I didn’t see her until I was almost on the escalator going up. It was that Korean girl who was in my AP classes. I don’t know why but I couldn’t remember her name. We were in the quiet part of the mall, a dead land of luxury between Nordstrom and the mall’s center, where there were the stores that no one except the crazy rich Asians could afford. She must have just taken the down escalator to our floor and seemed to appear out of nowhere. Though I’d heard her call my name, I was concentrating so hard following my boyfriend up to a higher floor that I just stepped onto the escalator. “Winnie!” she called again and then she and her whole family stood watching as it carried us higher. I tried to smile, but I think I looked angry or confused. When her name finally came to me—Victoria Park!— she was gone.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. Victoria was one of those studious girls who had blunt bangs, shaved arms, and wore preppy, ironed clothes. I didn’t really fit into her group, even though I should have: I was Asian, also a sophomore at Fulcrum High, and got all A’s. But my hair was dyed auburn and I preferred romantic, bohemian floral dresses. Also, I had a boyfriend. Simon was tall, white, and already a senior. We started going out in May when I was just a freshman and he was a junior, after he broke up with this senior girl he had been with for most of high school. He had been my math tutor before that.
If I had stopped to say hi, maybe Victoria and I would’ve become friends. She liked me—I had heard that in her voice. Maybe she had all this time and I had no idea.
“One of the Chinese Robots?” Simon grinned down at me. That was our joke. I felt bad now for having called them that but at the time, I was venting. I was kind of scared of them. During recess and lunch, they’d ask each other (and me, if I was around), “What did you get on the SAT?” I told Simon they were like killer academic robots programmed to murder tests. Though I was good at school, I was too emotional, messy, and all over the place to compete.
I didn’t bother to correct him and tell him that Victoria Park was Korean. I had lumped them in with the Chinese Robots when I was upset about my Geometry test anyway.
Simon squeezed my hand. It felt small in his and sometimes holding it I felt like a child. I tried to smile but wanted to cry. Tears came so easily when I was with him. They’d just trickle out, first, dribbling slowly, then transform into great, body-racking sobs. Simon would wrap me in his long arms and let his stringy, shoulder-length brown hair fall around me like a curtain. Then he’d let me use the sleeves of his flannel shirts as Kleenex.
I wanted to tug his hand and pull him back through Nordstrom to the safety of his car so we could drive somewhere quiet and I could cry. Then we’d make out because I’d feel bad for him having to just sit there while I got snot all over his shirt. After, he’d want to linger, but I wouldn’t feel secure until we were out in the world again, shopping or ordering Starbucks like the good kids we were supposed to be.
But if we went back through Nordstrom, I might run into Victoria Park. I knew after I didn’t stop that we would never be friends because I had blanked her.
I willed the tears back, trying to wipe the ones that escaped discreetly.
“One of the Chinese Robots,” I nodded.
I could feel Simon turning the pretty, silver ring on the third finger of my left hand as we walked into the mall. It had a tiny diamond chip in it with a flower etched round it so that the diamond was its sparkling center.
*
When we got to Natureland, I remembered that I kind of have a friend who works there. My mom often complains that we don’t get great service because we’re Asian. But even she was surprised by how nice Becky was. Becky played with my little half-brother while my mom shopped. I was worried that my mom might say something racist, but luckily, she didn’t. The next time we went in, I spent a couple minutes talking to Becky, joking about being in the middle of nature in a mall under the store’s canopy of trees. It wasn’t original, but she laughed, and it felt then like we were two people who were friends, not just a shop assistant and customer.
Today Becky had her dark, curly hair pulled back into a high bun with little rhinestone heart clips pinned at the sides. I was surprised because I think it’s the stupidest hair trend. I kept staring at it before she saw us, trying to see how other people could like it. For a moment, because it was Becky, I did.
“Hi Winnie!” she called.
I blushed, pleased that she’d remembered me. There were little kids shrieking and running around the back of the store and other shoppers trying to get her attention. But she came right over to us.
“I like your hair,” I said, shyly.
“You always look so pretty, Winnie. I love your dresses.”
I grinned. I just love it when people notice my dresses.
Simon smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Hi, I’m Simon Plank, Winnie’s fiancé,” he said as he proffered his hand, and my knees felt like they were buckling out from under me even though I was still handing, holding onto Simon’s hand like nothing had happened.
