: Chapter 6

I wake to the loud buzzing of bees.

No, not bees, I realize as I force my eyes open. It’s my phone vibrating against my bedside table, the screen lighting up again and again in rapid succession as more notifications come flooding in. I fumble to pick it up, my stomach already knotting with anxiety.

The last time I received this many alerts at once was when I forgot to call Mama three days in a row during exam season, and she thought I’d been kidnapped or hospitalized or something. I’d felt so guilty afterward that I promised to message her at least once a day, just to let her know I was safe. And even with everything going on—even on a night like last night—I’ve honored that promise.

But if it’s not Mama frantically checking that I’m still alive…

My confusion lifts, then returns with double the intensity when I spot the little Beijing Ghost icon beside what must be over fifty new notifications. Did someone manage to hack the app?

Wide awake now, I untangle the cheap, thin sheets from my legs and jump down from bed, yanking my phone free from its charger. Then I scroll through the messages, and a silent laugh of disbelief rises to my lips.

I’d thought Chanel was only joking about the review last night, but it turns out she really went ahead with it. Not only that, but it must’ve been pretty convincing—convincing enough to cause a 770 percent spike in user activity overnight.

My pulse quickens as I read over the new requests. There’s an odd fluttering sensation in the pit of my stomach, caught somewhere between nerves and excitement and impatience, like that feeling I sometimes get right before heading into an exam.

I filter through the smaller requests, the ones that wouldn’t make me much money and probably aren’t worth my time, and a few troll messages asking about weird sex stuff. Then I come to the most recent work order, and pause.

The message is surprisingly detailed and long enough to be an essay, and even comes with its own nondisclosure agreement attached, but that’s not what makes an alarm bell go off in my head. It’s the request itself; the user wants me to remove a series of nudes from Jake Nguyen’s phone before he can send them out.

Everything I overheard from Rainie’s conversation—or supposed audition—in the bathroom comes rushing back to me. It all seems like too much of a coincidence. Besides, almost everyone knows Rainie and Jake have been on and off since last year, and their most recent split was ugly. Apparently Rainie burned 100,000 RMB worth of the gift bags Jake gave her in a fit of rage, and Jake responded by hitting every bar and club in Thailand over the summer break.

But the nudes—that’s definitely a new development. It wouldn’t be the biggest scandal to hit our school, of course, not since Stephanie Kong’s potential Olympics career was cut short by a leaked sex tape, but it’s no small matter either.

After some deliberation, I type in the private chat:

This counts as child pornography, you know that right? Why don’t you go to the school, or the police?

My suspicions are confirmed when the user replies, almost immediately:

it’s complicated. i can’t risk anyone finding out abt this…would do more harm than good, tbh.

but you’ll help me, right??

I haven’t had a chance to form a response yet when new messages pour in:

please?

this is rly urgent.

like he told me he’d send the pics to his friends when/if he felt like it i tried to talk to him but he’s blocked me on all social media alr. even facebook.

i don’t know what else to do…

I can practically feel Rainie’s panic radiating through the other side of the screen, and with each new message I read, I can also feel my own anger simmering. Rising. First there was Chanel’s cheating father, and now this. If nothing else, these couple of days have served as a great reminder of why I’m glad to be single.

More messages pop up:

sorry, i didn’t mean to spam u…i get u must be busy & there’s probably lots of ppl messaging u rn…

i’d be happy to pay u early if that speeds things up would 50,000 RMB be enough?

I’ll admit—it does feel wrong to capitalize on her desperation like this, to charge money for the kind of help I should be offering for free, even if 50,000 RMB might mean nothing to her and her family.

But I would also be lying if I said my heart didn’t skip a beat at the number.

50,000 RMB. That’s more than what Mama makes in a whole year.

I glance at the time on my phone. It’s still half past five in the morning, giving me enough time to sign the NDA, revise for my Chinese tingxie quiz, and—ideally—come up with a game plan before first period.

I shoot back:

Ok. I’ll try my best.

Then I yank my uniform over my head, grab my school bag, and slide out the door, keeping my steps as light as possible so as to not wake Chanel up. After everything she went through last night, it’s the least I can do.

Henry and I are the first people to enter the English classroom.

Well, technically, that’s a lie—our teacher, Mr. Chen, is already seated behind his desk. He’s busy shuffling around piles of marked papers when I walk in, a Styrofoam coffee cup dangling from his mouth, his oil-black, shoulder-length hair combed back in a low ponytail. Out of all the teachers at Airington, Mr. Chen is probably the most talked about, and by far the most respected; he’s written for the New York Times, had lunch with the Obamas, published a poetry collection on the Asian diaspora experience which was later nominated for a Nobel Prize, and got his law degree from Harvard before he’d even turned twenty, then gave up a six-figure job at a prestigious New York law firm on a whim to teach all around the globe.

