This Time It’s Real

It’s close to noon before we find a space quiet enough to work: an empty picnic table surrounded by nothing but wild grass. Caz hops onto the wooden seat and leans back, his head tilted lazily toward the sun, eyes closed, his sharp, lovely features awash in hazy gold.

For one dumb moment, I can’t help but think, No wonder why he’s so vain. If I were that beautiful, I would be vain too.

I ignore him and lift my laptop onto my knees, then open up a blank Word document, privately grateful for a reason to focus on something other than him.

“So I’m going to assume that you haven’t written anything at all for your applications yet,” I say, pulling up a new Google window beside the page. “Would that be correct?”

“Yeah,” Caz says, without an ounce of shame. “Absolutely.”

Well, at least he’s honest. “Then we’ll start from the very beginning. Find the prompts and start brainstorming.” I flex my fingers over the keyboard. “What schools are you applying to again?”

“Just the usual,” he says tonelessly, the same way one might talk about booking a dentist appointment or filing taxes. “My mom found a couple decent universities in America that accept late applications. The Univeristy of Michigan is one, I’m pretty sure.”

I raise my brows. “Whoa there, no need to sound so enthusiastic.”

He laughs, but even that lacks his usual wry humor. “Yeah, well …” For one second he looks like he’s going to make a confession, tell me a secret, and an unbidden spark of anticipation shoots up my spine. But then he kind of shrugs and shakes his head. “It is what it is.”

“Again. Your enthusiasm is overwhelming.”

We both lapse into silence as I search around for the right college application topics. The prompt this year is pretty typical, if not disappointing in its lack of originality: Tell us about a particular experience where you struggled. What did you learn from it?

“Yeah, sounds good,” Caz says when I show him, giving the prompt the most cursory of glances.

I stare at him. “That’s it?”

“What else do you want me to say? Excellent identification of prompt? Exemplary organizational skills?”

“No—” I huff out a sigh, trying my best to keep my frustration at bay. “That’s not what I mean. If I’m going to help you write this essay about your struggles, you need to actually give me some source material. Tell me about a time where you, you know. Struggled.”

Caz merely lifts a hand over his face, blocking out the sun, his knife-cut jaw and cheekbones cast in sudden shadow. “Why can’t you just make it up?” He turns back to me, a gleam in his eyes. Which just seems wrong, scientifically. How can his eyes gleam like that if there’s no light? “Isn’t that kind of your area of expertise?”

I choose to ignore the jibe. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I say, exasperated. “My essay only worked because I still included real-life details—like searching for apartments in my compound, or the grocery store near our school. I still had my main personality traits, my voice, my—my defining characteristics. So anyone who’s read it would believe it was written by me. Right now I don’t know nearly enough about you to create an entire essay out of nothing, especially if it needs to be factually accurate.”

Writing is simply a form of lying; I’ve always known this to be true. But to tell a good lie, a convincing lie, one that is both logically constructed and consistent and emotionally resonant—that takes time and effort. Attention to detail. And in this particular case, it also takes cooperation.

“Look, Caz,” I say as diplomatically as possible. “I can’t write this essay if you won’t give me one solid, realistic example—and please don’t tell me you haven’t, because literally everyone struggles in some way at some point—”

“What a profound statement,” he says dryly. “Did you get that from a musical?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

But he elects to stay silent instead, and with every second that passes, I can feel my already-threadbare patience wearing thinner and thinner.

“This is your college essay,” I remind him. “And it shouldn’t even be that hard to write in the first place. It’s hardly rocket science.”

“Not for you, maybe,” he shoots back.

“Well, maybe if you tried—or cared even the slightest—”

“I am trying.” He sighs. Rakes his fingers through his hair, but it’s less his famous, calculated, heartthrob gesture and more genuine agitation. “See, this is why I don’t like—” He stops himself.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me,” I insist. “Why you don’t like—what? Studying? Planning for the future? Doing things you’re bad at?”

