Thursday. July 20th.
It was four in the morning. Stone and I sat in the cab’s backseat, staring blankly through the fogged windows. The chill inside and the darkness outside made it seem like the sunrise was still far away. I turned to look at my friend. He rested his elbow on the window ledge, his head in his hand. On his left wrist was the fitness smartwatch I had bought him yesterday evening, with our selfie picture on the screen.
I chuckled, pointing at the watch, “Are you changing that anytime soon?”
He turned and looked at me. “No,” he said, smiling. “Not anytime soon.”
I first met Stone in first grade outside of the boys’ bathroom right after a poetry class. He leaned against a metal locker and bragged about how he could fluently and enthusiastically sing Li Bai’s 176-letter poem, “Bring In The Wine.” Later that day, we were all exhausted from gym class, but he challenged Michael to a burping contest; somehow he still had the energy to spare. A few days later, he burst into math class after the mid-morning break, his muddy shoes squishing on the floor, a basketball clenched in his hand, and his shirt clinging to his sweaty back. Still, for the next hour, he was more exuberant than anyone else, shouting answers and disrupting the normal flow of the class. Mr. Niu yelled at him for not raising his hand before speaking but Stone didn’t apologize and made the same mistake three minutes later.
We became close friends soon after; I was drawn to his unmatched energy and enthusiasm. Even when he was disruptive in class, I could see that he was passionate about learning and having fun. He liked my intensity; because I was more serious about school, I often acted as a mentor to him, offering studying tips and other advice. He would listen carefully, buy the materials I suggested, and share his progress and results with me.
What really connected us was our shared passion for music. Several times, he took me to piano rooms to show me how he had mastered Für Elise and The Turkish March. I was astonished that he could play without even looking at the keyboard. As impressive as his playing was, however, it was also dry and mechanical.
“Music is about feeling the emotion, not striving for perfection.”
He ignored me. “How long do you think it would take you to play The Turkish March like me?” I sighed, “I don’t know. Months?”
Sometimes, I would try to discuss politics, but he had no patience for long, serious discussions. Once in fifth grade, Stone and I were on a school trip to Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. We started debating whether Confucianism, with its rigid social order, or Daoism, with its preference for less government intervention, was superior, but it only took a few minutes for Stone to veer off course into a realm of complete absurdity.
“I possess a supernatural power,” he said.
“What?”
“I have x-ray vision.”
I didn’t buy that, so I held three fingers behind my back and said, “How many?”
He squinted his eyes. “Three.”
“What?!”
He explained the origin of his superpower: “I was exposed to light radiation from the hospital I was born in. The radiation altered my genetic structure, giving me the ability to see through solid objects.” The thought that my friend had a superpower was so exhilarating that, at 12, I believed him and decided not to question it. It was comforting to believe in something extraordinary.
Stone was a gaming fanatic; it was his obsession. He played Game of Peace and Soul Knight whenever he found a spare moment. One day, I invited my friends to a party at my house; he parked himself on the bean bag in front of the TV, alone, with his phone plugged into the wall outlet, completely engrossed in another world. And despite my repeated attempts to coax him to turn off his phone and join the party, he refused.
Four years ago, my family immigrated to the United States and my life changed in ways I couldn’t foresee. For one, I lost the effortless confidence in my academic abilities that I’d had in China. Adjusting to a new school system, improving my English, and making new friends was difficult. Speaking with my old friends from back home made me feel more like my old self and I would occasionally call Michael, Steven, and Ryan to hear about their lives. But when I called Stone, I would hear the video game sounds in the background. It got so bad that he could barely hold a conversation. Because of this, I called him less and less until, finally, we stopped talking altogether.
Last summer, I paid a visit to my grandparents in Kongmoon, a city located in southern China. This was my first trip back to China since we’d moved. While living in the U.S., I had often imagined myself triumphantly announcing my return to my childhood friends in Beijing and calling for a grand reunion. However, because Kongmoon was so far away from them and my family had no plans to travel within China, I kept my visit a secret.
But one afternoon, I got a text notification from Stone. “You came back to China?” He typed in Chinese.
I felt guilty right away. “Yeah. How did you know?”
“My mom told me,” he wrote. “You aren’t coming to Beijing?”
“I have to stay with my grandparents.”
“Oh. I hope they are doing well.”
I thought this would end our exchange, but then he wrote back: “I will fly to you.”
“Really?” I typed. It wasn’t realistic for him to book a ticket and fly from Beijing to Guangzhou and then drive for another two hours to Kongmoon. But he wrote, “Definitely.”