He is, in short, everything I want to be.

“Ah. Alice.” Mr. Chen smiles widely when he sees me. He smiles a lot, Mr. Chen, despite the fact that there’s very little to smile about at eight o’clock on a Thursday morning. Then again, if I were a successful, award-winning Harvard law grad-slash-poet, I’d probably be grinning like an idiot even at my own funeral.

“Morning, Mr. Chen,” I say, smiling back and forcing as much enthusiasm into my voice as I can. This is a strategic move, on my part. When it comes time for the teachers to help us write letters of recommendation, I want to be remembered as someone “upbeat” and “positive,” with “excellent people skills”—never mind if that’s the complete opposite of my actual personality.

Of course, now that I might be leaving, all my efforts could be for nothing…

No. I crush the thought before it can fully form. I have Beijing Ghost now. A source of income. People who want to pay me 50,000 RMB for a single job.

Everything can still work out the way I want it to.

“…consider that English program?” Mr. Chen is saying, a meaningful look in his eyes.

It takes me a second to figure out what he’s talking about. He’d recommended this prestigious two-month writing course to me and only me at the end of last year, and I’d let myself get excited for exactly five seconds before erasing the whole thing from my mind. The program cost about as much as my parents’ flat, and even if I were rich and had the time to spare, I’d probably invest in a coding boot camp like the one Henry went to in Year Nine. Something with a high ROI.

But obviously I can’t tell Mr. Chen that.

“Oh, yes. I’m still thinking about it,” I lie. My smile is starting to feel even stiffer than usual.

To my relief, Mr. Chen doesn’t push the matter. “Well, no rush. And in the meantime… I have something for you.” He holds up a paper with my tiny writing scribbled all over it. It’s last week’s English test: an essay and two long-answer questions on symbolism in Macbeth. “Good job.”

My heart stutters a beat, the way it always does when I’m about to receive academic feedback of any kind. I grab the paper and quickly fold it in two so that Henry, who’s walking toward us, can’t see my score.

“And you too, King Henry,” Mr. Chen says with a wink, handing him his test over my shoulder. I don’t remember who came up with the ridiculous nickname first, but all the humanities teachers seem to get a real kick out of using it. I’ve always found it a bit too on the nose. After all, everyone knows Henry is the equivalent of royalty at our school.

I have a nickname, too, though only my classmates sometimes call me by it: Study Machine. I don’t mind, to be honest—it highlights my main strength and suggests at control. Purpose. Ruthless efficiency.

All good things.

As Henry thanks the teacher and strikes up a conversation about some extra readings he did last night, I step off to the side and sneak a glance at my score.

99%.

Relief floods through me. If this were any other subject, I’d already be beating myself up for that deducted 1%, but as a rule, Mr. Chen never gives out full marks.

Still, I can’t celebrate just yet…

I turn to Henry when he’s finished talking. “What did you get?” I want to know.

He raises his eyebrows. He looks more well rested than he did the last time I saw him; his skin smooth as glass, dark hair falling in neat waves over his forehead, not a single wrinkle to be seen on his uniform. I wonder, briefly, if he ever gets tired of being so perfect all the time. “What did you get?”

“You tell me first.”

This earns me an eye roll, but after a pause, he says, “Ninety-eight percent.”

“Ah.” I can’t help it—my face breaks into a wide smile.

Henry rolls his eyes again, and heads to his seat. He unpacks his bag slowly, methodically: a shiny MacBook Air, a clear Muji pencil case, and a thick binder with colorful annotated tabs running down the sides. He arranges them all in straight lines and ninety-degree angles, like he’s about to take one of those esthetic Studygram photos. Then, without lifting his head, he says, “Let me guess, you got ninety-nine percent, then?”

I say nothing, just smile some more.

Henry glances up at me. “You realize it’s rather sad that your sole source of joy comes from beating me by one percent in an English unit test?”

The smile slides off my face. I scowl at him. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not my sole source of joy.”

“Right.” He sounds unconvinced.

“It’s not.”

“I wasn’t disagreeing with you.”

“I—ugh. Whatever.” Despite the fact that there are literally a million other things I’d rather do—including walking barefoot over Lego bricks—I take the seat beside him. “There’s something kind of important I need to discuss with you…”

Henry’s expression doesn’t change when I sit down, but I can still sense his surprise. It’s an unspoken yet universally acknowledged rule that the seat you take at the very start of the year is the seat you stick with.

Which is why, when my usual desk mate and Airington’s top art student, Vanessa Liu, comes through the door a few seconds later, she freezes in her tracks. This might sound like an exaggeration, but it isn’t; she goes completely still from head to toe, even as more students trickle in behind her. Then she marches over to me with the sort of betrayed, wounded look one would usually reserve for when they catch their boyfriend cheating on them with their best friend, or something worse.

