Behind the Moon by Hsu-Ming Teo

herself acceptable to his parents. She sat with Tek in his karaoke den as he belted out ‘My Way’ and other Sinatra songs. She hung around with Annabelle and endured her reproaches—‘How come your mummy never teach you how to cook rice properly?’—just to be near Justin.
    She waited for two years. She bided her time, borrowed and read outdated issues of Dolly and Cleo , then psyched herself up to ask him to the Year 12 formal. He said yes, and she felt as ecstatic as if he’d agreed to marry her. She saved up her earnings from Uncle Duc’s restaurant and bought herself lace underwear, plucked her eyebrows and waxed herself in all the requisite places in order to prepare herself for love. She was determined to lose her virginity that night.

    Justin borrowed his mother’s blue Toyota Camry to pick Tien up for the Year 12 formal. He handed her a corsage—yellow Singaporean orchids—and barely looked to notice that it clashed with the traditional Vietnamese silk ao dai she was wearing.
    ‘You look good,’ Tien told him. He shrugged and did not return the compliment so she was forced to ask diffidently, ‘Do I look okay? I mean, I don’t look stupid in this get-up, do I? Maybe I should’ve got a normal dress instead of letting the mothers talk me into this thing.’
    ‘You look fine,’ he said automatically as he waited for her to buckle up in the car. He glanced at her and was surprised to realise that she did indeed look all right. He’d always thought of her as a rather ugly girl; now he saw that there was a certain exotic beauty to her strong-boned features. He said, almost wonderingly, ‘You look really good, Tien.’
    She beamed at him with that big wide mouth, and the momentary illusion of beauty was dispelled. He sighed and started the car. He did not know what to say to her as they drove to a hotel in the city. He parked the car and they walked inside to the function room where their classmates thronged, already half pissed. He felt depressed because it was only now that he realised how much more he’d wanted from his school life than this, and although he liked Tien and had been reciting her virtues to himself on a nightly basis to coax himself into attraction, he wished he was with Gibbo instead.
    ‘Why can’t you just come along?’ he’d begged Gibbo. ‘Don’t make me go to this alone, mate. We can be a threesome, as usual.’
    ‘Tien asked you, not me. And I won’t turn up without a partner.’
    ‘Who cares if you go solo?’
    ‘I care. I’m not going to play the loser for the whole year to see, even if I am one.’
    ‘Fuck.’ That was the problem with school formals, Justin thought bitterly. Everybody marched into that Noah’s Ark teamed up two by two. What did you do if you’d always been a threesome and there was nobody else to even it all out? He was angry with Tien. She had placed him and Gibbo in the position of being rivals. Instead of best friends, they were now winner and loser; the chosen and the rejected.
    Justin made an effort to shake off his mood, but he couldn’t. They sat at a table and he only asked Tien to dance once. Few people came up and talked to them. They did not talk to each other.
    Finally, he said to her, ‘Do you want to get out of here? Maybe go to Macca’s and grab something to eat?’
    ‘Yeah, all right,’ she said, and she thought that perhaps something of this night might be salvaged after all. He seemed to cheer up once they left the hotel. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar and said, ‘Sorry to spoil it for you, Tien. I just really hate that kind of thing. Bores me shitless.’
    ‘Yeah, me too,’ she agreed heartily, although she had been looking forward to this night with Justin for months. She had pored over magazines, spun daydreams, practised dance moves and rehearsed conversational gambits which would never be used now. But she did not care because she was out with Justin, alone, on her first real date.
    They went to a