Lok

No Place Like Home

Peyton Cheung and Ting Zhang shared the same last name, if not quite the same. Lately, that funny little name felt not enough for Peyton. She wanted to make them the same, like legally, politically, or have-a-family-together-kind-of-ly. The land of the free was not always free, but after 2015, everyone can marry with the person they love. The moment her teenage-self read that big news on the tiny screen on her smartphone, she jumped to play her “Born This Way” album to throw a private dance party in her mind. Peyton, after all the thinking, has decided to invite Ting to her party.

♦♦♦

Ting was rubbing her calves in an unnoticeable manner. She calculated every gap when Peyton was looking away, trying to not interrupt her.

“Wow, Look at that.” Peyton elbowed Ting’s arm.

Ting raised her head to follow Peyton’s sight like stargazing, a sizable metallic ribbon stretched a crevasse on the grey sky. It was frightening enough to look at, going up to the top would be unimaginable.

“Great. Let’s get inside and find a place to sit down first, will you?” Ting said.

As they walked into the blank white reception area, all Ting saw was the wooden bench at the center. There was a young couple sitting on it, playing with their daughter. The little girl messed around in circle on her wobbly feet, chortling in a piercing pitch. Ting slowly walked toward the bench, then dropped her hiking backpack on the floor, making a pounding sound. She caught some gazes darted at her with the fringe of her eyes. She did not turn to look. She squeezed into what tiny space the bench had left, sitting uncomfortably close to the trio.

“You can go around if you want, I’ll be waiting,” Ting said.

Peyton squatted down in front of Ting, holding Ting’s hands in hers.

“Come on. It’s gonna be awesome, I promise.”

“You Promise? You promised you’ll wake up at eight today, and how did that go,” Ting replied ironically.

“Five minutes don’t count.”

“Seven, seven minutes,” Ting corrected.

Peyton looked up to catch Ting’s brown eyes from underneath. She swung Ting’s hand from left to right like a pendulum.

“Think of it as a gift for me at our anniversary. It’s gonna be cool…” Peyton went on talking.

Ting retreated her hands from Peyton’s to hold her chin. She raised her brows, putting on an innocent expression. Peyton curbed her strands of talking and waited for Ting to say something first. In mere seconds, Ting surrendered.

“Only married couples would have and anniversary,” said Ting with a hint of smile. “But if you want it so bad, fine.”

A while later, Ting and Peyton were queuing in a security checkpoint, waiting to get into the arch. The whole system was by airport-standards, full-body scanner, metal detector, bag-check done by personnel who hate their job. It was fascinating how the things that keep people safe can be so intimidating, Ting thought.

“Miss, you can’t bring this on board,” said the middle-aged lady at the scanning counter. She took out Ting’s inhaler from her belongings. The woman resembled Ting’s mom, the way she looked and talked. She could have been an aunt that Ting had never met since birth, or maybe that was just how every middle-aged woman looked like.

“Oh that one? It’s fine. It’s just an inhaler. I’ll bring it on plane too,” answered Ting.

“No, you can’t. That’s the rule,” the woman repeated herself without explaining why. Ting was starting to be impatient. She speculated the people at the back must have been staring at her and felt the same unease.

“Can you at least keep it for me then? I’ll come back to get it when I get down?” Ting asked.

This time the security lady shook her head.

Peyton went up from behind and said, “We’ll get another one later. It’s not expensive anyway.”

Ting’s brows squeezed slightly closer, so small a movement that no one noticed. She took back the inhaler from the security lady, drew a breath from it, then dropped it into the garbage bin. She did not say anything but she felt like Peyton was an accomplice.

They passed the checkpoint, queued for another line, being lectured on African-American history in St. Louis by a boy who appeared to be a high school senior. It had nothing to do with the arch but everyone listened anyway. At the end of the presentation, the crowd clapped for the young man who gave the speech. Ting clapped along. It was the only normal thing to do in that situation, plus, she wouldn’t want to upset anybody.

♦♦♦

Peyton stood beside Ting, smiling at the round of applause given to the tour guide. This trip could have gone wrong many times, but it didn’t. It was a sign. With a bit of luck, this could be the moment.

As the igloo-shaped cable car arrived, the couple ducked down to get in. There was not much space to move around, but a mini five-seat cart felt enough for two people. The cable car rose up slowly inside the concrete tube of the arch, carrying the two closer to the highpoint.

“Doesn’t this look like a blanket fort?” Peyton put her hand on the wall and wondered.

“It’s basically an elevator,” Ting replied. “And what’s with blanket fort anyway?”

“No way, you’ve never built one as a kid?” Peyton asked in surprise.

“Well, I know what it is but my ma would go crazy if I dared to do that as a kid,” Ting lay her back on the chair.

“Is she that scary?”

“You’ve never met her,” Ting joked. “She taught me well.”

“Right, maybe we should visit her someday.”

“Actually, now that we’re here, this doesn’t feel so scary after all,” Ting said.

Peyton’s fingers were mindlessly tapping inside her pocket. Looking out from the window, there were nothing but slabs of concretes and metal stairs. She wondered what it felt like to get to the highest point of the city and look down. Yes, a cityscape was nothing new but everything felt different. Ting was by her side. Peyton started counting the number of floors she saw outside the window. When the mechanical humming sound and the cradle-like swinging stopped, they have arrived on the top. Peyton made a jump to get off the cart. She saw tints of natural light brimming at the end of the deck. With some encouragement, perhaps she would be able to say what she has been thinking. Beautiful noises of people chatting and laughing filled the front of the tunnel. Peyton walked up the stairs and look out from the deck.

There was nothing out there but a wall of dense white fog.

