21

TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT. ZEE AND I ARE GETTING READY FOR THE CHARITYgala. Because I don't know my foundation from primer, Zee has offered to do my makeup and hair.

I wait patiently for some kind of cream to sink into my skin while she livestreams her makeup routine. My shoulder-length hair has been meticulously teased into soft wavesà la Miriam Maisel from the show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with a little online help, Zee's top-of-the-range curler, and a brand of hairspray that Zee claims airily "would be illegal in the European Union, where they have standards" but is "relatively safe, I think?"

"You only live once. We should have standards!" I protested. But Zee waves my concerns away as people who can afford black-market lungs do.

Zee's done with her look: She's wearing creamy pastel-orange lids paired with a darker coral lip, and the bold colors pop against her deep golden-brown skin. She adjusts her hijab, removes the makeup bib she is wearing to protect her white shirt, throws on her tuxedo blazer,and does a little spin for me. Zee's gone for a classic black tuxedo styled with a pearl-white formal shirt and a silk sunset-hued hijab. She looks fabulous.

I wolf-whistle. "Gorgeous! You are an artist."

She beams, then sighs. "Too bad the one person I wanted to impress isn't coming."

"His loss," I say. "Anyway, we look good for ourselves, so."

"Absolutely," she says. "And of course, social media."

I snort-laugh.

Zee paints a matte, deep cherry color onto my primed lips, then proceeds to mist some kind of fixing spray over my made-up face. The look she is going for is Winter Fox—a clean, dewy base with neatened brows, a hint of white sparkle on the inner corner of my eyes, and a soft violet shimmer over my pale lids, which contrasts beautifully with the dark blue hue of my tuxedo and the beaded black bandeau top I've paired it with. Zee has loaned me a pair of sparkly crystal studs—at least, I hope they're crystal. I look so ridiculously good and yet recognizably me; I can't stop staring at my reflection.

Zee makes appreciative noises as she sprays more, well, spray into my hair. "Someone's gonna lose his mind," she sings.

"I'm not trying to impress anyone."

"Even so, he's going to be impressed anyway," she says, grinning.

My phone buzzes. I flick a glance at the screen: Agnes, would you meet me before the gala? I have something to tell you.…

I turn the phone over.

"Is that Royce?" Zee says shrewdly.

I make a face. "Yeah," I say, keeping my tone light. "It can wait."

"Why are you avoiding him?"

"I'm not."

"You like him?" Straight for the jugular, as always.

I turn away and busy myself looking at the mirror. "Nope, don't be silly."

"Huh." Zee eyeballs me. "So you'll be totally fine if he kisses someone else tonight?"

I blanch and Zee says, triumphantly pumping her fists in the air. "Ha! I knew it! I knew it. My sulky baby likes Royce!"

I play it nonchalant, even though just hearing those words out loud makes my heart race. "It's pointless being into Royce," I tell Zee. "He's going to leave in a few months, and then what?"

"It's, like, a whole half year!" Zee protests. "That's, like, forever!"

My stomach drops. In six months, I'd lose her, too—and then what?

Maybe some of that emotion telegraphs on my face despite my best efforts. "Agnes, you have to give people a chance to love you, and you have to give yourself a chance to love someone," Zee says softly.

"I love you," I say lightly. "That's enough for me."

"No, it's not," Zee says. "You deserve more than me. Truly. I wouldn't want to end up with just one love of my life, even if it is you."

I bite my lip, dangerously close to tears. "Shuudd upppp," I say, mature person that I am.

We both pretend to be busy with various nothings for some time; then, when the air lightens, Zee comes over to apply the final touches to my face with a little fluffy brush.

"And we are done!" she says, grinning. "Alexa, launch my Sexy Baby Dance Party Spotify playlist, please."

Ariana Grande booms from Zee's Bluetooth speakers as I assess myself in her full-length mirror. Zee has loaned me a pair of inch-inch (modest by her standards) gold pumps and a beautiful acrylic clutch with brass leaves as handles.

