made me a model.

My mom had volunteered me to model for a designer friend of hers when I was fourteen, back in my hometown of New York City. It seemed the norm to have random fashion designer friends, architect friends, CEO friends. Since that first runway show seven years ago, I had only gained in fame.

Krista Ming (one had to say both the first and last name) now had over a million followers on Instagram. She was optimistic, sassy, and confident. Her job comprised photoshoots, promoting Topaz and amassing paid partnerships from social media. In return, I received makeup, jewelry and an excessive supply of hair vitamin gummy bears—which I didn't even use.

Online, and at Topaz, people tended to get the wrong idea about me. I rarely corrected them, because customers didn't like to be corrected. They thought I was Krista Ming, the glamorous model. The party girl. The #lifegoals. Superficially, they were correct.

But I was really Kris, the couch potato.

Kris the couch potato was a twenty-one-year-old, Pre-Medical senior at Halston University. Like modelling, I had chosen my career path after sound advice from Mom. She wanted a stable, lucrative, and spiritually-rewarding job for her youngest daughter. Like her two oldest children had. I agreed that medicine could be all those things, but sometimes I suspected more for her than for me.

In what little spare time I got away from readings, labs, assignments, and preparing med school applications, I enjoyed watching any franchise with a Byronic antagonist-turned-protagonist and watering Rudy (my succulent). I worked casually as a writer for Natural Affairs—a small online science magazine. It was a perfect job that didn't require me to leave my bed.

On top of the two facets of my personality, I also oscillated between two extremes of the looks spectrum.

I was always either in sweatpants and a worn t-shirt, with my long hair coiled into a bun that exposed the lumpiness of my scalp, glasses pushed high on my nose.

Or I was in miniskirts and stilettos, which I could only endure wearing because doing ballet till I was sixteen had helped prepare me for throbbing pain in my feet, looking like—dare I say it—an ABG.

"But I am not an ABG!" I protested, crossing my arms at Vivian.

Riley, Viv and I found an empty table in the dining hall and sat down, sliding our meal trays onto the white surface.

Riley Salesi was my roommate in our residence hall. We'd met taking an interpretive dance elective in freshman year (renowned for being an easy A). She had a natural deep tan that people paid good money to achieve, thick curly black hair and brown-framed glasses that she only took off to go clubbing. Wholesome, gentle and understanding, she was the best roommate I could have imagined.

Vivian Sok was a short, slim, yoga-practicing Cambodian that went out every student night and weekend. Her black hair was cut in a lob nearly as sharp as her tongue. In freshman year, we had kept being thrown together in our mutual Pre-Med classes, eventually becoming close friends. Every time she appeared on my Instagram story, I saw through the business analytics that thousands of my followers clicked the link to her bio. She also lived on Riley's and my floor, just three doors down.

The three of us landed in different accommodation buildings all throughout freshman, sophomore, and half of junior year. Until we got lucky last semester. Senior year began with a good omen; we returned to the newly-minted hall that housed some of my best memories, with my best friends.

"You, Viv, are an ABG," I countered, taking a blissful bite of lasagna.

"I know!" she said happily. "But since we're so similar, you could easily become one. You just need to get lash extensions and vape."

I wrinkled my nose at the thought. I hardly drank, despite having been legal since Christmas. I couldn't imagine doing any recreational drugs outside of alcohol.

As for lash extensions, I could barely put my own contacts in for work at Topaz without making myself cry. I might actually scratch anyone who tried to put other objects near my eyes. Using magnetic false lashes was enough of an ordeal, despite their acclaimed convenience.

"But why do I have to be an ABG?" I muttered, nudging my glasses to perch higher on my nose. "Surely there's only room for one of us in this town."

"Because, then, you'd actually come out with us for once," Vivian continued. "And then we'd find a pair of Kevin Nguyens to buy us drinks and find Riley a tall redhead to rebound with."

Riley rolled her eyes, but she didn't protest the idea.

