Prologue

I sat on the bed Yang helped me make. The corners were still tucked the way she liked them, sharp and neat, even when her hands had started shaking. She made the other bed too, the one beside mine. She said it made the room feel less empty. Yang taught me everything — how to read, how to write, how to hold a pencil without snapping the tip. I didn’t understand it then, but she was becoming something like a mother. Not the kind you were born with. The kind you grow into.

She once told me we met when I was five. I don’t remember much from that time — just her voice, soft and certain, like she already knew me. She said she saw something different in me, something magical. I never asked what she meant. I didn’t want to disappoint her. She stayed with me for over six years but then she became ill. She rapidly progressed and I stayed right by her side the whole time.

When she grew too weak to leave her bed, I fed her the way she used to feed me. I read to her when her eyes wouldn’t stay open. She kept teaching me things even then — small lessons, quiet ones. Things my parents never bothered to say.

And then she was gone.

She called it “heaven.” I don’t know what I call it. I just remember carrying her to the cemetery myself because there was no one else. I said everything I could think of until the words ran out, and the tears dried up, and I felt hollow. After that, I had to take care of myself. I was 12 years old, and now I had nobody to take care of me. I had to grow up. Keep going. Pretend I wasn’t breaking. Sometimes I still wish a black hole would swallow me whole, so I wouldn’t have to feel anything at all.