This Time It’s Real

I wake up before dawn the next day, the heat heavy on my skin, my blankets twisted around me.

My phone is flashing.

237 new notifications.

I squint at it for a minute, uncomprehending, my brain still foggy from sleep. But again and again, the screen lights up, casting a soft blue glow over the bedside table, and a jolt of alarm cuts through my fatigue. No one usually messages me at this hour. And certainly no one—not even Zoe—would send me this many messages in a row.

239 new notifications.

240 new …

I kick my blankets aside, fully awake now, and check my iMessage, my confusion quickly curdling into apprehension.

Then I read Zoe’s texts:

holy shit.

Holy fucking shit!!!!!!

ok i knOW IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

BUT

PLS GET ON YOUR PHONE

asdfghjkklkll

girl have you SEEN THIS what the actual hELL

She’s attached a screenshot below: an article. I’m almost too scared to open it, but after two seconds of staring at the screen, my heart punching holes in my ribs, I give in.

A giant, bold heading leaps out from the page:

“A Rom-Com in the Making: This Girl’s Blog Post about Her Love Life Has Us Believing in Love.”

My pulse quickens.

I don’t understand what I’m seeing at first. I only know that there’s an excerpt from my personal essay—the essay I proofread at least three times, posted only yesterday—and my own name and … the BuzzFeed logo above it all. The same BuzzFeed I used to spend hours scrolling through with Zoe, taking quizzes to find out which party snack we resembled.None of it makes sense. I have no idea how or why BuzzFeed even has my writing.

It’s like coming across a photo of yourself in someone else’s house, this jarring combination of “hey, this looks familiar” and “what the hell is this doing here?” It feels like I’m dreaming.

But oh god—there’s more. So much more.

Apparently my essay was already spreading last night, but when someone semi-famous tweeted a screenshot and a link to my post on the school blog, it all blew up. I quickly secure my VPN and head over to Twitter, and my heart almost falls out of my chest.

Last night, I had a grand total of five followers on my lurking-only Twitter account, and I’m pretty sure two of them were bots.

Now I already have more than ten thousand followers.

“Holy fucking shit indeed,” I mutter, and the sound of my own voice, low and slightly scratchy with disuse, only makes it all more surreal. None of it makes sense. It doesn’t make sense that I could be sitting here on my bed, the light of my phone illuminating my plain bedroom walls, while this tweet a bunch of people have so thoughtfully tagged me in has gotten half a million likes and counting.

My hands are shaking as I scroll through some of the recent comments.

@alltoowell13: maybe guys do deserve rights after all???

@jiminswife: I’m actually crying omg this is SO. CUTE. (pls feed us more quality content my soul needs it) ((if they ever break up i swear i’ll stop believing in love))

@angelica_b_smith: Lmao how are teens these days writing Shakespeare-level essays abt the love of their life … like when i was that age i couldn’t even string together a full sentence

@drunklanwangji: not to be dramatic or anything but i would literally die for them to just stay together and hold hands and be happy forever.

@user387: pLEASE someone make this into a movie i am BEGGING—

@echoooli: Am I the only one hella curious about who the boyfriend is? (and where can I find one??)

I drop my phone before I can read any more, an unsettling mix of panic and euphoria shooting through my veins.

So.

This is ridiculous.

My brain feels like it’s glitching. Overheating. People across the world are reading my essay and imagining me cuddling with some guy on his couch, kissing him on a balcony, whispering things like I miss you even when you’re close to me and You’re so beautiful sometimes I can’t even think straight around you.

People have read it … and actually liked it. My words, my writing, my thoughts. Recognized some piece of themselves in it. Despite my embarrassment, I can’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. Is this what it’s like to be a celebrity? I can’t help wondering briefly, through my utter disbelief. Is this how someone like Caz Song feels all the time?

But no—I catch myself. All this, as exciting as it is, isn’t the point. Because going viral just for my writing would be one thing—a good thing, even, the stuff of modern-day fairy tales. But going viral for a “wholesome real-life love story” (@therealcarrielo’s words, not mine) that’s actually completely fictional is another.

I can just picture how the next BuzzFeed article would look if the truth gets out: “A Criminal in the Making: This Girl’s Viral Personal Essay about Her Love Life Turns Out to Be a Total Lie.”