I expected Becky to act surprised or disapprove. She just smiled warmly like she always does. Maybe it’s different for shop clerks because people don’t talk to them like they’re friends. They have to act nice no matter what.
She shook Simon’s hand with a firm grip.
“Nice to meet you, Simon,” she said. “Are you guys doing your Christmas shopping?”
I nodded.
“I’ve been rushed off my feet. It’s worse than finals!”
“You’re a student?” I was surprised. I thought she was just a really nice girl who was older than me, of course, and worked in a store. But not like us.
“Yeah, I still have a research paper to write.”
Simon cocked his head to the side, taking her seriously for the first time. “Where do you go?”
“Cal State Long Beach.”
“What are you studying?”
“Kinesiology but eventually I’m going to do my master’s for Speech Therapy.”
A patronizing smile spread over Simon’s face. Simon looked down on the Sciences as lesser than the Humanities and the hierarchy was that private schools were better than UC’s unless it was UC Berkeley or UCLA. Then came the Cal States and then community colleges. Cal State Long Beach was not as good as the worst UC. We were both on the honours/AP track. Most of the smart kids went to UCLA at the very least.
“Nice,” he said, not meaning it at all.
“That’s amazing!” I cried at the same time and stared daggers at him.
“My younger sister is hearing-impaired and works with a speech therapist,” Becky explained. “I help her with the exercises, so it feels like it would be something I would be good at.”
I wished I had that kind of purpose and knew what I wanted to do in life. But I also was surprised that Becky went to a Cal State. I hated that the little clips in her hair had started to look stupid again.
“I work here part-time,” she added. “These Christmas hours are insane. But gotta stack the paper, right?”
I nodded but didn’t know at all. I got allowance from both my divorced parents, and they paid for most of the stuff I needed.
“How’s Winston?”
“Aw, you remembered. He’s good!”
Becky suddenly switched into her smooth retail voice—“Can I help you find anything?”—and I was confused.
“What?”
“For your Christmas shopping.” She nodded her head to the right, and my eyes followed. I saw a frazzled woman in a Natureland vest who must have been Becky’s supervisor. I pitied her then for being stuck in this store, for having to please that woman, and for only going to a Cal State.
“I think we’re OK right now,” I said and gave her a big smile that I hoped didn’t look too fake.
She winked before moving away.
When she seemed far enough away, I hissed at Simon, “I thought we weren’t going to tell anyone!”
“I haven’t told anyone important.”
“Becky’s kind of my friend.”
“Then she should know.”
There was nothing I could say to that. But I could never go into that Natureland again. It would be too hard to talk to Becky with my family there, knowing that she knew that Simon was my fiancé and could say something and then we’d have to explain.
As we left with one big, green bag each, I still had the sinking feeling. I looked for Becky so I could say bye. She was busy, so I just waved in her direction. I wasn’t sure if she saw me.
*
I tugged Simon’s hand to hurry as we weaved our way through the thick crowds into the center of the mall. I still needed to find something for Winston. Everything had been too expensive or not special enough.
I felt Simon’s hand tug back.
“Let’s ride the carousel.”
“Why?”
“It would be romantic.”
I sighed.
Sometimes it seemed like Simon was just waiting for me to grow up. But he always brought me flowers, stuffed bears, and Chocolate Therapy boxes of chocolate. I could never figure out if it was because he really felt that way about me or because he just thought that he should do those things because I was his girlfriend. He had done them for his ex, Meagan Noguchi, too. She would make a big show of carrying the teddy bear around school that he’d given her as they’d walk through the halls with their hands in each other’s jeans’ back pockets. They were that couple who were all over each other, who you could stare at without them noticing until you felt uncomfortable.
I started feeling bad for being so mad at him for introducing himself to Becky as my fiancé, even though I still was. To him, she was just a girl in a shop not worthy of my time. Or maybe he didn’t want me to be friends with her or have any friends at all. Whenever I told him about a person that I hoped might become a friend, he never was as nice as I would’ve wished. I couldn’t point it out, not then, because my potential friends were there, and I wanted them to like Simon and not see us fighting right away. Afterward, when I’d worked myself up and was crying, he’d sigh and say, “Winnie, you’re so sensitive.” And, “Everything’s not such a big deal.” And the one I hated the most: “Sometimes you’re just so immature, Winnie.”