“You’re sitting here?” she demands, her thin voice stretching into a whine. When I don’t respond, just give her a small, apologetic smile, she pouts and continues, “You’re leaving me at our table with Lucy Goh?”

“What’s wrong with Lucy?” I say, even though part of me suspects I already know the answer.

Lucy Goh is one of the rarities at our school; thoroughly lower middle-class, with white-collar parents working at small local companies. She’s kind to everyone around her—she once baked the whole class personalized cookies for our end-of-year party, and she’s always the first to run over when someone falls in PE class—but she’s not an art prodigy, like Vanessa, or a musician, like Rainie, or particularly good at any of her subjects. And that’s the problem. Here at Airington, there are many different tickets to respect—talent, beauty, wealth, charm, family connections…

But kindness is not one of them.

“Like, yeah, she’s nice and everything,” Vanessa is saying, fluffing her bangs with one charcoal-smeared hand, “but when it comes to group work…” She pauses, then leans forward like she’s about to share a juicy secret, though her voice is still loud enough for the whole class to hear her next words: “She’s kind of useless, you know what I mean?”

Her sharp cat-like eyes crinkle at the corners, and she’s looking at me like she expects me to laugh or agree.

I don’t.

I can’t. Not when my stomach seizes up as if I’m the one she’s bitching about.

And maybe it’s because I’m aware of Henry sitting close beside me, watching and no doubt judging this whole exchange, or because I’m still riding the power high of my test results, or because there’s a chance everything might not work out and I’ll be gone from Airington in a semester, but I do something wildly out of character: I say exactly what I’m thinking. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure she does more work than you do.”

Vanessa’s eyes widen.

I shrink back in my seat by instinct, suddenly scared she’s going to punch me or something. Too late, I remember that in addition to all her prestigious art awards, Vanessa also won the national kickboxing championships last year.

But all she does is let out a loud high-pitched laugh.

“Damn. Wasn’t prepared for a roast, Alice,” she says, her light, teasing tone not quite matching the flash of anger in her eyes. Before I can backtrack, however, she marches to our usual table—her table now, I guess. I have a feeling I won’t be sitting next to her anytime soon.

“Wow,” Henry says once Vanessa’s out of earshot.

“Wow what?” I demand, cheeks flushed, regret already twisting into my gut. There’s a reason I never get confrontational with anyone at school, and it’s not because I’m a coward—well, not only because of that. With all the connections my classmates have, I can’t burn a single bridge without burning a hundred more bridges by association. For all I know, I might’ve just ruined any chance I had of one day working at Baidu or Google.

“Nothing,” Henry says, but he’s looking at me like he’s never really seen me before. “It’s just—you can be quite surprising sometimes.”

I frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind. Nothing,” he repeats. Looks away. “Anyway, what were you saying earlier?”

“Oh, right. About the next task—”

“Wait.” He opens up to a blank Pages document on his laptop, and motions for me to write what I want to say on there.

I type: srsly? we’re passing notes like we’re in year six now?

To which he immediately responds: Yes. Unless you want everyone eavesdropping on us right now to know you’re Beijing Ghost.

I look up just in time to catch four people staring our way with great interest. Point taken.

So I spend the rest of class filling Henry in on Rainie’s request and planning how to proceed via laptop, occasionally looking up at the board to pretend I’m taking class notes. It’s not like I’m missing much anyway; Mr. Chen’s handing back papers and going over the answers to our latest test, and most of the “model answers” he uses are either Henry’s or mine. See, I’m almost tempted to tell Henry as my classmates copy down my answers word for word. Here’s another source of joy. But when I play the sentence over in my head, I’m not sure if it makes me sound less pathetic or more.

The period flies by with surprising speed. And when the bell rings, sending everyone else scrambling out of their seats, Henry and I are the last to leave.

In theory, it shouldn’t be difficult to delete a few photos from Jake Nguyen’s phone, especially when I have the element of surprise on my side.

In theory.

But after observing Jake over the next few days and tailing him whenever I turn invisible, it becomes clear that the guy basically carries his phone everywhere with him—in class, on the basketball court, even on his way to the bathroom—as if it’s his firstborn child or something. He’s like a parody of the tech-obsessed, easily distracted Gen Z kid; always scrolling through memes on Twitter or Moments on WeChat or photos of his friends’ new customized Nikes on Instagram. On numerous occasions, I’m tempted to just slap the phone right out of his hands and be done with it.

Soon, five whole days have passed and all I’ve gotten out of my invisible spying sessions is his iPhone passcode (which is literally just 1234) and the knowledge that Jake Nguyen secretly watches Sailor Moon in his spare time. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what to make of the latter.