Over the next hour or so, while the rest of the apartment stirs and the bathroom taps creak and Ma shuffles into the kitchen to turn the soy milk machine on, this is all I can think about. The BuzzFeed heading. The comments. How invested people already seem to be, how many have followed me for “updates” that I don’t have …

Guilt soon worms its way into my chest and I want to scream.

But by some miracle, or maybe years of practice, I manage to act like everything’s fine at breakfast. It just doesn’t feel right to blurt out something like Oh, by the way, I may have treated my personal essay assignment as a creative writing exercise and it somehow went viral and now over a million people think I’ve met the love of my life in Beijing, when it isn’t even eight o’clock in the morning yet. So I drink my homemade soy milk and eat my tea egg and try not to think about the fact that my life may have irrevocably changed over the course of one night.

“… is killing me,” Ma is saying as she cracks her egg on a bowl, the shell breaking apart with a satisfying crunch. “It’s an absolute disaster.”

I don’t even have to pay full attention to know exactly who she’s talking about: Kevin from marketing. Some recent Harvard graduate with a genius IQ and, according to Ma, zero common sense.

“Sorry—what’s an absolute disaster?” I ask, hoping she’ll elaborate. Some disaster-management tips would definitely come in handy right now.

“My life,” Emily volunteers from the other end of the dining table. Her school uniform’s on backward, and her shoulder-length jet-black hair has been tied into what I suspect should be a ponytail but looks more like a bean sprout instead. Clearly, Ba’s been put in charge of helping Emily get ready today.

Ma rolls her eyes. “Save that attitude for your mid-forties,” she chides Emily, then turns back to me. “And since when are you so interested in my work life?”

“Since always,” I say innocently.

“I thought you found my job confusing,” Ma points out, passing over a plate of fluffy round mantous still warm from the steamer.

“Yeah, well, that’s only because your company insists on describing itself as a ‘creative collaborator and leader’ that seeks to ‘influence culture and inspire’ and deliver on ‘key marketing project initiatives’ or whatever.” I shred half a mantou into bite-size pieces, the dough softening between my fingers. “Like, those are literally just words. But I understand what you do. Sort of.”

Ma doesn’t look too convinced by this, but she sighs and explains, “Kevin got this huge investor to sign with us.”

“And that’s a problem because … ?”

“They only signed because he told them we were on great terms with that popular tech start-up SYS.” She grabs a mantou for herself and doesn’t eat it. Just watches it go cold beside the egg. “Except we’ve never even spoken to anyone from SYS before. We have no connections whatsoever.”

“Ah.” I nod slowly, shoving down a small bubble of hysteria at the obvious parallel between Kevin’s crisis and mine. “I do see how that might be challenging.” Then, hoping I don’t look overeager, I take a casual sip of my soybean milk and ask, “So, um, what’s the plan? Are you guys going to come clean, or—”

“God, no. Of course not.” Ma actually laughs, like the very idea is absurd. “No, we’ve been trying to get this investor on board for years. We’ll just have to work in reverse: reach out to SYS and forge a connection and act like we’ve been close all along. Maybe if we approached one of their marketing teams first, or that guy from the Cartier campaign …” She gets this distant, almost-zealous gleam in her eye, the way she tends to whenever she’s puzzling out a work issue. Then she remembers who she’s talking to. “But lying is bad,” she adds hastily, shooting Emily and me a stern look.

“Noted,” I say, and swallow the last of my milk with some difficulty. The soybean pulp scratches my throat like sand.

When everyone’s finished eating, I help Ma clean up the table, and we head down to the driver’s car together, my phone burning a hole in my blazer pocket the whole way. I haven’t checked it properly since this morning, but the notifications keep coming in. By the time we’re dropped off at school, I have 472 unread messages and god knows how many Twitter mentions.

And then things get significantly weirder.

•    •    •

I’m the first person to arrive to my math class, as usual.

Not because I’m particularly punctual by nature, or because I’m in any way enthusiastic about quadratic equations, but because there’s nowhere better to go. In the spare minutes before and between classes, people love gathering around lockers, blocking up halls, chatting and laughing so loud together the walls seem to tremble.

