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Lan Zhan is 13, terrified like he hasn’t been since their mom died, telling his uncle after dinner, after stretching out drying the dishes to avoid this conversation. Lan Qiren simply hums and fixes his glasses, and Lan Zhan is unable to sleep that night, not knowing what his reaction means.
The next morning, Lan Qiren looks more tired than he ever has in Lan Zhan’s memory, because as is his duty as an educator, he spent all night reading what academia and the medical community have to say about raising trans children. Lan Qiren wants only the best for his nephews.
For the first time in his life, Lan Qiren calls into his school to say that Lan Zhan is too sick to come in. They spend the whole day getting him new clothes, and a short haircut, and picking out paint samples to redo his room.
The rest of the school semester is strange as Lan Zhan is pulled out of classes to be homeschooled; he’s going into high school in the fall anyways. Lan Qiren isn’t willing to risk how Lan Zhan will be treated by his teachers and peers in this uncertain stage of early transition.
Lan Qiren isn’t the kind of person to say that he’s proud of Lan Zhan, or even tell him that he loves him, but Lan Zhan knows. he knows.
in the way that Lan Qiren yells and berates doctors who misgendered him, and how the light from the door to his office still leaks out in the late hours of night, him putting together the paperwork to change Lan Zhan’s documentation.
It’s embarrassing in the way all things are to 13-year-olds, but Lan Zhan, even at this age, is grateful. that is, until he gets signed up for summer camp.
Not that Lan Zhan is against the outdoors. He knows his uncle is coming at it from a good place, really, but for the last 3 months the most social contact he’s had have been family dinners with his uncle (stern, uncompromising) and his 16 year old brother, who, while being very kind and supportive, is not at all an accurate sample of the attitudes and behaviours of teenaged boys in any way, shape, or form.
But his brother’s best friend’s younger brother has been going to this camp three years running, even though “he’s not at all athletically inclined” and it seems the deal is sealed. At night, Lan Zhan directs all his malicious energies towards a 14-year-old he’s never met.
He keeps thinking, as the date that he will be dropped off approaches, that he will find a clever way to get out of it. However, as a boy who is neither prone to lying nor mischief, Lan Zhan finds himself at a loss. The day comes and he and his supplies are bundled into the car, backpack at his feet, his duffel and sleeping bag tossed in the trunk, he and his uncle make the silent, 3-hour drive to the group campsite. it’s excruciating.
Again! Lan Zhan is not against camping! He has gone camping twice with his uncle and brother, and despite getting many mosquito bites, enjoyed himself both times. It’s all about being around boys he does not know and does not like, in a situation he cannot control.
So: horrible, all around. (the icing on top of the cake is, hilariously, that now Nie Huaisang cannot make it to camp this year due to a stomach ulcer. Lan Zhan feels partially responsible)
He tolerates the process, the waving goodbye to his uncle (no hugs) and thinks maybe he can get through this right up to the moment he meets his bunkmate, a lanky kid from out east who will not shut up even when Lan Zhan shoots his most withering glares.
in fact, they almost seem to encourage him.
Within the first two days Lan Zhan has a catalogue of reasons why Wei Ying is the worst person he’s met. He moves in his sleep, which wiggles the bunk, which keeps Lan Zhan awake. The talking thing continues, and it’s worse, because he doesn’t stop when Lan Zhan doesn’t respond. When Lan Zhan chides him for breaking one of the camps rules, which were read out on the first day, and are very easy to follow, Wei Ying just smiles (evilly) and raises his eyebrows and says “Watch me.”
Lan Zhan does, in horror and rage, and also feeling more violent than he has in the whole of his thirteen years upon this earth. Perhaps, if Wei Ying’s legs were to be mysteriously broken, he would find it harder to run in the area surrounding the campfire. Unfortunately, Lan Zhan is no better at lying and mischief than before, despite his continued exposure to Wei Ying, who excels at both.
This continues the entire first week, like Wei Ying is laser-focused on breaking the rules with the only purpose of bothering Lan Zhan. In a bout of fury he accuses him of doing so, and Wei Ying just laughs, and now he Knows he’s doing it on purpose.
Truly the most evil being on this earth is a 13-year-old boy. Lan Zhan has proof.