And two days later, he assured me that he’d booked a three-day round-trip ticket.
“You are gonna make me cry!” I said.
“Don’t cry yet. Wait until you see me!”
On July 17th, the day of his flight, the sky darkened as Tropical Storm Talim churned offshore, sweeping across multiple southern provinces. Despite the weather conditions, Stone safely landed at
Guangzhou International Airport and took a taxi to Kongmoon. Because my grandparents’ apartment had no spare room, my mom and I booked a nearby hotel room for him. That afternoon, I stood inside the hotel, staring out into the rain, waiting.
At 4:25 p.m., a small taxi pulled up and a tall, large figure slowly emerged, holding an umbrella. His movements were slow, and his face, once expressive, now conveyed little emotion. It brightened only slightly when he saw me.
The initial confusion of “Is this real” and “Are you Stone?” slowly faded away as a raw, untamed childhood excitement grew.
“Why are you so tall?” Stone asked.
Although the question was genuine, his larger body size almost dwarfed mine.
I brought him into the hotel and led him to his room. Once inside, he began unpacking while I stood at the window, looking down at the plaza parking lot soaking in rainwater. I felt anxious; what would we even do with our time together? This wasn’t Rome, Machu Picchu, the Great Wall, or any other cool places that I could imagine. To make it worse, the storm showed no signs of letting up. For lack of something substantive to discuss, I mentioned the weather and he told me that he’d nearly died during his taxi ride. “On a mountain road, a car in front of me skidded. Thank goodness that thing didn’t crash into me.”
I looked back at him and sighed, “Welcome to Kongmoon.” But I still wasn’t sure what we should talk about.
He saw through my worry and smiled. “Let’s catch up.”
At first, our conversation felt stilted. I shared details about my life in America and all my struggles as an immigrant who had to spend years just to speak English as well as everyone else around me could.
“But look at you now,” he commended. “Trust me, there’s no one I know in BNTA (my elementary school) that can compete with you on that. Be proud of yourself!”
I wanted to, but it was difficult to feel confident when everyone in my high school was competitive and high-performing. And besides, what did Stone know about academic success? He’d been more interested in making students laugh than in excelling.
But instead of arguing—I realized it would be pointless—I let him speak.
He reminisced about our elementary school experiences and described his new life at the arts high school he had recently transferred to, where he was studying visual arts. I noticed that he spoke deliberately and more concisely than he had when we were younger. I asked him what had brought on these changes.
Two years ago, he said, he’d been attending an international summer camp in Switzerland. During one of the lectures, Stone—always the class clown—began interrupting the teacher. Then, an English student who sat right next to him whispered coldly into his ear, “You are a shame to your country.”
I took a deep breath. “He said that?”
He nodded, “And I will never forget it. Since then, I have become a very quiet person in public.”
“Wasn’t Mr. Niu always yelling at you in class to raise your hand?” I tried to lighten up the mood.
“Yeah, but that was China. In Switzerland, I was the only Chinese kid. And what that English boy said made me realize that at that very moment, I was representing my entire country..”
I watched his face, still haunted by what the boy had said, and felt sad for him. I wanted to say that the English boy couldn’t stand that an Asian kid was so rebellious. But before I could speak, Stone’s stern expression began to soften as his familiar smile returned. “I’m glad that it happened; otherwise I’d still be oblivious to my behavior.”
I heard what he said, but it took me a second to realize that Stone didn’t care about the English boy’s intentions, but rather how he had matured because of them. I was amazed to see him viewing this matter with such a positive attitude.
We kept talking until his phone chimed with a call from his mom. He answered it and gave her an update on his whereabouts. I noticed that he no longer had the old iPhone I remembered.
After hanging up, he explained that he had lost his iPhone on a family trip to Paris. This had driven him crazy, as the phone contained all of his hard-earned progress on his various games, all stored locally. With no way to retrieve the data until the device was found, he spent the next few days frantically searching for the device. Eventually, it was found by a train attendee, and he was reunited with his precious gaming data.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. A few months later, on a fall outing with his classmates, his phone finally met its demise—it dropped into a river. Knowing that years of hard work had become meaningless, he became despondent. Back in the school dorm, he would sit for hours by the window, staring at the empty courtyard, his mind plagued by intrusive thoughts of self-harm.
“I kept banging my head against the glass window,” he said. “I thought about jumping.”
That scared me. I hadn’t realized that his gaming addiction had affected him to that extent. But seeing him comfortable enough to share this with me, gave me some peace of mind. “How did you move on?”