I tried hanging around once too, on my third day here, and it only made me feel ridiculous. Ridiculous and kind of sad, since I had no one to wait for. I ended up just standing in the middle of the corridor, my bag gripped tight in my hands, praying for the school bell to hurry up and ring.

After that, I decided I might as well wait around in the classroom, books and pens out like I’m actually studying.

I’m pretending to look over my calc notes from the other day when I hear footsteps approach. Pause, right before my desk. Then—

“Hey, Eliza.”

I jerk my head up in surprise.

These two girls I’ve never spoken a word to in my life are smiling at me—positively beaming—as though we’re best friends. I don’t even know their names.

“Hi?” I reply. It comes out like a question.

They take this as an invitation to slide into the two empty seats beside me, still smiling so wide I can see all their pearly-white teeth. As one of them nudges the other, and a quick, meaningful look passes between them, I begin to have some idea of why they might be here.

“We read your essay,” the taller, tanner girl on the left blurts out, confirming my suspicions.

“Oh,” I say, unsure how else to respond. “Um, good. I’m glad.”

“I just—god, I loved it so much,” she continues brightly, in the manner of someone building to a big, emotional speech. “I was literally up all night reading it and—”

“It was so cute,” the other girl chimes in, hand fluttering to her heart.

Okay. I definitely wasn’t expecting this. Nor the small, involuntary smile tugging at my lips.

But soon they’re both gesturing wildly and talking at the same time, their voices growing louder and louder with excitement:

“My favorite part was the bit at the grocery store, oh my god—”

“I had no idea you were going out with someone! You’ve been so low-key about it—”

“Do you have a picture of him? I mean, you don’t have to show us if you don’t want to, but—”

“What’s his name? Does he go to our school?”

“Is he in our year level?”

“Is he in our class?”

They both turn, wide-eyed, to the classroom door, where more students are trickling in, as if one of the guys might suddenly step forward and declare himself my secret boyfriend. Nothing of the sort happens, of course, but people do slow down and stare at me like they’ve never really seen me before. Like they’re hoping I might share something about my fake love life with them too.

The only person who goes straight to his desk at the very back is Caz Song. Hands in pockets, one AirPod in, expression of perpetual boredom on his face. Just like yesterday. He glances my way, briefly, impassively, then turns away.

And though it’s really the least of my concerns, my rib cage curves inward. I’m not even sure what I was hoping for, why I imagined he’d acknowledge my existence after that one anomaly of a conversation out in the corridor. Caz Song and I are so different we might as well inhabit separate planets.

“Well?” the girl on my left prompts, drawing my attention back to her and her friend. “Is he?”

I study the two of them, searching for any signs of ill will or mockery. But they both just continue smiling, and I notice the light scatter of freckles across the taller girl’s nose, the yellow butterfly clip in the other girl’s wavy hair. They seem … nice. Genuinely friendly—

“Um, I can’t tell you that,” I say with a small, apologetic smile, hoping they’ll leave the conversation there. “I wish I could, but, you know. We haven’t been together that long, so we want to keep things private for now.”

“Ah.” They both nod slowly. Beam some more. Neither of them budges. “That’s totally understandable.”

Even though this is all part of the script I’d prepared when submitting my essay, it was only ever meant to be a preventative measure, not something to be shared with people across the world. It’s like those life jackets they store on airplanes; nobody actually expects to have to use them.

As if on cue, my phone flashes again on my desk.

531 new notifications.

The taller girl sees before I can flip the screen down.

“Wow,” she says as she finally starts unpacking her own stuff for class. A MacBook Air in shiny casing. Highlighters and pens with cute designs all over them. A thick planner that hardly looks used but has bright colored tabs running down the sides and a giant sticker of some K-pop group plastered on the cover. “You must’ve had a pretty wild morning, huh?”

“Wild is definitely one word for it,” I say, relieved I can at least be honest about this.

“I’ve always wondered what it’s like to go viral,” the other girl muses. She has her laptop out, and nothing else. This is actually standard for students here, I’ve learned the hard way. At my old school, we were only allowed paper notes, so I didn’t realize I would even need to bring a laptop until my first class at Westbridge, when everyone was working on a Google Doc and all I had was a notebook and pencil.

