The cafeteria is a battlefield.

Lin Mei knows this. She has known this since she was sixteen. The first time. The real time. She knows the geography of fear: which tables are safe, which tables are traps, which tables exist in the neutral zone where no one sits because sitting there means admitting you have nowhere else to go.

She walks in with her new tray. Her new uniform. Her new confidence that sits on her skin like a coat that doesn't quite fit.

She scans the room.

Wang Fang is at the center table, surrounded by her planets. They are eating sushi again. Actual sushi, delivered in wooden boxes with red ribbons. Wang Fang picks up a piece, examines it, puts it down. Too much rice. Not enough fish. Someone else finishes it.

Lin Mei looks away. She is not here for Wang Fang. She is here for the girl in the corner.

The girl is alone. Of course she is alone. She is always alone. She sits at the table near the trash cans, the one where the smell of old food mingles with the sound of two hundred teenagers shouting over each other. She is eating a steamed bun and pickled vegetables from a jar that used to hold peanut butter.

Lin Mei recognizes the jar. She recognizes the pickles. She recognizes the way the girl holds the bun with both hands, like someone might take it from her, like food is something that can be stolen at any moment.

She walks toward the table.

The girl doesn't look up. She is focused on her bun. She is counting the seconds until she can leave. Lin Mei knows this because she used to count too. Six minutes. That was her number. Six minutes was long enough to be noticed but short enough to avoid conversation.

Lin Mei sits down.

The chair scrapes against the floor. The sound is loud. Too loud. The girl flinches. Her shoulders curl inward. Her body tries to make itself smaller, a movement Lin Mei recognizes from the inside. She spent forty-two years making herself smaller.

"Hi," Lin Mei says.

The girl says nothing. She takes a bite of her bun. It is a small bite. A careful bite. The bite of someone who has learned that food is finite and must be rationed, even when it is not.

"I'm Lin Mei," she says. "The new girl. Well. New to this school. Not new to. Never mind."

The girl looks up. Her eyes are the same brown. The same brown as the earth in the factory courtyard. The same brown as Lin Mei's own eyes, reflected back at her from a face that is younger and softer and more afraid.

"I know who you are," the girl says. Her voice is barely audible. "Everyone knows who you are."

"Oh." Lin Mei didn't expect this. She didn't expect to be known. In her first life, no one knew who she was. She was a ghost with a student ID number. "Is that. Good? Or bad?"

The girl shrugs. It is a small shrug, a defeated shrug, the shrug of someone who has learned that opinions don't matter because no one asks for them.

"I don't know," the girl says. "I don't pay attention to things like that."

She is lying. Lin Mei knows she is lying. She used to say the same thing. I don't pay attention. I don't care. It doesn't matter. All lies. All armor. All ways of protecting a heart that was already broken.

"You write poetry," Lin Mei says.

It is not a question. It is a statement. A fact. A piece of knowledge that Lin Mei has carried for twenty-six years, since she found the notebook buried in a box of old clothes and read the words of a girl who believed in secrets and the possibility of being seen.

The girl freezes. Her bun is halfway to her mouth. Her eyes are wide. Her fear is visible now, raw and exposed, like a wound that has been uncovered.

"How." The girl swallows. "How do you know that?"

"I know a lot of things," Lin Mei says. She tries to make her voice gentle. She doesn't know if she succeeds. Gentleness is a skill she never learned. In the factory, gentleness got you nothing. In the dormitory, gentleness got you taken advantage of. In her life, gentleness was a luxury she could not afford.

"I don't." The girl shakes her head. "I don't write poetry. That's. That's stupid."

"It's not stupid," Lin Mei says. "It's the opposite of stupid. It's the bravest thing you can do. Writing words that no one will read. Believing they matter anyway. That's not stupid. That's."

She stops. She doesn't know the word. She has never known the word. In her first life, she would have said it was pointless. In her first life, she would have been wrong.

"That's what?" the girl asks.

"That's hope," Lin Mei says. "And hope is the only thing that ever saved anyone."

The girl looks at her. Really looks at her. For the first time. Her eyes travel from Lin Mei's new shoes to her new uniform to her new face that is somehow, impossibly, her own face.

"You're weird," the girl says.

"I know," Lin Mei says. "But I'm also right."

The girl almost smiles. It is not a real smile. It is the ghost of a smile, the memory of a smile, the promise of a smile that might one day become real if someone is patient enough to wait for it.

"What do you want?" the girl asks. "Why are you talking to me?"

Lin Mei looks at her. At this girl who is her and is not her. At this girl who carries all the same fears, all the same dreams, all the same words hidden in a notebook under her mattress.

"I want to be your friend," Lin Mei says. "I know that sounds. I know that sounds like something people say before they hurt you. But I mean it. I really mean it."

The girl looks down at her bun. It is cold now. The pickles are sour. She eats them anyway, because food is food and hunger doesn't care about hope.

"Okay," the girl says. "But if you're lying, I'll know."

"I know you will," Lin Mei says. "You're smarter than you think."

The girl looks up. Her eyes are different now. Not less afraid. But afraid and something else. Something that might, one day, become trust.

"What's your name?" Lin Mei asks. "Your real name. Not what they call you."

The girl is quiet for a long time. The cafeteria noise swirls around them. Two hundred teenagers shouting over each other, living lives that have nothing to do with this table, this moment, this impossible conversation.

"Mei," the girl says. "Lin Mei."

"I know," Lin Mei says. "I know."

She reaches across the table. She touches the girl's hand. It is cold. It is small. It is her own hand, twenty-six years ago, before the factory, before the dormitory, before the rain.

"I'm going to call you Little Mei," Lin Mei says. "Is that okay?"

The girl. Little Mei. Looks at her. Really looks at her.

"Okay," she says. "But only if you tell me why you're crying."

Lin Mei touches her face. Her fingers come away wet. She didn't know she was crying. She didn't know her body could still produce tears. She thought she used them all up in the hospital, holding her mother's hand, telling lies about everything being okay.

"I'm not crying," Lin Mei says. "I'm just. I'm just happy to meet you."

Little Mei looks at her for a long time. The cafeteria noise fades. The world shrinks to this table, this touch, this impossible moment where two versions of the same person sit across from each other and try to figure out what comes next.

"You're a terrible liar," Little Mei says.

"I know," Lin Mei says. "But I'm working on it."