i don’t know how u did it but...thank u.

you’re my hero.

I stare and stare at the message, read it three times over, and feel my heart lighten. Because this—this gives me a spark of hope. To know that I can live in a world where Rainie Lam would voluntarily call me a hero, even if she doesn’t know Beijing Ghost is me. To think that even the richest and most influential of Airington’s elite would thank me, need me, however briefly, and that my powers—my strange, inexplicable, unreliable powers—have actually been able to help somebody...

I hold the phone to my chest and inhale deeply. Never before has the summer air tasted so sweet.

8

I move through the requests quickly after that.

As I do, my life changes shape, fits into the mold of a new, bizarre routine: I spend my mornings going through new Beijing Ghost messages and choosing the most feasible tasks, lunchtimes developing a plan of action with Henry and sometimes Chanel, and classes only half paying attention to the teacher as I wait anxiously to turn invisible.

And on the days when I do turn invisible, and make that same mad dash out the classroom door, I always make sure to come back with a stolen, forged note from the nurse’s office, explaining a fictional chronic health condition I have that unfortunately makes me puke my guts out from time to time. It’s enough to get the teachers off my back about my sudden, spontaneous absences—that, and the fact that I haven’t fallen behind on any schoolwork.

Because when all my Beijing Ghost tasks are finally done for the day, I trudge back to my dorm, exhausted, and study, cramming lecture notes and slides and graphs into my brain until five or six in the morning, just in time to watch the watery sunrise through the window. Only then do I allow myself to be human and nap for about an hour. Two hours, max.

By the time November rolls around, I can’t remember the last time I woke up without bloodshot eyes and a terrible, pounding headache, like someone has taken to squeezing my skull for fun. The trick to working through the pain, I’ve discovered, is by forcing myself to conjure up worst-case scenarios, to picture a future where I don’t make enough money and have to leave Airington. It’s like the reverse of guided meditation:

You’re walking into the classroom of your new local school. You’re sweating visibly, a heavy bag of books you haven’t read gripped to your chest. All the students and teachers stare at you. The bell rings, and you take your first pop quiz: twenty-five pages of tiny Chinese characters you can hardly understand, much less answer. You feel sick. The test results are posted for everyone to see the next day. You push through the crowd, heart pounding, and find your name at the very bottom of the list...

Compared to that, staying up all night feels almost like a luxury.