Yeah, not exactly the best start.

“Nadia, didn’t that Douyin of yours go viral for a while the other month?” the tall girl is saying.

“The video got, like, twenty thousand views.” Nadia waves a dismissive hand in the air. “That’s very different from having like a bajillion people read your writing. Plus”—she wrinkles her nose—“I kept getting all those weird comments about my feet.”

“True. We don’t love that.”

As the two of them break into giggles, I feel a dull pang in my chest. I’d kill to have that—to be sitting next to Zoe, laughing over some silly inside joke without worrying that I’ll be leaving in a year. To feel so comfortable, at ease, at home.

Something must show on my face, because the tall girl stops and turns to me with concern. “Are you okay, Eliza?”

“Huh?” I feign confusion, then quickly pull my lips into a sheepish smile. “Yeah, of course. Just … thinking about the essay, I guess. And what I’m going to do about it.”

The two of them make long ahing sounds and nod again in total sync.

“That’s a good point,” the tall girl says. “You should do something about it for sure. You should— Oh! You should capitalize on the fame.”

“Yes!” Nadia points one finger at me excitedly—and almost pokes my eye out. “Oops—sorry! But Stephanie’s right. Whenever people go viral on Twitter, they always use it to promote themselves or boost their friend’s baking account or something.”

“Do you have one?” Stephanie asks, leaning over the back of her seat.

“What, a baking account?”

“Something to promote,” she clarifies with a laugh. “So? What are you thinking?”

And it’s silly, and beside the point, and completely unrealistic given the circumstances, but I do find myself thinking about it, some of my initial giddiness from this morning bubbling back up inside me. I’ve always dreamed of having people read my writing—read it, and actually like it—and now, for the first time ever, I have a potential readership. I have a following. Maybe if I published more essays while people are still paying attention, I could … I don’t know. Jump-start a legitimate writing career. Make a name for myself. I could be a Writer, not just someone who writes.

But just as quickly as hope sprouts in my chest, I crush it back down.

People only want to hear more from me because they think my essay was real. They think I’m dating a good-looking boy who takes me out on spontaneous motorcycle rides around the city and once slow-danced with me in the middle of a grocery store aisle and texts me good night every evening before I fall asleep. They’re in love with my love story.

If I want to keep writing and capitalize on my fame, as Stephanie says, I’ll have to keep lying.

“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “Maybe—”

The door swings open before I can give a vague response, and everyone snaps to attention at once.

Our math teacher, Ms. Sui, strides to the front of the classroom, an intimidating sheaf of worksheets balanced on one hand, a briefcase swinging from the other. She reminds me of the teachers at my old Chinese Saturday schools. Everything about her is sharp: her gaze, her voice, the cut of her pure white blazer. Her teaching style reminds me of them too.

She doesn’t greet us. She simply lets the worksheets drop to the desk with a menacing thud and calls on Stephanie to help pass them out.

We each get fifty double-sided pages of math questions printed in the tiniest of fonts, all due by tomorrow morning. This feels illegal. Someone makes a strangled noise that they quickly disguise as a cough.

Still, I’m almost grateful for the insane workload, for the focused silence that continues throughout the rest of class. I might be a good bullshitter, but I honestly don’t know how many more questions I could field without letting something slip.

•    •    •

By the time lunch rolls around, I’ve spoken to more people in the past few hours than I have since I started school here. People keep coming up to me, calling for me in the busy corridors between classes, at the start of double English, even on my way to the bathroom—and now here, in the middle of the cafeteria line.

Someone taps my shoulder. “Hey, you’re the girl with the essay, right?”

This is my reputation now, I guess: not “The New Girl from America” but “The Girl with the Viral Essay.” I would consider it an upgrade if it weren’t for my overwhelming fear of becoming known as “The Girl Who Lied” in a few days or weeks. Depending on how long I can keep pretending.

I spin around and find a whole squad of girls and three guys gaping at me.

They look a few years younger than I am, maybe year nines or tens. Some of them haven’t even shed their baby fat yet, but the girls are all wearing heavy makeup and the guys have on copious amounts of hair gel in an attempt to look more Grown Up.

