At the top of the hill, I pause to enjoy my last moments of unobserved existence. In front of me stands the house that I saw in the pictures—slate walkways, gleaming white walls, palm trees shooting out of the yard like fireworks. The sight fills me with both excitement and dread.
Every year, thousands of high schoolers apply for a spot on Hotel California. Out of all of them, only six are chosen. Out of all of them, the showrunners have chosen me—little old Sabine Zhang, straight outta Moline, Illinois; Quad Cities, rep till I die. I spent all spring in nervous anticipation for the show, and I even took my finals early so I could fly out to Southern California in time for the start of shooting. Now that I’m really here, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. But it’s too late to turn back.
Once I’m inside, the cameras will be recording my every move. Every moment, waking or sleeping, could make it into the final cut. I have to be on my A game.
I cross the yard, push open the front door, and check into the Hotel California.
I never thought I’d end up on reality TV. At least, not on the kind of wine-fueled, sun-soaked, Love Island–meets–The Bachelorette–meets–Survivor reality shows that most people know about. I’m not used to that level of attention—most of the people at my school don’t know that I exist. Or if they do know me, they’ll think of the eye shape, the AP classes, and the last name at the back of the alphabet, and that’s it.
But Hotel California is different. For one thing, it’s not on ABC or Disney+ or Netflix, where everyone can watch it. At my house, we get it from the fifteen-dollar cable package that you sign up for at the Vietnamese supermarket. It plays after the syndicated anime from the nineties, and before the budget K-dramas from the early two thousands.
For another thing, it’s not really about dating and drama and voting people off the island. Actually, it’s pretty relaxing to watch. Six high schoolers spend four weeks living in a beautiful house somewhere in California. And sure, two of them might go on a date, or even make out in the basement, and sure, there’ll be a couple of fights over dirty dishes. But mostly they just hang around the house, talking about their lives, what they’re afraid of, what their hometowns are like.
The thing about the show is, all of the contestants are Asian. They don’t make a big deal out of it in the show intro or on the website, but the show is on an ethnic network, after all—they know who their target audience is. Because of the casting, watching the show is like getting a window into a miniature utopia, where being Asian is about more than just not being white.
Most of the people on the show seem to be used to it: they’re from LA, or New York, or the Bay Area, places where you’re barely even a minority. But when you come from a town like Moline, in the cornfields-and-tractors part of Illinois, that kind of thing means a lot.
Enough that in the spring of my junior year of high school, the unthinkable occurred: I applied to be on the show. My friend Em helped me shoot my audition videos, which mostly featured the two of us goofing off at the mall. And yes, I told her that I was applying as a joke, but after I sent off my application, I couldn’t stop imagining myself getting picked, getting on a plane to California, being a part of that place. I wanted it. I dreamed about it.
And then those dreams came true.
In the foyer, I take off my shoes. Mine are the only ones there, which means I’m the first to arrive. The season premiere always features the same opening: new cast members showing up to the house one by one, awkwardly introducing themselves, until the group is complete.
I wasn’t expecting to be first. But maybe it’s a good thing, seeing as I’m still a little
sweaty from lugging my suitcase up the hill. I figure I’ve got about five minutes to dry off before the next person comes.
I shuffle into the living room, and it’s eerily quiet. I feel like the audience is watching me already, even though the show won’t air for months. As expected, the house is stunning. The ceilings are high, the interior is flooded with natural light, and little decorative touches—a mirror in the shape of a starburst, a pair of fragrant houseplants, a Georgia O’Keeffe lily painting—make it feel classy and elegant. Whoever actually lives here probably spends a lot of time sipping wine and musing on the meaning of art in the age of meme-able reproduction.
In the living room, I’m forced to choose a spot on the empty L-shaped couch, which feels vaguely like a personality quiz: extroverts in the middle, introverts on the ends. I go with the end cushion on the short part of the L and try not to think too hard about what that says about me. For optimal sweat elimination, I close my eyes and try to move as little as possible, hoping that my metabolism will slow down and my body temperature will drop.
After what feels like an eternity, I hear the sound of the front door opening again. Instantly, my heart rate spikes back up, and a blast of heat radiates from my chest. So much for not sweating. I give myself a final once-over to make sure I’m not, I don’t know, somehow not wearing pants or something. Then I sit up straight, paste a smile onto my face, and wait for my first housemate to come in.
“Hi! I’m Chris.”
Chris, it turns out, is an almost unreasonably handsome guy. He flashes me a thousand-megawatt smile that I could swear I’ve seen before—in my dreams (ba-dum-tss). Also, he’s wearing one of those skintight sports-material T-shirts, which shows off his honestly very nice arms.
“I’m Sabine,” I croak out. “I’m from Illinois.”
My throat has unexpectedly clogged up since I first sat down on the couch, so my voice sounds all phlegmy. Gross.
“That’s a cool name,” Chris replies, as he sits on the couch. He takes a seat two cushions away from me. Polite, but still friendly.
“Thanks. My mom used to watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch to learn English. But she picked ‘Sabine’ to make it easier for my relatives in China to pronounce.”