I, however, was completely averse to everything Vivian had said. I didn't want to mingle with random drunk guys, I didn't want to use them to get alcohol, and I didn't even want to go out. I'd given the drunk-at-town scene a solid effort, ever since I turned twenty-one before the second semester of junior year.

We'd gone out at least once a week, sometimes twice. It was during one of these nights that I had vomited in the bathrooms at Topaz. Zachary had found me and was going to kick us out. But I somehow convinced him to let us stay. That is, this is what Viv relayed to me the morning after, because I remembered absolutely nothing. Too much soju.

Apparently, Zachary liked the sound of having a promoter with such a large fanbase. Because the evening after, I got emailed with a job description. I needed a part-time job, and it wasn't too demanding of a university student. Two nights a week, seven-hour shifts. I even still had my weekends free, since I worked Tuesdays and Fridays.

I voiced my disgust with a single syllable. "Ugh."

Vivian arched a sculpted eyebrow. Riley and Viv were mid-makeup when we decided to get dinner. Afterwards, they would go up and finish their lashes and lips. "See? It doesn't appeal to you because you're not an ABG."

Riley took a less blunt approach than Viv, asking pleadingly, "Kris, surely you can come out with us tonight? You study every single day, you can spare one."

"Even if I could, I don't really feel it."

"You never feel it," Riley pointed out.

"Well, yeah. I'm surrounded by drunk freshers every single week for work. Kind of takes the joy out of clubbing for leisure when it's my job," I told my friends.

"Oh, suck," Viv's eyebrows furrowed. "That means you don't even use the staff discounts on liquor."

Viv thought that Topaz staff received cheap liquor if we went there on our nights off—which was true. But she didn't know that many of my workmates just drank during their shift, too, under the purposefully averted eyes of Zachary,

Not using the discount was a real abomination to her, I could tell. Viv was a girl who lived well outside of her means. Her family was middle-class and getting by, but she had tastes for Gucci and Louis Vuitton. I gave her all the excess makeup, jewellery, clothes and even the hair vitamin gummies that I didn't want or need.

"If you are ever around on a Tuesday, Viv," I consoled, "I will get you my staff discount."

Her deep brown eyes lit up, the silver glitter on her lids sparkling in the light. "Really? Fuck, that would be amazing."

I knew she was well and truly mollified now, her stubborn attempt to drag me to town quickly forgotten.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

After dinner, as we took the elevator up to the eighth floor, I could hear the party before the doors even slid open.

The eighth floor somehow contained the worst combination of budding alcoholics, recreational drug users and high-achievers I had ever seen. Most of my floormates were students who had been straight-A students in high school, like Riley, Viv and myself. Recently legal and free from parental supervision for the first time in their lives.

In short, they went wild. Off their rocker. Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Sometimes even Mondays. Or any random day when someone started day-drinking and the others didn't want to be outdone. It was insane, but I could understand it.

When my modelling job had started getting me into some high-profile parties in New York, I had been similarly adventurous. It was weird to think about it now, being seventeen and recklessly making out with strangers at parties, when I felt like an old homebody at the ripe age of twenty-one.

This kind of behaviour had earned us the reputation of being the party floor in the building. Residents loved us. RAs hated us. And as the elevator doors opened in the common room, where someone was doing a headstand, a rubber pipe feeding beer from a keg into his upturned mouth, I could hardly argue with the label.

Viv picked her way through the small crowd of people cheering the person on, eager to see who it was. The party floor was reckless, but we weren't stupid. People kept talks of our parties well away from the ears of the RAs. When you were on the floor, you had to keep the noise to a minimum. Drinking in the common room was permitted so long as you could produce ID, and were out by ten.

Riley and I followed in the wake she left through the crowd. There were beer bottles on the coffee table, so many of them that they formed their own table of sorts, bottlenecks at uniform height. I could rest a stack of books on them.

When we were close enough to examine the scene, I noted that it was Jake doing the kegstand. Jacobus and Jameson were identical twins. I don't know who in their right minds would name their children like they were nineteenth-century poets. They were senior varsity football players, and everyone called them the Jays for short. Jake and Jamie.

