The Bride-to-Be

Seventeen-year-old A He hadn’t even finished taking the ginkgo leaves out of her textbooks when her mother sat her down at the vanity to try on her wedding dress. As the red silk brushed her wrist, she felt the acceptance letter hidden in her sleeve: proof that she had secretly gotten into the county high school. “The Chen family is willing to pay off your brother’s gambling debts. That’s a huge kindness.” Her mother’s silver hairpin jabbed into her scalp. “Getting married before your eighteenth birthday isn’t too early.” She had met the groom, Chen Mo, once, at a repair shop in town. He had been crouched on the floor, tightening a bolt, the scar on the back of his hand like a faded earthworm. The matchmaker said he was an honest man, but didn’t mention that he was eight years older than her, or that in this marriage she was the bargaining chip being handed over to settle a debt. That night, A He tucked the acceptance letter into a crack in the wall and listened to her mother and the matchmaker counting the betrothal money outside. Tears of wax ran down the red candle onto the vanity. She suddenly recalled a line from her biology textbook: when a butterfly breaks free of its cocoon, it first pumps bodily fluid into its wings. Perhaps this marriage was a cocoon she had to bite her way through. This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.