Page 20

THIS TIME, I TURN UP AT THE TASLIMS’ ARMED WITH PROPER FOOD—a generous oblong slab of fruit cake that Stanley made for the family, but I’m sure he won’t miss, even if there was a sign that said DON’T TOUCH.

Which is not the same as DON’T EAT.

The nuts in there are brain food, after all.

My phone buzzes. Stanley. Oops. I ignore the call.

Royce opens the door dressed in a white T-shirt and filmy Lululemon joggers that I have to drag my eyes away from, because I am morally deficient. I blame Zee and the reality shows she’s watched that I have absorbed by osmosis.

“So,” he says once we are seated in the living room, “I wanted to explain about my behavior.”

I cross my arms and look at him expectantly, saying nothing.

Royce clears his throat, his face hot. “The thing is, Agnes, as you know, we’ve been spending some time together, haven’t we, and we’re both in comedy.”

I press my lips together and give him a terse nod.

“Yes. So…um, and in this time, I’ve come to…I’ve, uh, the thing is—”A loud rumble issues from his stomach and he turns even brighter red.

“Yikes,” I say.

“Sorry, I missed lunch. I came back late from violin because of the traffic, and then you arrived on time.”

“No worries, please eat something, we can continue this conversation after.” There’s already a tray of nyonya kueh and gummy bears and various potato chips set on the table, but I cake-block him triumphantly. “Try my cake,” I intone, brandishing it with a flourish. “It’s homemade.”

“Wow, a homemade cake,” Royce says. He reaches for cutlery, cuts a generous chunk of my—Stanley’s—cake and pops it into his mouth. His eyes widen. “Oh my God! This is amazing!”

“Thanks,” I say. I try some and have to stop myself from snatching the rest of the cake for myself, it is that beautiful.

We demolish three-quarters of the cake in ten minutes.

“What’s that liquid it’s soaked in? Tastes a little alcoholic?” Royce says between mouthfuls.

“I’m not sure. Prob not, I mean, there’s kids and a pregnant lady in my household.”

“So you didn’t make it,” Royce teases me.

“Nah.”

“I’ll have more, then.”

I reach over to smack him, and he grabs my wrist. And doesn’t let go.

We face each other, our breaths hot and fruity.

Wow, Taslim’s eyes are criminal. Like, literally, because of his family’s crime against nature. I will myself to think of spiders and licorice, but his lips are there and something has loosened in my brain.

“Agnes,” he whispers.

It’s going to happen. The air is making humming noises and we’re drawing closer to each other and—

My phone buzzes on the table like a trapped hornet. Taslim, startled, drops my wrist and, unbalanced, I pitch forward into his lap, face-first, where his crotch is.

“Oh my gosh,” I say, jerking upward. “I’m so…I’m so sorry!”

Royce puts a pillow over his lap, his face flaming. “Don’t…don’t apologize, it’s my fault!” He is also louder than usual.

My phone continues to buzz with messages. I glance down at the screen. Wow, why are my eyes not focusing? I rub them and try to read the screen.

Stanley:Agnes, did you take the cake that I made for the faculty’s End-of-School Bash?

Stanley:That cake is SOAKED in rum. Do NOT eat it!

Stanley:Where are you?

Oops.

“Oops?” Royce says, his eyebrows knitting comically.

I grin at him. “I think I just accidentally drunk you. And me.”

“What?”

Stanley:Agnes, where are you??

I type confidently: Im fine, don owrry m at Royce’s tuitioning at his! ya.

Royce reaches for his tea and knocks it over the table onto his white T-shirt. “Oh no,” he slurs.

I hold on to his arm. “You okay? You need help getting to your room?”

“I’m fine,” Royce says. “But if you really want to see my room so much, just follow me.”

“I do actually want see your room,” I say point-blank.

“It’s upstairs,” Royce says, not steadily.

We walk-wobble toward Royce’s room and pass a couple of servants on the way up, which helps bring me back down to earth, somewhat. How many people work and live here?

And then I’m standing in Royce’s stunning, light-flooded room. I can’t believe it.

“Just hold on a sec,” he says, ducking into, I don’t know, the antechamber? A walk-in closet? I peek and confirm that it is indeed a walk-in closet. Wow.

There’s a sound of a door banging open deep in the closet. “I’m going to change,” Royce says. “Make yourself comfortable.”

I wander around the room looking at the grays and creams of his room, broken up by the occasional splashes of color of a framed print or photos. I study his books (mangas, David Walliams books, the entire Percy Jackson series, a couple of Hanna Alkaf novels, loads of nonfiction books and textbooks). And his bed, which is neatly made and very inviting. I wander over, run my fingers across the plaid bedspread and sit. I have to resist the urge to sink my face into his pillow and sniff the damn thing.

Snap out it, I admonish myself. I turn and check out his minimalist nightstand, with only a small dimmable round lamp, an Apple watch, and a small silver photo frame tucked between a fluffy plush marmot and a soft brown bear, and a tissue box printed with a dancing lemur logo.

