“Alice?”
Alice swallowed. “Hey.”
Silence on the other line. Alice could hear the other girl breathing, soft and rattling. She curled her hand against her chest.
Say something, she thought, but nothing sprang to mind. Which was stupid.
It was Olivia. Her oldest friend. Olivia had taught her Mandarin when her own parents couldn’t, had helped her learn to ride a bicycle, had spent her whole life with her childhood intertwined with Alice’s. They’d never needed those awkward, stilted questions to start a conversation. Alice had thought she and Olivia shared their own language—some kind of familiarity. Now she sat across a silent phone line and found her throat empty of words, both in English and Mandarin. Now she had nothing for her.
“What are you doing up?” Olivia yawned.
“I…wanted to talk to you.”
“At 4:52 in the morning? I have an 8 a.m., you know.”
Alice had forgotten the intricacies of time zones. She huffed out a quiet laugh.
“I know. But I—” she grappled for words. It was like trying to practice Mandarin with Olivia: it should’ve come easy, but it never did. Frantically, she shuffled through her memories, looking for something to say. Only one thing came to mind. “I got a haircut.”
Nothing. Alice rolled over on her side, so that she faced her roommate’s walls. Her roommate had hung some old photographs of her family and friends, fanned out like a tapestry. Their faces stared back, frozen in bright smiles and improbable good times. None of them looked like Alice, with their pale hair and bright eyes. Their eyes stared off in the distance, not really noticing her prone shape in the darkness. They simply gazed blindly, unaware of the stranger in their room. She wondered if Olivia would look at her like that, too. It’d been months since they’d last seen each other. Who knew what else had changed besides hair and time zones?
“How short?” Olivia’s voice was dry. Alice took a deep breath.
“Shoulder length.”
“Hmm,” Olivia said. She sounded like she was falling asleep. “I can’t see you with it.”
“Yeah, well.” Alice glanced at the photographs again. They stared back, eyes like glass. “It was a rash decision. I like it, though.”
“Remember when it used to go down to your butt?”
“It was too hard to maintain.”
Olivia snorted. In the background, Alice heard the mumbling voice of a girl, heard the twisting of sheets, the tired sign of someone half-asleep. The words were something unfamiliar, like a foreign language. It reminded Alice of the way Olivia would speak Mandarin to her other friends, too fast for her to decipher the syllables.
Sorry, Olivia had said each time. I’ll try to go slower. But she never did—she didn’t really care that Alice had been left behind. Ironically, Alice could hear the echo of that phrase now. I’ll try to go slower. I’ll try to stay with you.
Olivia was speaking slower, alright. But Alice still couldn’t shake off the distance between them. Maybe this was how college was supposed to be, although the thought depressed her. She and Olivia had promised to stay close, despite the miles between them. Now Alice felt that promise slip through her fingers, floating away with the air.
“Who’s that?” she asked anyway, trying to cling to the thread of the conversation.
“My roommate,” Olivia said. “You woke both of us up.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Alice went silent, staring at the photographs. None of them had her in it. She didn’t have similar photos to hang on her wall. There was only one, a picture of her and Olivia with their arms thrown around each other, fairy lights strung above them.
They’d looked so similar—long black hair, bright blue dresses, dark eyes crinkled with joy. There was no other photo where they looked more similar, which was precisely why Alice had hung it up on her wall. Lately, though, she could hardly bear to look at it. It was like a scrap of home, the rest folded away. It hurt too much. Who knew familiarity would pry open more wounds?
“You here?” Olivia asked. “If you’re not, I’m gonna sleep again.”
“No, I’m here.” Alice chewed on her lip. “I just—I miss you.”
It’s the rawest confession there is. A long time ago, she would’ve denied it, or kept it cradled in her chest. She was the quieter of the two, after all. The one more likely to keep it all inside. Olivia was the heart; Alice was the muscle. But now, across a distant phone line, she chose to lay her heart out instead. It was kinder. It was a way to bridge the gap, she thought.
“Miss you too,” Olivia said. Her voice was sleepy, but Alice knew she was telling the truth.
They stayed there, breathing silently into the phone. Alice knew Olivia had to sleep, but she couldn’t bear to hang up, to fall back into her lonely silence. As stupid as it was, she didn’t want to let her go. Nobody else bothered to call her, not even her parents. Not even Olivia, technically, but she was the one thread Alice didn’t want to unravel. She swallowed down her goodbyes and asked another question.
“What does your room look like right now?”
“Um,” Olivia said. There was the sound of rustling, and then her voice filled the line. “Sun’s not up yet. Margo hasn’t picked up her clothes, they’re all over the floor.”
Alice looked around her own barren room. Her roommate was fairly neat, but then again, her roommate rarely entered their room. The stationary faces, unfamiliar and strange, were often her only company. Darkness seeped in from the windows. She shut her eyes tightly.
“What about you?” Olivia’s voice was caught in another yawn. Alice shook her head, even though she knew Olivia couldn’t see her.
“Pretty clean.”
“That can’t be you.”
“Maybe,” Alice said. She could sense the end of their conversation, edging closer and closer. She pressed her fingers tightly against the phone. Not yet, she thought. Don’t go yet.
“Hey, Olivia,” she blurted out. “How do you say I miss you in Mandarin?”
A silence. Then Olivia said it. It sounded clear when she said it, the words unfumbled, steady and clean. It was just a jumble of syllables to Alice. She didn’t want to ask Olivia to repeat it, but she wished she could say it back. English was too weak to describe her feelings. Still, the words sank into her chest, stinging like salt to a wound. All these years later and she still didn’t grasp it like Olivia. She still wasn’t like Olivia. The thought burned her.
“That all?” Olivia asked. Her voice sounded slightly more awake. Cruel, then, for their conversation to end soon, Alice thought. “Or should I stay up later?”
“Nah.” Alice pressed a hand against her eyes, willing exhaustion to come under her skin. “Sorry. Go back to bed.”
“Kay. Miss you, Alice.”
The phone went dead. Alice stared at the black screen, seemingly empty and lifeless now.
“Wǒ xiǎng nǐ,” she tried, but it didn’t sound right. She switched back to English. “I miss you too.”
She pulled the covers over her head.