On saturday he wakes up at precisely 1 in the morning, which is strange, because his internal clock is excellent, and he rarely, if ever, wakes up before 5 am.
He peeks his head to look at Wei Ying’s bunk under his, and seeing it empty, waking up does not seem strange anymore. Lan Zhan shouldn’t sneak out. he really should not, and besides, there’s a hard 10pm lights-out rule.
Except that they’re in a forested area, and even if it’s populated currently with rowdy teenaged boys, there’s still a risk of being out alone at night.
15 minutes later, Lan Zhan is sneaking out of his cabin with his flashlight to find Wei Ying. He is successful in not being detected so much because he is good at sneaking, but because he is naturally very quiet, and no one expects Lan Zhan, Rule Stickler, to be out this late.
The kitchen, the craft cabin, the sports equipment locker are all locked up. Wei Ying will not be there or at any of the sports fields. Which, using the power of deductive reasoning, means he will be at the lake.
When he sees Wei Ying surface from the water, hair dripping, shirt off, his first thought is of how egregious this error is. The fact that he looks kind of cute in the moonlight won’t strike him until much later.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying calls from the water, as if he has actually expected Lan Zhan to follow him, “Come in! The water’s fine!”
The beam of Lan Zhan’s flashlight sweeps over him.
“it is one thirty in the morning,” he says. It’s the only explanation required.
“Yeah, and?” Wei Ying says, because he is evil. “Didn’t you learn about specific heat capacity in school? It’s still warm.”
Apparently it’s not enough of an explanation. “Lights out are at 10 pm,” he says. “It is 1:30 in the morning.” he adds. Because Wei Ying isn’t getting it.
“I’m sorry Lan Zhan, but I can’t hear you,” Wei Ying says, floating on his back and pushing himself farther away from the dock and the shore. Lan Zhan isn’t going to fall for that. he stands at the foot of the dock, far away from the water and far away from Wei Ying.
Wei Ying smiles and swims further out.
“You should not be out this late without supervision,” he says, aware that he’s hissing now. “There is the possibility of encountering wildlife, or unexpected weather conditions.” If the rules will not appeal to Wei Ying, maybe logic will.
“But i have you, Lan Zhan!”
Lan Zhan valiantly resists the temptation to pick up a rock and throw it at him.
Something must show on his face, because Wei Ying starts laughing. Lan Zhan begins to think a litany of words that would give his uncle a heart attack, until Wei Ying’s head dips beneath the water, and then he thinks nothing at all. As he throws the flashlight back and sprints down the dock, he does a series of mental calculations: how far Wei Ying was from the shore, how deep the water is, whether or not it’s safe to jump. He dives in, pyjamas and running shoes and all.
The moment they break the surface, Lan Zhans hand on Wei Ying’s wrist, Wei Ying laughs again. “Lan Zhan!” shaking water from his bangs, “I knew you actually cared about me!”
Wei Ying might be bigger than him, & a better swimmer, but he cannot resist Lan Zhan’s rage-filled grip.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, as Lan Zhan drags him up the shore, “What about my shirt? Can you let me go? I was just going to hit the showers. Ow! Could you let go a little? Lan Zhan, my feet!”
Lan Zhan drags the both of them, dripping, to the head counsellor’s cabin, Wei Ying protesting the whole way. The head counsellor sits them down in his office and shakes his head as he explains to them all the rules they’ve broken, how they’ve tested the sanctity of their trust. “I expected more from dragonfly cabin,” he says. “I’m very disappointed.”
Wei Ying keeps his head down the whole time, except to glance up at Lan Zhan every so often. On the way back to their cabin, he says, “You know, Lan Zhan, you didn’t have to let yourself get punished too. It’s my fault for being out in the first place.”
Lan Zhan shakes his head. “I went looking for you of my own volition. I went in the water all on my own. I made the same choices and mistakes as you, and deserve the same punishment.” His wet t-shirt is plastered against his back. He is glad for its oversizedness.
“Who Are You?” Wei Ying says, “How are you a real person?”
The worst part of the ordeal wasn’t the moment of panic and rush of cold as his face hit the water, but figuring out a way to change with Wei Ying awake and able to notice him taking all his clothes to the bathroom. Despite him hating the entire concept of camp, and mostly everyone in it, it’s been nice for once to be assumed male and have no one question it. He doesn’t want to give that up. He doesn’t want to face what that might mean.
