It causes me great anguish to read about a woman in pain. 

To watch through her eyes as she burns and withers away, ailed by a plague that cannot be cured. Yes, I despise it - but it has never failed to give me a profound sense of clarity.  And for that reason I have never stopped. 

When I began my literary journey, I felt that I empathized with these women. I read Falling Leaves when I was a lonely sixteen year old - the very picture of teenage angst - and homeschooled, in that gray area between junior and senior year. I was set to graduate in about fifteen months. 

The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter, the subtitle boasted. Was I not unwanted too? As I wasted my high school days away in a fragile bubble of innocence, it certainly felt like I was. 

It was early fall when he contacted me, after I left a comment on the author’s socials: Yen Mah is my Cinderella! The bubble had not yet popped, and wouldn’t for a while; I was still looking for chimneys of cinder to sweep. I remember feeling a thrill of excitement at the message in my usually empty inbox. 

Insomniac__: hey. i read ur book review. r u in high school?

This sucked. On principle, I never opted to share the fact that I was homeschooled until someone knew me well. I never had many friends. The homeschool groups my parents took me to were awkward, trepidatious, and full of slimy hands and buck teeth, and the few other students I related to were just as fearful of social interaction as myself. Would he even talk to me if I told him I was homeschooled? I was terrified to find out.

I eventually opted to be vague and unassuming.  I couldn’t bear to ignore him; that would mean continuing life as it was. His pull was as relentless as it was unforgiving, and my first response had me entangled in his web.

Orchid: Hi @Insomniac__! Thanks for checking it out! I am in high school. Isn’t Yen Mah’s prose just stunning? 

Insomniac__: i’m in high school too.

He dropped the subject of education after that. I was grateful. What’s funny was, I quickly realized he didn’t want to talk about Fallen Leaves. He didn’t seem remotely interested in reading at all, for that matter. 

Insomniac__: how old r u?

Orchid: Sixteen.

He told me he was eighteen. It didn’t make a difference to me.

We talked about the randomest of things. I’d write him long messages detailing my passions, hobbies, discoveries. I told him why I gave myself the nickname Orchid - for my delicacy and nimbleness. His responses would be short and to the point: that’s cool or lmfao. I suppose calling the name beautiful would have been too much to ask. I had kind of hoped he would.

He was matter-of-fact, if not harsh at times. He never told me his name, perfectly content to remain Insomniac__. Despite his blunt authority, it comforted me to talk to him. He was astoundingly artificial; I would spill my heart out to him in a prompt on a screen, and his response would be computer-generated. If anything, it was the process of writing that wrapped a blanket around my naked heart, but I convinced myself it was the companionship of a boy I barely knew. I liked watching the three dots appear each time he was typing a response, followed by an inevitable swoosh and resounding ding. I liked the way he made me feel heard. 

Then one day, I powered on my device to find a picture of him staring up at me, all pixels and skin gradients. He was tall and lanky, with a gap-toothed frown and a scraggly bunch of black hair that flopped onto his forehead like a bird’s nest, and his skin looked sickly and pale, like he didn’t spend enough time outdoors. Not particularly attractive, but not ugly either. Just… average. He’d written: i want to see what u look like ;).

I hid behind my waves. They tangled in front of me in thick, dark clumps. And I began to imagine what it would be like to send a picture of myself to him, to have him scrutinize every inch of my face, every inch of my being. I was riddled with imperfections. My breaths quickened, and I began to type. The keys always felt sticky against my fingers when I lied. 

Orchid: You look amazing, @Insomniac__! I would love to send you a picture of myself, but unfortunately, my parents don’t want pictures of me on the internet. I hope you can understand. Is it OK if we just keep talking for now?

Insomniac__:  it’s not on the internet. it’s just me.

 I swallowed, unsure of what to say. Eventually I settled on: 

Orchid: They like you, but they’re still saying no.

Insomniac__:  what’s the point of talking to u if i don’t even know what you look like?!