"Girl,"Zee says emphatically, standing next to me in five-inch transparent platform heels studded with crystals.

"Girl, you too," I say, nodding at our reflection. We vogue in front of the mirror for a good minute.

Zee's phone beeps and she's suddenly all business. "Let's go! We've got to get there by four thirty." Organizing committee and student acts had to get there by that super-early call time because Malaysian traffic is unpredictable, and we aren't exactly known for being on time as a nation.

We giggle and then haul butt to the long black sedan in which Zee's mom's driver, Pak Khalid, is waiting (I say a tiny prayer of thanks when I see that it's not Pak Ismail, and then I panic when I realize Pak Khalid could be worse). And then we're off, or at least as off as one can be in snaking Saturday-shopping traffic in the city center, with Pak Khalid driving a stately, dignified pace while Zee gets increasingly agitated as the minute hand ticks closer to 5 p.m. Her phone beeps nonstop in her frantic hands, so much so that I confiscate her phone and make her take a screen break.

"How are you doing?" Zee says, popping a handful of cashews into her mouth. "Nervous?"

I search my feelings. "Just a little." Wrong. I have been in low-key panic mode since early this morning, barely managing to eat more than two slices of toast and an apple for lunch. For the first time in my life, I'm going to talk about the things that have made me me in front of a crowd of people who know me. "But I should be calmer once I start performing."

We arrive at the hotel on time, carrying bags of stuff Zee had ordered for decorations (the team in charge of decor had "run out of budget," and so Zee had come to the rescue, as usual). Both of us let out a gasp when we enter the ballroom. It is amazing. The already imposing space with its dramatic, twenty-foot-tall ceilings dotted with hand-cut crystal chandeliers and mirrored panels is awash in pink light, its walls having been softened with dreamy floaty draping. White silk flowers on gold branches burst out of tall vases on each table. The stage had been decorated with rose-gold and white balloons and strings of fairy light. Flanking the stage were integrated screens that would be projecting live gala feed from a dedicated social media channel during the lulls between acts—at the moment it projected all the event sponsors' logos on a black background. There's only a couple I recognize: Zee's parents consortium's abstract logo, a gyrating lemur from Frisson Cola, but they all pop on that high-definition screen. Zee's going to raise so much cash.

Zee excuses herself to handle the various mini crises that needed her attention, shooing away my attempts to help. I wander outside the ballroom aimlessly, past the photo booths, the registration table with the gift bags (free aviator glasses from a new start-up owned by someone's family, vouchers for the movie theater, skating rink passes, and exotic-flavored gourmet popcorn from another student's family). I find one of the organizing team's smaller prep rooms (Orchid) behind the photo booths, filled with bags of decorations and markers and stationery. There's no one around, most of them congregating in the larger room next door.

In spite of my best efforts, I start obsessing over Royce's message. What could he want to tell me in private?

I'm in love—with Dr. Maria.

Dr. Maria…is my mother.

Cut it out, I admonish my stupid imagination.

My phone buzzes; this time, it's Vern. Hey have fun up there, he says.

Me:You can still come if you want. I put you down as my plus one and never changed it. (Zee wouldn't let me.)

Vern:Really? I'm touched.

Me:Yeah.

I am distracted by a picture my parents sent of their villa in Janda Baik from earlier in the afternoon. I send them a generic smiley face, pleased at how well my sneaky plan is going.

Things are going so swimmingly that I start relaxing. I yawn as exhaustion envelops me in its furry paws—it's been a really tiring couple of months, what with my frequent nights out, the twice-weekly Seoul Hot shifts (with Mrs. Yoon consenting to let me take more frequent breaks), exam prep for our finals in ten days, then prepping all those essays hoping that I could update them come January with something like "winner of the qualifying rounds of JOGGCo regional stand-up comedy competition…"

Royce:Agnes, please, we really need to talk.

I should see him, right? Just to see what he's wearing tonight. Then I'll nip whatever this is in the butt…bud! Freudian slip!

Me:Let's meet in the organizing committee's prep room by the photo booths, Orchid I.

