The International Kissing Club (38 page)

She stared at the boxes, dread clutching her throat. “This is impossible. It’s going to take forever to read through these!”

Guiran just smiled. “You Americans are so impatient.”

She glared, unfairly taking out her disappointment on him. “Let me guess, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?”

He smiled, gesturing to one of the boxes. “Or the journey of a thousand files.”

She groaned. “That’s so cheesy.”

He just laughed and flipped open a folder.

Starting on the next box, she was gladder than ever that she wasn’t doing this alone. And at least she didn’t feel like bursting into tears anymore.

Three hours later, her back ached, her eyesight was starting to blur, and it felt like half the dust in China had crawled up her nostrils. The stack of discarded files in front of Guiran was about five times taller than the one in front of her.

Frustrated, she dropped another folder—this one had been misfiled and wasn’t even from the correct decade—and arched her arms over her head, stretching the muscles around her spine.

She looked at Guiran to find him watching her and she paused, midstretch. He swallowed, then said, “Not it, huh?”

“Nope.” Feeling oddly self-conscious, she tugged at the hem of her shirt, which had ridden up. “I think I need a break. My legs fell asleep about two hours ago, and I’ve lost all feeling below the waist. You want to go find a drink?”

He shook his head. “You bring me back something. I want to get through this box first.”

Mei ventured out into the hall alone. The front stairs would take her past the director’s office. Hoping to avoid Dao-Ming’s adult clone, she went searching for a back staircase instead, which she hoped would lead her straight to the kitchen. She wandered aimlessly for a minute, down one hall, past the windows that overlooked the fenced-in backyard. From the window, she could see a path leading to another building. There were kids out playing in the yard and she didn’t linger too long. Not all the babies were adopted; some lived their whole childhoods here, until they aged out at fourteen. She couldn’t think too long about them. So she hurried past and down the hall. Just as she’d spotted another staircase, she heard the sound of a crying baby coming from one of the rooms.

Inexplicably drawn, she followed the sound to an open doorway. The nursery.

A faint smell of bleach hung in the air, along with something sweet and milky. Baby formula, maybe. The scent was so familiar it grabbed her and pulled her into the enormous room.

There were metal cribs in groups of four. Each set was pressed together so the babies inside could see each other. There were thirty-six cribs in all, though right now, only about half of them were occupied.

A nanny had come by to scoop up the baby who had been crying. The tiny woman held the infant close, gently cooing to quiet her. The two cribs nearest the door were occupied. Mei couldn’t guess at the babies’ ages, but they were old enough to both be sitting up. They stuck their hands between the bars, giggling as they reached for each other and then snatched their hands back.

Mei watched for a moment, then she walked into the room as if in a trance, crossing to the farthest set of cribs. The wide window beyond them overlooked a tree, its branches hanging low and casting the light in a green glow. Mei stopped beside one of the cribs. It was empty, but there was a baby sleeping in the one beside it. She looked out the window, then crouched beside the empty crib and looked through.

She wrapped her fingers around one of the metal bars. It felt small and cold in her hand. Familiar, yet wrong, as if it should have been bigger. Or her hand smaller.

In an instant, she couldn’t breathe. She felt her history pressing down on her. A memory she hadn’t even known she had until she stepped into the room. It hung just out of reach, vague and ephemeral. Held together by the scent of bleach and the sensation of the metal bar beneath her hand.

This had been her crib. For nearly two years, she’d lain here, another baby in the crib beside her. Like the girls she’d seen when she first walked in, she had held on to the bars, stuck her hands through.
Tormented the other baby with playful fingers. She’d lived her entire life beside that other little girl. And then one day, her parents had come and taken her home. She’d gained parents, but she’d lost the girl forever. Maybe she had also been adopted, maybe not. Mei would never know. One more question she wouldn’t find the answer to.

Suddenly, all of it—her memories, her doubts, her fears, her anxieties—came crashing down, dragging her under. She’d dived off the cliff and now she was going to drown under the weight of the unspeakable anguish that came from losing herself to this country she would never truly understand.

Fighting panic, she jumped to her feet and ran. Back down one hall and then the next, until she was panting, out of breath, and facing the storage room. Guiran looked up as she came skidding to a halt beside the open door.

