As an unwelcome chill snakes down my spine, I text back slowly, my fingers fumbling over the correct pinyin:

why wouldn’t it be?

She shoots back a message within seconds:

I don’t know. Just had a bad feeling—and the thread on my handkerchief snapped earlier this morning, which is never good omen in those palace dramas. You will tell me if something is wrong at school, won’t you?

My heart pounds faster, the bass-like beat rattling my skull. The rational part of me wants to dismiss her messages, to simply say everything’s fine and tease her for taking her Chinese soap operas way too seriously.

But instead what I type is:

can i visit you this weekend?

3

I’m greeted at my aunt’s door by Buddha.

Not the Buddha himself—though it certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen to me this week—but a giant poster of him, half peeling at the corners and framed with gold. Around it, there are little yellowing stickers my aunt has clearly tried and failed to scrape off, some advertising cleaning services and what may be a porn site, and others sporting nothing but a surname with a phone number printed underneath. Next to the Buddha’s serene, smiling face, they look almost comically out of place.

I shake my head. It should be the local wuye’s responsibility to get rid of all the spam, but in a small, rundown compound like this one, most tenants are left to fend for themselves.

“Yan Yan!”

Xiaoyi’s voice drifts out to greet me before she does, and despite myself, I find my lips tugging upward at the familiar childhood nickname. It’s hard for me to really feel at home anywhere with all the moving around I’ve done, but there’s something about Xiaoyi and her little flat that always grounds me, pulls me back to simpler times when everything felt safe and warm.

Then the door swings wide open, the strong smell of cabbage dumplings and damp cloth hitting my nose, and Xiaoyi appears before me in a plastic floral apron, patches of white flour sticking to her permed hair and hollow cheeks, her resemblance to Mama striking despite the nine-year age gap between them.

She grabs my hands in her calloused ones, the cool wooden beads of her bracelet brushing my skin, and proceeds to pinch and pat my cheeks with alarming strength for her petite frame.

Once she’s satisfied I haven’t lost or gained too much weight, she steps back, smiling, and asks, “Have you eaten, Yan Yan?”

“Mm,” I say, even though I know she’ll make me sit down and eat with her anyway, that she’s probably spent half the day preparing my favorite food for me with fresh produce from the morning markets. Xiaoyi doesn’t have any children, but she’s always doted on me like I’m one of her own.

Just as I predict, she starts ushering me into the cramped dining room, pausing only when she notices me bending down to untie my school shoes.