He doesn’t answer, but a muscle works in his jaw at my last guess.

I almost laugh, torn between sheer frustration and amusement. “Caz,” I say. “I know there are people who’ll literally worship you for drinking water, but you realize you don’t actually have to be perfect all the time. I mean, I’d probably like you a lot more if you weren’t so perfect. You’d be way more—I don’t know, human. Not just some shiny product of the entertainment industry.”

Surprise flashes over his face, though it’s quickly clouded by something like wariness. “Is that how you see me right now? As a … shiny product?”

“No,” I say, then pause. “Well. Sort of, yeah.”

He falls quiet, his eyes trained on a splash of color in the cloudless sky. A kite. It’s shaped like a dragon, with golden bells for eyes and painted Peking opera masks making up the rest of its body, its long, flared tail undulating in the breeze.

“I guess … that’s fair,” Caz says, yanking my attention back to him. He huffs out a small laugh. “It’s funny, because after I landed my first role, I promised myself I wouldn’t become one of those bland celebrities who only give corporate answers and sidestep any meaningful questions about themselves.”

“But?”

“But, like, for instance: In an old interview, I mentioned this singer I was really loving. And then the next month, he was exposed for doing drugs—which I had no idea about, I just thought he was a creative lyricist. But somehow the story turned into me encouraging teenagers to do drugs, and I had to issue a public apology, and it took weeks for all that to die down—mostly because this other actor made the headlines for misquoting a classic novel.”

As he speaks, I get a startling glimpse of the boy behind the glossy magazine cover. Someone a little afraid. That part I can relate to, at least.

So it’s with full, gentle sincerity that I say, “Well, you’re safe with me. I’ll only write the story you want to tell for this essay; I won’t twist your words or anything like that. Promise.”

A long pause. A soft breeze brushes through the grass, past my cheek.

When Caz glances up again, he looks different. Or he’s looking at me differently, his eyes less black than brown, the rich shade of freshly upturned earth.

“Fine,” he says at last. “I’ll talk.”

•    •    •

Caz Song broke his arm when he was thirteen.

But break is too gentle a word. What he really did was fracture it and dislocate it at once, splitting the bone down the center. In certain places the bone had been shattered so completely that tiny white shards had poked up against his skin, threatening to pierce straight through. The pain, according to him, was manageable. Nothing more than a brief flash of agony, a crushing sensation, fire spreading up from his fingers—followed by numbness.

The pain, I imagine, was unbearable.

He had injured himself performing a stunt for a historical C-drama. It was his first time playing a fairly important role—the crown prince’s spy—and he wanted to prove he was up for the job. If he didn’t, there were at least four other actors his age with more connections who could replace him at a moment’s notice.

The stunt required that he leap over two sloping palace roofs (with the help of wires, of course) and do a double flip in the air before launching directly into a fight scene. He managed to make the jump over one roof before one of the wires accidentally went slack. He stumbled, landed hard at the wrong angle. By instinct, he’d lifted his right arm to protect himself. A mistake.

“I knew pretty much straightaway that I’d broken it,” he says, rolling back his sleeve to show me. The ghost of a jagged white line trails from his elbow down to his wrist, cutting its way into lean cords of muscle. I have to fight this strange, abrupt urge to trace my fingers over the scar, just to see if it still hurts. To see if he would let me. “I mean, I heard it.”

A jolt of imaginary pain lances through my own arm at the thought.

“But you kept going,” I guess, tearing my eyes away from his scar before I can do something foolish.

“The cameras were still rolling.” He shrugs. “Everyone was waiting. I figured I could afford to finish the scene.”

And so he did. He finished that scene, and the next, and the one after that. For two whole hours he said nothing, just kept his head up and stayed in character and pulled off all the remaining stunts himself. It wasn’t until his scenes were done for the day and the director was completely satisfied with everything that Caz asked, quite calmly, whether he could go see a doctor, as he couldn’t feel his fingers. The staff member assigned to bring him there had taken one look at his arm—now no longer hidden by the thick, layered sleeves of his costume—and almost screamed.