In the end it’s a non-issue, because before he can even gather his towel to dry off Wei Ying has stripped down and into a new pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, and is burrowing into his sleeping bag. Lan Zhan just looks at him. “If i get swimmer’s itch, I get it. I’m tired.”
Their punishment is no free time for a week, kitchen duty for the same span, and a phone call home. Lan Zhan has already come to terms with it; Wei Ying is visibly anxious, tapping his foot against the wood floor of the head counsellor’s office as he dials their parents.
Lan Zhan stands at the back of the room as Wei Ying talks on the phone, slipping into Chinese. “Yes, Yu-ayi. I know. I know, it was incredibly stupid of me. I know how it looks. I didn’t—no, I—yes, Yu-ayi. I understand.” It’s like all the light and energy has gone right out of him.
Lan Zhan’s nervousness rises as the head counsellor dials his uncle and explains what’s happened. What if his uncle blames him—him—for it? Tells him he was never like this before, that he made a mistake, sending Lan Zhan to this camp—
He picks up the receiver.
“Hello, shufu,” he says, wanting to keep this conversation as private as he can, even though Wei Ying will understand.
“Lan Zhan,” his uncle says. “I understand you are being reprimanded for breaking several rules last night.
“Yes, shufu.”
“If I get one more phone call, I will have to come and remove you. Is that clear?”
“Yes, shufu.”
“When you arrive home there will be more punishment if you continue to misbehave.”
This is not the conversation Lan Zhan expected to be having. “Yes, shufu.”
A pause. Lan Zhan swallows. “I want you to call me if you get uncomfortable or want to come home.”
Oh, okay.
“This is a new experience for you and I don’t want you to struggle through it because you think you have something to prove.”
“Yes, shufu.”
“Respect those in charge and do not break any more rules. I am sure you will behave yourself going forward.”
“Yes, shufu,” and then, “thank you.”
Lan Qiren hrmphs into the phone and hangs up.
Wei Ying gives him a look that says ‘uncle?’ and Lan Zhan returns one that says ‘aunt?’. They both blink, and suddenly the understanding between them has shifted, slightly—that, like it or not, there may be more things they have in common than previously thought.
Their first kitchen duty is a disaster. Lan Zhan talks too little and Wei Ying talks too much, and never about the right things, which results in a whole, camp-sized jug of unidentifiable fruit juice being dumped down the front of Lan Zhan’s clothes.
“Orange really isn’t your colour,” Wei Ying says, and it takes a great strength of will for Lan Zhan to not throttle him then and there.
Lunch is better, and dinner even more so, because there are no broken plates, burns, or significant spills. Wei Ying holds up a cup of purple drink. “To our victory!” he says, as if it is a toast. Lan Zhan does not raise his glass or drink it (he is very suspicious of purple drink).
They end up communicating in kitchen duty, more or less. They find a way of talking, which is to say they will talk about their siblings, but nothing about their parents or themselves. It works for them.
Until the penultimate day of their punishment. Wei Ying, as Lan Zhan dices an onion, says, “You’re really good at that.” Not in admiration, just as a fact.
“I help cook at home,” he says. “My uncle believes it is a good skill to have.”
Wei Ying laughs. (Wei Ying always laughs, for any reason. He uses it as a defence like Lan Zhan uses his silence.) “I’m not allowed in my kitchen. I either burn it or make it too spicy for anyone else to eat.” Lan Zhan is suddenly glad seasonings are solely in the camp cook’s domain
“Anyways, Jiang Cheng’s going to freak out when he learns i’ve been working in the kitchen. He’ll think I poisoned everyone.”
“Jiang Cheng?” Lan Zhan asks. Wei Ying’s family are referred to by relation. they are jiejie and didi, Yu-ayi on the phone.
“Oh,” Wei Ying says, flushing, “He’s my didi. I’ve talked about him.”
Lan Zhan’s confusion must show at the surname mismatch, because Wei Ying explains. “I’m adopted,” he says. “The Jiangs were kind enough to take care of me after my parents died.”
