computer’s list with a firm command. Immediately, the voice in the ceiling went quiet.
“What’re you doing?” I cried, whirling around and clamping my fingers over my nether regions. I hadn’t even heard the washer door open.
She gave me a small smile, and for the first time since I had met her, her eyes did not meet it. “Silly me. I’ve never needed to enable the privacy settings on that computer. You’re the only other person who’s ever used my bathroom, you know?”
“Oh?” I said, for lack of a better of remark.
“Yes,” she said, her smile steadfast. Her eyes traveled down to my fingers, lingering there for moment, and then—they flicked back up. “Dress up.” She turned around and left the room.
Feeling a creeping sense of discomfort, I picked my clothes off the floor and put them back on. When I returned to the silver-white room, I heard Mi-Yao calling for me from another room. I followed her voice into a room with cold sapphire walls.
The room was in the style of a regular kitchen: cabinets and counters on the circumference, an island in the middle. Except, in place of pans, ladles and a stove, there was what looked like an elaborate chemistry set, with glass tubes, bulbous ends, and lots of shiny valves. Oh, and the seats around the island had no visible legs.
Mi-Yao was in an apron. “Sit down,” she said.
I sat on one of the floating plush discs.
“I understand that here, the females traditionally prepare meals for the males,” she said.
“In 1984, sure,” I said.
She cocked her head. “No. That is still a largely respected convention in family units around your planet, contrary to what your progressive few like to believe.”
“Oh. Okay.”
She smiled—a real smile. “And what is it your people say…when in Hungary, do as the Hungarians do?”
“So close,” I said.
“Please be patient as I work.”
She set about taking measurements, diluting powders, mixing liquids. She pushed buttons, turned valves, and stirred mixtures. Her fingers were fast, and her movements were efficient. Not a single spill. Soon, there were colored fluids racing through the glass tubes. It was psychedelic to behold.
After about ten minutes of this, she turned around and placed a plate and a steel straw in front of me. I stared at the contents of the plate.
“Is that supposed to be a dog?” I finally asked.
The gelatinous substance on my plate was fashioned in the likeness of some generic breed of hound. Except, every part of its body was a different color, like some kind of patchwork ragdoll.
Mi-Yao clapped. “You could tell,” she gushed. “Back home, the true mark of a good cook is their ability to express their food artistically.”
“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be when you’ve eradicated hunger and turned cooking into a chemistry session?”
“Taste. Taste. Taste.”
I took a deep breath, picked up the straw, and stuck it into the ‘food’. I took a tentative sip.
Despite the care I took, the cold substance flooded my mouth, and I fought back a gag. It tasted like someone had made Jell-O out of a fish, an onion and a bag of honey-glazed peanuts. It was like if sushi had an ugly older brother. I wasn’t hungry any more. I doubted I ever would be again.
“Well?” Mi-Yao asked.
“Fantastic,” I choked.
She beamed.
I pretended to sip a couple more times before I gave up. “It’s really filling though,” I said. “And I’ve been watching my figure, you know?”
“Since when?”
“Um, this entire summer.”
“I watched you stuff your face with three rounds of currywurst in Berlin, Peter,” she said.
“Yeah, but nothing the Germans make is truly fattening. Those guys, God bless them. Who knows how they do it?”
She stared at me. “I don’t even know which part of that statement was the most absurd.”
I looked down at the gloop. “I should probably just pack this up and enjoy it later.”
“You hate it, don’t you?”
“Wha—come on!” I stuttered. “Did I say that? Did you hear me say those exact words? I don’t think so. Nope.”
Mi-Yao looked down. Then, slowly, she took off her apron, and tossed it aside.
“Mi-Yao,” I called after her, as she walked out. “Mi-Yao, come on.”
I sighed, and followed her to her room. I barely ducked in time to avoid the vase hurtling at my face; I heard it shatter behind me.
I watched in disbelief as Mi-Yao smashed, crashed, and demolished every item in her room she could get her hands on. Electronic picture frames hit hard surfaces in a shower of brilliant sparks; squiggly ceramics scattered across the floor in pieces; plants were torn asunder and hurled into the air, so that they fell limply down like drunk rain; even her bed suffered under the pointed end of a pair of cutters, before being overturned in an unsettling exhibition of strength. All the while, Mi-Yao let out bursts of screaming. Earsplitting screaming.
