The International Kissing Club (22 page)

A glance at the clock told her she had only an hour before the cafeteria closed, and she knew she needed to head over there to try and eat. She’d only been in China two weeks and she’d already lost so much weight that she’d had to buy a belt to hold up her jeans—and punch a couple new holes in it to actually make it small enough to cinch.

Her parents were going to have a stroke when they saw her.

But not even that worry got her moving—it wasn’t like her weight loss was the only thing her parents were going to freak out about. She hadn’t had much luck in finding her birth parents yet, but her ability to
speak Mandarin was getting a little better every day. Soon, she was hoping she’d be able to navigate the public transportation system well enough to get to the orphanage in Dalian.

Mei glanced at her guitar. It was lying on her bed where she’d left it earlier. Part of her wanted to pick it up and play some old Clapton stuff to chase away the homesickness—but it took more energy than she had. Instead, she pulled up the widget she’d been working on in an effort to stop thinking about how hungry she was. It was a silly thing, but cute, and she thought it would give the IKC page a little more panache.

And something more for visitors to do. She was shocked at how many people had Liked the page already, how many girls were visiting and posting about their kisses—international or domestic. Admittedly, the fans were nowhere near the numbers of Piper’s Kiss the Pig page, but linking the IKC page through it had really paid off. And it was nice to see how many girls were getting into the International Kissing Club. It made her feel a whole lot less alone in her little corner of the world.

She messed with the widget for a while—it was giving her a little trouble with the whole stick-a-pin-in-the-map thing, almost as if it knew she had no right to be sticking pins anywhere. Piper, on the other hand, was going to turn all of France—maybe all of Europe—red with her little pins.

Finally, Mei got it to work, and she added one red pin in Sydney for Cassidy, and eight around Paris for Piper—at least she thought it was eight, based on the running tally, but by now it could be a lot more. If so, she’d let Piper take care of that.

Still unwilling to leave her dorm room—why should she when everywhere she went she ran into Dao-Ming, who was like Germaine times ten? And her group of followers was a lot meaner—and a lot smarter—than the cheerleaders of Paris High. Instead, Mei fooled around on the Internet for a little while, but it wasn’t the same as back
home. So much was blocked by the government that trying to surf her favorite sites, or find new ones, was almost impossible.

Finally she gave up and clicked back to the IKC page to update her status—pathetic—and was shocked when she saw a whole bunch more pins on the map widget she’d just put into place. And none of them were around France, so she knew it wasn’t Piper striking again.

There was one in Los Angeles, two in Toronto, and five in Miami. New York had a couple pins in it as well, as did Mexico City and Jamaica. She smiled. The International Kissing Club really had gone global.

Logging off Facebook, Mei switched over to the bus schedule and maps she’d downloaded the day before. She was pretty sure she had figured out the best route to the Social Welfare Institute, where she’d spent the first two years of her life. Still, she ran over the different routes again, making sure she wasn’t missing anything. When she was satisfied that she wouldn’t get lost, she set her computer aside and stretched. Though she wasn’t planning on going for a while, it was nice to know she was ready when the time came.

A quick glance at the clock had her yielding to the inevitable. If the food was really bad, she could eat a huge plate of rice, right? By itself, it wasn’t the most nutritiously sound alternative, but if it would quiet her stomach, she would go for it.

Grabbing her sweater—Shenyang got cold at night—she headed for the cafeteria. Maybe tonight she’d get lucky and they’d have egg rolls or orange chicken or a vegetable she actually recognized.

As she walked across campus, Mei weighed her options for the next eight weeks in this institution. She could suck it up and grow a thick skin—who cared if she had any friends, after all? That wasn’t what she was here for.

Or she could talk to the dean of student life, Furen Guong, about the fact that she wasn’t fitting in. But that was pretty much like admitting her “buddies” had completely dissed her, and she wasn’t quite ready to commit social suicide of that order yet.

Or, she could go home early. A lesser girl would call her mom and have a plane ticket FedEx’d stat. But failure wasn’t an option. Joneses didn’t fail. Besides, if she ran away, she’d never know the truth.

She’d picked this school instead of one in Beijing because it was in Liaoning Province. Shenyang was only a short train ride from Dalian, where the Social Welfare Institute (SWI) from which she’d been adopted was located.

No, she was going to stay here and stick it out whether the other girls liked it or not. And if she didn’t want to spend all her time in her room she was going to have to get focused. Dao-Ming and Bao might rule the school, but surely there was one person here who wasn’t under their spell. One rebellious teenager in all of Communist China. She decided that by the end of today she was going to find an ally. And then—

The next thing Mei knew she was flying through the air on a collision course with a large tree. She hit it hard enough to daze her, and as she sat there, trying to get her scrambled brain to work, she couldn’t help wondering if her fellow students had tired of nonconfrontational animosity and were now starting on actual physical violence.

She heard someone speak, but nothing made any sense. She glanced up, completely nonplussed—right into the eyes of the best-looking guy she’d seen since coming to this school.

He was kind of tall, but that could be because she was flat on her back and he was towering over her. His hair was longish, not cut short like so many of her classmates, and he had a small earring in the cartilage of one ear. As she stared at him, trying to gather her scattered wits, he popped his skateboard and rested it against his leg. She blinked, looked from the board to the earring to the hair and back again, and that’s when she knew. For once the universe had actually listened. She’d found her rebel.

Then he was squatting by her side, his dark eyes filled with a concern that warmed her. He spoke again, and again the words coming out of his mouth made no sense to her whatsoever. Finally her addled brain
regained its senses and she realized he wasn’t speaking nonsense—just Mandarin.

