Page 68 of Somewhere Only We Know
A part of her had drawn into herself again. Although her curious energy was still there, excited to see and touch everything, she was different. Wary and subdued.
I couldn’t blame her. Something like relief had flooded me as soon as she knew I knew. It wasn’t exactly how I wanted her to find out, but I was glad it was out there. And her reaction had been better than I thought it would be.
Well, her reaction to one part of the story. My phone had buzzed in the shop.
Info is leaking out about a Lucky sighting at the light show. What happened?? We better not get scooped.
A part of me wanted to toss my phone into a trash bin and forget the story, forget the hustle for once. But this would ruin all the work I had done the past few months—building Trevor’s trust. Without the job at the end of all this? Nothing.
So while Lucky was walking ahead, I texted him back:We managed to escape. Getting photos at Mong Kok. Don’t worry.
We could hear and smell Mong Kok before we saw it. An endless maze of stalls filled streets lined with stores, selling every kind of good at the bustling Ladies’ Market—mostly touristy souvenirs crammed into the small spaces, the wares hung along the metal frames of the stalls. Walking through was slow going, with people stopping to shop and take photos.
I kept close to Lucky, hovering over her obnoxiously. She didn’t seem to mind. Despite her new disguise, she looked nervous and walked closer to me.
“Wow. This is intense,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s definitely a tourist favorite. But you can’t leave Hong Kong without having seen it,” I said. “We’re about to enter the food market. There’s so much good stuff to eat there.”
She was already walking ahead of me to get to the food stalls—led by her nose, it seemed—a poised figure even in an oversized sweatshirt. That’s what I had been noticing about her since we met: Some people have a star quality. They radiate something otherworldly. It’s not only that they’re attractive, there’s a magnetism and presence. And Lucky had it.
Doing the work that I did, I didn’t get starstruck. In fact, the closer to celebrities you got, the more they lost their luster. Star quality or not. They showed some petty or unkind behavior that made your soul shrivel up. Like Teddy Slade and Celeste Jiang yesterday. Nothing like seeing a guy in his bathrobe cheating on his wife to tarnish that luster. After enough incidents like that, I had become immune to their glamour. They became another story to chase.
Obviously, this was different.Shewas different. And the weird waffling going on in my head right now was super unpleasant.
“Jack!” Lucky called out to me, waving her arm to beckon me over to her. She was at a seafood stall, pointing at some crabs in a plastic tub. “Totally fresh. Should we try them?”
“Hm.” I stared at the small blue crabs, their claws banded with tape and crawling over each other. Just trying to live. How could I explain to her that picking out my seafood when it was alive depressed me? Without looking like a total sheltered American weenie?
“You don’t like crab?” she asked.
One of them fell over and ended up on its back. The other crawled over it, trapping it. Tragic. “I’m allergic to shellfish, actually.”
She frowned. “That is so sad.” To my relief, she moved on, and when she did, she reached behind her to hold my hand.
A tiny jolt of excitement ran through me. As I wrapped her fingers in mine, I felt a surge of hope. She reached for me first. Was I earning back her trust?
Did I deserve to earn back her trust?
“Are you allergic to dumplings?”
I looked at the plump row of sheng jian bao she was pointing to. “Mmm, no, I love these.”
“Good! They’ll go perfectly with stinky tofu!” Lucky orderedsome and I caught a whiff of the pungent tofu before I saw it on the menu.
Lucky was such an adventurous eater that she made me feel like a conventional bore. And maybe I was, to an extent. Today was the first day I’d run around the whole city like this. Everything was so much more fun through her eyes. She soaked in every experience, every molecule of it.
We grabbed a few other eats—a stick of fried pork intestines, curry fish balls, and egg tarts.
“Let’s go find a spot to sit,” I said, trying to balance all the food in my arms. A few minutes later we came across a group of low tables with colorful plastic stools scattered around them.
We were surrounded by people, but no one was paying any attention to us. Lucky was relaxed; the disguise seemed to be working. I wished we had thought of it earlier. We ripped into our feast messily with our bare hands, using almost the entire box of tissue paper that had been placed in the middle of the table.
“So. I have some questions,” I finally said as she finished inhaling some pork intestine. I figured the best time to get answers was when she was full and happy.
She nodded. “I’m sure you do.”
I leaned forward on the small table, our knees touching, my elbows pushed close to her. “Why are you doing this?”
