Chapter 5

 True Deceit

Selina’s closet was a complete mess.

Clothes from her twentieth birthday that had brought back too many memories to throw out. Boxes and boxes labeled “important stuff” that were not important at all. Her good luck stuffed bunny? Soiled. Her first musical jewelry box? Broken. Her high school graduation cap? Dusty. A university softball bat? Useless. Med books? Ancient. It was a wonder, really, why she had managed to keep so many things.

Selina sighed. Spending an entire Saturday afternoon cleaning out her closet of shenanigans was definitely not going to fall on her long list of “best days in life”.

But she had promised herself for eight months already that she’d clean this closet out, as she had not touched the junk she’d thrown in there since the move to Uptown Manhattan.

“Okay, so what’s in here?” Selina muttered, pulling out one of her “important stuff” boxes and tearing open the construction tape she’d used to neatly seal the openings eight years earlier. She remembered firmly taping the boxes, not wanting to hold onto memories that she could no longer grasp.

“Wow hmm, middle school stuff…” She pulled out a nearly-torn notebook and read the heading, “Property of S.H.E, Beware, Caution, Do not Open or Else…”

She opened it anyways. She figured that Selina herself didn’t exactly count as trespasser as the notebook used to belong to her as well to Hebe and Ella.

Selina turned to the first page and laughed as she read aloud to herself the bubbly babblings of stupidity and innocence, “Entry 1 Selina: Omgoshness! I think Evan was waving to me in the hallways today and I was so happy I dropped my books…”

Flip. Goodness. She did not want to remember those days.

“Entry 2 Ella: Today, I ran so much I almost died. But it was fun anyway. Jiro and Chun insisted that I look at like a lost panda bear when I run…can you believe it? They just moved here last month and I’m already being teased by them, but anyways, after I came home, I drank 8 bottles of water…”

Flip. Ella had been friends with Chun and Jiro ages before she’d been introduced to them. How exactly that friendship had ended up in ruins, she did not know.

“Entry 3 Hebe: You know why my life is difficult? Because I have one friend bathing in her own world of lovey dovey-ness that I know nothing about and I have another friend getting drunk on water. And no, I don’t know exactly why I’m sharing this notebook with them. All I know is that they’ve got their heads in the loo…”

Flip. Hebe had always been the sensible one. Had there not been Hebe’s voice constantly ringing through their heads, reminding them of reality, Selina didn’t think she would’ve made it through the stupidity of adolescence.

Selina emerged from that childhood, pulling away from the notes and keepsakes that ranged from friendship bracelets to old fortune cookie strips.

It was a nostalgic mess of sorts, all crowded into one box. Selina would never learn how she had managed to fit it all in.

The next box consisted of old books, Jane Austen Classics and sappy Nicholas Sparks Romances included. Hebe had always compared Sparks and Austen on the same level, insisting that “Pride and Prejudice” was the Sparksonian Drama of her time period and the “Twilight” of her days.

Why the boxes of books were label “important stuff”, Selina had long forgotten.

The last box was cluttered with photographs. That was back then, when photos were still printed in a glossy set of snapshots and stuck into albums and boxes for keepsake only.

Selina was wasting a considerable amount of time sifting through every picture in ready interest. Hebe had gone off to make up hours and work a prolonged night shift, and thus, Selina had time to waste.

As she flipped through high school and college albums, she began noticing such patterns in the photos:

Selina, Hebe and Ella. Selina and Jiro. Hebe and Jiro. Selina and the dance team. Hebe and the poetry club. Selina and the softball team. Selina and Hebe. Selina and Ella. Hebe and Ella.

Ella and the track team. Ella and the basketball guys. Ella, Jiro, and Chun. Ella and Chun. Chun and Ella.

More and more of their pictures piled up through the years, in all places, at all times.

Because developing the photos had been Selina’s favorite hobby and, later, assumed responsibility for the group, she had photo footages of everything and anything.

She slowly traced her fingers across the last photo she’d taken with Ella and Hebe together…it had been at a wedding reception. Ariel’s wedding banquet. Ella’s sister. Stepsister, actually.

Then, shortly after that, Ella took off for Russia without further ado.    

Selina pulled out a picture of Ariel the bride, the smile on her face iridescent, and Ella the maid of honor, a smile matching that of her sister’s. And then there was another snapshot of her and Chun, maid of honor and best man arm in arm, grinning like idiots. Selina remembered teasing the two old friends to no end about that picture.

She had been Ella, the youthful and down-to-earth woman that she was. And she had been happy. Happily surrounded by her friends. Happily seeing people. Happily sending her sister away onto her journey of blissfulness. What had happened between then and her sudden leave for Russia, in which she wanted to do nothing more with the humanity that she’d known?

Selina stared down at the grins and the smiles. She was supposed to remember.            These pictures were supposed to tell her. Only that those pictures refused to trigger old memories.