“I speak English,” she said as clearly as she could manage.

He said something else, still in Mandarin, and she shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

Recognition dawned on his face and he switched to barely accented English. “So, you’re the American exchange student that has Dao-Ming and Bao in such a tizzy.”

Mei pushed herself up into a sitting position. “Yep. That would be me.”

“I’m Guiran.” He held out a hand and she took it.

“I’m Mei Jones.”

“Look, I’m really sorry about running into you. I’m practicing some new tricks on my board and you walked right in front of me.”

So that’s what had hit her—a guy on a speeding skateboard. Amazing. It had felt more like an 18-wheeler.

“Sorry. I was … thinking.” Pouting was more like it, but he didn’t really need to know that, did he?

“I bet.” He was still holding her hand and it felt kind of strange—but in a good way. Of course, that could just be the fact that after two weeks here she was starved for some kind of decent human contact.

Either way, she resisted the urge to tug her hand away.

“Why do you say that?” she asked curiously, pulling at her uniform skirt—which she had just realized was hiked up to the top of her thighs.

“Here, let me help you.” Standing, he easily pulled her to her feet. “I just figure, if Dao-Ming is gunning for you, your life couldn’t be that easy right about now.”

“You have no idea.”

“Sure I do. It wasn’t that long ago that I was the new kid here.”

“Really?” she asked, fascinated. “You’re not from Shenyang?”

“Not exactly. We travel around a lot for my dad’s job, so for the
most part I was raised outside of China. Now that we’re back—” He shrugged. “Now that we’re home, it isn’t as easy to fit in as I’d expected it would be.”

“Yeah. Believe me, I know what you mean.”

He glanced at the cafeteria, which was currently bustling with students—many of whom had seen her less-than-graceful fall. Mei felt her cheeks burn. Like she didn’t already have enough strikes against her, now she looked like a klutz, too.

“Were you going to eat?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t know why she felt awkward admitting it. “But it can wait—”

“No, you should go. If you don’t get in there soon, they won’t serve you.”

“I learned that the hard way.”

Guiran laughed. “Bummer.”

She didn’t want to leave him. How else could she cross off the one item on her to-do list? After all, she couldn’t count on fate to step in twice. It was now up to her. “Have you eaten already?” she asked.

“Nah. I’m waiting for my friends.”

“Oh, right.” Mei backed away, stumbling over a large tree root and nearly ending up on her butt for the second time in five minutes. Ducking her head to hide her total embarrassment, she said, “Well, it was nice to meet you. Good luck with the skateboarding trick.”

Could I have been any more stupid?
she berated herself as she started up the cafeteria steps. Of course he didn’t want to eat with her—he already had friends.

She passed a group of girls who pointed and laughed. She ignored them as best she could, but it didn’t work. She couldn’t make her feet reach the top of the stairs. Instead she turned around and ran back to Guiran. “May I join you and your friends?”

He smiled. “Actually I just texted them. They’re running late. So if the invite is still open, I’d love to have dinner with you.”

She felt herself light up like the Fourth of July. Somebody liked
her. Somebody wanted to spend time with her—even if it was just a quick dinner at the cafeteria. They walked through the double doors together, and as they got into line, she was incredibly conscious of the fact that half the school was staring at them. “Although, I’m not sure what having dinner with me will do to your reputation.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can take it.”

“Oh yeah? So you think you’re bad to the bone, do you?”

“I try,” he answered, pretending to buff his nails against his jacket. As he guided her through the line, cracking jokes, she felt herself relax a little. Feeling optimistic for the first time since she’d gotten to the school, Mei reached for a dish of who-knows-what. Big surprise—every meal was an adventure in gastronomical distress.

“Oh, not that!” Guiran put out a hand to stop her. “Unless you like overspiced octopus?”

Ugh. Octopus. Was that what she’d tried to choke down the night before? “Not really.” She glanced at the remaining choices. “I can’t read much Mandarin yet, so I don’t know what any of this is. Do you have suggestions?”

He studied her. “Do you trust me?”

“Sure.”

“That was quick.”

“Well, you already threw me against a tree. I’m not sure what you could do in here that would be worse.”

“Hmm. Good point.” He leaned across her to reach for something and his shoulder brushed against her upper arm. “Here. Try these.” He placed two dishes on her tray.

“What are they?”

“One’s beef and one’s fish. But they both taste good, I promise.”

“I believe you.”

They worked their way through the serving line, then Guiran snagged a small table for them against the windows at the back of the cafeteria.

The cut-stone and glass buildings of the campus surrounded an
intricately designed and manicured garden. In the evenings, lamps along the concrete paths highlighted huge pieces of contemporary sculpture. It certainly wasn’t the sloped tile roofs and gilded lions “Mulan” had expected, and again she was hit by how incongruous her preconceived notions of China had been.

She picked up her first bite with her fingers, popped it in her mouth and chewed gingerly, then smiled at the pleasant taste.

“You like it?” he asked with a wide smile that put her further at ease.

“I do, actually.”

“Good.” He started in on his own food.

Silence stretched between them for a few minutes as they ate. When she was finally full—or close to it—Mei focused on trying to make conversation. She searched for something to say, then remembered what Guiran had mentioned outside. “So, you weren’t raised in China?”

He paused, his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “No. My parents left when I was three and we lived most of my life in Europe.”

“Where in Europe?” she asked.

“France and England. We also spent a year in Germany.”

“Wow. You’ve been all over.”

“Yeah.”

He looked distinctly uncomfortable, so she tried to change the subject. “I have a friend in Paris right now. She’s doing the same kind of exchange program I am.”