I pick it up, curiosity getting the better of me. It’s a studio photo of a young man in his twenties around a gawky, younger boy of around ten years of age, who I realize with a start is Royce.

“Hey,” Royce says.

I drop the photo in a panic. “I’m sorry,” I chirp, “I’m not snooping, I promise.”

“It’s okay.” He sees the question in my eyes and sighs. “That’s my brother.” He takes the photo I am holding out to him. “My older half brother, actually.”

I look at the way Royce is grasping the photo frame and understood that they had been close. “He looks much older than you,” I say cautiously.

“He is. He’s nine years older. When his mother died in an accident, my dad took a second wife—my mom—then they had me.” A half smile curved his lips. “The spare.”

There’s a weight in every word he’s saying. I keep quiet, willing him to keep talking.

He traces his brother’s face. “This is the only photo of him left in the entire house. My mother had all his photos taken away and stored when…when he left. Back when we were in Jakarta.”

“He left?” I say, not understanding.

“Yeah.” His voice roughens. “He…he left home years ago.”

“Shit,” I say. “What—where…”

“I don’t know. As the elder son of my dad, who himself is the only son of his generation, my brother had been primed from birth to take over from him for a specific branch of the family business. He went to the best schools in the region, then college at Stanford, then Harvard for hisMBA, then straight to work. Everything was going along swimmingly, then about five years ago, out of the blue he j-just snapped.” Royce’s voice drops to a whisper. “He told us he wanted nothing to do with the family business, that he hated the pressure, and poof! Bye. Gone. He didn’t even want to tell us where he was going. I haven’t seen him since then.”

He has that silver frame in a death grip, looking like he would shatter if I made the wrong move. I put my hand over his and give it a brief squeeze. His hands relax at my touch. “I’m sorry….What happened then?”

Royce ducks his head. “My father was so angry, he had a stroke and was in the hospital for almost a month.” He inhales and exhales with force. “Then the machinery cranked into action, hushed up my brother’s disappearance and my father’s stroke, because the illness alone would bring down the stock price, even crash it. And then they just—they just quietly replaced my brother in the company and stopped mentioning him in press releases. There was this vague planted story about how he joined a monastery, and maybe that’s true…maybe that’s what happened.” He shuts his eyes. “And then he was cut out of the will and from our lives, as though he never existed. One day I woke up and just saying his name become anathema. His belongings were cleared away, his photos disposed of. After that, at age twelve, I started having to do everything he used to do. Attend these business courses, academic programs, chess lessons”—the frustration in his voice could cut glass—“golf lessons, and show up in the business proper, shadow my dad in meetings, conferences, all of it. The spare had to step up.” He laughs, low and bitter. “All the proverbial eggs were in my basket now. But do you know why…why we’re in Kuala Lumpur now, where my mom is from, instead of Jakarta?”

I shake my head, my stomach tensing.

“I had…an episode.”

“Meaning?”

Royce’s face twists and he drops his voice low. “It was half a year after my brother had left us…left me, and everyone at home was pretending he never existed, they were making me go t-to fucking mini—MBA courses and Mandarin and French lessons and the corporate ski trip and YPO outings. I just…lost it.” He balled his fists, the photo frame forgotten in his lap, his breaths shallow. “They came to pick me up at school and I just…I just…I just started screaming.”

My heart stopped.

“I—I just screamed and screamed and screamed in the middle of my classroom. The teachers had to drag me to the infirmary so I could be sedated by the school doctor. My parents freaked out. I didn’t mean to, but I was only twelve—”

I grasped his arm, wishing I could hold him instead. “Royce, you don’t have to justify what happened at all,” I say, my heart squeezing so tight that tears prick my eyes. “It’s not your fault. Something traumatic happened to you and nobody gave you any support. You were only twelve.”

I stop, hit by a stunning realization: I, too, had been though something traumatic—my mother’s years of mental illness, and nobody had thought to see how I was coping with it. Not even myself. And I couldn’t blame my loved ones for missing this check-in, not when it feels like the world is only just beginning to tolerate the field of mental health.

His gaze meets mine. “Thank you,” he says simply. He gathers himself before speaking again. “Anyway, that’s why we left. There was no way they could save face if they lived in Jakarta. The community is so small, and with two ‘crazy’ kids…” He used air quotes on crazy.

I withdraw my hand and cross my arms.“I hate that word, crazy,” I say quietly. “My mother…they used to call her crazy in front of me, when she used to pick me up at school in tears. The kids, even the teachers.” This is the first time I’d ever told anyone about this, but why stop now? I mean, I’d already face-planted in his crotch.

Royce gives my arm a brief squeeze. “That’s not right. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“So, what did they make you do?” I ask him, almost afraid of the answer.

“Myparents were so worried they tightened the network around me and sent me to a mental health professional to get assessed.Here, let me show you something.” He goes to the door and points out the lock system, with a simple lever apparatus. “See that lock? I don’t have the key. My doors don’t lock. Not even in the bathroom.” He pauses and smiles mirthlessly. “They don’t trust me. They are afraid of what I might do.” His eyes are glassy, unseeing.

