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It’s dangerously easy to make a habit of something.

Every night now, I read Jessica’s journal before I sleep, hoping there’ll be answers hidden between the lines, waiting for

me to find. And that means going all the way back to the beginning.

Okay, so this past week has been absolutely wild and amazing. I was invited to this super fancy scholars’ conference and apparently

I’ll be the youngest person there—the others attending are basically all seniors and even college students. And guess what?

I get to fly business class and bring my parents with me—and we’ll all be staying in a five-star hotel. It’s so cool!

Most of the early entries are written this way: giddy, wide-eyed, her excitement palpable in the wild loops of her letters

and the smudged ink, as if she was impatient to jot down her next thought before her previous one had even dried on the page.

But as I read on, her enthusiasm levels out into the indifference of someone who was already expecting every good thing that’s

happened.

I guess that checks out.

Jessica has never been one of those people who need to compare their current selves with their past selves, to show how much they’ve transformed for the better. She’s never really experienced failure—her successes have simply kept growing. She went from being the best in her class, to the best in Chinese school, to the best in our entire high school—and now she’ll go on to become the best in all of Harvard, and then the best in the world. Her life is one of exponential growth, the type you can graph out perfectly with a calculator.

My life has never been like that. The only discernible pattern, really, is inconsistency: the second I improve in certain

areas, I regress in others. My skin becomes clearer, but my hair becomes thinner. My grades in English rise, but my grades

in math fall. I start exercising more in the mornings, but stop doing my laundry over the weekends. One step forward and one

step back, and repeat, until in the end, it looks like I’ve been standing in the same spot for years.

There’s another shift in her journal entries starting from around two years ago.

She doesn’t sound excited or coolly nonchalant, satisfied or superior to everybody. She just sounds angry.

Like in this one:

Sometimes I really hate this school. I hate what it stands for, what it chooses not to stand for. I hate that it splashes out ads in Chinese newspapers and recruits students from overseas just so they can pay the more expensive international fees and boost the end-of-year scores, while it only celebrates its legacies and rowing club heirs. This place has made me miserable, and some of my worst days have been spent trapped inside its halls.

But I also know that when there’s a high school reunion three, five, ten years from now, I’ll still attend. And not only will

I attend, but I’ll spend the week beforehand planning out my outfit, mining my life for things I can brag about, just to give

the impression that I’m doing well.

I hate this school so much, but I can’t stop myself from caring about all the people who go here, from wanting the school

to love me, even if I know it’s impossible.

And this:

There’s a story the teachers like to tell about me. Two years ago I’d come down with a horrible fever the night before our

final exams; I was so dizzy I couldn’t stand up properly. Eating hurt. Breathing hurt. Everything hurt. And yet I’d insisted

on pushing through it; I’d forced my mother to drive me to school and I’d stumbled into the exam halls on my own, gripping

the backs of chairs for support, steadying myself against the walls. I don’t remember anything I wrote that day, but I ended

up with the highest score in the class across all my subjects. And the moral of the story was that sometimes you have to be

a little cruel to yourself, that sometimes pain is necessary if you want to succeed.

That’s what we do, isn’t it? We turn pain into a story, because then it has a purpose. Then, we reason, there was a point to it all along. But sometimes pain is just pain, and there’s nothing particularly noble about clinging to it. Perhaps I would have done much better still if I were healthy; perhaps I was lucky I didn’t end up damaging my body permanently or fainting halfway through the exam, and the moral is that I should have stayed at home and let myself rest. Only I guess that’s not as inspiring.

The ruined skin on my arm has only just started to scab over when another note appears in my bag after school, folded beneath

the cover of my textbook.

Everything inside my body goes cold as I pick it up. Read over the handwritten message. It feels like an explosion has sounded

right next to my ear, sending my thoughts scattering through my skull. The world slips and sharpens into pieces. The words

slice across the torn paper. Whoever is targeting Jessica must be losing their patience, because all the note says is:

If you don’t confess, I’m telling everyone in three days.

Three days.

That’s hardly anything, and the first day is already taken up by my auntie’s planned hiking trip for the weekend.

“Can I not go?” I plead, dragging my heels all the way to the front door. “I still have work—”

“Your aunt and uncle will be there,” Auntie says, which I have to mentally translate into my own parents. “And Aaron is coming along too.”