No one wants to talk about dead parents. There is a frozen sense in the air, an elastic band ready to snap. “I also have a unique custody agreement.” it sounds so mechanical and awkward that it does nothing to relieve the tension.
“You don’t live with your parents?”
So he hadn’t been eavesdropping. A well of shame grows in Lan Zhan’s chest. “No. With my uncle.”
“Are they around?”
“Around” as in “alive”, he thinks. “My father.”
“Why don’t you live with him?”
There’s no good way to say that he and his brother are unwanted by his father, that the moment he got the chance he gave the responsibility to someone else.
“It’s better this way,” he says.
“I understand,” Wei Ying says, and Lan Zhan believes that he actually might.
They leave it at that. there isn’t much more to be said. At least, not anything that Lan Zhan knows how to put into words.
It eats at his heart, at night, when there is nothing else to distract him, how his mother never knew him as himself. That she loved and died seeing him as the wrong person. Wondering, always, if her love would be given so freely if she knew. It doesn’t matter, he thinks. He chose his name in her memory. The context is lost, but he still remembers her pinching his cheeks, saying “Your father chose your name, but I wanted to call you Lan Zhan. The sky was beautiful the day you were born. Blue, all over.”
In the kitchen, they can stand next to each other and not make eye contact, and say things that are lost to all other ears by the general cacophony of a camp mess in action.
Free time is much worse, in every way. They are closed inside their cabin while the other boys are out playing volleyball or kayaking or doing archery. Lan Zhan is stuck in a poorly ventilated room with a very understimulated person who would much rather be anywhere else. The point of their punishment is to be bored and missing out, but Wei Ying is incredibly jittery. “Why did you pack books?” he keeps saying. Lan Zhan gives him one in the hopes it will stop him from pacing the length of the cabin and back. “Why is this so nerdy? Non-fiction?”
And then it’s “What movies have you watched this year?” and then “What do you mean you don’t go out to the movies?” and “Do you even have a tv?” and “How could you live like that? that’s torture!”
Lan Zhan is bothered by the fact that it’s not bothering him.
Wei Ying is standing on the bottom bunk, fingers wrapped around Lan Zhan’s wrist, saying, “Lan Zhaaaaaan, Lan-er-gege, please, I am dyinggggg,” when Lan Zhan realizes he does not mind the warm scrape of Wei Ying’s fingers on the soft skin of his inner arm, and, Oh No.
Logically, Lan Zhan knows there was likely going to be a gay thing along with the trans thing. There was a period where he was unsure if his gender was due to his attraction to men, before he folded that idea up tightly and put it in a box at the back of his brain. The box is currently being dragged back out into the open, and Lan Zhan is very much Not going to have a gay crisis in the direct aftermath of his trans crisis and subsequent resolution. It’s not going to happen. And Not over Wei Ying. Not at an all-boys summer camp. He’d thought, maybe I can put off this whole sexuality thing for a few years. Until high school, at least. Maybe college. Have his gay awakening come in the form of his lab partner in biology class.
He admits to his horrible, mortifying crush on the world’s worst bunkmate with his face buried into the pillow that night, tears trailing down his face, because this is another way that he’s not normal, and weird. And different from the person he once thought he’d be. He wishes his brother were here. He wouldn’t be be able to understand, but he could hug Lan Zhan and stroke his hair and tell him that he loves him and nothing will be able to change that. Instead he is muffling his sobs against his pillow. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard already, with others in the cabin being homesick. No one will be able to know it’s for a different reason altogether.
When they’re done with kitchen duty, done with hours spent with Wei Ying endlessly pestering him as they both sweated in the humid heat of the cabin, Lan Zhan thinks: this will be the end of it. Now that Wei Ying has seen him, and knows him, he’ll see—he doesn’t know. That he’s nothing special, nothing interesting. Fun to look at, tease for a while, but boring once the initial thrill of making Lan Zhan throw daggers at him wore off.
The first breakfast he’s back sitting in the mess, Lan Zhan sits alone, the wood of the bench cutting into his thighs. he doesn’t feel sad about it. Just lonely. Nothing he isn’t familiar with. Kids smell insecurity like sharks smell blood. Lan Zhan had perfect grades, perfect clothes, a face that betrayed nothing—and still, not knowing what they were looking at, his classmates saw he was different. Exclusion is Lan Zhan’s oldest and closest friend. So: him, empty table save for him and his food, Wei Ying’s laugh ringing like a bell through the room. Clear and loud.