Royce:Sure. Btw, save the first dance of the night for me, OK?

I don't respond. I can't dance with Royce. I just can't at the rate I'm disintegrating.

I don't expect Royce for another hour as he's not performing today and has no role with the committee, so I switch the lights off and stretch out on the couch for a little nap after setting a thirty-minute alarm.

I'm woken up by a firm tap on my shoulder and I leap up from the couch with a shriek, jolted out of my dream of—well, Royce-related stuff. I land awkwardly on my bad leg and yelp. The light flips on.

"Agnes!" Tavleen and Kira exclaim in unison. They are both wearing sleek, delicately sequined dresses, very high heels and very fluffy hair, accessorized with glittery fine jewelry, and I suddenly felt very homely. My tuxedo had had to be dry-cleaned and deodorized because someone might have died in it, and my mom had had to take it in at the waist rather inexpertly. "What are you doing here in pitch-darkness?"

"Just napping before my show, I've had quite the week and the door wasn't, like, locked or whatever." I cross my arms. "Shit, I almost got a heart attack."

"Sorry" is what a normal person should say. Instead, Tavleen says, "Even if it's unlocked, this is clearly a private room. Only committee members can be in here."

"Yeah," Kira says bossily. "There's professional camera gear and auction shit in here. What if something gets stolen? You'd be, like, the prime suspect."

"Hey, you know me, I'm friends with"—I almost said you guys out of habit—"Zee, so maybe you can give me a pass?"

"We'd have to give everyone a pass, then," Tavleen says. There's no warmth or give in her voice. She and I could have been strangers—come to think of it, we might as well be. I leave the room before I do something that could get me arrested.

"Angry much?" a familiar voice says behind me. I turn around and squeal when I see Vern, almost unrecognizable in neatly slicked-back hair and a slightly oversize navy suit that's somehow a tad too short at the arms and legs at the same time.

"Hey there, Agnes," Vern says. "Surprise!"

I hug him like he's candy incarnate. "You came!"

"Of course I did," he says, pulling back with a smile. "Well, at least I did in the end. I thought, what kind of friend would I be if I did not come and support Agnes in her first non-comedy-club set?"

"What kind of friend, indeed," I echo. After what just transpired with the Flashes, Vern's solid, unpretentious presence reassures and centers me. I look him up and down. "Damn, boy, you scrub up well."

"So do you," he says, giving me an appraising look. "Nice outfit."

"Hey, Agnes." Royce chooses to appear at this moment, dapper in a burgundy tuxedo jacket and black trousers. He's carrying a tiny gold paper bag that he's trying to hide behind his body. I can see a small handwritten card addressed to me, or at least someone called Agn—. It's all very sweet, until he turns and sees Vern.

"Hey!" I say, faux jaunty to diffuse the glare-off that's happening before me.

Royce collects himself and turns his attention to me. "Wow, Agnes," he says. "You look"—he takes a deep breath—"so…"

"Isn't she a doll," Vern says, throwing his arm around me. "I mean, she's always beautiful, but today, wow. I guess she dressed up for me, since I'm her date."

The air sings with new tension. I decide to play along, maybe to prove a point to myself that what was happening between Royce and me was reversible as footprints in sand. "I—um, I, erm. Yeah. Technically, that's true." God, someone give me a prize already.

"I didn't know you were coming with a date," Royce says.

"I—I, well, yeah, I asked. And here he is." I was on a roll!

"Nice suit," Royce says flatly, his eyes fixed on Vern's arm. It's hard to tell if he's sincere or mocking, it's so emotionless. He stuffs the gift bag in an inner pocket in his tuxedo jacket. "Is it a rental?"

"Thanks, man, it's actually not a rental, would you believe," Vern says easily. "It's my dead uncle's one suit. Can't say he and I are the same size—or height, for that matter." He brushes imaginary lint off his shoulder. "BTW, which is it here, Ray? Royce?"

"It's Taslim to you," Royce says.

"Right," Vern says, shrugging. "It's so hard to keep track of your, ah, personas."

