand in public. Sometimes, when we were crossing this bridge, he would reach out, his fingers loosely curled round mine, only for the length of the bridge, and stupidly I held on to every moment of that more fiercely than he ever held on to me. Hard to believe now that something as simple as handholding could’ve made me so happy.
I still see him everywhere. Every blond-haired white boy is him. 19
The buzzing of my phone stops me from getting too lost in my thoughts. I assume it’s just another message from my mum – I’ve had a few of those already today. But, when I take out my phone, I see it’s not her at all.
For the past few months, there have only been two things making my heart race. The first thing was bad. Every time I opened an exam paper, I’d be terrified that it would turn out to be incomprehensible, filled with questions I was unprepared for: I had missed an entire topic in my revision; I had been taught the wrong syllabus; I had forgotten every single thing I’d ever learned. All frequent occurrences in my exam-season nightmares.
The second thing is happening right now, and it’s good. Extremely good.
It’s a message from Ada.
There’s a link, followed by a series of orange hearts – Ada’s preferred heart emoji colour. Her preferred colour full stop.
I’m desperate to read the fanfic that she’s written for me, but not standing in the middle of the street, especially not on this bridge. I want to savour it. Get home, hole up in 20my room, lie on my bed and linger over every word on my phone. Then I’ll read it again on my laptop, where I can easily copy and paste all my favourite parts into a comment and tell Ada in all caps how much I hate her for ruining my life with her brilliant writing when what I really mean is I love you, I love you, I love you.
But I think about what else is waiting for me at home.
I know I’ll have to see how sad my mum is, and I don’t ever want that, but especially not right now. I’ve just finished my exams, and I want to be happy.
I’m definitely going to swing by the comic shop first.
Before I do that, though, I let myself revel in the giddy rush that Ada’s message has given me.
I pocket my phone, and when I start walking again I have to try actively not to skip. Exams are over, the sun is shining, and Ada has written me a fic.
It feels like summer at last.
CHAPTER TWO
The Speech Balloon is only a few minutes away in Gloucester Green, sandwiched between a bubble-tea place and a dusty antiques shop. Inside, I’m greeted by cheerful blue walls and packed white shelves.
There doesn’t seem to be anyone here, until a person stands up from behind the till, their back to me. All I see is a blond head of hair.
My heart stops.
I only started coming here after the break-up, looking for something to occupy myself with now that I had all these frightening empty swathes of time. I was armed with a list of recommendations I’d found on Tumblr – comics featuring prominent queer characters of colour. Eden Recoiling was one of the first things I picked up, and I got into it so quickly, I barely even remember what else was on that list. 23
Leo never mentioned he liked comics but maybe he does, and I just don’t know about it. I never knew him well enough: he was worse than a stranger to me, someone I thought I knew, but didn’t really—
But they turn round, this blond person at the till, and it’s not Leo, after all. This person’s hair is different, lighter in shade and in volume, a sunlit cloud floating away from their head. They’re skinnier too.
They smile at me.
I realise that I’m staring, and I look away without smiling back. I end up feeling horribly rude, and I don’t know how to fix that, so I make a beeline for the shelf that I know Eden Recoiling is on. The newest issue from May is there. On the cover is Neff, short for Nefarious. Nefarious Warthorn, a male character that everyone in the fandom is obsessed with. He’s white, of course, and lean with a cruelly handsome face, and he wears a lot of patterned velvet suits. Nobody can tell whether he’s actually evil or not, despite his ridiculous name, and he has a dark and blurry past. Nearly everybody ships him with Hax, the oblivious daydreamer and inventor, a minor character and also a white guy, who perpetually looks like he’s just been deposited by a hurricane, with a dazed expression and straggly hair and grease-stained dungarees, one strap unbuckled.
Eden Recoiling is set several decades after an apocalypse, when plagues of locusts destroyed much of the vegetation, 24and then monsters emerged from underground and killed most of humanity too. The heroes of the comics continue to fend off these monsters, while some of the few plants that remain have gained sentience and mobility.