“It took me weeks to figure things out. All those lonely hours spent gaming alone, chasing fleeting highs, had never been fun. True joy came from playing with friends, from connecting with others.”
I was surprised by his openness about his struggles with addiction and his strength in overcoming them on his own. Throughout our conversation, he never checked his phone more than once, while I found myself pulling away multiple times for no particular reason.
I felt a swell of admiration for him. “The phone no longer controls you. You control it.”
“Steve Jobs originally thought smartphones would be a tool that improves your life. That’s what mine is now.”
The following morning, I took him to my grandparents’ apartment where we played on the old upright piano that had been sitting there silently for years. Although he had seldom practiced since moving to the arts high school, he could still play The Turkish March with his eyes closed. I, on the other hand, shared some of the pieces that I had composed earlier that year.
He sighed as he listened to my performance. “I wish I’d taken a more creative route when learning piano. It’s a shame that I can only play The Turkish March. How did you compose that piece?”
The question caught me off guard, as I had never formally learned music theory. My creative process typically occurred in my mind, and I only needed to hum a melody before putting it together as a digital production.
“I feel everything,” I tried to explain. “It’s a very spontaneous process.”
“That sounds more like magic than technique.”
I thought for a second. “I listen to a variety of genres. It’s easier to form ideas if you check out Taylor Swift alongside Mozart and Miles Davis.”
“Okay, I will try that.”
The storm had finally passed, and on the last day of Stone’s stay, my parents took us to rural villages with multi-story concrete watchtowers, the only historical landmarks worth visiting in Kongmoon. These “Diaolou” were constructed for protection against Japanese troops during the Second Sino-Japanese War and many bore the scars of bullet and cannonball damage. Walking inside, we encountered the preserved beds and shoes of deceased Chinese soldiers who had once guarded the towers. As we strolled through the towns, Stone brought up the newest controversy between these rival countries: Japan’s release of nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.
“By doing this, they are posing great health risks for Chinese people that are living in eastern provinces.”
“But didn’t IAEA claim that the wastewater meets international safety standards to be disposed of?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
This complex issue left us without answers, but I was astounded by his ability to view it from multiple perspectives, rather than aligning himself with one side. What was even more surprising to me was that the Stone I remembered couldn’t care less about these matters. Yet, now he was deeply engaged in discussions about international affairs and global politics.
That evening, Stone retired to his hotel room to pack while I wandered through the Plaza Mall to get him a present. The past three days had been the most fulfilling of my summer. I marveled at how time had transformed both of us. I recalled our childhood, a time when I often found myself in the role of mentor, guiding Stone through the labyrinth of adolescence. Now, it was he who stood as a beacon of wisdom, his experiences having etched depth and resilience onto his younger self. His new-found optimism and self-possession had elevated him to a level I could only aspire to reach. After a moment, I walked up to the second floor of the mall and entered the Xiaomi retail store: I bought him a watch.
The next morning, I woke up at four to accompany Stone on his taxi ride to the local bus station, where the early bus would take him back to the Guangzhou airport.
The station was deserted, save for a single security guard. Dim white lights illuminated the ceiling as we entered. We passed through the turnstiles, past movie posters, and finally stopped before the station terminal. Stone and I sat down on one of the empty metal benches, gazing into the darkness outside.
“So,” I said, “Do you actually have x-ray vision?”
He widened his eyes. “You still remember that?”
“How could I forget? You made a big deal about it during the Qufu school trip.”
“I guess I did.”
“So, is it real?”
“Of course not! I just guessed how many fingers you were holding up and got lucky.” We both laughed.
“When are you going back to America?” He asked.
“Nine days from now,” I sighed.
“That’s pretty soon. Where do you see yourself in a year?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. There is so much left to do, but I only have one year left before applying to college.”
The bus had arrived. Stone and I rose to our feet and hugged each other. His smile reappeared. “Don’t worry, you will figure it out like you always did. Everything is gonna get better.”
His unwavering belief in me rekindled my own faith in myself, as years of worrying and insecurity had somehow vanished in an instant. I didn’t say anything else and simply nodded.
He put on his backpack and walked toward the gate. I watched as he boarded. The bus interior was dark so I couldn’t see anything through the windshield. But I looked anyway as if I had x-ray vision, imagining him finding his seat and sitting down, looking back at me the same way I was looking at him. Slowly, the bus pulled away, revealing a faint orange glow of sunrise in its wake.
(Memoir by Evan)