“Nice,” Chris says. There’s an awkward silence as we both search for conversation topics.
“So, are you a big fan of the show?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Never watched it before. I don’t really watch reality shows.”
“So why’d you decide to do it, then?”
“My agent booked it for me. This is my first time doing TV.”
Huh. It never even occurred to me that people might be doing this show so they could actually get into Hollywood. I had always assumed that the participants were people like me, fans living out their little
dreams.
Chris explains that he wants to be an actor. Given how small Hotel California is, I feel like he’s taking the long route to success. But what do I know?
He pulls out his phone to show me clips from his past gigs: he was an extra in a commercial for laundry detergent, he did a magazine ad for chewing gum, and he’s in some stock images of a high school class, smiling as his hand hovers over his notebook.
“So what’s your ideal role?” I ask. Based on his muscles and his suntanned skin, I could see him as the hunky jock type who’s the first to die in a horror movie, or maybe the bad guy in the next installment of Fast & Furious.
“I do have this idea for a movie in my head,” Chris says, scratching his chin. “It’d be me and my little sister, living as thieves in a postapocalyptic New York. Not my real little sister, obviously. But, um, yeah, we’d probably, like, steal from the rich and make getaways on our motorcycle. And I’m, like, trying to make her believe in the better version of the world that I knew as a kid, the one she never got to experience, because she was born after the revolution, or the pandemic, or whatever. And also I die at the end, which makes the audience cry, but not before I leave her with hope. Something like that.”
He finishes his synopsis with a shrug and a sheepish chuckle, like he’s embarrassed to be oversharing. For a hot guy, he seems surprisingly self-conscious. In a weird way, this gives me confidence. It’d be no fair to show up to a lo-fi show like this with zero anxiety. If we’re all nervous, then maybe I’ll be okay.
“I think that’s cool,” I say. “I’ll watch it.”
Chris smiles, and I breathe an internal sigh of relief. Despite my choppy introduction, I’m pretty sure I just knocked out a good fifteen seconds of screen time without vomiting or crying. It’s a start.
The front door opens again. The third housemate to arrive is a cute girl wearing patterned socks and oversize, wire-frame glasses. Based on her clothes, I get a distinctly artsy vibe.
“Oh my gosh!” she says, when she walks into the living room. She fans herself, and for a second I think she’s about to tear up. But instead, she comes over and gives us each a hug.
“Sorry, I’m really overwhelmed,” she says. “You both look radiant. I’m so grateful to be here with you!”
She slots herself into the crook of the L, right between me and Chris. I make a mental note—classic extrovert.
“I’m Mari, by the way,” she says. “I’m from LA. Not too far from here, actually.
But this is my first time in Palm Springs.”
Chris and I both introduce ourselves. Chris mentions that he’s from San Jose, and Mari’s eyes light up.
“Aha, I knew it! You look like a NorCal Asian. I have a question for you. Do you guys really say ‘hella’ a lot?”
Chris shrugs. “We say it. Maybe not a lot.”
“And what about the drink with the chewy stuff at the bottom? What do you call that?”
“Boba?”
“Oh. Really? My friend told me you call it ‘PMT.’ Like, pearl milk tea? Guess that one is fake, though.”
Because of our seating arrangement, Mari and Chris are practically facing each other, while I’m leaning in awkwardly, trying to interpret their bewildering terminology. I’ve never met a NorCal Asian, or any type of non-Moline Asian, for that matter. I’m a little jealous of their instant West Coast affinity. When Mari asks where I’m from, I feel like her eyes glaze over at my answer. She nods politely, but she doesn’t ask me about any Midwest Asian slang.
The next housemate to show up is another boy, and once again, he’s weirdly way too hot to be on this show. Compared to Chris, he has more of a brooding pretty-boy vibe, with sultry eyes, a long, lean frame, and chiseled cheekbones. His name is Grant, and I’m pretty sure that he’s—
“You’re half, right?” Mari asks.
As Grant settles onto the couch next to Chris, he has a bemused grin on his face that says, I’ve heard that one before.
“Half what?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
Mari frowns and shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “You know, half Asian.”
Grant pauses for a moment, as if deciding whether or not he’ll deign to answer. Our first moment of tension. I feel bad for Mari, who seems to have a lot of feelings but not much of a filter. It’s normal for the first episode to feature some questions about ethnicity, but it usually isn’t this blunt. Mari is dangerously close to But where are you from? territory.
But then Grant grins. “Yeah, I know, I’m just messing with you,” he says. “My mom’s Taiwanese, and my dad’s Nigerian.” He pauses to let that sink in before adding, “Which makes me a future doctor, if I know what’s good for me.”
That gets a laugh out of all of us. I notice that Grant has a touch of British in his accent, which comes out in the way he says “few-chuh doc-tuh.” Once again, why is everyone so hot? Not to get too shallow about it, but past seasons of this show featured your ordinary sixes and sevens, maybe the occasional eight. Grant is, like, a twelve. It seems like a total one-eighty to suddenly turn the new season of this show into a Uniqlo photo shoot.