Yet slowly, memories began running like rusty wheels in the back of Selina’s mind, like old filmy images that had so much static it was too blurry to see. The pictures with smiling brilliance were taken the night of the wedding banquet; that was self-explanatory.

But the next morning…the radiant Ella that she knew had gone. She’d gotten drunk or something, Selina remembered Ella had insisted the next morning, as she bent herself over the toilet puking leftover contents from the night before.

But soon, Selina’s thoughts of vomit were interrupted by a loud shout and a flurry of demands quickly following.

“Eeeeeeeek!--W-What in the world is all this mess!?”

Hebe had come home. Until she arrived, Selina had not realized that the afternoon had welded well into midnight and she hadn’t even eaten dinner yet! Time had come to fool her once again.

“Ohmygoodness,” Selina threw the pile of photos back into the box and sprang up, “I was cleaning my closet… and got carried away.”

“I didn’t know that cleaning that closet of yours would serve as such an interesting experience,” Hebe muttered, her arms tightly folded under her chest as she leaned against the wall.

“I didn’t either, I-I just got absorbed in the silly notebooks we used to write in and photos we had taken. Remember those notebooks, Hebe? Oh gosh they were so dumb! You should totally check those out and have a laugh sometime.”

“Yeah, sometime,” Hebe nodded. She had never been much of a past-orientated person, and thus, she had not let those silly little memories hinder her path ahead and cared more about the food currently on the dinner table--or the lack thereof--than her high school graduation.

And so, ignoring her stomach, Hebe started talking about today, as if no other day mattered more, “--and of course Arron Yan--he’s that pathetic nurse you saw the other day but you don’t want to know him--has to ruin it by completely mixing up Dopamine-A with Actin Amine-14 and we ended up having to refile the entire Amines medicine cabinet. A useless mop, that one is!”

“Wait… he’s a nurse?”

“Yes, and he’s quite infuriated by it too! Especially when he meets a female doctor. He goes on and on about it and how women aren’t doctor-material and I was like, oh please little boy,” Hebe ranted with fervor, her shoulder-length black hair bobbing, “don’t be such a grouch just cause we got into med school and you didn’t.”

“A male nurse?” Selina began giggling immensely. She had seen them around, but the idea of a guy in those preppy white skirts and spiffy white hats just did not fit into her perception, “well that’s rather uncommon…”

“Yes Selina, a male nurse. And to think he has the right to judge people about stereotypes, right? That ist pig! I mean, your right Selina, how common is it that a guy goes into nursing? But noo, he thinks he has the right to complain about the incompetency and uselessness of female doctors. At least we have brains.”

“Well he obviously won’t be getting a date anytime soon,” Selina commented, slightly amused at how red-faced Hebe had grown from the anger. A staunch feminist she was, indeed.

“No, he won’t be,” Hebe agreed, “You still need some brains to do that. I mean, this guy is majorly pathetic. He couldn’t even recognize the morning-after pill when he saw one! I mean, please! Everyone knows what that is, even guys should know a bit about that, considering that he’s a nursing major. I don’t think he even knew what he was sorting on the “B” rack, even when the packages were clearly labeled ‘BirthControl’.”

“Did you just say the ‘morning after pill’?”

“Yeah, you know, that one pill that women take the morning after a one night stand or something to keep them from having a baby pop out of nowhere and to ease the non-stop vomiting…? Selina, you should know that for goodness sake! You’re the emergency medicine doctor, not me!”

“No, I do know…it’s just that…” Selina frowned, glancing down at the box of photographs on the floor, “…I wonder if...”

“What?”

“Never mind. It’s nothing...”

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.

Ella thought that there was nothing more dreadful than reading the job-seeking column of the New York Times. Of all things she could’ve been doing, of all the music she could be playing, Ella was stuck in the cubicle-like study room of her apartment looking for a flippin’ job. Why oh why was music such a dead-end career? In such times like these, Ella had wondered if her life as a musician would’ve been better had she been living in communist Russia. Not that it was anymore, but still.

She rolled up a newspaper article and chucked the wad into the nearest garbage bin and wailed, “That’s it. I give up! Life cannot go on.”

She needed find a job and she needed it fast. Sure, she’d have her weekly earnings from playing at Carnegie Hall’s invitational performances, but that wasn’t enough. At least, not enough to pay for Cammie’s hospital bills. It wasn’t a chronic illness that the doctors had diagnosed, but as Chun had explained, her daughter’s respiratory tract would weaken over time. If it were healed now, chances of relapses would lessen greatly.

“Ella, quit being so melodramatic. I’m sure there’s someplace suitable. I mean, you grew up here, so I’m sure you could get into something, you know…through connections or something,” Selina suggested reassuringly, mentally counting the number of friends Ella had known in high school. But she could only think of herself, Hebe, Chun and the guys.

Ella shook her head, “Thanks, but I’d rather not. Plus, I cut ties with everyone after I’d left for Russia, remember?”

“How about people you are in touch with? I mean, Chun’s got three jobs on his hands. I’m sure he’ll be helpful,” Selina said thoughtfully.