“Yeah,” I say, smiling a little despite myself. “Yes. That’s me.”

“See, I told you,” one of the girls says to the guy behind her. The guy scowls. “She looks the exact same as her photo.”

I blink. “Uh, my photo? What photo?”

The same girl’s eyes widen while her friends titter. “Haven’t you seen it? It’s been going around everywhere—pretty flattering too,” she adds hastily, in a way that makes me suspect she’s lying. As we shuffle farther up the line, she fishes her phone out from her pocket and brandishes it in front of my face.

And I don’t know whether to cry or laugh.

In an article for some online teen magazine (titled “Why We’re All Swooning Over This Senior Student’s Love Story”), someone’s attached one of my old school photos from when I was still living in the States. It’s actually impressive, how they managed to find the worst possible photo of me. My hair’s been tied into a super-tight high ponytail that’s hidden behind my head, so I pretty much look bald, and my eyes are only half-open and watery from having just sneezed.

I’d begged the school photographer—almost bribed him—to let me retake it at the time, but he’d waved me away with a cheery “Don’t worry! Only your parents will see this anyway!”

Funny how that turned out.

“Wow,” I say. “This is just … great.”

“I know, right?” The girl beams, either missing my sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. “You’re, like, famous now.”

Famous. The word tastes funny, but not entirely in a bad way. There’s something inherently cool about it, something flashy and shiny and desirable, all the things I never thought I could be. I just wish it were only my writing that was famous, and not me.

I make a noncommittal sound with the back of my throat and grab an empty tray. Try to focus on selecting my lunch. If there’s one thing Westbridge International does well, it’s the food. The school chefs serve actual three-course meals, and they change it up every day; we had pineapple fried rice and braised chicken and silk tofu earlier this week, then dim sum (complete with shrimp dumplings and fresh mango pudding and all) the day after.

Today, they’re serving up roujiamo—shredded pork belly and diced scallion sandwiched in crisp, golden pieces of bing.

I heap four onto my tray and turn to go, but the kids behind me aren’t done yet.

“Is it true that your boyfriend’s identity is top secret?” the same girl asks.

My body stiffens, but my voice comes out smooth. “No. I mean … No, I wouldn’t say that.”

“So you can tell us who he is?” another girl pipes up.

“Also no.”

Even though I can only see them out of the corner of my eye, I can practically sense their disappointment.

“Can y’all give her some space?”

This, from a girl in my year level I vaguely know. Her name starts with S: Samantha or Sally or Sarah … No, Savannah. She’s standing at the front of the line, her tray stacked with at least six roujiamos, one hand on her hip.

After a stunned beat, the kids mumble apologies and back away. I almost feel bad for them. Savannah is one of those people who’s effortlessly cool and absolutely terrifying at the same time. Her winged eyeliner alone is sharp enough to cut glass, and she’s so tall I have to crane my neck a little just to look at her. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s dating one of Caz Song’s friends; anyone with any connection to Caz Song is basically granted instant membership to the school’s Super Popular, They-Could-Step-on-Me-and-I’d-Thank-Them circle.

“Um, thanks for that,” I manage.

“No big deal,” she says. She has a faint New York accent, and I remember hearing somewhere that she’s Vietnamese American. Quite a few students around here fall into similar categories: Chinese American, Korean Australian, British Indian. All people who have grown up balancing different cultures. People like me. “Must be pretty overwhelming, huh? Getting questions like that all day.”

“It’s okay.” I shrug, hoping to play it cool. “Could be a lot worse.”

“Yeah, I mean, you could’ve gone viral for trying to go up a down escalator in the middle of a crowded mall only to end up falling and knocking over a mascot in a giant chicken costume.”

I stare at her. “That’s … very specific.”

She laughs. “It was trending the other day. In fact, I think your post took its spot.”

“That’s nice? I guess?”

“Huge accomplishment,” she agrees jokingly. “You should be proud.”

We’re standing near the cafeteria tables now, and for a moment, I debate asking if she wants to have lunch together. But that’s silly. It’s not like I have a great track record with keeping new friends; I can’t imagine building a friendship on a deeply embarrassing lie would yield great results in any case. And like she said, her speaking up for me wasn’t a big deal.