I followed him in line for the carousel. We waited behind parents who held the sticky hands of their little kids or who were trying to hold them back because they were trying to run toward the moving wheel. Simon and I were the only teenagers and the only couple without kids.
He paid for the tickets. I let him even though I didn’t want to feel like I owed him, but he was the one who wanted to go. The wheel was decorated for Christmas with all the horses transformed into reindeer and the benches turned into lavish sleighs with greenery attached to their sides. It was smaller than it looked from the outside, just wide enough for two reindeer side by side. I took the inside one so that the people in the mall couldn’t see me. We didn’t talk as we watched the little kids scurry past to find a place.
“We could sit on one together,” he suggested. I shook my head—I wasn’t sure a mall carousel reindeer could hold us both. Already, I couldn’t see any adults on the reindeer and was worried that we should be sitting on the sturdier sleigh benches instead. It was mostly babies and toddlers riding on the reindeer with their parents standing next to them, helping to keep them upright. But if we sat on the bench, Simon might act romantic and do something that the adults would think was inappropriate. He looked away from me, hurt. But I didn’t want to get in trouble, just so he could feel close, sitting, probably illegally, two to a reindeer.
The bright music started while Simon froze me out though I tried to smile, not wanting to ruin the video the parents were shooting and mar it by being a sullen teenager without any Christmas spirit.
Simon stared straight ahead, not looking at me. I turned away toward the center of the carousel, so no one could see my face fall. In the middle, there were ornate mirrors where I saw a sad-looking red-haired Asian girl staring back at me with smeared eye makeup that I wiped away with the pads of my second fingers. Deeper in the image, behind me, I could see Simon reflected. He looked like a man already, with curly hair on his arms. He was hunched into himself, and his brown hair fell limp past his chin. It looked so soft that I wanted to reach out and touch it. I turned toward him then and tried to get him to look at me. When he didn’t, I looked past him into the mall.
There was bored-looking white girl in a Santa hat who was getting the line ready for the next group of riders. Beyond her were the shops on the lower level that everyone likes—Gap, the Discovery Store, Chocolate Therapy—and then the carousel turned and there were more shops and more people who looked happy or irritated but were in motion, making their way through the thronging crowd to wherever they were going.
*
As soon as the wheel slowed, Simon hopped off. He was walking so fast that I thought he would leave me while I was stranded on my plastic reindeer.
I knew I should follow but instead I took my time. I fiddled with my ring and wondered what would happen if I just let it fall. Would a kid pick it up and think that it was treasure? It wasn’t the kind of ring a good person would even bother taking to the mall’s lost and found. You couldn’t even tell that the diamond was a real diamond.
I saw Simon’s pace slow like he was waiting for me even though he was still making a point to walk away. Alone, he looked like some pretentious college guy already—long, messy hair, plaid, flannel shirt, but at the same time his face looked like an upset little boy’s from the way he chewed his bottom lip. He looked like the whole world was against him.
I hopped off the wheel and grabbed him from behind near the little fence that separated the carousel from the rest of the mall. I held him right in front of everyone. We were now the still center in the middle of everything—him, rigid with his arms glued to his sides, me holding him, around him.
I pressed myself against him until I felt his body soften. Then he turned and kissed me in the way that I always felt embarrassed of when we’re around other people. But I didn’t pull away.
*
Hand in hand, we strolled into Chocolate Therapy. Simon fiddled with my ring as we waited in line.
We weren’t paying attention when the shop assistant called us forward. She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t recognize her because her face was concealed beneath the store visor. Two floral tattoos peeped out from the wrists of her long-sleeved uniform and a nose ring hung between her nostrils like a bull.
When we reached the front of the counter, she looked up and I heard myself stammer. I was looking into the face of Simon’s ex, Meagan Noguchi.
“Simon Plank and girlfriend,” she acknowledged us.
“Meagan,” Simon said as his hand dropped mine like deadweight.
“Is that little Winnie Ng?” she squinted. “I didn’t recognize you at first. You look like some white girl who just walked out of Anthropologie.”
“Don’t be racist,” I said.
“Don’t be so touchy,” Meagan smirked. “I was merely stating fact. If I called you a peeled banana, now that would be racist.”
I hated that she acted like she was so woke and more Asian than I was and that made her so superior. She was already older and had been with Simon first and could live all by herself without her family on the other side of the country. It was like her competing with a Kindergartener. But I mustered a big smile and kept my voice bright.
