My Last Summer

Part one

Chapter 1.

I work in a restaurant in an airport in Taiwan. I am eighteen years old and I don’t like my job because everyone gets on planes and leaves. And I want to leave too.

Today is the first day of summer and I have a big secret. No one in my family knows this, but this will be my last summer in Taiwan. I can speak pretty good English and write pretty good English because I was a real nerd and studied lots and lots in high school (and watched lots and lots of American movies too!), so this will come in handy for my secret. I need to tell someone, and I don’t really have any other friends, so here goes. My big secret is this:

I will leave Taiwan at the end of the summer to become an actress in Hollywood. I will leave for Hollywood and become a star and never come back.

Chapter 2.

Some things you should know about me, then. I only wear makeup to make myself look pretty for my boyfriend, otherwise if I leave it on too long then the makeup dribbles off my skin and it makes me look sick and ugly. I don’t think I am pretty and I don’t think that I am ugly. I think that I am average. I think foreigners are pretty cool and that there should be more of them in Taiwan. And once I leave I don’t think I’ll miss Taiwan at all. I don’t think I’ll miss the food stands and the stray dogs and the steam rising from the dumplings and the way the countryside can sometimes look so beautiful. I don’t think I’ll miss the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101, and how it looks like a big metal flower. I don’t think I’ll even remember anything about Taiwan ever again.

Chapter 3.

What I usually do when I get home from work is this. I get home. Open the door. Go to my room. Lie on my little bed. Forget about my day. Think about Hollywood. Think about being an actress. And then I get up and put on my favourite CD.

Every night before I go sleep I do the same routine. I brush my teeth. I wash my hair. I take off my makeup if I’ve seen my boyfriend that day. I listen to my favourite CD. And then I pretend that I am in America.

That I am famous.

That I am married.

And that I am happy.

And when I fall asleep I try as hard as I can to dream about the big beautiful Hollywood sign. I dream of touching it and that it feels like fire.

Chapter 4.

In high school I was always in lots of plays. I was always trying to act in as many different things as possible. I loved it. And my teachers would nod their heads and clap their hands and smile at me after every performance and say that I was good. They said that I was always getting better and better at my acting, and this would always make my insides feel like they were fizzing.

But it wasn’t like I was the only one who could act. Of course, there were other kids in my school who were just as good as me, probably better than me. But I like to think that it’s because I looked so average, and because by looking at me you wouldn’t really expect anything so great. It was like when I got up onto the stage and started to act, people just seemed to take notice. The way I look at it is like this. I’m a little Taiwanese girl with long brown hair and small eyes and a little nose. So when I act, I have something that is more subtle or something. That makes me more interesting somehow. I don’t know how or why, but that’s just the way it seems to be.

So, all my teachers said that I could do it. They all said I had something.

So what did I do next?

I told my mother.

I told my father.

I told my brother.

I told them all that I could do it. I told them all that my teachers said I could do it. They all looked at me. They all looked at me like I had gone crazy. And then they all laughed.

Chapter 5.

You wouldn’t believe it, but they never ever came to see any of the plays I was in in all the time that I was in high school. When I was in junior high I hadn’t really started acting and had no real interest in it. But that was before I had met my special old teacher who really helped me and really started to make me believe.

Everyone in my family said they didn’t have the time. They all said that they were busy. My brother even said he would rather stick sharp scissors into his eyes. Why were they like this? Why didn’t they want to see me or encourage me to do this new thing that I had found? This new thing that was going to change my life? I don’t know. I asked them. I asked them many times. But all they would give me was stupid reasons.

My brother said I was making an idiot of myself.

My mother said it was fine to have some fun every once in a while.

My father didn’t say anything.

And from this, for the first time ever I guess, I really started to understand what my family was all about. I started to understand that they didn’t know anything at all.

My father is a taxi driver. When he finally decided to say something about my career and my life and my dream he opened his mouth and said that he would drive all the way to the coast of Taiwan, jump into the sea, weave around all the sharks and all the fishes and all the jellyfish, drive around the Statue of Liberty once it came into view, flip over the Empire State Building, and then speed all the way into America if he thought it was possible that I could become an actress in Hollywood. And then he laughed some more.

Chapter 6.

