Affection

by Jiadai Lin

2023 Flash Contest Honorable Mention

Come here, Asian Barbie, she whispers. That’s you, so you move closer into her orbit and let her pull you by the hand across the grassy field.

Once, in middle school, you ran together down a hill in the woods in the bitter cold of winter, and she said, you look so pretty with your cheeks flushed. And you examined your reflection in the school bus window with your rosy cheeks and hooded eyes and the cream hat that your mother knitted, and you thought that if you were pretty in the eyes of your best friend, then it must be true.

Once, she said, you can just open your eyes wider, like this, when you complained that your eyes were too small—even your mother agreed—and that, if they were just a tad bigger, you’d be that much prettier. She opened her hazel eyes wide to demonstrate, to show you what’s possible.

Once, she told you that when people see her alone they ask, where’s your other half? You were sitting together in the hallway after the last bell had rung, and she touched her thigh to yours and rested her head on your shoulder, and you thought that you were so lucky to be seen, even if it was just as part of a whole.

Once, during the morning announcements, as you both peered into your CoverGirl compact mirrors, you could feel her staring past her own reflection at your face. The warm sun poured in through the classroom window behind your back, and she said gently, you’re so pretty, for an Asian girl. And even though you were scorched thinking about the way she walks down the hallway in her skintight jeans, the curve of her ass and the sway of her hips, those black platform shoes and streaks of honey blonde in her hair, all of her mocking you and your flat chest and no butt and too-small eyes, even despite it all, you wanted it to be true, what she said.

Once, she went off with an older boy under the bridge at night and reported back, he told me to bring a hair tie next time, and your mind scrambled to fill in the blanks about what happens under the bridge in the dark. She watched you trying to figure it out, and you swear there was an edge of a smile on her lips, the hint of satisfaction in knowing that you couldn’t keep up.

Once, she asked, did you French kiss? when you confessed that you had your first kiss in the upstairs bedroom of her house with a mutual friend while she was out back at the pool party. And when you hesitated, unable to answer, she sighed and bent at the hip to turn off the sprinkler hose, and her boobs looked so smooth and tan falling out of her bikini top, and she said, well, maybe next time.

Once, she surprised you at your house over the summer and handed you a CD she had burned of songs that reminded her of you. Here, I made this for you. And you took that CD and played it on your computer for hours while you sat on your bed and watched the ceiling fan turning, turning, ever so slowly, and Donna Lewis sang you into a dream . . . I love you always forever . . .

And so now when she whispers for you to come here, you give in to the tug of her hand and allow yourself to feel the overgrown grass grazing your ankles as you run across the field toward the edge of sundown and your throat opens in a laugh and your ponytail bounces loose and you don’t for a second let yourself wonder if you are the object of her affection or just something that she can claim as hers.

Published January 7th, 2024