I roll my eyes at the cover, where Neff is apparently talking to a vine demon. Admittedly, I had a soft spot for him when I first started reading the comics, but then I stumbled into the fandom and realised that he’s all everyone wants to talk about, even if there are plenty of characters who deserve just as much attention, if not more.
I take the April issue off the shelf just to look at it because it has Zaria Zero on the cover. I already have a copy of this; it’s on my desk at home, and I would just sigh at it whenever revision overwhelmed me. Zaria in an emerald jumpsuit, her beautiful dreadlocks streaked with purple, looking up at a night sky with a pink-hued full moon. I can’t help but stroke the cover. Zaria got me through so much. Could I have finished my A levels without her?
I put it back on the shelf eventually and go to pay for the May issue.
“Eden Recoiling! Oh my God, I love this series. I don’t know anybody who reads it!”
I am not prepared for this interaction. Usually, when I’ve come here after school, I’ve been served by an older guy with a scruffy beard, who never really speaks to me. 25Occasionally, there was a different guy, beardless but with long dirt-brown hair, also older, also uninterested in conversation with me. The boy in front of me now is probably about my age, and he genuinely seems to want to talk.
“Uh yeah! It’s great. I don’t know anybody who reads it, either.”
Is that true? I don’t know anybody in real life who reads it, but there’s a small fandom online and, of course, Ada.
The boy drums his fingers on Neff’s face on the cover. “Ah, Neff. He’s fit, isn’t he?” He says this not with the detached tone of somebody who’s only saying what he supposes my opinion would be, like I would expect a straight boy to say, “He’s fit” – not that I would ever really expect a straight boy to say that – but with personal conviction in the statement, an audible swoon in his voice.
I blink at him, and he ducks his head, embarrassed, scanning the comic. “Yeah,” I say, “but I think Zaria’s the hottest.”
He smiles at me now, and, unlike when I first entered the shop, I can actually return his smile, even if I’m still nervous.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “All the characters in this comic are extremely fit. It’s a real problem.”
“Yeah, how dare they? Like the world is rebuilding itself after an apocalypse – there’s no way they can possibly look that good! It’s just so implausible. I can’t look half as 26put-together as them, and the world hasn’t even ended in our universe yet.”
He laughs. “You’re right. Don’t they have higher priorities than fashion and personal grooming? Where are all these amazing outfits coming from?”
I set my backpack on the counter, fishing for the right coins from my purse to give to him. As I’m sliding the comic into my backpack, he reaches out to touch the acrylic charms dangling from the zip. They clatter together in his hand. “Wow. Is this Zaria? And Mayumi?”
I nod. I bought them from this fanartist that I really admire. The Neff charm sold out within a few days, but I looked last week and there were still Zaria and Mayumi charms left. Ugh. It upsets me that they don’t get nearly as much love as Neff does.
I wish I could draw but I can’t. I can’t write fanfic, either. I’ve tried before but I’ve never managed to finish anything worth posting. The only thing I can do is leave enthusiastic comments on other people’s fanworks, and sometimes I make graphics: mood boards, aesthetics and gifs, what people call ‘edits’ on Tumblr.
As Eden Recoiling doesn’t have a movie or TV adaptation, I can’t make gifs of it exactly, but I take snippets from other things with actors that could play characters like Zaria and Mayumi, and overlay them with quotes from the comic and pretty effects. Even if Zaria and Mayumi aren’t the most popular characters, I still tend to get over 27a hundred likes on my posts, which means they must be all right. Ada always gushes about my edits too, so I’m encouraged enough to keep making them.
She has the same Zaria and Mayumi charms. I bought them for her, as a Christmas present.
“I love these – they’re so cute! You must really be a huge fan. I’m Felix, by the way.”
His expression is just as sunlit as his wispy white-gold hair. I look past him and see the piece of paper stuck to the wall: Staff Wanted.