Aaron.

He might know what to do. I clamp my jaw down over my remaining protests and quickly slide into Jessica’s boots.

Auntie sends me an unsubtle smile. “I thought that might motivate you to join us. Why don’t you put some lip tint on? That

rose color looks so lovely on you.”

Wonderful, I think darkly to myself as I step outside. I may not succeed at uncovering the anonymous student, or at recovering Jessica’s soul, but even if I achieve nothing else,

at least I can take comfort in knowing I gave my aunt more reason to believe that Jessica and Aaron belong together.

There’s something both terribly familiar and strangely disjointed about the scene at the bottom of the mountain. My parents

are busy applying sunscreen in the shade, and I should be standing with them, letting my mom fuss over the exposed back of

my ears and my neck, humoring my dad by half-heartedly following along to his warm-up exercises. Except I arrive in Jessica’s

fancy car with my aunt and uncle, who are both dressed in designer clothes completely unsuited for physical activity. Aaron

is alone, but that’s normal; by now, we know to invite his father to these things only out of politeness, rather than any

expectation he might actually show up.

“Everyone’s here, then?” my dad says, smiling around at us as he fixes the cap on his head. His eyes move right over me, and

my chest contracts. Dad. I have to shove aside the childlike urge to call for him, like I would when I lost sight of my parents among the crowds at the mall. It’s me. “Great, great, let’s get going. I’ll lead the way.”

My uncle laughs at him. “You look like a tour guide with that hat. All you need is a little flag to wave around.”

Dad makes an unimpressed face. “It’s a nice hat. I got it as a birthday present from—” He pauses.

My daughter should be the rest of his sentence. I’d bought it for him three years ago, and he’d sworn to wear no other hat from that point

on.

Now he turns to my mom, confused. “Who gave this to me again?”

“Why are you asking me ?” she demands. “Why do you always expect me to remember these things?”

“Because your memory’s better than mine,” my dad says, then shakes his head. “Ah, I must be getting old. I could’ve sworn

it was someone important....”

My mouth dries.

“Your memory wouldn’t be so bad if you ate more walnuts,” Mom insists.

The others are laughing, but I don’t feel like laughing at all. I feel like the ground is sinking, like it might crack open

at any moment and I’ll fall in. How could my dad have just forgotten ? And what other memories has he lost?

“You bought him that hat, didn’t you?”

I startle. I hadn’t noticed Aaron walking over to me while the parents started up the mountain steps.

“Yeah,” I say, making an effort not to look concerned. “I did.”

“You’re concerned.”

“I’m not,” I say, striding forward.

“Don’t lie to me,” he says. “You might have Jessica’s face, but your expressions are still the same—”

“Keep it down,” I hiss at him, glancing ahead at the adults. “Do you want them to overhear?”

He shrugs, perfectly nonchalant. “I guarantee that even if they overheard, they wouldn’t have any idea what we’re talking

about, and they wouldn’t believe us anyway.”

“You could still try to be careful. What if they think we’ve lost our minds?”

“I’ve got it under control.”

“Oh sure. Because you just have control over everything. You’re just perfect and magical like that.”

“Well, yes,” he agrees.

I would swat his shoulder, except Jessica isn’t the kind of person to swat things—not even flies—so I’m forced to take my

annoyance out on an overhanging branch. It’s darker here on the mountain path, cooler, with the thick spread of trees filtering

out the sun.

“How did you even know I bought him the hat?” I ask.

“You mentioned it once,” he says simply.

I falter on the next step, something new occurring to me. “But how do you remember? Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone else has merely accepted that I’m gone,” I tell him in a low voice. My parents are already a good few yards away, the distance between us stretching wider and wider; they appear to be racing each other. “The teachers, my friends, my family. They’re all under the impression that I went away—except you. You came searching for me,” I say. “And you still recall all our past conversations and everything. Right?”

He raises his brows. “Would you like to test me?”

“Eighth grade,” I say. “The last day of school. What did I say to you in the parking lot, before we left—”

“That Old Keller was being too harsh with his marking,” he says easily, not even pausing to think. “That you felt like he

singled you out in class all the time, and you actually were listening, you just don’t enjoy staring at the teachers when they’re lecturing because you find the eye contact awkward.”

I stare. “I—yeah. I mean, exactly. How did you... I can’t believe you actually remember that.”

