Anyu Ching

1.

Waiting for the sunrise at 2:30 a.m. and looking at what is possibly Jack Ma’s house. We act out movie titles on the comedown. Doctor Dolittle. The one with Tom Cruise as a Nazi. We follow this with a round of King’s Cup, three games of pool, and all of a sudden there are throw pillows all over the basement floor. Peter asks us what we think the worst part of being rich is. He answers, “All these goddamn pillows.” He starts to tell a story that ends with the Mahjong table as God and holds up a bottle of pills from his bedside table drawer when we are alone. The best part of these, he tells me, is that he is never bored. Max feeds me mochi ice cream from the refrigerator and we pretend that we never matched on Tinder. Josh presses his dick against my backside when no one is looking.

2.

Mia talks about a diner with the best cheesecake in the world. She says there’s warm coffee, really fucking good music, and families, too. On Waverly Place, there is a rooftop strung with all the stars that are missing from the sky. There are cobblestone streets where horses don’t walk anymore, so the children do—all the time. Jumping over faded chalk lines while girls in tan cardigans and ripped leggings ash the ground beneath their boots. And over and over, like the returning of something borrowed, onlookers watch as they press their hopes up together from the shadows of the sun. So cynical yet so romantic on the brain. Someone says that surely there must be grief on Waverly Place. Mia says that of course, grief is everywhere! And you can turn on the news to see that grief is everyone, also! But not here. Not yet at least. Not on Waverly Place, where she comes home.

3.

On Sundays, the girls reach for love. A friend of the party looking around the room. Today, you are just a big pot of dream. Something talented that always says “night groove” and “freestyle,” but it is what everybody steals. He nurses a can of Asahi Dry as I tell him that everybody has read Camus and Nietzsche, and that the only difference between a college boy and a high school boy is that college boys have better bookshelves. He nods. We don’t have to pretend to fall in love for the night. Sometimes men just want a girl who will cut their hair. Spit in their mouths a little. We play Rummikub and he takes off his shirt to show me his third eye. I tell him that I liked it when he kissed me on the cheek the other night. “Nobody’s ever kissed me on the cheek before,” I say. He tells me that’s how they say goodbye in Brazil. Then his lips fall down to the corner of my neck. “This is how we say goodbye in Spain.” A sharp bite on both sides. “This is how we say goodbye in Finland.” Then back up to my lips. “And this is how we say goodbye in France.” I wonder if he kisses every girl goodbye like this.

4.

I ask Mino if she remembers that late December afternoon when we ran away to the beach. Praying that the Sentosa air would fix us, or at least stain our cheeks red. We sipped on overpriced sangrias that got us dizzy enough to forgive the weather. Dizzy enough to forgive everything, really, so you sprinted out into the sea. My own unbroken creature of habit. And the vision of you halfway underwater—it was as though I was seeing you in a new life. Too soon everything will fall away into the Pacific. The endless summer. My makeshift bed on your floor. I watched you from the shoreline break from just beneath the surface. You were like the horizon itself. Or whatever it is that people hope to find in the desert.