I make up my mind and reach into my bag for my CV.
“I’m Elsie,” I say.
As I leave the shop, I text Ada again, my stomach bubbling and my hands shaking. I’ve never given my CV to anyone before or met another ER fan in real life.
A link appears. I open it up, and it’s a Tumblr post by a woman called Sara whose username I instantly recognise. She belongs to the contingent of Neff/Hax shippers; one of her novel-length fanfics is regularly hailed as a classic in the fandom. I’ve never seen an Eden Recoiling fanfic recommendation list that doesn’t mention at least one of her works. According to her bio, she’s in her late twenties and lives in California.
In this post, she’s cosplaying Neff Warthorn in one of his customary velvet suits, hair neatly coiffed, and somebody else is cosplaying Hax, sporting a bedraggled look and sooty dungarees. Against a lush floral backdrop, Neff is down on one knee, proposing to Hax. And what a picture they make – Neff’s flawless composure in delicious juxtaposition to Hax’s unkempt delight. The caption reads: I proposed to Macy and she said yes! So of course we celebrated with a Neffax enGAYgement cosplay shoot!
A ring emoji caps off the post.
Sara and Macy are the dream. Two years ago, when Ada and I just started chatting, Sara was in the middle of writing the fanfic that propelled her to fame. Macy 29commented on every chapter. She lives in Washington DC but she happened to be visiting California for a work trip, and she posted about it on her Tumblr. Sara, curious about this person whose comments were basically fuelling all her writing at this point, was looking at Macy’s Tumblr and spotted that post. They met up in LA and found that they got along better than they could ever have expected.
Two years later, they’re still doing the long-distance thing, but Macy is planning to move to LA eventually, and now they’re engaged.
Sara and Macy have a mini-fandom of their own, and Ada and I, even with our slight grudge against Neffax shippers, still count ourselves as part of it. They’re just adorable. They do Neffax cosplay shoots together when they can, and you can see their chemistry in every photo. Fans would often sigh, I want someone who looks at me the way Sara looks at Macy.
I could be this for you, I think. You don’t have to do anything except ask me. Instead I write:
I send it before I can even think about what I’m saying, and, with my heart in my throat, I add:
I hate that I’m standing outside the Speech Balloon because I need to lie down right this second. I already can’t believe I even said the thing about us cosplaying Zaria/Mayumi together. But Ada’s message has murdered me. 31
What can I possibly say to that?
Not as cute as you dressed up as Zaria, I’m sure.
We’d steal the spotlight from Saracy.
Do you think we’d have people shipping us?
What would our ship name be? Adelsie?
Which of Mayumi’s outfits would you most want to see me in?
I groan. I think about Ada wearing Zaria’s emerald jumpsuit. I groan some more.
My heart goes somewhere that isn’t this earthly realm.
I can’t take it any more. I decide that this is it. This summer – The Summer – is when I’ll tell her how I feel about her. I have to. I don’t know how – the thought of confessing my feelings, saying, “Hey, Ada, I have a crush on you,” out loud over a video call or even typing it in a text feels like it would kill me instantly, turn me into dust on the wind. But there must be a way. There has to be. After this summer, we’ll both be at university, and there’ll be so much work to do and so many new people. Ada will probably find someone within walking distance to fall in love with, someone who’s not an ocean away, and that’ll 32be the end of us. If I don’t do it this summer, I never will.
Other people have done it before. Sara and Macy did it. I can do this.
I rub my hands over my face and try to summon enough composure to at least reply.
CHAPTER THREE
Mum and Po Po are sitting together at the dinner table.
It’s startling how much skinnier my mum is after only two months. Two months – that’s the longest she’s ever been away from me. Seeing her now, it hits me how much I’ve missed her. Sure, there’s been a handful of nights while she’s been away in Hong Kong where I’ve cried myself to sleep, but I told myself that was only because I was stressed about my exams.