I feel like someone had punched me in the stomach. Suddenly, the walls of his room felt too close, the cavernous space too small. My mother—I’d done the same to her, hadn’t I? I’d been tiptoeing around her, treating her with kid gloves, too—even though I’m the kid in this equation.

I don’t feel good for many reasons, and not just because I’d accidentally drunk myself. If this is what rum does to you, I’m never drinking again…at very least not until I turn eighteen.

“Man, this is not what I expected when I asked to see your room,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.

Because I cannot be the girl that makes Royce Taslim cry in his own bedroom.

It works: He chuckles wryly. “Believe me, this is not how I saw this day going down. I had other plans.” Royce joins me on the bed again. “Anyway, this is why I’ve got a finger in so many pies, why I’m involved in a bazillion after-school activities, and why I’m killing myself to excel in everything. That’s the only way to get my parents to let their guard down. To them, success equals normalcy. So I show them what they want to see, and I’ve learned to make it work for me.” He shrugs. “This way, I’ll always have excuses whenever I want a night to myself at the comedy club: Peer tutoring! Russian movie marathons! Javelin practice! Marcus, Killian, Shyam, my crew—they take turns covering for me. I get dropped off at theirs, they assure my parents they’ll take care of me, and then I cab off.…”

I see, in my mind’s eye, how the people I had dismissed as his “flighty, rich jock” friends, were standing by Royce and making up excuses for him, inviting him around, doing all they could so their friend could let off some steam. No, it wasn’t just letting off steam—Royce loves stand-up, the way I love running. I understand that kind of passion. If I’d been in his place, I would have done everything I could to preserve this secret garden of mine, too. I understand Ray Lim, and I think I understand Royce Taslim now.

I rest my hand on his arm. “Taslim?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m so, so sorry your family put you in this position. And for all that’s happened to your brother. And you.” I make myself look him in the eye, even if doing so messes with my respiration. “I really…I really appreciate you telling me this.”

“Thank you for listening,” he says. “I was afraid you’d think less of me if I told you about my past.”

“Not at all,” I said. “In fact, I think I like you better now.”

“Great,” he says. “Although—” Something shifts in his eyes. A question in them.

I blush and drop my hand. “How’s your dad doing these days?” I say, trying to sound nonchalant.

“My dad, he’s never been the same, physically, since the stroke. He’s actually in Switzerland now, and they are doing some experimental stem cell treatment thingy on him. The results have been promising, but he had a little setback last week. Please don’t tell anyone.”

I nod. I would never use this personal information against him. I hesitate. “Thank you for sharing this with me, Taslim. It’s…very, erm, personal.”

I am so good at this.

He smiles at me and says, “Don’t you think it’s time you called me Royce?”

“Royce.” I try it out and my face burns at the newness, the intimacy of his name.

“I like when you say my name,” he says without irony now.

“You can call me Agnes, too.”

He gives me that Taslim half smile I’ve come to know. “Haven’t you realized I’ve been calling you that for some time?”

I think about it. Yes, yes he had. And I like it, more than I should.

Royce shifts closer to me and reaches over to put the frame back on the nightstand and doesn’t move away. We’re too close. We’re not close enough. He bites his lip and I am mesmerized. He moves just that bit closer, again. I wait for the panicked warnings to start up, to tell me to move away: Bacteria! Tetanus! but my thoughts are conspicuously silent now even as my mind sharpens to take in every minute shift in his movements. My heart is a bird trapped in a cage, my blood is both too slow and too fast. The mattress dips and our fingers graze. When I don’t pull away, he takes my hand and threads his fingers through mine, and I stare at our clasped hands, transfixed by the slightly calloused feel of his touch.

“Listen,” he says, in a new voice I’d never heard before. “Before you drunk me, I’d been meaning to tell you something. It’s about—”

A very loud rapping at the door jolts us apart. “Tuan! Tuan! You in there? Semua baik? Should we come in to help you in case you fainted?”

The spell breaks; Royce clears his throat. “We, ah, we should go down before my housekeeping staff calls my mom home. They’ve been briefed to keep an eye on us, in case we, uh, sin,” he says this with a hint of amusement in his voice.

I nod, trying to act nonchalant even though my heart is still racing from what I thought was going to happen. It was probably just the alcohol, I admonish myself. Get a grip, don’t forget yourself. Even the servants have been briefed to keep you and Royce apart. We should keep things simple, friendly—but that’s it. “Let’s get back downstairs to algebra, then, Royce,” I say in a clipped voice, already walking toward the door.

“Sure, Agnes,” Royce says, sounding a bit confused at my sudden coolness.

We finish revising and I head home to a rightfully upset Stanley, who I placate by helping him with making a substitute alcohol-free butter cake (he’d used up all the rum in the previous cake anyway).

And then, when my mother comes back from her doctor’s appointment, her eyes bright with some secret joy, I go up to her and hug her.