The rest of the morning, the same. canoeing on the lake in separate boats, eating lunch at separate tables, and all the time Lan Zhan knows it’s over. The closest he’s come to making a friend of his own—
That’s not right. He’d thought they were friends, but it turns out it was nothing but a combination of proximity, Wei Ying’s charisma, and Lan Zhan’s fallible heart.
After lunch is free time, the tennis court is open, there are boys yelling on the basketball court, and Lan Zhan is walking back to the cabin, thinking about the book he still hasn’t finished. It means he doesn’t have to think about other things. Lan Zhan’s shoes are crunching the gravel underneath his feet, by the volleyball court. He stumbles for a moment: Wei Ying, sweaty, his hair haloed by the sun. seeing Lan Zhan. Smiling. He keeps walking, his ears heating up with a blush he can’t conceal.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying yells. Lan Zhan turns around. “You know how to play?”
Lan Zhan has never been so happy to have his shoes fill with sand.
It’s not—it isn’t even Wei Ying acknowledging him now. It’s Wei Ying seeing him, looking at him, spending time with him and making the choice to spend more. He’s never been chosen by someone who’s had no obligation to. He doesn’t know how to feel about it, except special, and good. Wei Ying pulls him in. Includes him. He teases him, kicks at his ankles. Laughs at the archery range when he tries to show off and Lan Zhan hits every target dead centre.
There are moments when Lan Zhan is sure that Wei Ying’s doing it out of pity. His weird bunkmate, friendless and quiet, always out of place. It would be easy for Wei Ying to make a little room for Lan Zhan, squeeze him in, so he’s not standing all by himself on the sidelines. But Wei Ying looks at him sometimes and he understands that the seeing goes both ways. That there are times when Wei Ying isn’t smiling and laughing because he’s happy. Lan Zhan’s not good at people, but he thinks, well, he thinks, maybe he’s getting there with Wei Ying. It’s not just wishful thinking; he can tell when Wei Ying smiles at him, it’s for real.
He’s sure when he wakes up one morning and his duffel bag is empty, all his clothes hung on the trees outside, and when he goes out to get them, ears burning in humiliation, Wei Ying is there too, holding one of the Wen boys from two cabins over by the collar of his shirt.
“It’s not fucking funny,” he says, and Lan Zhan has never seen him so angry, in all the short days since they’ve met. the Wen boy doesn’t have enough time to resolve his snarl of a smile into a laugh before Wei Ying punches him right in the mouth. Wei Ying grins shamelessly for the five minutes he has to help Lan Zhan pick his clothes off the branches, before a counsellor comes to drag him off to be disciplined.
Talking at night, before lights out, Wei Ying says, “They almost sent me home, but Yu-ayi didn’t want to come pick me up. Guess you’re stuck with me.”
Lan Zhan is happy to be. He spends his free time with Wei Ying, holed up in the stuffy cabin again, lying on his stomach, chin on his folded arms, Wei Ying in the bottom bunk talking about nothing and everything at the same time, painting the world in colours Lan Zhan’s never thought of before.
Wei Ying says his aunt can’t stand him, and Lan Zhan knows it’s true, but anyone who doesn’t love Wei Ying, a little bit, admire his cleverness and goodness and just—he’s vibrant. He’s the full spectrum of light spun into one body.
(When he thinks of this summer, years along the line, this is what sticks with him: shirt sticking to his back with sweat, golden light filtering in through the windows, smell of pine in his throat and not being able to look at Wei Ying for all his brightness)
These are the halcyon days, before reality finds its way back to him. Late days of July, early of August, heat rising, a wave, a chorus. Letters from his brother and uncle, written in their neat handwriting, and Wei Ying begging to see.
Two weeks into august, summer reaching its peak, they load all the boys from the camp into buses, thirteen through eighteen, for their annual hike. Wei Ying sits next to him on the ride, in the aisle seat. usually Lan Zhan likes to look out the window, watch the world go by, see the houses there and wonder what their lives are like, standing in those fields, walking through those trees. This time, when Wei Ying falls asleep, he watches him instead. After all, he and Wei Ying live in different cities in different states. When the summer is over, the likelihood of them ever meeting each other again is so small as to be completely negligible.