The doctor had been horrified as well. Shocked that Caz hadn’t passed out from the pain at that point. Caz had simply smiled his famous, crooked white smile—the smile that made all his costars and viewers fall at least a little bit in love with him—and said, Come on, it’s barely a scratch.

“And what did the doctor say to that?” I ask.

He runs a hand through his perpetually messy hair. “Honestly? The drugs kind of kicked in at that point, so I can’t be sure.”

“Nice.” I snort.

“Though I imagine he shook his head in admiration and murmured to the nurse beside him, What a brave young man. Maybe even a few tears were shed.”

“And then everyone in the operating room burst into loud applause?” I say sarcastically.

He stares at me in fake shock. “How did you know?”

A small, involuntary giggle rises up my throat, though I quickly squash it down again. Still—a giggle. It doesn’t make any sense for me to feel that way now.

No. I need to clear my head. Refocus. I’m not here to make friends, to get my hopes up about people only to be let down over and over again. Especially not when it comes to Caz Song, who makes a literal living off pretending to feel things he doesn’t.

Nothing else.

“Go on,” I tell Caz, sitting back, a safer distance away from him. “What happens next?”

He hesitates, as if sensing the change in my tone, however subtle. But after another beat, he nods and picks up where he left off.

After the operation, the doctor advised Caz to rest for at least a month. The next week, he went back on set again. He worked with the director to devise a way to hide his cast under his costume and refused to restrict his movements in any of his scenes. Even when he went back to the hospital for further treatment or was forced by his parents to rest, he secretly studied his script under the covers of his bed, repeating lines to himself over and over again.

By the time they wrapped up shooting, his arm still wasn’t fully healed yet. But his performance, according to the director and his cast members, was phenomenal. Far beyond their highest expectations.

Except the drama never actually ended up airing. The main lead got involved in a huge scandal concerning an underground strip club, and the higher-ups decided it was best to cancel the drama altogether.

“It was still worth it, though,” Caz says, picking up a long blade of grass and wrapping it around one finger like a ring. Caz can never seem to keep still. “I learned a lot.”

And while this does sound like typical corporate bullshit, I’m surprised to find myself actually believing him.

Even after I have all my material for the essay, it takes me longer than usual to get into the writing zone. I’d blame the good weather or the squeals and cheers of children in the distance, but if I’m honest, it’s mostly because of Caz. Even when he isn’t talking or looking my way, I can sense his presence keenly, as if every molecule in the air is oriented toward him. I’m almost tempted to ask him to move to another table, though I know that isn’t fair.

But once I do manage to tune out all unwanted distractions, the words come in a flood. My mind sharpens. My fingers find a natural rhythm over the keys. Because I might be clueless about dating and hand holding and dancing for fun in a crowded classroom, but this—this right here, stringing words together to mean something—is my element. This, I could do all day for the rest of my life.

It feels like the closest thing I know to home.

When I reach the final paragraph, Caz disappears for a few minutes and comes back with two tanghulus, the jewel-like fruits glistening in the light. One of them is the traditional flavor, the type I used to have as a kid: a string of bright red hawthorns pierced through with a wooden skewer. The other is crowded by giant, ripe strawberries and green grapes and fat slices of kiwi, all sprinkled with a generous layer of white sesame.

“I saw you eyeing that little boy’s food earlier,” he says by way of explanation. He holds the skewers up before me like he’s about to perform a magic trick. “Take your pick.”

I blink at him and push my laptop slowly aside, surprised that he noticed. Or maybe he’s only acting this way in case someone else is watching, just to make it look more like a date. And to make himself look more considerate. “Um …”

“I understand it’s an incredibly difficult decision to make,” Caz teases when I continue uming for a solid minute. “A lot at stake here. Would you like to talk it over with your lawyer first? Consult a third party?”