I waited for a few moments, until I realized that was all he had to say. I was too scared to message him back. I’d ruined everything. 

#

As college approached, I grew incessantly fearful and paranoid, each waking moment filled with thoughts of loneliness and timidity. That is to say, I didn’t think I could survive without the warm embrace of our small suburban home. I couldn’t even sleep without the lights on. How would I function in a college dorm room?

The hours ticked away in slow increments. Each night I begged my body for the sweet release of sleep, but when morning finally came, all I could think about was how the sand of yet another day had slipped through my petite fingers. My mind would often wander to Insomniac__ on those nights. The name was awfully fitting for my current state. 

One morning, in the late spring, I gave in and wrote a long message to him confessing my worries. In spite of our past conversation, I still considered him my only friend. I was heartbroken when I received no response.

 Had I bored him? Even worse, had I weirded him out?

The days continued to drift away like petals on a dying rose. 

#

In Yen Mah’s Falling Leaves, Yen Mah is a member of a wealthy Chinese family in a port city a little north of Shanghai. 

My parents immigrated from Shanghai. Falling Leaves got me thinking about an old expression they used to tell me. In America, we say, “An apple falls close to the tree.” In Shanghai, they say, "The leaves fall close to the roots." It’s supposed to mean that, no matter how long or how far the journey, one will always have an old abode to return to. 

As I stepped onto the crowded college campus, I couldn’t help but feel I would never return home.  

My mother stood beside me, looking stiff and sharp-edged amidst the swathes of laidback college students. But her expression was remarkably gentle as she cupped her hand against my cheek. I leaned into her. 

To my mother, I had lived my childhood years as the perfect guai Chinese daughter. I was obedient and complacent, demure and respectful. In other words, I was absolutely and unequivocally unremarkable in every way. I wonder what she would’ve thought then if I had told her about the long nights I’d spent messaging a boy two years senior to me, to ease a loneliness she didn’t know I felt. 

Still, she loved me. And as her gentle fingertips left my chin, I found myself clinging to the imprints they left behind.

The first day I was gripped with an unfathomable lethargy. I had slept little the night before, my mind plagued with visions of inconceivable monsters lurking in the dark and the mattress itchy and rock-solid beneath my diminutive frame. No one seemed to notice the dark circles under my eyes in class. I sat in the back.

Afterwards I went on social media and stared at picture after picture of strangers living their best lives. Even if they were fake, the likes beneath their posts indicated they knew people willing to humor them, which is more than I could say for myself. 

The hours wasted away. Eventually I forced myself out the door, feet dragging against the frayed carpet of my dorm building. I collapsed into a sofa chair in the Starbucks next door. 

Someone had spilled coffee on it, and I was hyperattentive to the dried liquid rubbing against my clothes . I doubted anyone would care if I had a stain on the back of my pants, but I couldn’t keep myself from feeling disgusted. The masses surrounded me in a swirling, condemnatory wave. 

I was still shifting uncomfortably on the worn leather when a voice broke through the bustling atmosphere. It took me a minute to realize it was addressed to me; the change in environment had done nothing to lift the weights on my eyelids.

“Hey! I think I saw you in one of my classes. You’re new too, right?”

I nodded hesitantly. 

The girl’s brow furrowed slightly, as if confused by my reluctance, but she plowed on. 

“I’m Charlotte.”

A mass of dark chocolate curls curled around her head and fell loftily onto her slim shoulders, and the twinkle in her eye told me she was outgoing as well as beautiful. I introduced myself, and she brightened a bit. 

“We have a group chat for some of the freshmen in our dorm,” she told me. “Let me add you and we can schedule something!” 

I said ok. Then I got a wet wipe from my bag and wiped the chair down.

#

It was everyone’s idea except mine to go out that night. I said yes even though I didn’t want to. 

Despite my best efforts, I quickly learned the names of a few others in the group. I stuck by Charlotte like a lost puppy, though most of her jabbering went in one ear and out the other.

