Chapter Twelve: Threads of Gold
The morning after the gallery exhibit, Syra woke to the scent of jasmine tea and the low murmur of her parents' voices in the kitchen. Her phone buzzed with notifications—congratulations from classmates, a Shanghai Art Digest feature titled "Beauty in the Fracture,"and another anonymous message: You shine too brightly. Someone will snuff you out. She deleted it, fingers lingering over the cracked screen, then pulled on a paint-splattered hoodie and fled to the art studio.
Ms. Lin was already there, critiquing a student's ink-wash landscape. She nodded at Syra's arrival but said nothing, her silence a familiar comfort. Syra gravitated to her usual corner, where her half-finished canvas—a self-portrait woven with Persian calligraphy and Song Dynasty clouds—waited. She dipped her brush into vermillion, trying to lose herself in the rhythm of strokes, but the stalker's words coiled in her mind like smoke.
The studio door creaked open. A girl Syra didn't recognize strode in, her confidence magnetic. She had Nasreen's almond eyes but her father's Cantonese cheekbones, and her hair was braided into a crown threaded with crimson silk. Without hesitation, she dropped her portfolio beside Syra's easel.
"You're the one who paints like a war cry," the girl said, unzipping her bag to reveal a sketchbook filled with collages of Persian miniatures spliced with Shanghai street graffiti. "I'm Jia. Ms. Lin said we're partnering up."
Syra blinked. "Partnering?"
"Mixed-heritage solidarity project." Jia grinned, flipping to a page where a phoenix burst from a girih tile pattern. "Your fracturing thing meets my chaos theory. Let's make them feel it."
---
Lin arrived an hour later, balancing three bubble teas in a cardboard carrier. "Move over, Frida Kahlo," she said, nudging Jia aside with her hip. "I brought sustenance."
Syra hesitated, glancing between them—Lin's neon-streaked hair and ratty band T-shirt, Jia's poised intensity. But Lin plopped onto a stool and shoved a drink into Jia's hand. "Rule one: no art on an empty stomach. Rule two: Syra overthinks everything. Your job is to stop her."
Jia raised an eyebrow. "And your job?"
"Snark and moral support." Lin slurped her tapioca pearls loudly. "Also, I know where they keep the good spray paint."
The tension dissolved. By afternoon, their shared canvas pulsed with defiance: Jia's bold, slashing lines clashed with Syra's meticulous gold leaf, while Lin sneaked in splatters of electric blue.
"It's like… a scream and a whisper at the same time," Syra said, stepping back.
Jia nodded. "Exactly. They want to box us in? Let's break the damn box."
---
That night, Syra found Nasreen waiting up, a plate of *baghlava dusted with pistachios on the table. "Jia's mother called," Nasreen said casually. "She's from Isfahan. We're invited for Nowruz."
Syra froze, a shard of pastry crumbling in her hand. "You didn't tell me you knew her family."
Nasreen smiled, her eyes softening. "Some seeds need time to bloom, *azizam*."
---
The stalker escalated.
Syra found roses outside the studio—blood-red, thornless, with a note: Your purity deserves better than decay. Jia ripped the card into confetti. "Romanticizing trauma? Basic."
Lin hacked the gallery's security feed, tracing the delivery to a fake LLC. "Amateur hour," she scoffed. "But let's set a trap anyway. Bait him with something irresistible."
They chose Syra's most vulnerable piece—a nude sketch from her hospitalization, her body mapped with gold-leaf scars. Lin hung it prominently in the studio, then rigged motion sensors to a can of neon pink spray paint.
"Justice, Jackson Pollock-style," Lin said, grinning.
---
Jia arrived the next morning with a box of *samanu*, the sweet Persian pudding glistening like liquid amber. "My mom's recipe. Eat it while I fix your composition."
Syra protested, but Jia was already reworking the canvas, her strokes fearless. "You're hiding here," she said, pointing to a shadowed corner. "But your light's here." She slashed a beam of gold across the darkness.
Syra's throat tightened. "What if the light isn't enough?"
Jia's gaze didn't waver. "Then we fight in the dark."
---
The trap worked.
At 3 a.m., the motion sensors blared. Syra, Jia, and Lin burst into the studio to find a figure in a hoodie fleeing, his back drenched in fluorescent pink. Lin whooped, snapping photos for the group chat: "Pigeon-holed a creep!"
But Syra knelt, picking up the stalker's dropped phone. The screensaver was her hospital bracelet photo—the one taken the night she'd tried to erase herself.
Jia's hand closed over hers. "This isn't about your beauty. It's about your power. And that terrifies them."
---
The next morning, Syra stood before her fractured self-portrait, now threaded with Jia's gold and Lin's chaos. Ms. Lin appeared at her shoulder.
"They're offering you a solo exhibit in Paris," she said, handing over a brochure. "But they'll whitewash the story. No scars, no cracks—just a pretty face."
Syra studied the glossy images—sterile galleries, her art stripped of context. "What would you do?"
Ms. Lin's smile was sharp. "I'd make them swallow the thorns with the petals."