They were exactly the sort of adults-gone-wild I was talking about. Even worse that they were twins living on the same floor, because they kept competitively egging each other on into more extreme acts.

Viv stabbed a manicured finger lightly into Jamie's chest, causing him to look dazedly at her. His eyes were unfocused and his cheeks were ruddy. Drunk. As fuck.

"Riley and I are going to finish our makeup," she instructed him. "Save a keg for me. I'll show you amateurs how it's done."

"Yes, ma'am," Jamie winked at her. "Suck it real good and dry, won't you?"

Viv matched his smirk. I supposed I was grateful for my floormates. We had great banter, and it was all in jest. "You know it, Jay."

Then she and Riley departed to her room, which was out the east door of the common room and down the hall, the same direction as Riley's and mine.

I was about to follow them, when a girl tapped on my shoulder. She was not from this floor, but many partygoers often weren't. She was also very intoxicated. I turned around, bracing for her to recognise me and to ask for a photograph or why I was dressed so differently.

"I don't know if anyone's ever told you this," she leaned into me conspiratorially. I could smell the raspberry vodka cruiser on her breath. "—but you look so much like Krista Ming. Do you know her?"

Breathlessly, I chuckled. This didn't happen often, but it did happen. Most of the time they recognised me and wanted a photo even in my couch potato state. But like I said—my looks really were on opposite ends of a spectrum. I apparently looked so different from my Instagram pictures that a drunk person couldn't place me.

Dare I say catfish?

"Nope," I said confidently.

I didn't want to deal with this right now. I wanted to study for my Biochemistry test next week. But I also didn't want to be rude to the girl. I tended to be especially sensitive when I got drunk, and take the slightest withdrawal as a stinging rejection. I didn't want her to feel like that. Plus, she was a fan.

So best just to pretend like I didn't know what she was talking about.

"Oh my gosh, how can you not?" She swung an arm around me and pulled me close, her head lolling at my shoulder. "She's only the queen on campus. Let me show you her!"

She pulled out her phone and immediately jumped to my profile, which had been auto-saved under her recently searched items. I saw the familiar order of posts, the clean colour palette.

I was modelling a silky satin dress in one picture, and the other showed me at the beach in a neon yellow bikini. That latter picture was old, saved over from the summer holiday. Most of my pictures were old, actually. Strategically saved up and scheduled to paint an image of constant, vibrant socialising and tanning. In reality, my life was much less exciting than that.

"Wow, she is pretty," I awed, purposefully widening my eyes at the phone screen.

"She's so hot! Such a fashion icon," she drawled, her words sloppy and blended together. "I reckon you could be just as hot if you wore those sorts of clothes. Maybe even hotter, because you are naturally pretty."

"Thanks, love," I smiled mildly. "Have a good night."

"Aw, you're so nice! I will," she told me, squeezing the arm that was around me even tighter. I wrapped my hands lightly around her and gave her a hug. "Mm. You smell good."

I held nothing against her. She was not herself at the moment, and she really had only complimented my natural looks, even if in a strange, indirect manner. Drunk girls were sweet and hilarious.

I extricated myself and stepped backwards. "Thanks."

"Kris!" Jake boomed, "If one of us has to vomit tonight, who do you think—"

"You, Jake."

"Ha!" Jamie whooped. "Get fucked."

I dashed to the east corridor, giving Jamie and Jake a wave goodbye on my way out of the common room. Only when I was safely in my and Riley's room did I heave a sigh of relief, and jump into my worn pyjamas. No neon bikinis around, unfortunately.

See what I meant about being two-faced?

Most of the time, I felt like the glamorous model and the couch potato were two entirely different people, masquerading under the same name.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

How are we liking Krista? Each female character I write somehow has a kernel of me, like I pick one facet of my personality and extend it into a fully-fledged person. For this book, Krista encapsulates my experiences as the daughter of Chinese immigrants.

And loving Zuko.

Aimee x