But like I’ve just told you, they don’t know that I am going to leave after this summer. They all think that I will be at the airport forever and they all think that I like being at the airport. They somehow have the idea that I like to clean tables all day and take food from the kitchen and bring it to the customers all day. They think that this was what I was born to do.

What they can’t see while I’m at work is my eyes and my heart when I stand outside the restaurant on my break and watch all the people head towards the departure gates.

They can’t see my eyes and my heart looking sad, looking so empty, trying their hardest not to take control over me and make my legs run towards the gate and burst through security and jump on a plane and hide until we’re in the air and far, far away from Taiwan. I know everyone in my family thinks that I am stupid and that I am just silly and full of dreams. But I am not. I know exactly what I’m doing.

Chapter 7.

I sometimes tell the people I work with that I will be an actress. I tell them this because I like to see how their eyes change. Most of them don’t know what to say so they just look at me and smile and their eyes try to hide their surprise or their shock or their pity. Their eyes try to hide it, but I always spot what they’re really thinking.

One thing you should really know about me is that I’ve started to become a bit of an expert at reading eyes. The average person probably doesn’t take too much notice of most people’s eyes. Probably they just look at them when they have to, when they’re speaking to someone, or if they’re finding a particular pair beautiful for a moment or two and they want to stare and linger and soak them in for a while. The average person probably thinks that eyes can’t give away your feelings. That eyes aren’t anything except round circles that are coloured brown, blue or green. But that’s because not many people take the trouble or the time to really look.

For example, these people I work with when I tell them I am going to be an actress. They smile at me with eyes that say that I must be joking, that I must just be fooling around. They smile at me with eyes that might say, OK, see you on T.V. soon, and seem genuinely nice, because their eyes get a little bigger and they will stare at me for a bit longer (after all, who do you know that worked in an airport in Taiwan and then went on to become a famous actress in Hollywood? I’m not surprised they give me eyes that say I must be joking!) But when I say no, not T.V., the movies, the movies in America, then their eyes really explode. They really can’t believe that. A little Taiwanese girl like me? A little Taiwanese girl like me working in a place like this? Their eyes look at me like I’ve gone crazy and that I must seek some help from somewhere. And I smile. I smile because I know their eyes will look exactly the same once they see me on the big screen and on the red carpet at the Oscars one day.

Chapter 8.

But one girl I work with also wants to be actress. When I told her I wanted to be an actress in Hollywood she smiled and her eyes widened and she said, me too! And then she raised her hand at me, waiting for me to give it a high five or something.

I looked at her in total shock. I looked at her hand, stuck in the air like that, looking so stupid in the air like that. Was she making fun of me?

I asked her. ‘Are you making fun of me?’

‘No,’ she said, looking hurt, her raised hand falling by her side. And then she explained.

She wants to be an actress, but not in Hollywood. She wants to be on T.V. in Taiwan. She doesn’t like English. She says it’s too hard and that foreigners are strange. She wants to be a superstar in Taiwan.

I looked at her. Her face wasn’t beautiful. But it wasn’t ugly either. It was kind of average, like mine.

‘But every girl wants to be a superstar in Taiwan,’ I said.

When I said that, she pretended not to hear (or maybe she didn’t hear, who knows?) because she opened her mouth and asked me how I would get to America. She asked me with a nice sweet voice. She asked me with big wide eyes.

I looked into her eyes. They seemed curious. They didn’t seem full of anything angry.

I raised my hand and pointed over her shoulder. I pointed to the exit sign of the restaurant.

‘Through that door,’ I said. ‘Through that door and then onto a plane.’

She gave me a funny look, and in her eyes now couldn’t tell if I was joking or not. Her eyes said, maybe this girl is actually serious, and if she is, then maybe I should get to know her or something. She might be interesting, or maybe she’s crazy.

Then she laughed. But in a nice way.

‘You are crazy,’ she said. ‘Why do you want to go all the way to America?’ she asked. ‘It’s easier to stay in Taiwan.’

But when she said this, something happened to me. Something happened to the inside of me. I know it might sound weird, but I felt sad. I don’t know why I felt sad, but I could feel it, swirling around my chest and into my bones. I had to look at the floor for a moment or two. I had to look down and wait for the sadness to leave me, and go somewhere else for a while.

Maybe it’s because I have this idea that no one really cares about what happens in Taiwan. About how the rest of the world kind of ignores us. After all, what are we famous for? What are we ever in the news for? We’re not