What I do know, however, is that the longer this drags on, the greater the chances of Jake sending the photos out. And according to Rainie’s increasingly desperate messages, he’s threatening to do it very soon.

Then, early on Wednesday morning, as I’m getting ready for school, Henry calls me.

My hands freeze over my skirt zipper. I don’t know what’s weirder—the fact that he’s calling me, as if we’re still in the early 2000s, or the fact that it’s him.

“Hello?” I say, tentative, lifting the phone to my ear with my free hand. Part of me is convinced his number has been stolen.

Then his voice comes through the line, crisp and smooth as ever. “Alice. You busy?”

“No—well, I mean, I’m just getting dressed,” I say without thinking.

“Oh.” There’s an awkward pause. “Right.”

I quickly yank my zipper all the way up and sit down on the edge of my bed, my cheeks heating. “Wait, never mind. Forget I said that.” Across the room from me, Chanel is snoring softly. I press the phone closer to my ear. “So, um. What’s up? Why are you calling?”

“It’s about the latest task.”

For some reason, the first feeling that pools into my stomach is…disappointment. But of course it’s about the latest task. Why else would he be calling? “Go on.”

“Given how slow business has been, I’ve taken it upon myself to observe Jake’s movements around Mencius Hall these past few days—truly one of the lowest points in my life so far, I might add—and it seems there might be a small window of opportunity for you to delete those photos of his…”

I swallow my surprise. Out of courtesy, I’ve been keeping Henry updated on my progress—or, well, the lack thereof—ever since our first English class together, but I never expected him to go out of his way and gather information on his own. Part of me is grateful, obviously. Another part of me hates the fact that he’s spotted an opportunity before I did. It makes it feel like he’s winning, which is ridiculous.

This isn’t meant to be a competition.

Still, I can’t help the hot stab of irritation in my chest—nor the strange chill that follows it, like a winter draft blowing over me, except all the windows are closed…

Oh.

Henry continues talking, completely oblivious to what’s happening. What’s about to happen. “See, the only time Jake leaves his phone in his dorm is when he’s showering. So I was thinking, if I could wait in the halls near his room and pretend to accidentally spill something on him—something you’d have to wash off, like orange juice—you’d have around eight or nine minutes to—”

“That sounds great,” I cut in, suppressing a shiver as I push myself off the bed. My hands feel like ice. No, everything feels wrong, somehow, the walls of the dorm room swelling up around me like an open sore, and my heart speeding up with it. Just because I’ve experienced this shit before doesn’t make it any less terrifying. Any less unnatural. “You think you’d be able to do that in like, ten minutes? I’m heading over.”

“Er…right now?”

The cold has spread all the way down to my toes. I need to move. And quickly.

“Yeah,” I manage.

“Right, well, there’s a slight issue I was about to get to—you know Jake’s roommate, Peter? He’s still in the dorm, and from the sounds of it…” He pauses. A door creaks, and somewhere in the background, I swear I hear beatboxing, of all things. “…he’s currently busy recording a new mixtape. Or perhaps it’s another one of his political rants. If I’m honest, it can be quite hard to tell the difference—”

“What do we do then?” I cut in, urgency leaking into my every word. “I mean—crap, I forgot about the roommate situation—”

“I can probably help with that,” someone says from behind me.

I almost drop my phone.

When I whirl around, Chanel is standing there in her silk pajamas, still a little bleary-eyed from sleep but smiling.

“Chanel, I…” I say, too stunned to form a complete sentence.

“This is for your Beijing Ghost thing, right?” she clarifies. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing just now.”

Henry’s voice cuts through the phone line. “Wait. Chanel?”

“Yes, hi, Henry,” Chanel says into the phone, her grin widening. “How do you feel about us working together again?”

“Since when did you two work together?” I demand, the same time Henry says, a trace of incredulity in his tone, “You told her about Beijing Ghost?”

“Yeah, yeah, Henry and I’ve known each other since we were kids,” Chanel explains quickly, like it’s not really worth mentioning. “SYS collaborated with my father”—for a second, the corners of her lips turn down—“on a few promotional campaigns for his night clubs.”

“Oh.” I shouldn’t be surprised. Sometimes it feels like all the Airington students and their families belong to a single intricate, complex web of power, one I can see but can never enter. Not without getting trapped inside it like some pesky fly.

“And Alice told me about your app last week,” Chanel goes on, speaking to Henry now. “But it’s kind of a long story, and we’re apparently very short on time.” She turns back to me. “So. Can I help out or not? God knows I need the distraction.”

I’m aware that this kind of decision should warrant careful evaluation, a comprehensive risk assessment and at least two long lists detailing all the pros and cons of getting a third person involved. But I’m also acutely aware of the cold spreading fast over my body.

“Okay,” I say. “You’re in.”