Meanwhile, I have zero idea what school I should be applying to, much less what program I want to do. The career counselor recommended that I try a process of elimination until I found the pathway that spoke to me, but I’d made my way down an entire list of possible degrees, and none of them spoke at all. None of them even spluttered at me. And at the end of the day it just felt pointless, silly, what with my horrible academic record, as if I were inspecting million-dollar castles and debating which one to move into when I couldn’t even afford to rent half a bathroom.

“What about you?” Cyrus murmurs. “I would’ve thought that with all the modeling you’ve been doing—”

I almost flinch out of my seat. “How do you know about that?”

“What?” he asks, confused.

“How do you know I …” Modeled. The past tense threatens to slip its way into the sentence. It’s bad enough that he’s the only person here who knows about my modeling career. I can’t have him finding out that my modeling career failed before it even properly took off. That as of now, I have no future plans, no known talents, no useful connections, no marketable passions, no projects in the works, not even a regular sleeping schedule. I have basically nothing except a nice wardrobe and a strong dose of existential dread. “I don’t remember ever telling you I became a model.”

“I mean, it’s all over your social media,” Cyrus says like it’s obvious.

I blink. “You follow me?”

Before he can reply, a shadow looms over the two of us, and we both look up to be punished with a terrifying angle of Wang Laoshi’s scowling face.

“While it’s nice to see you already bonding with your new teammate, it would be better to wait until I’m finished talking,” Wang Laoshi says.

“New teammate?” I repeat.

“Yes, and if you’d been paying any attention, Leah, you would have heard me announce all the teams based on your test scores,” Wang Laoshi says impatiently. “If you have any objections, I don’t want to hear it—all decisions are final. This trip is about opening yourself up to new places, new ideas, and new people. Most growth happens when we find ourselves in unexpected situations. And frankly,” he says, raising his brows, “your Chinese skills could really use some help from a much more fluent speaker.”

On that uplifting note, he walks off to another table, his hands behind his back.

“You should consider yourself lucky,” Cyrus tells me.

“Why?”

“I mean, I’m obviously your best bet at winning,” he says, arms folded across his chest, the wind tousling his hair.