“I do,” Suraya said. Her answering smile was so wide it made her cheeks ache.
She went on the first of many visits to Jing Wei’s house, a neat, modern affair in a neat, modern neighborhood ten minutes from school. Jing’s mother—“Call me Aunty Soo, dear”—picked them up in her car, a trim red Mercedes-Benz, and served them fried rice she’d bought from a stall nearby for lunch. “Halal, darling, don’t worry,” she’d said, patting Suraya’s shoulder with a perfectly manicured hand, the nails painted bright red. “I purposely went to buy from that stall because I knew you were coming. Ha, eat, eat, don’t be shy ya, you want somemore you just ask.”
“Okay, aunty,” Suraya said, her mouth full, her heart so happy she thought it might burst.
Jing’s room was big and sunny, like her personality, and full and colorful, like her life. The walls were painted a soft blue, and there was an entire wall of shelves crammed full of books and DVDs and toys. “I used to play with those when I was small,” she said quickly as she saw Suraya’s eyes linger on the worn dolls and teddies. “Not anymore.” There was a desk with a shiny laptop and piles of books and notebooks, and in the corner, Jing’s own small TV and DVD player.
Suraya ran her hands along the books, craning her neck to read their spines while Jing Wei popped a DVD out of a case on her desk and crammed it into the player. “Come on, come on!” she said, grabbing Suraya’s hand and forcing her to sit down on the bed. “Okay,” she said, standing next to the TV with the remote in her hand, a serious look on her face. “There are prequels, and there’s the original trilogy. I’m gonna make you watch the original trilogy first, ’cause the prequels suuuuuuck.”
“Does that mean I don’t have to watch them?”
Jing stared at her, wrinkling her nose. “Of COURSE you have to watch them, Sooz. I just mean you watch these ones first, because then you’ll get why people love these movies so much. Then only you watch the others so you get the full story. Understand?”
Suraya smiled and rolled her eyes. “Okay, cikgu. Teach me the way of Star Wars.”
They watched them all as the weeks passed, in between doing their homework and talking and eating the snacks that Jing’s mother pressed on them in between, from fresh pisang goreng, the batter fried to crispy golden perfection, the banana inside still warm and steaming, to ais krim potong, blocks hand-cut from frozen ice cream, skewered with sticks, and flavored with everything from mangos to lychees and deliciously refreshing on hot afternoons. The more she was there, the more she experienced of Jing’s seemingly charmed life, the less willing Suraya was to let Jing see her own. Jing almost forgave Suraya for never quite being as excited about Star Wars as she was, though that didn’t mean she stopped trying to stoke her enthusiasm for it. But she never understood why Suraya wouldn’t invite her to her house.
“I could go with you on the bus what,” she said. “And I could see your room and your books, and you could show me the orchards and the paddy fields. I’ve never even seen paddy fields in real life, Sooz.” Jing Wei had spent her whole life in cities and towns; Suraya’s stories of climbing trees and plucking fruit right from the branch fascinated her.
Suraya thought of Mama, distant and cold, and the shabby wooden house on the edge of the paddy fields. The idea of Jing setting foot into her bare little room was enough to make her shudder. “No lah,” she demurred, trying to sound casual. “It’s too far, and my mom is always working. Better I come here.”
“Then can’t I come on a weekend, or something?” Jing pressed on. “Some time when your mom isn’t working. She can’t be working all the time lah right?”
“Right,” Suraya said. “I’ll ask her.”
She never did. She was quite happy with her life as it was, quite happy to endure Kamelia and Divya, and the long bus ride later in the day that brought her home close to sundown, if this warmth and friendship was what she got in return. And eventually, Jing stopped asking.
Mama, for her part, never asked where she’d been all day; she just assumed, Suraya guessed, that it was a school thing.
She realized that being Pink’s friend was like dancing on the edge of a precipice; it was fun, and you were on solid ground as long as you didn’t slip, but you worried about that line separating you from the darkness all the time. Being friends with Jing, by contrast, was like . . . just dancing, with a partner who matched your every move. It was easy and free, balancing and satisfying. It felt right. It felt good.
And so life went on, in a way that made Suraya the happiest she had ever been.
Eleven
Ghost
BUT WHAT ABOUT Pink?
This was a question that Pink found himself asking constantly as Suraya watched movies and ate meals and spent hours talking and giggling with Jing. What about me? What about me, Suraya, what about me?
No longer did they spend their time idling in the sunshine, or lying on the cold kitchen floor to escape the heat, or nestled in the crook of tree branches, Suraya’s feet swinging in the air as they talked. She turned to him less and less as he lay curled up in the pocket of her school shirt, listening to the rhythm and music of her day. She often dozed off on the long bus ride back home from Jing’s house, leaving Pink to stare out of the window as streaks of orange and rose wove themselves through the darkening sky, and at home, between dinner and bed, there was barely any time to talk at all. “G’night, Pink,” she’d say sleepily as they curled up together the way they had for years, but even as she slept peacefully in his arms, Pink could feel that he was losing her. They were bound together by blood, as they always were—but she’d never been so far from him.
Do you not think you are spending too much time with this girl? he’d asked her one day, trying to mask his anxiety, the fretful note that crept into his voice.
“No, I don’t think so,” she’d answered, with a puzzled smile. “At least, I haven’t heard her complain about it. Why?”
It doesn’t leave much time for other people. By for other people, Pink really meant for me. But he was hoping she’d understand that on her own; it felt vaguely embarrassing to have to talk about his emotions like this.
“There’s really nobody else I’d want to spend that time with anyway,” Suraya had said, and the way she laughed as she said the words, so careless, so lighthearted, tore right through his chest.
And he didn’t know what to do about it. What was this feeling, this sense of loss? Loneliness? Fear? Resentment? The ghost didn’t know. All he knew was he didn’t like it, not one bit. Ghosts, he told himself sternly, were not meant to feel things. Therefore, he couldn’t possibly be feeling those things, yes? Yes.
The only way he knew how to cope with this mysterious new sea of emotions he found himself navigating was by hanging on to the one thing he did recognize: anger.
Anger was good. Anger was familiar. Anger was nourishment to a dark spirit like himself. He could work with anger.
But how?
The source of his anger, Pink knew, was Jing Wei. Jing Wei, with her smug little grin and her irritating giggles and her whispered confidences. Jing Wei, who had waltzed into school with her offer of friendship and stolen his Suraya away, the way the witch used to lure children with those perfect, mouth-watering jambu.