My stomach churns. "Guys, please—"

"Agnes!" I hear a squeal and Gina appears, dazzling in a silver sequined V-neck dress that showcases her fuller figure. We hug and the tension dissipates between the boys somewhat.

"I was hoping to speak with you alone, Agnes," Royce says.

"Later," Gina says, grabbing me. "Zee's on a warpath looking for us. We should go to the green room, stat."

"Save the first dance for me, or better yet—all of them," Vern says as I am physically hauled out of the room by Gina, who's scarily strong. The last thing I see as the door swings shut is the hurt look on Royce's face.

~

All the performers for the night are gathered in the meeting room that connects to the ballroom, which the committee has designated as the makeup room/talent holding room; no one is allowed to wander out unless they inform Yun, the talent manager of the event, the reason for leaving. "Or else," Zee says menacingly.

Fine by me. I have no desire to untangle the Ken vs. Ken battle royale out there. There's a buffet table laden with fancy finger food with nonalcoholic drinks. I am safe here.

The speeches are over and the performances are up. Our stand-up act will follow a slam poetry reading; then the student performances end and the live band will start playing.

Sometime around the interpretive dance duo that precedes us, I head to the ballroom and stand "backstage" with Gina to prepare for our performance. Yun appears and tells us, "I'm moving you two up before the slam poet, her parents want her to close out and they're a sponsor. Is that cool?"

"Yes, yes," Gina mutters absently. She is ashen-faced and sweating.

"Are you okay?" I ask her worriedly once Yun was gone. Gina was usually the paragon of calm before a performance.

"I don't think oysters and milkshakes go together," she said in a tight voice.

One of Zee's minions pokes her head behind the makeshift partition that separates the stage from the back of the hall. "You guys go onstage in five, the dance is almost over," she whispers.

Gina's stomach rumbles like an earthquake. Her eyes are glassy. "You go first, do your ten. Excuse me, I've got to, y'know."

"Now?" I squeak. She was supposed to perform her set before mine.

Gina's only response is to break into a run out back where we'd come from. Of course, as soon as Gina is gone, the minion turns up, frantic. "I got the timing wrong. Gina's on! What? She's not here?" She tears at her hair, hissing, "Fine, whatever, Agnes, you're on! You're on! Get onstage!"

Then I'm onstage, blinking in the bright light. I'm discombobulated by the sudden change in schedule. Dear God, the lights are hot, and there are so many adults in here.

So many parents.

I can't talk about my mother to this crowd. I have to pivot!

"Ahh…erm." I clear my throat and try again. "So the thing is, you know…"

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Where's Gina? My mind is blank as a fresh sheet of paper. I'd never ever frozen onstage before, ever. I'd always been able to freestyle, deal with hecklers and setbacks. I've been doing this for almost four months, three to four times a week, so I'm not exactly a novice. Yet here I am, freezing like a noob.

"I—I…"

"Get on with it," someone shouts. Bile rises in my throat and my insides feel like they've been dipped in acid: Could I be more of a loser than I already am?

"Hey there," Royce booms as he bounds across the stage to join me. "I'm Royce."

What the…

"As you all know, I'm rich."

Surprised laughter.

"And that's great, most of the time. Except everywhere I go, I'm a target for kidnapping, so I'm always surrounded by bodyguards. I don't remember a time I've never been watched over by a man. Except, y'know"—he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and the audience is rapt—"when I…take my exams!"

Hooting.

"So I was on a date with a girl. A real one. And at some point she was like, ‘Let's go to that dark corner and make out,' and I said, ‘No,' and she said, ‘Why not?' And I said, ‘If we do that, you will die. There's this figure in black that follows me all the time, and he doesn't like other people touching me.'"

He shrugs. "For some reason, I didn't get a second date."

The audience laughs. Royce is freestyling and looking like he's having fun. Our eyes meet and the block inside me dissolves.

"I'm sorry, Taslim, your life sounds so tough," I tease him, finding my voice all of a sudden. "What's the matter, you couldn't buy milk with a bar of gold? They didn't have spare change?"