“I can’t do this,” she gasped out. “I’m not ready. I can’t stay. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t give him a chance to reply but dashed for the main stairs and the street beyond, plunging into the bustling midday foot traffic. For a second, her panic nearly brought her to her knees. There were too many people here. Too much noise. The chaos of it all swirled around her, making her head spin. And not in the good way that Guiran’s kiss had, either. In an about-to-puke-on-the-roller-coaster kind of way.

She started pushing her way through the crowd, walking aimlessly. Almost at the end of the block, Guiran caught up with her and grabbed her arm. She swung around to face him, opened her mouth to explain, but there simply weren’t any words.

He must have read the distress on her face—or, hello? Simply noticed that she’d run like a crazy person out onto the road—because he didn’t even ask what was wrong, just cupped her elbow and steered her around the corner to a quiet spot under a willow tree.

Ignoring the stares of passersby, he gripped her by the upper arms.
She thought he might shake her. She kinda needed it. But instead he just looked at her with a steady gaze and asked, “You okay?”

She bit down on her lip, then nodded. And then shook her head. “I didn’t expect …” She blew out a long breath. She was so not used to being the emotional one. Calm. Levelheaded. Logical. That was her. Bolting when things got too deep? That was Cassidy’s job. Mei’s cheeks were warm with embarrassment, her throat still tight from choking back tears.

“You didn’t expect … what? That it would be hard?” Guiran asked. “Why wouldn’t it be? It’s hard for me.”

She raised an eyebrow in question. ’Cause it didn’t
seem
hard for him. He appeared to be blowing through boxes.

“Each of those files is a girl,” he said. “Like my sister. Some of them were adopted. Some were placed with foster families. But I’ll never know what happened to my sister. My parents will never know.”

“But you could—”

He shook his head before she finished the thought. “No. Looking into it would be too hard on my mom. I’d never go against her wishes.”

Mei felt a sharp pang of regret. Her own parents didn’t know what she was up to and they’d be horrified if they did. A part of her wished she could mimic Guiran’s blind acceptance, wished she didn’t want to know. Before she could spend any more time feeling like the worst daughter ever, he said, “This is a huge step. Why wouldn’t it be hard?”

“I just thought—” She twisted away from him, suddenly unable to bear his scrutiny. “I thought I’d find answers in China. All my life, there’ve been these two sides of me, the Chinese side and the American side. The part of me that’s thankful I have a family, and the part of me that’s smothered by their coddling. The rule follower and the rebel.” And now, there was the guilt too, because what kind of monster felt smothered by the love all these other girls didn’t have? “And I
thought that if I came here, and I found out something about my birth parents and who they’d been, then maybe I’d figure out something about myself and who I’m supposed to be. But that’s not how it is at all.”

She risked a glance back at Guiran. He was studying her, his lips once again twisted into that lopsided smile of his.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she bumped up her chin. “What?”

“You thought you were going to get all that from some dusty old file?”

“I—” But she broke off, because when he said it that way, it did seem kind of silly.

“You’re seventeen, Mei. Maybe you’re not supposed to know who you are yet.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but could think of nothing else to say. The words were so similar to something her father had said. Yet, coming from Guiran, they felt completely different. She, who was never speechless and who never felt an emotion she couldn’t describe with a polysyllabic SAT word, could think of nothing to say. So she just nodded.

“Come on,” Guiran said. “Let’s head back to the SWI.”

After a few seconds of walking, she said, “I think for today I’m ready to give up. Just put all the files back in their boxes and walk away.” Her voice sounded small. “Just for today.”

As she’d sat in that little room, looking at the files of all those parents who’d given up their children, she’d realized that her birth parents could have been any of them. Knowing their names wouldn’t answer the questions that had been plaguing her.

Or maybe she just wasn’t ready to know yet.

Guiran nodded, brushing his lips over her forehead so softly that for a second she couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t imagined it. But the warmth from his touch, the small sense of peace that spread through her, proved that she hadn’t. As they walked through the gates of the SWI, he took her hand.

Staring up at the wide red doors leading into the building, she thought of all the girls and boys who’d come and gone from this place and of all the families they’d found. She thought of the girl in the crib, the friend she’d lost forever. And she was glad she had Guiran here beside her, because she knew she couldn’t have done this alone.

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