Really it was the emptiness of the house, especially when Dad went over to Hong Kong too for a week to attend the funeral and left me all alone. It was me sitting at my desk with my revision notes, and, whenever I pressed pause on my studying playlist and took off my headphones, I could only hear quiet. No TV downstairs, or my parents having a conversation way too loudly with no concept of indoor voices. 34
It was me waking up on the day of the funeral and thinking about putting on black for something I wasn’t going to, and then remembering that it wasn’t black but white that was the colour of mourning in Hong Kong. So I wore a white dress to my exam, and then when I got home I found it impossible to concentrate the rest of the day, until I ransacked my room and found, in a crumpled tote bag at the back of my wardrobe, the zippered red coin purse I used on trips to Hong Kong when I was little. It had an Octopus card in it and a handful of coins. Hong Kong dollars. I rolled the pretty, scalloped edge of a two-dollar coin between my fingers.
The final thing in the purse was a key ring, with no keys attached. It was a flat, rectangular piece of white acrylic, in the style of the hand-painted signs that red minibuses in Hong Kong use to show their destination. There were Chinese characters written in red and above them an English translation in blue: Made in Hong Kong.
Before he retired, Gung Gung was a minibus driver. He bought the key ring for me, a little piece of his history.
I took it out into the garden and buried it. I felt silly afterwards, kneeling on the grass, still in my white dress, which I’d pulled up over my knees so as not to stain it. It had been so many years since I had seen Gung Gung, and what did I know about him, really? Nothing except the faintest memories. I wasn’t sad, not exactly, but I was filled with a kind of longing for all the knowledge that 35would allow me to be sad. What would life be like for me if, like the key ring, I had been made in Hong Kong? If I had grown up there? If Gung Gung had been a real part of my life, and not just the hazy outline of a man, seen from a distance?
“Yan Yan,” my mum says, as I walk into the dining room. It’s a nickname for my full name – Yut Yan – that I hardly ever hear. “Where have you been?” All in Cantonese, since Po Po doesn’t speak English.
Mum looks like she’s holding herself too tightly, back straight and arms rigid. I almost wish I could give her a hug, but people in my family don’t really do that. Her taut posture matches her mother’s. Sitting across the table from each other, they’re nearly mirror images.
“Celebrating the end of A levels,” I reply in Cantonese, except the word A levels is in English.
“How was the exam?”
The actual exam seems like something that happened to somebody else a long time ago, or like one of the many dreams I’ve had about exams. “I think it was OK.”
“It’s nearly four.” Mum actually taps her watch when she says this. “You agreed to be home by two, and you didn’t reply to any of my messages. Now greet your grandmother properly.”
I nod at my grandmother. “Po Po.”
“Yan Yan! So tall now, ah! Taller than your mum, aren’t you? And what a lovely dress!” 36
I can’t help but preen a little. I wore one of my favourite dresses today to face my last exam. Not my favourite because that’s folded up and pushed to the back of one of the drawers under my bed. I haven’t put it on since Leo broke up with me because I can still picture the way he looked at me whenever I wore it. The one I’m wearing today I bought earlier this year with my Lunar New Year red envelope money. It’s a blue wrap dress with a daisy print.
“Um, thanks! I like your blouse too, Po Po.”
“You sound like a white person trying to speak Cantonese, ai yah. And what has your mother been feeding you? Too many potatoes.” She shakes her head and then immediately offers me an egg roll from a big square tin made of shiny red metal.
An egg roll. Just one of the many snacks my gung gung used to press into my small hands, insisting that I eat more. I peer down through the golden cylinder and spy the pork floss stuffed in its centre. Pork floss! It’s been forever.
I’m still full from lunch, but the egg roll is so tasty, crumbling sweet and buttery in my mouth, with the savoury touch of pork. It’s almost enough for me to forget that I apparently sound like a white person trying to speak Cantonese.
“You like it?” Po Po says. “I remember it was your favourite.”
“It’s delicious. Thanks, Po Po. How are you?”