“Two small coffees with milk and sugar, please. And I want a box. We’re getting all of Simon’s favourites.”
I started to list them, but she snapped, “I remember!” Then she continued talking to Simon as if I didn’t exist while she grabbed handfuls of Amaretto Surprise and Peanut Butter Cup with her plastic gloves.
“You grew your hair out,” she said.
“Winnie likes it.” Simon sounded defensive.
Meagan shrugged. “I preferred it shorter with the goatee. You’re going to love college, Si. It’s like waking up. It’s when you’ll really find yourself. I’m so glad I moved to New York. I finally feel like I make sense somewhere. It’s like total culture shock coming back here. What’s your number one right now? Is it still Carleton?”
“I was thinking of staying closer to home.”
Meagan glanced at me. “Don’t decide your whole college career based on your high school girlfriend,” she said. “I know you’re serially monogamous but it’s fun to be single. You shouldn’t let anything hold you back.”
“You didn’t,” Simon said shortly.
Simon never talked much about Meagan. He told me once, half joking, “She’s a dragon lady. Chewed me up, spit me out, moved onto someone else.”
I had said then, “I’m not like that. I’m nothing like Meagan,” but I wondered if he might call me that, too, one day, if I did something that he didn’t like.
I was too busy fumbling for my money to hear the next part, but I could feel a current of feeling between them. When Meagan handed me the receipt, Simon was looking at the ground with his arms crossed.
“Thanks for visiting Chocolate Therapy,” Meagan finally said, like she was supposed to.
I smiled wide at her. A big fake smile.
“No, thank you! I don’t know if you heard, but Simon and I are engaged.”
I held my ring in front of her nose as if it were a real engagement ring like you see on The Bachelor. The diamond, at least, was real.
“I hadn’t,” she said softly.
“I guess I’ll be Winnie Plank soon,” I continued. “We’d better finish our Christmas shopping. Isn’t that right, baby?”
After a beat, Simon nodded. “Of course, Win. Nice seeing you, Meagan,” he said and actually sounded pleasant.
Simon didn’t look back as we exited the store, but he put his hand on my butt with a proprietary air. I could feel its heat through the flimsy fabric of my dress. I watched Meagan out of the corner of my eye. She looked like she was about to cry. She seemed really small despite her nose ring and black eyeliner. As she motioned the next person forward, she was just another unhappy shop girl helping a customer.
*
We were laughing as soon as we were out of the door.
“Did you see her piercing?” Simon said. “It looked ridiculous. You could tell she thought it was so cool.”
Still, neither of us wanted to stay near the center of the mall knowing that Meagan was there. We were already walking back toward the car. I decided to just pick something up for Winston at Natureland on the way out.
I couldn’t see Becky and was relieved. I bought a junior archery set and grabbed Simon’s hand to go.
We were walking quickly back through the mall when I heard heavy footsteps behind me. I turned to find Becky, flushed and breathing heavily. She must have been running.
“Winnie! I’m so glad I caught you! I just wanted to give you my number. I’m leaving Natureland after Christmas to go to school full-time. Keep in touch, OK? Maybe we can get coffee sometime. I wanted to tell you earlier but didn’t get the chance.”
I clutched the paper and grinned.
“For sure!”
“I better get back at it,” she said, flashing me a grin and shrugged like she hadn’t run after us. “Have a Merry Christmas!”
“You, too, Becky! Merry Christmas!”
I looked down at the paper scrawled with her pretty, round cursive. She had written down her phone number and drawn a heart by her name, Becky Lopez.
I felt lucky. I wouldn’t have to avoid Natureland and I’d made a new friend. In my head, I was already writing the text I’d send Becky later. It would be so nice to have a friend not from high school but just because. We could meet somewhere when I could finally drive next year. I could picture us at a coffee shop at a small table, Becky’s open face across from me. Then I wondered what I’d say if she asked about Simon. Of course, she would, that’s what girlfriends talked about. I tried to think of how I would answer.
My mind went blank.
“You’re not really going to text her?” Simon said with one eyebrow cocked up.
“Nah,” I said.
I crumpled the paper and let it fall.
Then we were walking back through Nordstrom. For a moment, I thought I saw Victoria Park. I opened my mouth to yell her name. I really wanted to see her all of a sudden. But it was just another Asian girl with her family.