Chapter 1

I seriously need to get out of Beijing.

There's the fact that the air is trying to kill me. No joke. The American embassy over in Chaoyang does readings of the air quality in Beijing, since the Chinese government doesn't, or won't reveal the results anyway. A while ago it was so polluted that they ran out of normal descriptions and came up with one of their own, so what went out over Twitter was that the air was "crazy-bad."

Thanks, guys. Remind me not to breathe.

There's also that it's been another long winter, and while you think I'd know what's coming after three years, it still takes me by surprise: months of wind so cold and dry that sometimes I feel like I'm breathing razors. Now that it's the last day in February, temps are getting up above freezing at least, but it's still the kind of cold that settles into your bones and makes my leg ache even more than it usually does.

My apartment's comfortable. There's a central furnace that controls the radiators in the living room and the two bedrooms; the enclosed balconies provide a buffer against the chill. I broke down and got a cheap flat-screen at Suning, and I have a stack of DVDs from my favorite DVD store off Andingmen, every American movie or TV show you could want. I've got take-out menus from half a dozen restaurants, and right at the end of the alley there's a great jiaozi place and some snack stands, plus there's a tiny store about the size of my bathroom that sells toilet paper and Yanjing beer and a bunch of snack foods, including my favorite spicy peanuts, that's just across from the entrance to my apartment complex.

So it's not like I really have to leave my apartment all that much right now. Or go very far if I do.

It's just that I can only take so much of my mom without a break, and I've about reached my limit.

"Ellie, do you know where's the best place for me to find peanut butter?" she asks from the doorway to my bedroom. "And chocolate chips?"

"Any of the foreign supermarkets'll probably have them," I say. I'm sitting on my bed with my laptop propped on a pillow on my legs. I don't really look up. She's always asking questions like this, and I admit I tune them out a lot of the time.

"Really? Because I went to . . . what's the name of that French one? Carrefour? And they had peanut butter, but it was chunky and I need smooth. And I didn't see any chocolate chips at all."

"I don't know," I mutter. "You could always buy chocolate bars and hit them with a hammer."

"I guess I could."

Now I do glance away from my screen. There's my mom, her streaked, bleached hair rising in a halo of static, wearing a SunRise T-shirt (I'VE FOUND MR. RIGHT AND HE'S PERFECT! ISAIAH 62:5) and sweats, solid through the middle like a pound cake, the bramble-rose tattoo above her elbow sagging a bit, which is what happens with a tat inked twenty-five years ago.

"Aren't you cold?" I ask, because even with the radiators on I'm wearing a sweatshirt.

She snorts. "Not right now. I've got my own heat." She mimes fanning herself. "Hot flashes."

Like I needed to know.

"The thing is, I want to make my special chocolate-chip cookies for Andy," she continues, cheeks flushing.

And that's when I know I've got to get out of Beijing: That nice Mr. Zhou next door has become Andy.

Given my mom's track record with men, no good can come of this.

"Maybe try Walmart," I mutter, and turn back to my laptop.


I love my mom.

Seriously, I really do. She did the best she could do with raising me, which maybe wasn't...