“The flight was so long,” she complains. “My body aches! Even more than usual. This house is very nice, though.” 37
How strange that she’s never been here before, to the house where I’ve lived all my life.
Now that I’m closer, I can see that Mum’s mug is actually empty, but she carries on gripping it with both hands. She starts on a long spiel about all the work that’s gone into the house over the years, the big bathroom renovated a couple years ago and what she’s thinking about doing with the kitchen next year.
Po Po’s eyelids are drooping.
“Po Po, why don’t you go for a nap?” I suggest. “You must be so tired after the flight.”
“Oh, gwaai syun.” Good grandchild. A verbal pat on the head.
Warmth flushes through me, a sunflower turning towards the sun. I’d forgotten the way those simple words could make me feel. If I’m just a white person speaking Cantonese, how can that phrase make me glow like that?
“We were waiting for you to come home,” Mum says a tad sharply. She’s always been stricter than my dad, but she seems more intense than usual.
She leads Po Po up to the guest bedroom.
I wash up the mugs they left behind and go upstairs, to the sanctuary of my room.
Being around my mum was like sitting next to someone who’s smoking a cigarette. Like I was inhaling all this second-hand smoke, but the smoke was her grief, thick and clouding the air. 38
It was what I’d anticipated. Why I’d put off coming home for as long as possible. I just didn’t want to be in the same room as all that sadness. I wanted to be able to pretend that this was going to be the best summer of my life.
I lie down on my bed and check my phone, clearing away the WhatsApp notifications from my mum asking me why I wasn’t home yet.
I sling my arm over my eyes. Po Po is like a stranger to me, but she makes me feel like I’m a stranger in this house too, with her comment about my bad Cantonese.
A memory floats up. One summer, when Joan and I were both in Hong Kong at the same time, we went to the Peak. The skyscrapers of Hong Kong glittered below us. “Isn’t it weird,” she said, “that when we’re here everyone looks like us, but I feel even more different than I do when we’re in England?”
“It’s not weird. I know what you mean.”
“We’re just like tourists here.”
“At least here nobody is yelling ching chong ling long at us, though.”
“Yeah. There is that.”
I roll over on to my stomach, open up Ada’s fic on my phone and start to read.
39Two hours later, I’m still lying on my bed, phone in hand. I’ve read the fic three times over, but I haven’t managed to leave a comment. I haven’t even messaged Ada to say that I’ve read it.
I just want to roll off the bed and smush my face down into the carpet and become one with it.
For Elsie, the Mayumi to my Zaria. That’s the dedication at the beginning.
And the fic is exquisite. Ada’s writing always is, but this is special because she wrote it specifically for me. From all the comments I’ve left on her fics, from all the conversations we’ve had, she knows exactly what makes my knees weak and my cheeks hot, and she’s woven all these perfect details into the story. Mayumi overhearing the cool and serious Zaria talking to a stray fox in a baby voice, cooing at it. Zaria dozing over an open book and drooling, and Mayumi deftly removing it from under Zaria’s chin before their research is destroyed by Zaria’s drool – but pausing, just for a moment, to watch Zaria’s sleep-softened face. Mayumi fastening the clasp of Zaria’s bracelet round Zaria’s wrist, fingers brushing along skin.
And Zaria and Mayumi’s kiss. I’ve read iterations of their first kiss a dozen times – most of them in Ada’s previous fics because she’s practically the only Zaria/Mayumi writer in the fandom – but, while I lapped it up every time, I’ve never read one as exhilarating as a real kiss. But this one. Three times I’ve read it in the past two hours, and each time 40I touched my fingers to my lips, felt my breath, quick and shallow in my throat, a pulse of pleasure fluttering through me like the wingbeat of an enormous bird.
Ada wrote this for me.
Ada, the Zaria to my Mayumi.
Like everyone else in fandom, Ada and I say I love you to each other like it’s punctuation. But lately I’ve been finding it harder to say it to her because I’ve discovered that I mean it more seriously than I thought. Even just typing those three words requires an effort that feels deeply and nauseatingly physical, like reaching into my own ribcage and turning my lungs inside out.
