It was just like his mom to hatch a scheme like this. The entire thing was ridiculous. He wasn’t going to change his mind. M? could be the most perfect woman in the world, and it wouldn’t change anything. His liking her was inconsequential. In fact, if he liked her, that was all the more reason why he shouldn’t marry her.

CHAPTER THREE

M? clawed the arms of her seat as the plane landed with a stomach-dipping jerk. Strange mechanical sounds reached her ears, and the lights flickered back on. She never wanted to fly again. Once in her life was enough. The loudspeakers dinged.

“Welcome to San Francisco, California. The local time is 4:20 P.M. Thank you for flying Air China . . .”

Thank sky and Buddha for English classes in high school, all the bootleg American movies she’d watched, and the audio English lessons she’d been listening to nonstop while she cleaned these past couple of months. She’d understood most of that.

California. She’d finally made it.

That meant she’d be meeting him soon.

Nausea hit her so hard the skin on her face prickled and her vision blurred. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. That wasn’t how she wanted to spend her first moments in the United States of America.

What if they dragged her somewhere for disrupting the peace with her vomit? Or—she glanced at the nice old lady in a hand-knit sweater next to her—for spraying the people around her? Could she go to jail for that? Could she get deported for that? Maybe they’d send her back without letting her off the plane.

Everyone started lining up in the aisle, and M? jumped to get her luggage from the overhead bin. A tall man in a brown leather jacket beat her to her suitcase and pulled it out. “Here, let me get it for you.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Embarrassment locked the English words in her throat. She’d learned the words in school long ago and could read and write a little—enough to fill out the disembarkation form and customs declaration, at least with help from the flight attendant—but actually talking had always been a challenge. She curled her fingers into ineffectual fists. How could she make him stop? All she had in her purse was Vietnamese d?ng, and it amounted to basically nothing here. It wasn’t enough to tip him.

He set the small navy-blue suitcase in the aisle and smiled, and she yanked it close to herself before he could take it hostage. His smile dimmed, and he turned to face the front of the plane. As they filed up the Jetway, she kept expecting him to “help” her more and request payment, but he never did.

When they reached the terminal, he disappeared into the massive crowd, and panic seized her. He’d known what he was doing. He could have told her where to go, but now she was all alone. What if she went to the wrong place and did the wrong thing? She was going to end up getting a full-body search and a lie detector test.

As she blindly followed the crowd, she tried to read the signs overhead, but her fear-scrambled mind couldn’t make sense of the English words.

“Passport, please.”

Somehow, she found herself at the front of a line. Heart pounding, she retrieved the little green booklet from her purse and handed it over along with all the forms the flight attendant had provided on the plane. This was it. This was the part she’d been dreading. The paper part. This was when everything could go wrong.

The airport employee scanned the forms, leafed through her passport, and stamped one of the pages before handing everything back to her. “Welcome to the United States, Esmeralda Tran. Enjoy your stay.”

She stared at him blankly. Oh, right, she was Esmeralda Tran. It was going to take time to get used to her new name—which Ng?c Anh had given her because Esmeralda from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame shared their coloring. Ng?c Anh had also chosen that moment to announce she wanted a new name, too. After a bit of research, they’d settled on Jade.

The airport employee motioned for her to move on. “Please proceed to baggage inspection. Next in line.”

That was it? It took her longer to scrub a toilet. Hugging her passport to her chest with one hand, she rolled her suitcase toward the inspection line. She put everything she owned on

the conveyor belt and walked through all the spaceship scanner devices.

Once she came out on the other side, she grabbed her suitcase and stood still for a moment, taking in the chaos of the airport terminal. Foreign languages all around. The smells of perfume and food and bodies. Expensive-looking shops. Colors, clothes, hands holding suitcases, hands holding other hands. Everyone calm, purposeful, on their way. She wished she knew her way.

All of this was too new. Even she felt new.

New place, new name, new person, new life. Maybe. For the summer, at least.

She should be excited. Hollywood and Disneyland were here. But all she felt was . . . scared. Home, however, wasn’t an option right now. She had to do this for her girl.

Her mom’s advice rang in her head: Seduce first. Love will come.

It was time to see a man.

She marched straight into the nearest bathroom, took an empty stall, and changed out of her comfortable travel clothes and into a tight pink dress. After exchanging her flat shoes for a pair of high heels that looked like weapons, she left the stall to brush her teeth until her gums hurt and apply the smallest amount of eyeliner, mascara, this shimmery stuff to hide the tired bags under her eyes, and bloodred lipstick. There. That was as good as it got.

When she checked herself in the floor-length mirror next to all the sinks, her reflection was completely unrecognizable to M?. But that was a good thing. M? was a naïve poor country girl who never quite fit in. She was leaving that girl behind. She was Esme now.

Lifting her chin, she exited the bathroom and joined the crowd. She sounded out the words on the overhead signs with determination and followed the foot traffic through the airport. After she passed security, she scanned the people and their faces, searching, searching, searching . . .