“That probably won’t be necessary,” I say, playing along. “Though it might be wise for me to evaluate the pros and cons of both options. Really think this one through.”

“Yes, of course.”

I snort out a laugh and take the traditional hawthorn tanghulu from him. “Thanks.”

He waves his free hand. “Anything for my fake girlfriend.”

A brief, inexplicable pain fills my chest, like my heart has snagged on a stray piece of barbed wire. Unsure what else to do or say, I bring the tanghulu to my lips, letting the thin paper cover dissolve on my tongue first. Then I bite down. The inside is so sour it makes my eyes water, but the smooth, sugary exterior helps balance it out. It tastes just like I remembered.

For a while neither of us says anything, content to simply chew and enjoy the silence while the summer breeze blows around us, pleasantly cool against my skin. Then I lick the sticky skewer clean, toss it into a nearby bin, and get back to work, savoring the sweet aftertaste of the fruit.

“Done,” I say a few minutes later, clapping my hands together.

“Done already?” Caz looks up in surprise, then down at my laptop screen. He’s only just finished eating his tanghulu. “Damn. That’s impressive.”

I try not to let his words go to my head, though a flush of pleasure still spreads through me, warming me down to my toes. “I’ll email it to you when I get home,” I promise, packing up my things. But as I prepare to shut my laptop, I notice three new messages from Zoe, and beside those, an email notification from Sarah Diaz.

I immediately open it, my heart thudding, half-convinced as I always am these days that Sarah will message me out of the blue going, Hey, I just found out that you’re a complete fraud and your essay is a lie! You’ve now been blacklisted from every magazine and publisher in the world, and everyone hates you. Bye!

To my relief, the new email doesn’t say anything along those lines. Not yet, anyway.

Eliza!

Just wanted to check in and see how you’re going with your blog post for tonight. I was looking around at the comments on your Twitter, and it’s pretty clear everyone is dying to see another (ideally less blurry) photo of you and Caz together. Even just a couple selfie would be amazing—

“Eliza? You good?”

I slam my laptop shut and spin around to face Caz. “Yeah,” I say, as cheerily as possible.

I’m cringing before the words are even out of my mouth. “Could we—would it be okay if we took a selfie together? Right now? For my internship?” Wow, I could not have chosen a more awkward way to ask that.

A ridiculous, self-satisfied smile spreads slow over his lips like honey. “Of course. Anything for my nonfan.”

My face heats. “When are you going to let that go?”

“When you join my fan club.”

“So: never,” I say flatly.

“Don’t sound so certain” is all he says as he adjusts the screen.

And I don’t know what compels me to do it, what gives me the nerve—whether it’s because I’m still riding the adrenaline high of having just written an essay that I know is really good, or because the persistent heat has subdued the impulse-control section of my brain, or because I want to startle that smug smile off his face—but just when he’s about to take the photo, I stand up tall on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek.

Click.

The camera flashes once, capturing the kiss for eternity, and I pull back. Suddenly uncertain what to do with my mouth, my face, my hands. The aftermath of my one moment of impulsivity.

“And you say you don’t have any experience with this stuff,” Caz remarks after a pause, his tone casual.

“Well, you’re not the only one who can be spontaneous.”

One corner of his crooked mouth lifts higher. “Clearly.”

It should all be over then: the selfie, the essay-writing session, the strange electricity in the air. But as he hands the phone back to me, our wrists brush, bare skin against skin. Immediately, every nerve end in my body ignites as if struck by a match, and I freeze, stunned by my own response.

I expect Caz to move away, but instead he slides his long fingers around my wrist. Runs a thumb over the frayed string bracelet there.

“You always wear this,” he says.

I nod. Swallow. “Yeah. I know.”

He waits for me to say more, but I’m too busy trying to act normal, like I’m not hyperaware of how close we are, how his hand is still moving slowly over my skin, his touch warmer and lighter than the summer air.