He clears his throat. For the first time, he looks flustered. “You ought to give me more credit.”

“Xianzai de nianqingren tili buxing ya,” my dad calls, spinning around. The youths are so weak these days. “You two need to get your heart rate up. Move your limbs. Where’s your energy?”

In another life, I’m sure he would’ve been a sports coach.

“So how are you feeling about college, Jessica?” my dad asks when we draw closer. “Harvard. Harvard. Your parents raised you so well.”

Cue the instant protests and humble-but-not-humble smiles from my aunt and uncle.

“Don’t be modest,” he says. “This is a very big deal, yes? Tai you chuxi le. You will be set for the rest of your life, you understand that? With a great education, you won’t have to worry about money or job security or buying a house ever again. You can be anything. Whatever you want to be. We never had that kind of freedom when we were younger, did we?”

My uncle nods, his forehead shining with sweat. He’s evidently having difficulty keeping up with my dad. “No,” he says. “When

we were... their age... we had two choices: pass the college entrance exams, or—”

“Stay in our town forever,” my dad finishes. “To be honest with you all, I’ve always been proud of us: we were one of the

only families where both sons made it out. I like to think we’re successful, in that regard. But Jessica’s success—that’s beyond anything I could

have ever imagined. Did you imagine this?” he asks my uncle, waving a hand at me.

“No, no, not at all,” my uncle says.

My dad beams at me. “See? She’s the pride of our whole family.”

This, I think to myself, breathing in the crisp air like someone smelling a fresh bouquet of azaleas, letting the sweetness fill my lungs. For a few moments, I feel whole, the sense of solidity spreading down to my tingling fingers, my toes, as if I’m a sketch colored in at last. This is why I crave success, why Jessica’s life will always be better than mine. Success is such a beautiful thing. It’s so intimate, so heartachingly personal, I can feel it in my very blood. It’s the closest you’ll ever fly to the sun. The closest you’ll ever get to immortality. Who cares about a bit of pain and sacrifice when you could—if only for a few fleeting days in your already short life—know what it’s like to be a god?

“But Aaron has enjoyed plenty of success too, hasn’t he?” My dad claps Aaron on the back. “He’s going to be one of the best

doctors in the world . If anything happens to me in the future, I’ll go straight to you.”

Aaron absorbs this with the perfect amount of confidence and humility. “Well, you’re very young and healthy, shushu. You’d

be welcome to ask me for anything, but I doubt you’ll need me.”

“Oh, please. You flatter me.”

“Just telling the truth, shushu.”

My dad sighs. “Ah, you’re such a good kid. If your mother were still here, she would be so happy....”

I immediately tense and glance over at Aaron. His expression hasn’t changed—he’s too good at hiding his emotions for that,

too used to carrying these kinds of conversations with well-meaning adults who don’t understand him. But I notice how his

fingers shift, curling around air.

“That reminds me,” I say loudly, stepping in between them. “There’s a question I wanted to ask our brilliant future doctor.”

Aaron blinks, and his hands relax. “Yes?”

I deliberately slow down on the path, waiting until my dad and the other parents have tuned out of our conversation and started

complaining among themselves about inflation before continuing. “It’s about Jessica. There’s someone who’s been sending her

these strange messages....”

“What kind of messages?” he asks, frowning.

I recount everything I know, all my flimsy guesses and incomplete clues.

Surprise washes over his face, but it quickly settles into contemplation. “You can’t find the sender’s address?”

“I thought to check,” I say, “but the first email seems to have been sent from an untraceable email provider or something.

It’s too hard to track them down.”

“What about the handwritten notes?” he prompts. “You said you found them folded between your test and your notes, right? And

that was in—”

“Our world politics class,” I finish for him, following along. “That’s why I thought it was Celine before, since she seemed

kind of... I don’t know...”

“Jealous?” Aaron raises his eyebrows. “You’re probably just sensitive to the fact because you’re experiencing it firsthand,

but I definitely wouldn’t count it as suspicious. Almost everyone’s a little jealous of Jessica, including her best friends.”