Parvati, an Indian girl with a strong FOMO, was a quintessential pre-med. She had thick dark lashes and wore too much makeup. Sara was a business major, short with a perpetual smile and overbearing personality. I didn’t mind her.

We walked and walked, a messy jumble of high heels and high pitched laughter piercing through the night, and the streets and boulevards began to fade into one another. I kept checking my phone, though no one ever contacted me. My wallpaper depicted a bright pink orchid with a tan backdrop. Pink was my favorite color. 

I felt tired but restless, and the crowd pulled my dazed self across decaying sidewalks and through dim alleyways until suddenly the setting had changed.

I had never been to a club before. It was a different kind of overwhelming, swimming through a sea of pulsating adults. It seemed oddly childish. 

Each brush of bare shoulder or errant elbow against my fragile figure sent sparks tingling down my spine. My thoughts were dominated by the skin of a distant stranger against mine, over and over again as we all frantically scrambled for a breath of fresh air. The air was tainted with the smell of cheap liquor. I shivered. What kind of college girl didn’t like breaking the rules?

A man bumped into me, the studs of his boot knifing into my foot. I felt the uncontrollable urge to rip it off him and shove it down his throat.

Then Charlotte tapped on my shoulder and shoved a thick glass into my fist. She somehow still managed to look stunning in the artificial light. My chest prickled with something like envy.  

The glass was warm against my sweaty palms, but I shoved down the disgust and forced it towards my mouth. The foam felt soft and airy on my lips and itchy as it dribbled down my chin. Then the bubbles burst inside my stomach. 

I took another sip. The liquid was battery acid against the back of my throat. It filled me with a warmth that made me want to claw the flesh off my skin, but when I dug my nails into my arm, all I felt was pain. 

Maybe in some masochistic way, I enjoyed the pressure, the feeling of it building, bubbling up inside of me as my insides burst into flames. Better to feel pain than nothing at all. 

My eyes were lit with a manic fervor as I plugged my nose and emptied the glass.

#

I don't know if this is a myth, but when I was younger I used to read that in the old black & white movies, if the woman was older, they put Vaseline on the lenses of the cameras to soften and blur any wrinkles. 

I was viewing the world through a Vaseline lens. 

Everything was muted. All of the worries and needs, the perpetual knot in my stomach, the obsessive compulsions - they’d all been quenched by the roaring tide. I didn’t have to be scared of hurting someone anymore. If only I was always like this… I’d be able to sleep every night. 

Time sped up, and the night ran by as I floated on a cloud. At one point, Parvati screamed, “Let’s take a picture!” I was jostled around until I could feel another girl’s head pressed tightly against mine, all of us squished together in a tight lego brick. My hair felt itchy against my ear. The flash was brighter than any light I’d seen before.  

Parvati tagged my empty profile on the post. I’d never been in a picture on social media before.

Finally we were outside, the whimsical breezes of the morning rolling over my back. Charlotte was crying for some reason or another; apparently Parvati had said something. She kept peeking over at me like she wanted me to lick her wounds, but it was hard for me to feel sympathy for something so shallow. 

I reached to touch her arm, and then drew back as a wave of repugnance washed over me. It seems even alcohol couldn’t totally fix me. A sudden teardrop carved a path down my cheek. 

Charlotte’s tears will dry and leave no trace, but mine will leave a permanent stain.

#

I woke up the next morning with chapped lips and a pounding headache. It was Saturday. Charlotte knocked on my door thirty minutes later, hands wrapped around a steaming thermos of coffee.

I invited her in, gesturing towards the couch I’d bought from Ikea a few weeks before (to give the impression my dorm wasn’t a complete barren wasteland). Charlotte sat elegantly, perched on the edge of her seat with her legs crossed like a model. I sat like a duck. 

“Drink,” she demanded, thrusting the flask towards me. I took a small drink and winced at the bitter taste. 

“Cream and sugar?” 

Charlotte laughed. “Nope, it has to be black if you want to get that dead look out of your eyes.” I was skeptical, but I forced myself to take another swig. It burned the roof of my mouth. 

