Ken Liu - Broken Stars

Jiaming stared at him. “You think those are lies?” She leaned against the wall so he wouldn’t see her trembling.

The stars had said that he was a very important person.

“Who would believe that you took the mock exam for Lina? The dean already talked to her. She’s been crying ever since. How can you hurt someone just to satisfy your vanity?”

He already believed them, just like that.

Jiaming bit her lip. Something was stuck in her throat, burning, suffocating her. She didn’t want to speak because it would hurt too much. But… but he was an important person to her. Maybe he was worth it, worth her ripping the words from her chest.

“What if I told you that I really did take the exam for her?”

She stared into his eyes, hoping to find something familiar.

“You’re filthy,” Xiaobo said.

She twisted her face away. She did find something familiar, though it wasn’t what she wanted. She was in so much pain that she could not bear to look at him.

But, he was going to hear her explanation. They would be happy together. She just had to—

The bell rang.

“Let’s talk about it more after school, all right?”

Xiaobo rushed for the classroom. Jiaming followed and climbed up a few steps, stopped, and turned around to go back down.

She decided to leave; leave behind the trivial nonsense, the school. She was going to cross the street and go through the revolving door of the McDonald’s, where she would sit on a sofa chair and sip from a large Coke. She would do nothing and think about nothing, until school let out.

She had never told anyone about taking the exam for Lina. This evening, she was going to tell him the whole story as a joke. She would be lighthearted and not leave out any details. She would be careful with her phrasing. She didn’t want to make him feel guilty.

The ice cubes slowly melted, gradually vanishing into the dark, sweet liquid. Very few people ever paid attention to how ice disappeared. What about the pale woman? Did she once focus on the inevitable fading away of things? What would her stars say?

The stars want you to be happy.

What kind of stars would make her happy? Jiaming didn’t know and didn’t want to figure it out.

The pale woman was still asleep. Jiaming didn’t wake her. The Coke she brought back for her was already warm, but she didn’t want to awaken her. She rarely got to see the pale woman so at peace.

“What time is it?” The pale woman woke up. She glanced at the TV; the anchor was reporting on the domestic news. “It’s so early. I thought you had a date. Did you get to meet him? You should have taken a path this morning you normally don’t.”

“I met him. We made a date for McDonald’s after school. There’s a Coke I bought you on the table.”

“How was the date? It ended too early.” The pale woman tilted her head and laughed. “Now do you believe me? Your mama isn’t mad! The stars tell the truth.”

“Mama, let’s look at the stars.”

The pale woman set down the Coke and happily took out her star chart. The spinning disk stopped and the symbols appeared clearly on the paper. The woman began to interpret.

Her mouth was open, but no sound emerged.

“What’s wrong, Mama? What do the stars say?”

The pale woman collapsed into the chair. She had never been as white as she was now.

“Why are you hiding in the shadows?” she asked Jiaming.

“You’re not going to like the way I look now.” Jiaming walked into the lamplight. “They got my clothes dirty.”

They had held her down on the beige-colored sofa at McDonald’s, where the Coke spilling from the cup they toppled on purpose flowed onto her pants from the table. Lina hadn’t been in the crowd; she had stood in the back, traces of tears on her face.

“Did they hit you?” the pale woman asked.

Her face felt swollen, and there were a few scratch marks. Jiaming licked her cracked lips. The taste of blood was a bit similar to Coca-Cola.

“They weren’t too fond of iced soda.”

The girl who had toppled the Coke had been the first one to slap her in the face. Then they had dragged her in front of Lina. Half a dozen pairs of hands had shoved her until she was kneeling before Lina, her knees striking the hard tiles. This was the price for betraying Lina.

They had then slapped her face: one, two, three. Right in front of the customers and employees gathered around them, in front of the pedestrians on the sidewalk looking in through the windows, in front of the teacher mixed in the crowd pretending to not know them, perhaps in front of other students.

Someone had held her by her hair so that she couldn’t lower her face. They wanted everyone to see her face. Jiaming had closed her eyes.

One of the girls had explained the scene to the spectators.

Look at this stupid bitch. She could barely get passing marks. How dare she make up stories about Lina, a model student?

“You know who they are, don’t you? Did you guess or did the stars tell you?” Jiaming wiped away the pale woman’s tears. “Don’t cry. Don’t you find the whole thing funny?”

Had she not shut her eyes tightly, had she been able to see the expressions on those faces, she would have laughed hysterically, unable to stop herself. The joke hadn’t reached the punch line until then.

“Did the stars tell you how many times they slapped me? Twenty-seven. I was so bored that I counted for them. But this wasn’t the real problem. There’s actually a really important question, something that I had to ponder before Lina left. Mama, how did they know I was at McDonald’s?

“Why did the man who’s so important to me take up their side? Ask the stars, Mama, ask them! Why did he treat me the same way that man treated you? Hurry up and ask the stars! We must have the same stars, Mama.”

The pale woman was curled up in the chair, biting her fingers instinctively. Only her eyes, independent of body and will, attracted by the star chart, stared without blinking at the figures on the sheet.

Jiaming walked over and pulled her fingers out of her mouth. “What do the stars say? My crazy, mad mother, tell me, what does this mean?” She pointed to one symbol.

“The Moon.”

“The Moon?” As Jiaming spoke, she moved her pen. The pale woman screamed and stretched out her bloody fingers to stop her, but it was too late. The symbol for the Moon disappeared in a dense storm of pen strokes. The pen moved and casually drew the symbol somewhere else. “It’s over here now.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“What about this one?” The nib pointed at another symbol.

“That’s Pluto.”

“It’s too crowded over here.” She scratched out Pluto and randomly set the nib down in a blank space elsewhere. “Isn’t this better?”

The pale woman howled, tearing at her hair.

“Don’t cry. Open your eyes. The stars and planets are no longer where they were, but the world remains the same. Nothing has changed. The stars do not speak; they don’t tell the future. The future, the past, the present—none of it has anything to do with your shitty stars.”

The pale woman bent over the star chart, as if gazing at a baby she had given birth to who had just died. Tears flowed down her cheeks and dropped onto the paper; ripples expanded over the chart as though pebbles had been tossed in. The symbols on the paper trembled like reflections in the water, and then cautiously began to move, heading for their former positions.

Jiaming watched them expressionlessly, unmoved. This was nothing more than another cheap trick.

The stars did not speak; the stars did not tell the future; the stars were powerless.