Chapter 19

十九

When I got to the classroom, it was cold as a sepulcher, and I saw that the students looked like skeletons, assortments of bones. I closed my eyes, rubbed them, but still, everyone in the lecture hall, all 50 students, were skeletons, moving, talking skeletons, skeletons holding phones, skeletons writing in notebooks, holding books.

I clung to the lectern, my palms clammy and hot, and I mechanically conducted my lecture on variations between Western cultures, trying my best to keep my focus on my laptop, my notes or on the back of the classroom, where a poster of Supreme Leader Xi Jinping hung on the wall. He was the only human in the room.

During the final couple minutes of the class, I shifted to the last slide of my PowerPoint and saw- her- on my laptop, her face, Lily, staring at me, smiling.