“Three jobs?”

“Yup, Chun’s got it all weighed down-- doctor by day, secret agent by night, and a big company manager on the weekends. What more can you ask for?”

“What… what the hell is wrong with him? I can’t even land myself with a decent paying job and he’s juggling three?!” Ella groaned in disbelief, “Is that…in any way normal?”

“For him, it is,” Selina mused, “Well, he used to always talk about becoming an agent or FBI of some sort…”

“And that’s normal, I suppose,” Ella retorted skeptically.

“Well, Chun isn’t really the conventional type of guy, is he? He’s never been, but you should know that, Ella,” Selina commented, “In fact, he kind of reminds me of you…”

“Of me?”

“Yeah. I mean, you’re both a bit… strange, I guess. You’re this obsessive music lover and he’s this obsessed-with-examining-new-things kinda person. I dunno, it suits you two.”

“Suits us?”

“He’s single, Ella.”

“What does that have to do with finding a job?!”   

“What I mean is,” Selina dove straight into the heart of the conversation, whilst steering the topic at hand completely away from everything else, “you’re single too.”

“Yeah, and I had pancakes and honey-oat waffles for breakfast. Does any of this really matter right now?” Ella cried out.

“Chun’s reliable,” Selina persisted, ignoring Ella’s biting retorts completely, “He’s bound to be successful in the future, considering his ability to handle three jobs, and on top of that, he’s pretty good looking to! I mean, we have to give that one nurse, Rainie Yang, who has the mind of a broomstick, some credibility when she said that Chun has a nice --”

“Selina, if you want to talk about Chun’s rear end, please do that elsewhere. This is a breakfast table you’re sitting at! You’re going to make me vomit.”

“You’re not even eating!” Selina accused, looking down at Ella’s half-bitten waffle which had gone cold an hour ago.

“But still, if you want to date Chun, be my guest. Just don’t mention any body parts, please. I know you doctors have a tendency to do that,” Ella muttered darkly, dipping the leftover corner of her waffle into a jar of strawberry jam.

“Oh please, Ella! You know I’m already with Calvin and I don’t plan on changing that,” Selina smiled a little, thinking of bliss, of pleasure and a tangent of silly little things.

“Actually, I didn’t know you were a keeper,” Ella remarked sardonically, remembering of all things, high school.

“Of course you didn’t,” Selina agreed, remembering that Ella had only just come back from four years of isolation. But it was as if today had blended into yesterday and this year had converged with a decade ago. The two friends were talking again and normality had ridden over the two friends faster than their minds could pause to think about it.

Selina fell out of her trance and narrowed her eyes, “Don’t you dare distract me, Ella! This is about you, not me! Now how about I introduce you to Jiro or something…”

“Thanks but no thanks, Selina. I know perfectly well who Mr. Jiro Wang is and no, it’s definitely not going to happen between us,” Ella rejected the ridiculous idea immediately, her lips curling into an expression of repulse and amusement.

“But Chun and Jiro are the best men I know! Except for Calvin, of course,” Selina smiled at the thought but quickly proceed with her wailing on and on about Ella’s solidarity.

“What’s with you, anyway? Didn’t we say to each other back in high school that you’re my wife and I’m your husband and that would be enough?” Ella inquired, suspicious that her parents had phoned Selina to stalk her into getting married and other such trivial matters.

“It’s just t-that…t-that…”

“That what?”

“Cammie needs a family, Ella. You shouldn’t stay a single mother and deprive your daughter of her father--”

“No! How can you say that? We’re doing fine without anyone else, thanks!”

“--so it’s either you marry her father or find someone elsewhere so that Cammie can have one!”

“No.”

“I’m being serious, here Ella!”

“Marry her father,” Ella jeered, accusatorily, “he doesn’t even know she exists!”

“W-Who is he, then?” Selina half-whispered, half-choked in fear.

 “Someone,” Ella gazed out the window forlornly, her voice suddenly distant, “But he’s living his life and I’m living mine. He’s happy with what he does and should not be disturbed from his unknowing, from his naïve tranquility. The fact the he fathers a child will shock him from his ambitions. It will hinder his goals. Do you understand that, Selina?”

“Do I…know him?”

Ella smiled bitterly, shaking her head, “No, I don’t think so.”

“But I do know him,” Selina murmured in her softest whisper. Silence rode throughout the small room.

“Excuse me?” Ella looked up suddenly, a blur of panic rushing through her face.

“I was there on that night at the party too, don’t you forget that, Ella Chen.”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ella’s words came in a hurry of broken thoughts and fragmented explanations.

“I’m not stupid, you know. I was there the next morning too, when you had assured me that your nonstop vomiting was only the result of careless drinking…even though you had not been drinking at all the night before.”

“S-Selina, d-don’t you say su-such nonsense…”

“Now that I think about it, it all makes sense. All that vomiting was the morning after, wasn’t it? The morning after--“

“No, Stop!”

“--you and Chun had .”