I’m just as bad as everyone else, I admit to myself, shifting my gaze away, guilt squirming in my stomach. I’m worse, because I’m closer to her, whether by blood or by the years I’ve known her, and I still can’t control my jealousy. Whenever I think of her, I see three different images: there’s my cousin, who’d catch my eye across the dining table while our relatives gossiped loudly and make the long dinners more bearable; there’s my friend, who’d line up with me at the mall just to try out the newest ice-cream flavor and buy us both hot drinks afterward, when our teeth were chattering from the cold; and then there’s bierenjia de haizi, someone else’s perfect child. The only person who’d understand the pressure to succeed, and the last person I’d want to tell all of this to.

“We can narrow it down to the people sitting around you in world politics,” Aaron is saying. “That’s around fifteen people.”

“But I only have two days to figure out who it is,” I tell him, my throat tight.

“What about if you tried to match the handwriting?”

“I’ve considered that. The problem is that half the class takes notes by hand; everyone else just uses their laptops. And

I’d need to have a sample of their handwriting for long enough to actually compare it.”

“A sample...,” he repeats slowly. Then his eyes widen. “Wait. I think I’ve got it.”

The roar of blood in my ears.

“You do?” I say, not daring to hope but hoping anyway. “What?”

He hesitates. Unexpectedly, inexplicably, color rises to his cheeks. “Remember that birthday card you gave me when I turned

fifteen? The one you asked everyone in our grade to write a message on?”

Of course I remember. I can’t believe that he does. I had started preparing it a month in advance, hand-painting the dozens

of flowers on the front and chasing down every single classmate with a pen, even the people I wouldn’t normally dare approach.

Nothing is too long or too earnest, I’d reminded them. Most of the girls had been all too glad for a chance to say something sweet about Aaron, and for once, I hadn’t minded it. I knew that the card wasn’t enough. That it couldn’t compare to having both parents around to blow the candles out. That on those particular days—his birthday, Mother’s Day, the Spring Festival—the grief would wrap around him like a damp scarf and the shadows would fall sharply on the empty spaces his mother had left. But I just wanted him to feel less alone.

“I’ve kept it by my bed—I mean, in my room,” Aaron says, rubbing his neck. “I can send a photo of it to you when I go home,

and then you can compare the handwriting, side by side.”

“Oh my god.” I skid to a stop. “ Oh my god , Aaron. That might actually work. You’re a genius.”

“I know,” he says. He stops too, standing directly beneath a faint trickle of sunlight through the trees, and turns back to

glance at me, his grin quick and beautiful as a lightning strike.

And time fractures. Reverses in on itself. We’re both on the cusp of fifteen again, and it’s autumn, everything soft and ephemeral

and molten gold, the leaves crinkling underfoot. We’re in the same mountains but deeper. The air is cold. We’ve been walking

for hours already and Jessica’s run ahead as always, leaving just us here. Alone. Privately, I’m grateful, then feel so guilty,

so foolish for my gratitude—what do I expect to happen?—that my tenderness splits into irritation.

“Are you tired?” he asks, noticing me falter.

“No,” I grumble, though my limbs are aching, and my breathing is shallow, labored. The sky is starting to darken, the pinkish

light dying beyond the horizon. I watch it change through the gaps in the foliage. I’ve never known how to witness dusk without

feeling a dull sense of grief: another day gone, another day lost where I’m still the same.

“We can rest for a while, if you want,” he offers.

I shake my head. “It’s too late. You know my mom will kill me if we don’t get home in time.”

“I’ll tell her you were with me. She trusts me.”

“A little too much, I think,” I mutter, forcing myself to walk on.

He waits until I’ve caught up before moving too, his paces even with mine. “What do you mean?’

“You know what my family thinks of you.”

“I don’t,” he says, sounding genuinely curious.

“Aaron, the golden child,” I mimic, unable to hide the envy in my tone. “Aaron, the good influence. Aaron, the future doctor. They adore you. They think you’re going to save the world and eradicate all misery and disease.”

He cocks his head to the side, considering. “If it bothers you so much, I could always be a bad influence.”

“Oh sure.” I snort.

“Really.”

“I doubt you’d even know how, to be honest.”

“I can. I could be terrible,” he says, voice suddenly low, suddenly too quiet, and leans in. My heart runs away from me, thudding

so hard that it feels like punishment. “Jenna.”

“Y-yes?”

“Should we sneak into a bar tonight?”