My phone buzzed. 

Insomniac__: hey, i saw a post u were tagged on. been thinking abt u…

I stared, and Charlotte’s eyes lit up. “Who is that?”

“Oh, just a friend from high school,” I whispered, my eyes still glued to the screen. 

“Is he cute?” Charlotte asked slyly. 

“He’s fine,” I mumbled. 

“Look!” She pointed, and my eyes followed her beautifully painted nail to the message I’d already memorized. “He’s totally into you. If he’s near here, you guys should meet up!” 

“I-” I stammered. “We haven’t talked in a while.”

“Do you know him well?” 

“I talked to him quite often,” I admitted begrudgingly. “But I still don’t even know his name. We just used our usernames.”

“Mysterious.” Charlotte smirked. “How’d you meet?”

“He messaged me about a book,” I said. 

“Aww, that’s so cute!” Charlotte squealed. She punched me teasingly in the shoulder. “Two book nerds. A match made in heaven.”

“I don’t think he even likes books.”

“Stop being so pessimistic. Give me that!” she said, wrenching the phone from my hand with a feminine grace I could never have. Then she paused. “Orchid. That’s… fitting. I’m going to schedule something.” She started to type. 

Orchid: yeah me too! do u want to hang out sometime? 

We waited for a few halting moments until another bubble lit up the screen. 

Insomniac__: ya i’m down. r u still in the same area?

I opened my mouth to say something, and Charlotte gave me a look. 

“You’re going,” she told me. 

“Can you come?” The words escaped me before I could even comprehend them.

She raised her eyebrows. 

“You really want me to come?” 

“I’ll ask him myself,” I said, taking the phone back from her.

Orchid: I am. Is it OK if my friend comes too? 

It took awhile for him to respond to this one. 

Insomniac__: i’d prefer it if u came alone.

At Charlotte’s insistence, we still arranged to meet that night, on a street in the Old District. Charlotte told me that if he wanted to take me into a bar, I should stand still and look pretty and he would deal with the rest. I was doubtful but nodded anyway. That might have worked for her, but we didn’t look the same.

I had a lump in my throat that I couldn’t understand. I guess I had just assumed I would never meet him in person - and I had felt better that way. I’d slowly erased the photo of him from my memory, and I’d grown to prefer imagining there wasn’t another person at the other end of my long tirades. His responses certainly didn’t look like they were coming from another human being.

I wondered if he’d know what I was talking about if I asked him about Falling Leaves. Something told me he wouldn’t.

#

Night arrived before I could take another breath. Charlotte was excited for me. I wasn’t.

The streets of the Old Town District were of cobblestone, long and narrow and thin like someone had drawn them in with pencil. Lampposts lined the dark corridors, shoved between tightly packed houses that reached for the sky and the occasional dilapidated restaurant. Each building seemed to have a personality of its own; the glass stained windows blinked like weary eyes with eyelashes of dust. I wanted to curl up beneath the peeling paint and sleep forever.

The sky darkened as I approached. My heart leaped to my chest when I noticed a figure in the shadows. Somehow I knew it was him.

“Orchid?” a voice said. He stepped into the lantern light. My breath caught in my throat - he hadn’t changed a bit since he sent me that picture. 

“Yes,” I breathed. 

He grins. “You look stunning.” Blood rushed to my cheeks, but not from appreciation. 

“What’s your name?” I blurted. 

He pauses. “My na - you don’t know my name?”

“You don’t know my name either.”

“Yeah, but you're my… my -” He stopped again, frowning. “Nevermind.” 

What’s that supposed to mean?

“Your name?” I pressed, when the silence stretched for several awkward moments.

“Will,” he said. He stared at me. His eyes had a wolfish glint. I waited for a little while until I realized he was not going to ask me for mine. 

Good. I’d prefer to remain Orchid for tonight. 

“Would you like to get a bite to eat?” he said eventually. 

“Sure.”