“Mi-Yao,” I yelled over her. “Mi-Yao! Calm down!”
Finally, I ran up to her and locked her in a tight hold. She struggled with me, and we toppled over onto the cluttered floor.
She was still screaming, when I asked her, “Are you supposed to be on medication? Tell me. Tell me.”
Mi-Yao stopped suddenly, panting in my arms. She wouldn’t look at me.
“That tray was overflowing, Mi-Yao. When was the last time you took your pills? Any of them?” I whispered.
“I was trying to do something nice for you, Peter. You hurt me, Peter. You hurt me,” she said.
“Mi-Yao—“
“The pills make it hard for me to feel, Peter. They control my emotions and make it hard for me to feel,” she stuttered, almost deliriously. “But this feeling I have is too important, Peter. It’s too important not to feel. Too important not to feel, Peter.”
“To feel? To feel what?” I asked her.
She looked at me, and her eyes seemed laden with sadness. “Peter,” she murmured, “I don’t need the pills when I’m with you.”
Silence. Her face was so close to mine, I could feel her breath on my upper lip. I swallowed. My heart was thumping.
She started…stopped…and then, slowly, very slowly, leaned in. I felt her lips—cool as spring water—brush against mine.
And then: “Ow,” I cried, jerking back. I had felt a spark of static shock on my lower lip.
Mi-Yao looked away and leaned back. “Get out,” she whispered.
I hesitated.
“Now, Peter,” she added.
I rose up, and left the room.
One of her chaperones, Mu or Bhark—I couldn’t tell the difference—took me home. I waited to hear from Mi-Yao, but summer ended and I didn’t see her again.
The morning school reopened, I woke up to find a letter and a package on my bedside table. The contents of the letter were typed.
By the time you read this message, I will already be half way home.
I do not know if you will ever see me again.
Thus, I have left you another gift.
The letter wasn’t signed, but the sender was obvious. I ripped open the package.
It was a framed picture of Mi-Yao and me on a bridge in Prague, overlooking the Vltava River. I was smiling into the camera, and at first, it seemed that Mi-Yao was too. But fifteen seconds in, the Mi-Yao in the picture turned slightly, and now she was staring at the Peter standing beside her, with a look that I had never seen in her eyes before: adoration.
I stared at the picture for a few more minutes, allowing the bittersweet tinge to sink in. Then, I stored the letter and the package away with my comic books, and went to school. Of course, I assumed that the portrait was the gift.
But then three weeks later, I heard that Dad’s girlfriend had disappeared from their apartment in Florida, USA. It eventually made it on the news and everything. The police couldn’t find a body, but w
e began to assume that wherever she was, it was unlikely that she was still alive.
Three months later, Dad flew back home for an awkward two weeks. Mom allowed him to stay, mostly out of pity. He could barely look either of us in the eye, much less talk to us, and I preferred it that way. Eventually, Mom made it clear that she wasn’t interested in taking him back, and they signed divorce papers.
Dad left again to stay with his family up north.
It was then that I knew that I would never want to see my father again.
IX.
Next summer, Mi-Yao was not waiting for me when I got out of school. It was a strange cocktail of feelings that hit me when I waited in our parking lot till 5 pm, and realized that she wasn’t coming. Because on the one hand, I missed her. I was sorry about how our last holiday had ended, and I wanted to tell her that. But on the other hand, I was relieved. Because: Tiffany.
Tiffany was my chemistry lab partner. Or that was how we had become friends anyway. And Tiffany, she had a way about her. The way she always brushed her fair bangs out of her eyes every time she laughed; the way her nose crinkled just a little bit when she smiled; the way she would tug on my earlobe when she teased me. She was always squinting into the chemistry workbook because she was scatterbrained, and she would forget her glasses at home every other day.
She was too pretty to hang out with me. By some miracle, she did anyway.
I only spoke to Tiffany about Mi-Yao once, when she found the picture of us in Prague in my closet. Thankfully she didn’t stare at it long enough to notice the animation, before asking, “Who is this?”
“My cousin,” I answered.
She looked at the picture again. “She’s pretty.”
“She’s okay.”
“Where did you take
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