The road curves up and up, pavement turning to gravel turning to dirt, not much more than well worn tracks. trees scrape against the sides, crowding all around them. The buses stop and they get out, Wei Ying resting his weight on Lan Zhan as he stretches and yawns.
It doesn’t last. All things are temporary. All things.
The ending begins when he and Wei Ying get separated on the trail, Lan Zhan spending too much time looking at wildflowers, trying to find the sort of silence where the world forgot he was there and moved on without him, birds singing, wind moving through leaves. Watching the trail, trying not to step in the mud, keeping his footing, not even noticing he was being left behind.
Wen Xu, eighteen years old, easily a foot taller than Lan Zhan, comes up from behind him and shoves him to the ground. His palms scrape raw. His face hits the dirt, bits of gravel in his mouth, the skin on his cheekbone either bruised or gone. He doesn’t know, only that it stings.
Lan Zhan has not talked to Wen Xu before, barely seen him in passing, but he knows of him well enough. His younger brother has done nothing more than harass and bully other campers; Wen Xu is only different on the surface. A quieter, more insidious cruelty, one not interested in theatre and performance. He doesn’t hurt the other boys to show off, but because he enjoys it.
Logically, Lan Zhan knows he’s being targeted because he’s alone, and small, but the logical part of his brain is very small right now. He is a too-fast heartbeat, the tightness of his hiking boots, the sweat at the roots of his hair, a series of senses and disparate body parts only moving together because they are united in pure and simple fear. He gets to his knees. Wen Xu grabs the back of his shirt and pulls him the rest of the way up.
“Your friend hurt my brother,” he says, “so I’m going to hurt you.” Uncomplicated math. Lan Zhan does not panic, because panic will only give him what he wants. Still, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands other than wrap them around the wrists holding him up.
What happens next is a series of poorly taken photos in Lan Zhan’s memory. Blurred colour and light, shades of red and brown and green. Wen Xu’s boot cracking his leg, the sensation of being pushed off the edge of the trail, and gravity taking control as he tumbles down and down. The slope is steep. He is whipped by thin arms of the underbrush and scratched by fallen branches. His descent is arrested by the trunk of a tree when it connects with his ribcage. Taking his first breath after stopping is strange; he feels like he has not breathed for years. He tries to get to his feet, but it’s no use. His leg is obviously broken, and can’t hold any weight. He’s not sure if staying in one place in the woods applies when someone forces you to be lost; he slides gracelessly down further until he reaches the bottom of the basin, a small stream running through it. He scoops handfuls of ice cold water to scrub the dirt and wells of blood from his arms and legs. It makes him feel more like himself, slows down his inner momentum, still rapid and fumbling for grip.
When he finally regains a sense of self, of body, his feet soaked wet down to the skin, he thinks, Oh. This is not good. Bruises are purpling along his shins, the place where wen xu kicked him the size of a plum and just as dark.
Time slows to match the speed of the water below him as it trickles over rocks. He does not know how long he’s been down there when he hears Wei Ying calling his name through the trees.
Lan Zhan musters up as much air as he can fit into his lungs and yells “I’m down here!”, trying and failing to not hear the thinness in his voice, the fragility of it. Bend him and he’ll snap, like dry wood, brittle all the way through.
Wei Ying slides down a minute later, swatting at a horde of insects buzzing around him. Black and yellow, furious, a swarm of vengeful wasps. Wei Ying, fearless, marches on, every step bringing him nearer to Lan Zhan.
“Are you okay?” Wei Ying asks, crouching at his side. His skin is swollen and red where the wasps have stung him. A lightning bolt of guilt lances through Lan Zhan, even as he is breathing in relief for the first time in hours.
His mind is pain-slowed and addled. When Wei Ying’s hands glance across his skin, it is like Lan Zhan is seeing it from outside himself. He moves unconsciously, grabbing Wei Ying by his fine-boned, knobbly wrists. “Uh, Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asks, nervous.
“Your stings,” he says. Lan Zhan’s fault, by association. Swelling and painful.