Plus, a scan of the cafeteria makes it clear that her boyfriend—Daiki, I remember from roll call—is waiting for her at the largest corner table, alongside Caz Song, Stephanie, and Nadia and a bunch of other loud, gorgeous, perfectly sociable people from our year level. They’re laughing together at some joke Caz must’ve told just now, their mouths wide open, some actually doubled over in mirth. I can’t help but stare for a few beats, an unwelcome, unreasonable stone of envy lodged in my gut.

“Well, thanks again,” I tell Savannah with a weak half wave, eager to be alone. “Um, bye.”

She looks surprised, but she nods at me. Smiles. “Anytime.”

Then I leave her there. I leave the cafeteria entirely and climb the five flights of steps up to the very top of the building, my lunch tray still gripped tight in my hands. Soon, the babble of voices and clatter of plates fade away, and it’s just me standing alone on the roof with warm, buttery sunlight falling around me.

For the first time since this morning, I feel myself relax slightly.

I love coming up here, not only because it’s quiet and most often empty, but because it’s beautiful. The rooftop is designed like a garden, with bright mandarin trees and slender bamboos and this gnarled-looking plant I can’t name lining the sides and fresh jasmine flowers—Ma’s favorite—blooming everywhere like little clusters of stars, sweetening the air with their scent. There are even fairy lights strung up around the railings and over the wooden swing set in one corner, though I’ve never stayed behind late enough to watch them glow.

The view’s gorgeous too. From here, you can see the entire stretch of the school campus, and Beijing rising behind it, all that shiny glass and steel reflecting the clouds in the sky.

This is my trick to surviving new schools: Find a space like this, a place no one can disturb me, and claim it as my own.

It’s especially useful now, when I need to figure things out alone.

I lower myself onto the swing and balance my tray on my lap, ripping out a large bite of the roujiamo with my teeth. Then I do the thing I’ve been putting off all day: I check my phone.

Generally speaking, I try to stay off social media as much as possible. Every new post from an old friend serves as a painful reminder: This is their life now, without you. This is their group of best friends, their boyfriend they didn’t tell you about; this is them moving on completely. This is proof that when they said they’ll remember you, stay in touch with you, they were lying. Sometimes I’ll stare at an Instagram photo of someone I was close to in London, New Zealand, Singapore, at their fresh-dyed hair and wide grin and the kind of cropped jacket they wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing years ago, and get the odd sense of seeing a total stranger on my feed.

But today, so many messages come flooding in that my phone freezes for a solid minute. My heart freezes as well. People I haven’t spoken to in years—people from primary school—have reached out to me, all with screenshots or some variation of omg you made it! A few have followed up with questions like How has life been? or It’s been ages! but the distant politeness of it all, compared with the keyboard smashes and emoji spam we used to send one another without thought, only drives another pang through my gut.

And all I can think is: Thank god for Zoe.

She’s the only one left in my life. The only one who’s stayed over the years. And the only one who’s messaged me with a completely unrestrained number of exclamation marks demanding an explanation.

I shoot back a quick message promising to update her on everything the next time we call, before moving on to my inbox with quivering fingers. My mouth feels too dry. I can barely swallow.

At least twenty emails from journalists and writers for all kinds of media sites pop up, some requesting interviews, some asking for more exclusive material, including a couple selfie. I imagine myself posing with one arm around nothing but air, or one of those cardboard cutouts of a K-pop idol, and hysteria rises to my throat.

But the absurdity doesn’t stop there. A few people have sent me links to think pieces inspired by my essay. “The Teen Love Story People Can’t Stop Talking About: Joy in the Age of Cynicism,” one reads. Another has tied the “surprising success” of my essay to the revival of rom-coms, as well as my generation’s “growing disillusionment” with dating apps like Tinder. Yet another has somehow managed to drag my racial identity into their analysis, warning that the whole thing could be an elaborate ruse designed by the Chinese government to “soften the image of the rapidly emerging global superpower.”

Despite the dread churning in my stomach, I can’t help it; a laugh of disbelief bursts from my lips. This is by far the most ridiculous thing to have ever happened to me. That probably ever will happen to me, period.

But then a new email comes in with a faint ping, and my incredulity gives way to pure awe when I see who it’s from.