I stare at him for a beat and burst out laughing. “God, I can’t stand you,” I complain, but I’m smiling wider than I’ve smiled in a long time, and he’s gazing down at me, his raven-black hair windswept, his eyes dark with amusement, and I think I might go mad from all the emotions boiling inside me. I’ve never wanted anyone so badly. I can’t imagine ever wanting anybody else like this again. My throat aches from it.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to,” he says. “Unless that’s why we’re in these mountains? Is this all an elaborate plot to murder

me?”

“Don’t expose my plans, please. It took a lot of effort getting you here.”

“Is Jessica in on it too?”

The mention of her name hits me like ice water. I deflate, and the wilderness in the background sharpens into focus again,

the sound of sparrows chirping and small creatures scurrying through the thornbushes. Jessica Chen. There’s an unspoken equation

here: the three of us versus the two of us. Friends versus something else. Maybe that’s why he brought her up—to remind me

that we can’t be anything else. I tug the sleeves of my sweater down over my fingers and walk faster, my eyes trained on the

dark blue slope of the mountains ahead, still and silent as a slate sea.

Then a sharp pain tears through my left calf.

I freeze, and the first thing I register isn’t the branch twisting into my skin but Aaron’s expression, his eyes widened slightly,

his jaw tight. He’s beside me in an instant, one arm sliding around me to support my weight as I lower myself down onto a

boulder.

“Let me see,” he says, and I don’t even think twice about it, just nod. My mind feels fuzzy at the edges; everything stings.

He could ask anything of me in that moment, and I’d probably agree.

Very slowly, he wraps his long fingers around my bare ankle, stretching my leg out a little before him, and inspects the wound. I hiss. Blood is flowing from a fresh gash the length of my thumb, the red so vivid I can’t imagine it’s something that could come from my own body. It looks almost artificial, like food dye or acrylic paint.

“You’ll be okay,” he murmurs.

And for some reason, even though I’m bleeding up in the mountains miles away from home and I can barely see the sun anymore,

I believe him.

“I should clean this out first, though,” he says.

I flinch. “Wait. What?” My voice rises an octave. “That, um—that sounds really painful. Will it be painful?”

“Only for a bit. It’s better than an infection.”

I manage a weak scoff. “You sound like a doctor already.”

He smiles then, or tries to, but only his lips move. The rest of his features are hard, focused, his eyes burning with a rare

intensity. “Maybe hold on to something—that should help. I’ll try to be quick.”

Without thinking, I grab his shoulder, and I feel the surprise flicker between us, the air rippling like water, though we

both do our best to hide it. Act like nothing’s happening, when everything is. At least for me. I watch him as he takes out

the bottle of water he’s been carrying, unscrews the lid with steady fingers, his movements fast and certain. Then he splashes

it over my leg.

The pain is instant. I clench my teeth around a yell, my nails digging into the fabric of his shirt, so tight I know it must be hurting him, but he doesn’t utter a single word of complaint. Instead he’s apologizing, his voice low and hoarse. “Sorry,” he keeps saying, one hand still wrapped firmly around my lower calf. “Sorry, almost done now. It’s going to be fine.”

Through the hazy film of tears, I stare at him, the white of his neck, the intense concentration in his eyes, and it takes

me a delayed beat to realize that he’s scared. Maybe even more scared than I am, when I didn’t think he could be scared of

anything. My blood quickens in my veins. I imagine reaching out across that cold space and touching his cheek. Just once,

gently. I imagine wrapping my arms around him when he’s done, leaning all the way against him, thanking him the way I want

to. Nobody else would know, except us and the sky and the trees. At the mere thought of it, I feel a rush of longing so violent

it almost strangles me. Will it always be like this? I wonder, squeezing my eyes shut, feeling the places his fingers touch my skin. Is this as close as we’ll ever be?

“Jenna,” he calls, a second or a lifetime later. “Jenna.”

“Jessica.”

Time resets itself, like a dislocated bone. I’m someone else, and someone else’s mom is waving me over.

“Look at this,” my aunt is saying, pointing ahead of us at something in the shrubbery. “Did you see the butterfly? I’ve never

seen one with so many colors in its wings before. It was right here.”

That old saying floats across my mind again. To dream of becoming a butterfly. I’ve been busy deliberating why the dream started, but I’m not so sure if I’m ready for the dream to end. Would the butterfly

be relieved to turn back into a human? Or would the butterfly miss being able to fly too much?