“My stings?” Wei Ying says. “Look, they hurt, but they’re really not that bad. I’m fine.”
Lan Zhan’s leg might be broken, but that doesn’t make him any less stubborn.
Stings left unattended get worse, like so many injuries. Lan Zhan does not let go of Wei Ying. He moves his hands to the first spot grown angry and red. Thumbnail into skin, pulling the stinger out. Wei Ying protesting loudly. “Lan Zhan, don’t worry about me.”
He stops complaining by the third sting, sitting still and quiet as Lan Zhan methodically removes the stingers, the venom. Wei Ying is watching him, mouth tight; Lan Zhan does not meet his eyes. He doesn’t want to see what is reflected in them.
Together, they walk up the slope towards the hiking trail, shoes slipping on moss and pine needles and fallen leaves turned mouldy. Between the two of them they have one pair of functioning legs. A dark, ugly bruise blooms on Lan Zhan’s shin. Wei Ying’s leg is puckered and swollen with a constellation of stings, and Lan Zhan sees him hiding the wince when he stands. so they sling their shoulders around each other, a limping, lumbering duo. The inches Wei Ying has on Lan Zhan are all in his legs; it makes coordination unsteady and their progress lurching, with Lan Zhan struggling to match his stride. But they do it. When the ground gives way under their feet, or they stumble over a hidden root or rock, Wei Ying’s grip tightens around Lan Zhan’s shoulders, and he laughs, as if Lan Zhan isn’t intensely stiff and sweating. As if Lan Zhan isn’t leaning on Wei Ying for more than support, to feel his body move under his weight, to be close. To imagine that Wei Ying is holding him for a reason other than support, because he wants to.
They are careful to avoid rotten wood, the soft bark of trees long since fallen. No second wasp’s nest for them.
They collapse when they reach the packed dirt of the trail, too exhausted and too injured to stand any longer. They press their backs into the trunk of a tree, the only thing propping them up.
“We did it!” Wei Ying exclaims, throwing his hands in the air. “We’re saved.”
Lan Zhan wheezes out a pathetic laugh beside him. He must be getting delirious, shocky from the pain of his leg and the cold of the stream.
He thought he had been lost for hours, a lifetime, but leaning his head back against the tree, face tilted towards the sky, the sun is still high and shining. It’s just that it couldn’t reach him through the cover of trees.
A neon-shirted camp counsellor with a walkie-talkie in hand finds them, eventually. “Hold up everybody, I’ve got them,” he radios in, and then describes their injuries. He grumbles to himself, performing what little first aid he can before more help arrives.
“Of course it had to be you two,” he huffs. He rubs alcohol and bandages the cuts they collected on their way up and back down, gone unnoticed among all their other injuries. Lan Zhan watches Wei Ying smile through the whole process.
Ii’m getting so much soup when I go home,” he says, with a nudge to Lan Zhan’s side. he gasps, involuntarily, at the sharpness of the pain. “Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I won’t touch you again.”
Lan Zhan doesn’t have the words to tell him it’s okay.
It takes four counsellors and a mob of curious teens to get them down off the trail and back to the parking lot. One of the few women counsellors, unknown to Lan Zhan beyond her name being ‘Mossy’, scoops him up in her arms and bridal carries him all the way.
He’s too tired, and in too much pain to be embarrassed, or suspicious about why Mossy is the one carrying him, and not another counsellor. He just lets it happen.
Instead of one of the buses, Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are loaded into the back seat of a pickup truck, and another’s cabin’s counsellor climbs behind the wheel. Lan Zhan sits over two of the three back seats, his broken leg stretched out towards the door. His back is pressed against Wei Ying’s side, the one that got stung by fewer wasps. The counsellor turns around to face them. “I’m taking you two to the hospital, but it’s going to be a long drive. Just hold on for a while and it’ll be okay.”
Through the windshield, Lan Zhan watches the crowd of gathered boys grow smaller, and smaller, and they turn a corner and they’re gone.