Neither of us spoke as we walked toward an errant taco stand at the end of the street. I didn’t think I could survive this for the next two hours if he wasn’t going to speak. 

He came back sooner than I’d hoped, arms laden with food and drink: four carne asada tacos and two cans of beer. He handed me the can he’d already opened, and then we sat on the curb and I watched him eat. I wouldn’t have had a taco even if he’d bother to offer me one; I doubted I could stomach food right now. 

As I took tentative sips of the beer, something occurred to me. The only reason I’d used him as a personal diary was because he had come to me in a time of weakness. We didn’t have anything in common. And I was starting to get more and more of a sense that he hadn’t  read  a word I wrote anyway. 

I jumped as he cleared his throat, and a pang of nervousness rippled down to my feet. I shivered.

“Do you want to - uh…” He gestured toward the other end of the street. 

“Yeah.” I laughed nervously, and he smirked, straightening his shoulders. That wasn’t a happy laugh. 

“Come on then.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and I winced at his touch. He smelled like cheap cologne and body odor. His hand stuck to my hair. 

I took a deep breath as the usual wave of revulsion accompanying skin to skin contact pulsed through me. We walked for a bit, the minutes moving along at a sluggish pace. He seemed perfectly content to not say a word. I wished Charlotte was there. I wished anyone was there, anyone other than him.

We trudged down an empty alleyway, and suddenly he looked around and stopped, his grip tightening. Then he smiled, and all I could think about was how his wet teeth looked oddly yellow in the lantern light. 

He reached to grab my other shoulder and massaged it slightly. His face was now mere inches from mine, and his acne looked like dried blood. It took everything I had not to double over as another fit seized me. I gasped and tried to pull away, but his fingernails were nailed into my skin, holding me in place.

“Hey,” he said, laughing slightly. “It’s just me. You want this.”

I looked deep into his alien gaze, trying to make sense of the Cheshire Cat before me, but all I could see was a stranger who wouldn’t let me go. 

“Falling Leaves,” I gasped, scrabbling for anything, anything but skin and cloth and claws. 

“Yen Mah artfully depicts the cruelties of twentieth-century China…” 

“What are you talking about?” He shook me angrily, and I could feel my bones rattling inside the limp sac of skin I called a body. 

“Get a grip!”

I thrashed and kicked until something connected. It was my fist, and his jaw shattered beneath it in a trembling avalanche of dust and tears. 

“What the fuck!?”

I turned, my ankles threatening to shatter as my heels collided with the fragmented road. He grabbed my wrist and spun me back around. 

“That hurt,” he hissed. He grasped my upper arms. “Just listen to me. Deep breaths.”

I relaxed a little. “I don’t want to…”

“I get it,” he said. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. Just… don’t be so rough.”

I nodded tentatively, unsure,  but then he seized my hips and pinned me against the grime-covered wall. The dirt tumbled down my spine in a waterfall of filth. 

He crushed his lips against mine, and when his spit dribbled down my chin, something inside me broke and I began to cry. Snot mingled with tears on my soft cheeks as all struggle abandoned me. I was a ragdoll. 

A grizzled hand cupped my face. The calluses on his thumb cut into my skin as he wiped me dry, the foreign touch a stark reminder of the love I’d left behind when I went to college. It felt nothing like my mother’s.

My shoulders shook. He kissed my neck with kitten teeth, gnawing softly on paper skin. 

My lips had begun to bleed, droplets of red staining my soft blouse, but he didn’t seem to mind, murmuring softly under his breath as he peeled away the fragile layer. 

I felt distant. I was viewing the world through a rapidly-closing lens. My eyes began to flutter. 

“You’ll be fine, sweetheart,” he whispered.  “We’re going to have some fun together, and then my friends will take care of you and you can meet some other guys. You won’t remember a thing.” 

A lavender haze engulfed my vision, and  I heard the screech of van tires in the distance. The last thing I felt was the brush of cold metal against my belly button as he unbuttoned my pants.