I still say it to other people in fandom easily. A pretty piece of fanart featuring Mayumi in a tuxedo, an eloquent paragraph or two of analysis about snake symbolism in the comics, and I don’t even think for a second before saying I love you to the stranger responsible. Meanwhile, my closest friend in fandom has written me this unbelievable piece of art, and I’m just lying here, clutching my phone to my chest, paralysed with feelings that I can’t bring myself to articulate.
For dinner, Mum’s planned chicken wings marinated in soy sauce, a whole steamed fish, pan-fried tofu stuffed with pork mince, and gai lan with oyster sauce. I make a face when I see the gai lan in the vegetable drawer in the fridge. 41Chinese broccoli is too bitter for my taste but, whenever I complain to Mum about that, she just says, “Be thankful I’m not making you eat bitter melon.”
I chop garlic while Mum washes the gai lan. Part of me is still living inside that fic Ada wrote for me, the cosy weave of its sentences like a blanket fort, and I nearly slice my own finger open.
Mum doesn’t notice. She asks me about the exam again absent-mindedly. Then she asks about Ritika.
“She’s all right. We might go and see a movie tomorrow.”
Mum looks up, holding a bundle of green under the running tap. “You know you need to stay at home and look after Po Po while your dad and I are at work, right?”
“Po Po is perfectly capable of looking after herself for a few hours.”
Mum looks back at the sink and turns off the tap, shaking the leaves energetically. “I brought her here so she wouldn’t have to be by herself.”
I can’t believe this. All my hopes for The Summer feel like they’re going down the drain along with the green-tinted water. “She knows how to use a phone. She can call any of us if she needs to. This is the time when I’m meant to be having fun with my friends, Mum, and I can’t even go to the cinema?”
“Weekends.” Mum sets aside the gai lan in a blue plastic colander. “You can go this Saturday or Sunday. You can do anything you want at the weekend. Believe me, I want you 42to have a good summer with your friends. I didn’t want any of this to happen, but it’s what’s best now.”
“Wait, what about my holiday with Ritika? You said I could go to Cornwall with her as long as I get a job first.”
“When did I say that?” Mum’s brow is creased.
“Um, I don’t know. Before exams?” Before everything else happened. Of course.
“You know things have changed since then, Elsie.”
“It’ll only be for, like, a week!”
“And what about this job?”
“OK, I haven’t got a job yet… But I’m sure I can work weekends or something.”
“Maybe, if you ask your dad, he can take a week off work to stay home with Po Po when you go to Cornwall. I’ve used up all my annual leave already. But…” She glances at me. She looks so frail and her small hands, dripping water into the sink, are nearly skeletal. “If you find a weekend job, when will we have time together as a family?”
“Mum, you just said I can do anything I want at the weekends. Also, we’ll still have every evening together, right?”
Her lips press together in a flat line. “Hmm. Well. You have to find that job first.”
“Do you want me to get one or not?”
“I want you to hurry up with chopping that garlic,” she says.
43When Dad comes home, Mum meets him at the door, and I hear them in the hall talking in low voices while I watch the stove. After a while, they come through to the kitchen, and Dad oohs and aahs over the smell of the food.
The house feels better now that he’s here. Airier. Dad’s always been really good at lifting the mood.
Mum tells me to go and wake Po Po up for dinner. I’m still half in shock and half annoyed by the fact that this summer isn’t going to be anything like I dreamed, all because of Po Po being here, so I do this briskly, throwing open the curtains of the guest room and letting the light of the summer evening spill in. Po Po sits up groggily and asks me the time.
“It’s seven.”
“In Hong Kong?”
“No, it’s … two in the morning there, I think? Dinner’s almost ready.”
“I’m not hungry. I just want to sleep.”
“Mum’s making soy-sauce chicken wings.”