♦♦♦

It was a Sunday morning. Rays of sun penetrated through the mint-colored curtain, waking up the couple that slept late last night. Peyton, with her hazy eyes, watched Ting moving around in bed, refusing to wake up. She snuggled with Ting to earn her extra moment of sleep. When their eyes crossed each other, Peyton felt at home.

“Tingting, there’s something I want to tell you.” Peyton put her face on the slope between Ting’s neck and shoulder, her steamy breath landing on Ting’s collarbone.

“ZenMeLe (What is it)?” Ting playfully responded. She looked away to the other side of the bed at the rice white wallpaper to hide her flush. The couple shared a faint laugh that warmed up the room.

“I have a good news for you. Our anniversary is coming in less than a year, right?” Peyton pretended to be surprised.

Ting nodded her head, pinching her lip not to laugh in front of Peyton’s banter.

“I have an idea,” Peyton said, “a great way to celebrate our anniversary.” Peyton hugged Ting even tighter now, “From now on, we’ll live every day like this together, until the end of our lives”

Ting looked into Peyton’s eye. She saw a hint of playfulness quickly subsiding into anticipation. Peyton was waiting for an answer.

“Pey-” Ting squeezed her shoulder to escape Peyton’s hug. She tried to halt Peyton. It was too late.

“Would you marry me?” announced Peyton.

A chill was hovering around Ting’s neck. She evaded Peyton’s heated eye. Ting released a long breath. She pressed the heels of both of her hands against her brows as if something ached. “It wouldn’t work. Your visa is about to expire anyway. We’ll talk about this when we’re ready.” Ting raised her palm in front of Peyton, signaling her to stop.

Peyton sat up too, holding Ting’s hands in hers. “I can find a job! We can both find a job after we graduate. Then we get to stay in Chicago, or wherever you want. Didn’t you say you like the arch when we visited St. Louis last time? We can move to there if you want to.”

“Peyton,” Ting said in a breathy voice. She lowered her head, with her bangs shadowing her entire face now. She didn’t say a word. After a moment, she left the bed and said nothing, didn’t looked at Peyton again.

Seeing Ting’s complete silence, Peyton lay back on the bed, staring blankly on the ceiling. She didn’t want to sleep but she felt too weak to move.

Peyton sucked at rejection. She wasn’t sure about giving Ting a cold shoulder. Sometimes talking was difficult. Friday night came. Ting texted Peyton for dinner at Panda Express as usual. Peyton checked the message on the front screen. She saw it. She read it. A minute went by. Sure, she texted, followed by a chain of laugh-cry emojis.

♦♦♦

Ting stared at the plate of orange chicken and honey walnut shrimp Peyton had ordered. It looked ungodly sweet, how come anyone would enjoy that?

“They look like candy, don’t they?” asked Ting.

“Yep, almost shiny,” Peyton answered mindlessly, poking her fork into another piece of chicken.

They both smiled for the first time since that night.

“The only real food here is the chow mein,” said Ting, “Everything else tastes kind of unreal.” She picked up a mouthful of noodle with her chopsticks. Her slender fingers deflected a natural white glow, something Peyton had not noticed before. Ting put that bite of chow mein into her mouth. It still tasted awful.

Peyton seized the window. “Are you free these days?”

Ting looked down on the table and bit the side of her lip, her expression numb. “Well, there are things waiting to be done,” said Ting.

“I figured you’d be returning home these days. Your ma and pa must be dying to see you in the new year,” Peyton said. “You fixed a date yet?”

“They did…I did,” Ting whispered, then mumbled. Her appetite was gone midway through the meal. She cracked open her fortune cookie to see what was inside. The fortune paper wrote No place like home.

“You know, maybe you’re right,” Peyton said. “I’m sor…I’m such a fool. If you aren’t ready to let your family know about me, that’s okay.”

Peyton went on with talking. Ting’s white glow grew paler on her face. It didn’t bother her what Peyton was saying. She waited, for a gap to chime in. She uncrossed her legs, lay back on the sofa and said, “I’m getting married.”

How easy it was to say those words. Before coming to the dinner, she had rehearsed in her mind how this conversation could open. She never thought about how this could end. The fortune cookie in her hand, the worn-out padding of the sofa, that patch of sticky stain on the edge, all faded out.

“My parents found a date for me,” Ting said calmly, “I’ve been talking to that guy online for a while now. He’s not a bad person”.

Peyton snorted a quick breath from her nose. “What do you mean?”

“I said I’m getting married.” Ting combed her hair with her bony fingers, “My parents are getting old. They can’t wait. How can I be so selfish to reject them?”

“And you would be happy?” Peyton retorted.

“I don’t hate that guy, Peyton! It’s not always about love. We all have responsibilities. And you’d know too if you could be more mature.”

♦♦♦

The light on Ting’s apartment was no longer on, three weeks gone. Peyton vaguely remembered Ting promised her that she would come back to find her. Her voice was disappearing.

It was drizzling. Peyton lay on her bed, browsing through social media, doing it all over again. Clicking, swiping, the next thing she saw on her screen was the dating app she had uninstalled, she thought. Profiles, exhibitions of people’s faces. She sent a message to every owner of the faces she liked. Will you marry me?

Heyyy, what u upto? Came through 20 minutes later

Just lying on my bed. Peyton typed.

U alone? The message asked.

Yea, alone.

Mind if I see your face? the message asked. Peyton replied with her Instagram account. A minute went by.

Sorry, beauty. Not into Asian. No offense, just preference.

The message shone. She made a little decision, before she turned off her phone. After she graduated, she’d go home.

More from Creative Nonfiction & Fiction: Read Part of Infinity, Half of Forever by Lok