"What, Chan, you mean they don't take gold anymore in corner stores? Do they take diamonds?" he shoots back.

We roast each other, going off on tangents, improvising, and it's not exactly stand-up, yet people are in stitches, laughing. The spotlight is intoxicating, and the enthusiastic reception from my peers is everything I've been missing. I'm home.

And then I see Gina frantically gesturing just beyond the curtain to my right, and I signal to Royce that we have to wrap up our performance.

I say, "This has been super fun, but now that you all are sufficiently warmed up, let me introduce you to our good friend and fellow comic, the real star of the night, Gina Cheung. We're Royce and Agnes, thank you!"

Gina stumbles onstage, mouthing "Sorry, the runs" to me as I hand her my microphone, and Royce and I amble off to deafening cheers.

We wait in the darkened sidelines after an assistant takes Royce's mic from him. I'm dizzy and smiling from the high of our performance. "You were amazing," I whisper to Royce.

"Thanks," he says. He leans back against the wall with a soft exhale. "Wow. That was a rush."

"Yeah, it was. Thank you for helping out onstage when I was floundering." At risk to his cover, too. I cringe when I recall that I had introduced him as a fellow comic. I hope he doesn't get into trouble for this.

"You've got to believe in yourself more, Chan." A wry note enters his voice. "The way a Taslim would believe in himself."

I can't help laughing. "I'll try."

We watch Gina telling her signature bit about returning to the homeland—Australia—after a decade of living in Hong Kong. "Suddenly there was just so much space around me that it felt wrong to be bulimic," she joked, owning the stage without even trying. "So I started eating as much as I could. Gave myself permission to take up space. Problem was, no matter how much I put in my mouth, people still couldn't see me, maybe because I'm four foot eleven. So really"—she sighs dramatically—"I gobbled all those penises for nothing."

There's a shocked murmuring amidst the laughter. Royce chortles. "I can see the whites of several teachers and parents' eyeballs from here, they're so offended."

"So what if they are," I say brashly. "I'm not saying we give comics carte blanche to offend, but I think it'll do all of us some good to examine what exactly about the joke offends us, and why, then take a step back to see if we should react, especially if a comic isn't punching down. Gina's joke is layered if you actually parse what she's trying to say."

"Most people don't bother looking under the hood of a joke, they just care about the aesthetics. Propriety. Saying the right thing to the right audience."

"I couldn't care less about check-the-box virtue signaling," I say.

"Most people aren't like you. You listen, you think for yourself. It's…it's what I like about you. Though if I'm honest, I like a lot of things."

I turn to look at him, completely floored by this turn in our conversation. "Excuse me?" I say before I could stop myself.

He clears his throat, suddenly shy. "You heard me," he says in a low voice.

"Penis! Penis!" someone—hopefully a teenager—in the audience is chanting.

"Tell me again," I say quietly.

He doesn't speak—instead he closes the distance between us with a deliberate step. I could move away but I don't. Why should I? What am I afraid of, of this attraction not making sense? To whom? In this space, we're finally equals again. I turn to him just as he does. In the dim violet light, his eyes are hopeful, questioning. I close the space between us in response. His arms encircle me, clasping me to him, and he tips my chin back, his breath quickening. He traces my face with his eyes, murmurs my name as I whisper his. Our heads lean toward each other, so slowly I can practically feel seasons change, my heart pounds with elation, with—

"Royce, are you there? The student committee wants you, they said you're going to be awarded Athlete of the Year, so you need to come with me," a very familiar voice says, and I snap apart from Royce to see two shadowy figures emerge from the connecting room. It's Zee—and Royce's mother, Ming Taslim. Her eyes narrow in suspicion at Royce and me, at our guilty postures. I back away before I realize what I'm doing, wanting to get as far as physically possible from her icy contempt. That's when I trip over a bunch of cardboard boxes holding sponsored merchandise in the corner of the room and fall—landing, once again, on my barely healed leg.