“I know,” she says, and I remember that she was with Mum this morning, buying all the groceries. She sighs. “Your mother is trying so hard to make my favourite food for me, and I’m too jet-lagged to even enjoy it.”
“Didn’t she cook for you while she was in Hong Kong too, the past couple of months?”
“No, of course not. It’s my house. I make the food.”
She relents and comes with me, making her way down the stairs slowly with a hand on the banister. 44
We have the TV on in the living room, but the volume turned down. As we eat, Po Po keeps asking what’s happening on the show, but she does compliment the food too. Mum looks momentarily less ghostlike when Po Po says she likes the chicken wings.
Then two men kiss each other on the TV, and everyone at the table turns ghostlike, including me.
I always freeze when there’s anything gay on television, as though there’s a rainbow searchlight beaming from the screen directly on to my face. I’m used to it being awkward, my parents looking down at their food and saying nothing, and that silence taking on a physical presence, like a clammy fog over our table. But this time, with Po Po here, it’s so much worse.
The audible pause in chopstick activity rings in my ears.
This has to be the longest TV kiss I’ve ever witnessed in my life. It’s not even all that passionate – it’s a bit unconvincing, to be honest. If anything, the fakeness of it makes it even more excruciating: here I am, having to endure watching this gay kiss with my family, with my grandmother whom I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade, and it’s not even a good kiss.
When it finally ends, Dad offers Po Po another chicken wing.
Mum stands up, her chair scraping against the floor, and walks into the kitchen.
Po Po frowns. She lets Dad drop the chicken wing into her bowl of half-finished rice without protest and eats it 45with a focused efficiency, discarding the clean bones in the growing pile on the table.
Mum emerges from the kitchen with a glass of water. We all carry on with the rest of our meal.
Probably ten whole minutes later, Po Po says, “It doesn’t seem right for a man to be wearing a floral shirt.”
The man wearing the floral shirt on TV right now was not involved in the kiss earlier. I’m not sure if he’s another gay character, although it seems highly unlikely to me that there would be so many in a single show.
“I love florals. I think they look great on everyone,” I say.
Po Po glances at me. “Hmm? Do you know any boys who wear floral shirts?”
I watch as it takes Mum four tries to pick up a piece of tofu with her chopsticks, which is unusual for her. “No, but I wish I did.”
God, boys at my school wore the most boring things. I’ve always thought more boys should dress like Nefarious Warthorn, or, if they can’t be as bold in their sartorial choices as Neff, a floral shirt should be the least they could do, once in a while.
Po Po’s response to this is to lift a long strip of white flesh from the steamed fish with her chopsticks and put it in my bowl.
CHAPTER FOUR
After dinner, I retreat to my room and message Ada at last.
It turns out that saying I love you to Ada is so much less horrible than watching two men kiss each other on TV while my family sit round me in silence. Baby steps, I guess.
Ada’s reply is almost instantaneous.
I press the video button in the top right corner, and after a couple of seconds Ada’s cute shaved head and big tortoiseshell glasses appear. She waves. She’s wearing a robin-egg-blue bow tie and a grey shirt with a subtle white floral print. Every time I see any of her outfits, I feel a spike of something in my gut. I’m pretty sure most of it is just the fact that she’s so gorgeous, but sometimes 48I wonder what it would feel like to dress the way she does. The confidence that would take. I don’t think I could do it, and maybe that makes me a little jealous of her. But mostly I’m just in awe of how she looks.
“Speaking of florals,” I say, “you look great!”
“Thanks.” She smiles. “You do too. So. How was the rest of your day?”
“I bought the May issue of ER but I haven’t even read it yet because I just couldn’t stop rereading your fic.”
Ada hides her face behind her hands. “You’re too sweet! We should be talking about how awesome you are. You finished your exams, and you applied for your first job ever!”
“I just really hope I get it! But it was so frustrating earlier with my mum. She totally forgot that she said I could go to Cornwall with Ritika as long as I get a job.”
“So she’s not gonna let you go any more?”