Each bump and divot in the road sends a line of pain straight through Lan Zhan’s entire body. He keeps quiet, his jaw and hands clenched, but Wei Ying seems able to tell he’s hurting. He keeps up an inane stream of talking until they get out of the woods, and the radio signal clears, and the counsellor turns up the volume to drown him out. By the time they hit the highway, Lan Zhan forgets to feel in pain, leaning instead into the warmth of Wei Ying against his back, and his voice—not hearing the words, just the syllables and sounds and up and down music of Wei Ying’s delivery.
There are fewer trees out here, and Lan Zhan can see the sun, sinking lower and lower in the sky, casting everything in a golden light, long blue shadows.
Unable to not in the tight cab, They eavesdrop on the conversations with both their guardians once cell reception is regained. Lan Zhan will not be going back to camp, his injury too severe, but it seems Wei Ying will. His visit to the emergency room merely a precaution.
They make eye contact over Lan Zhan’s shoulder.
“We have to find a way to keep in touch,” Wei Ying says, emphatically.
“I don’t have a cell phone,” Lan Zhan admits. Or a facebook. Or an email, outside of his school one, and, well, that’s going to change, soon, and even if it wasn’t, the thought of Wei Ying learning of that version of himself—no, no. It can’t happen.
“That’s fine,” Wei Ying says, patting the thigh of his uninjured leg. “remind me when we get to the hospital, and I’ll write down my address.”
The time doesn’t come.
Somewhere, in the long stretch of a two lane highway, Wei Ying falls asleep. Lan Zhan knows the moment it happens, his words dropping off and his breath slowing down. He’s heard the same thing for many nights that it is familiar to him now. Lan Zhan is tired. He is hurting. There is a yawning, a hollow opening in his chest, when he knows this is the summer’s end, and in all meaningful ways Wei Ying will be lost to him forever.
Wei Ying, his best friend, his only friend. Troublemaker, hellraiser, and rescuer all in one. Wei Ying, the boy who looked at him and saw Lan Zhan, only Lan Zhan, and chose him. Best friend, first friend, first love.
In the secret of the cab, in the privacy of the backseat, with Wei Ying’s breath a tidal lull, bad country music blasting on the radio, Lan Zhan turns around as much as his leg and seatbelt will allow. Wei Ying’s sleeping head drops onto his shoulder, and Lan Zhan presses one kiss, quick and chaste, to the fullness of his cheek, full of all the feelings he does not know how to say.
Within half an hour, they pull up to the hospital, a tiny, rural thing, in a town with one set of stoplights. The counsellor opens the back door and manoeuvres Lan Zhan out, trying his best not to jostle his leg.
“Wait,” Lan Zhan says, bleary from the road and not talking for so long. “I have to say goodbye to him.”
“You’ll have time for that,” he says, “but your leg is more important.”
Lan Zhan quickly learns two things:
One, that his uncle is not only capable of but extremely good at exceeding the speed limit, and two, that in sleepy rural towns, there is no wait time in the emergency room.
Wei Ying is asleep. He will think Lan Zhan just left him, and didn’t care to say goodbye or leave him with anything. He tries to tell his uncle this, the staff, but the painkillers hit hard and fast, and soon time is dripping around him, and his tongue is wooden in his mouth. All he can manage to convey is he needs his things, from the cabin. If he goes back there, he can give Wei Ying the farewell he deserves?
His uncle soothes him with a hand across his forehead, unusually tender. “Lan Huan is going with Nie Mingjue. There is no need to worry.”
In his uncle’s arms, in this tiny room in this tiny hospital in this tiny town, Lan Zhan’s heart breaks for the first time.
Lan Zhan does not know of the future. In the present, there is a cast, and medications, and a long drive home, but just a handful of years away—a chance meeting. A familiar laugh. Both of them most of the way grown up, but not quite, still gangly in their limbs and afraid of what is to come, of picking colleges and majors and the possibility, for the first time, of setting out on their own. Much will happen in the intervening years. Joys, sorrows, triumphs, failures, haircuts, hangnails, and Lan Huan picking him up from more than one miserable school dance, his feet sore and head aching.
In this moment, however, Lan Zhan finds on his arm that in all the chaos of the moment, he, too, had been stung by a wasp, the swelling clear and familiar on his arm.
He wants to remember, so as his uncle dozes, he takes his fingers and picks at the scab, making sure it scars.
Making sure something, no matter how small, will tie him and Wei Ying together for as long as his body would let them.