Fighting the vicious urge to use the pen as a weapon, I snatch it from Cyrus and turn toward him. He extends his hand, his palm held open. He has the long, elegant fingers of a pianist, his skin smooth and so pale on the underside of his wrist that it’s almost translucent, the purplish-blue veins as visible as creeks running through snow. I grab his arm to steady it against the movement of the train, my nails digging in with a little more force than necessary, but he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull back. His attention remains sharp on me as I tighten my grip on the pen and press down, outlining the wobbly shape of a cloud in the center of his palm.

“There,” I say. “Done.”

Oliver and Daisy both peer over.

“That’s so cute,” Daisy says very generously, and I feel a sharp surge of affection for the girl. She’s one of those people who is kind solely for the sake of being kind.

“It has personality,” Oliver agrees. “Personal style is important when it comes to art.”

Cyrus lifts his hand and stares down at the cloud for a long time, his lashes shadowing his eyes, focusing hard as if I’ve really drawn something worthy of critical analysis. Even his breathing seems to still. Then his fingers furl around the doodle. “Your art holds such potential,” he tells me. “If you just added horns to it, you’d have a sheep.”

If I just added horns to you, we’d have your true form, I can’t help replying inside my head.

He glances past me as an attendant pushes a snack trolley down the aisle toward us, the wheels rumbling under the weight of all the bottled drinks and instant noodles. I immediately forget about him and perk up. It’s only been a few hours since our last meal, but I still crane my neck to scan the trolley. This was one of my guilty pastimes when I’d force myself to go hungry for a shoot—I would stand in the middle of the grocery store aisle and simply browse through the shelves of ready-made cakes, imagining myself eating all the things I couldn’t.

“You shenme xuyao de ma?” the attendant asks in Chinese, slowing down near our seats, and again, I’m surprised at how the words—which would’ve been a nonsensical jumble to me when I was in LA—actually clarify themselves inside my head, only because I’ve heard the words spoken by so many waiters and hotel staff by this point. Is there anything you need?

The top layer of the trolley is covered by an assortment of lemon iced tea, grape juice, and milk tea; the layer beneath it dedicated to beef jerky and sesame candy and the Choco Pies I used to crave all the time, with the soft white marshmallow filling and the crumbling cake layers.