A few tourists stop to stare as they pass us, but I don’t get the same self-conscious, ready-to-hide feeling I used to. It’s like my brain has undergone a makeover too, those dark spots of doubt brushed away and replaced by almost obnoxiously optimistic thoughts. Maybe they’re staring because they also think this style suits me. Maybe they’re admiring how the pins glow in my hair. Maybe they too want to experience the thrill of spinning around in traditional robes. Maybe they’re trying to figure out how much a photo shoot like this costs.

“You’re doing such an amazing job,” Pei Jie calls out to me a few dozen different angles later, the camera clicking furiously. “Have you ever modeled before?”

I swallow. “No,” I say, but the lie worms its way down my throat and sharpens its teeth to gnaw at my stomach.

“Well, maybe it’s something you should consider,” she says, lowering the camera to inspect the last couple of photos. “All right, I think we’re finished here. Thank you so much for agreeing to this—I can’t wait for you to see how they turn out. We’ll do some retouching and send the final files through to Wang Laoshi—I’ve already added him on WeChat …” She starts going into what I assume to be the technical things, and that’s where my Mandarin fails me and I have to revert to smiling and nodding and hoping that she hasn’t slipped in a question about whether I’d be happy to sell her a vital organ.

But I understand exactly what she says as I turn to go, only because I’ve heard the same words from my friends and relatives before, always meant to be encouraging, to steer me toward the right place in life: “It’d be such a waste if you weren’t a model.”

Before, I would’ve given those words all the weight in the world. I would’ve let myself become convinced that, yes, being a model is the only way for me, if that’s what other people think. But a new, exhilarating thought pushes up in resistance: It’s not for them to decide. I could be a model, but I could be a thousand other things, lead other lives, follow new paths and find my way forward. I can’t know exactly where I’ll end up, but I don’t have to let them choose for me.

I walk without looking back. The farther I go, the lighter I feel.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It takes far less time to remove the elaborate wig and robes than it took to put them on, but most of the evening is already gone when I join Cyrus outside the studio.