The doorbell rings, and we all go quiet. So far, we’ve all been walking right in, but this new housemate must not have gotten the memo. I feel a sudden prickle of dread, a premonition that someone monumental is about to join us. Just as Grant points to the foyer and mouths, Should one of us . . . ?, we hear the door open. I sit stone still, waiting for the new person to come into the living room. And when she does, I’m not disappointed.
Into my life walks the most stunning girl I have ever seen. Perfect hair, pearly skin, absurdly symmetrical facial features that reach straight into my soul and snatch away every ounce of my self-esteem. Instinctively
, my eyes snap onto the guys. Yup, they’re staring. Grant’s mouth is even hanging slightly open, as if he’s spotted a rare species of jungle cat.
The new girl doesn’t wait for an invitation to drop onto the couch. Even though there’s hardly any room, she squeezes into the crook of the L, between Mari and Chris, which I suppose makes her an Inception-style extrovert-within-an-extrovert. She puts her head on Mari’s shoulder and unleashes a dramatic sigh.
“The traffic was so. Frickin’. Bad. I swear I was in the cab for two hours, and the driver would not stop talking.”
“There, there,” Mari says, patting the girl’s head. I’m confused. Do these girls already know each other?
“It took two hours?” I ask. The cab from the Palm Springs bus station to the house should have been twenty minutes at most.
“From LAX,” the girl murmurs, without lifting up her head. “And my flight was delayed. Not that that’s a surprise, coming out of LaGuardia.”
I recognize the name of the airport: the new girl is from New York. Maybe that explains the instant affection with Mari. The two of them have already identified each other as members of the same upper class of coastal Asian female elite.
The new girl’s name is Yoona. She lives in Manhattan, and she wants to be a doctor. When she says this, Grant’s eyes light up. I don’t blame him, either. It’s like Yoona was created in a lab to be the total package.
“We’re going to have to commiserate at some point,” Grant says. “I have to tell you about the time my mom took me for an MRI, just so I could ask the radiologist for advice on med school.”
“No way, you too?” Yoona puts a hand over her mouth in mock surprise.
“That’s what siblings are for,” Mari adds. “My older sister got into Johns Hopkins, and now all the pressure’s off. Liberal arts degree, here I come!”
“Doesn’t work if you’re the oldest,” Chris says, shaking his head. “Then if you fail, you’re an extra-big disappointment.”
It’s like the queen bee showed up, and the whole hive is suddenly buzzing. Yoona, Grant, and Mari are dropping quips in rapid fire, and even Chris is talking more. I seem to be the only one who doesn’t have much to say.
At one point, Yoona looks at me with an eyebrow raised, as if challenging me to show her what I’ve got. Gulp. I already feel like I’m under her thumb.
Finally, the last house member arrives. His name is Danny, and like the other boys, he’s tall and looks like he plays sports. When he sits down next
to me and shakes my hand, I can see that he’s really good-looking, but at this point I barely notice. Call it sensory overload.
Suddenly, the coffee table that we’re sitting around comes to life. Out of the table pops a speaker shaped like a lava lamp, with a band of neon-blue light ringing the top.
“Welcome to Hotel California,” the lava lamp says. It (she?) has a deep, husky drawl that I find oddly menacing. The blue light flickers along with the rise and fall of its voice. We all go dead silent.
“This summer, we’re taking our show to the next level. This season will be nothing like what you’ve seen before.”
Next level? Nothing like what I’ve seen before? The whole reason I came on this show is because I thought it would be exactly like what I’ve seen before.
“In previous seasons, show participants were free to spend their time at the Hotel California however they wished. This season, there will be two new requirements. One, weekly outings. Once per week, you may invite one other guest for an exciting activity outside of the house. A film crew will accompany you.”
Aka mandatory dates. A chill runs down my spine. I’m not too sure about this dating angle. So far in my life, I have exactly zero experience with going on dates. Especially not with cameras rolling.
“You will also leave the house once per week to participate in a weekly challenge,” the speaker continues. “These weekly challenges will have you forming teams and competing for ten-thousand-dollar cash prizes.”
Hold up. This is totally new. The whole point of Hotel California was that it didn’t run its cast members through some high-concept social experiment, but rather depicted their actual, daily struggles. Except now, it’s been turned into a dating contest–slash–game show, populated with obscenely attractive boy candy to boot. I mean, yes, the prize money is cool and could help me pay for college, but I can’t help but feel that this is going against the spirit of the thing.
“The first challenge will take place at the end of the week. Before that, you will all be required to go on an outing, to build team chemistry.”
Well, at least the boys are practically required to ask us on outings. I don’t have to worry about not being asked.
“That’s all,” the speaker finishes. “Let the third season of Hotel California begin.”
The speaker drops back into the coffee table, and my housemates start to applaud. They’re exchanging excited looks, like this lava lamp just delivered the best news they’ve gotten all summer. None of them seems at all put off by the new rules.
This show suddenly doesn’t feel anything like the Hotel California that I know. In fact, it feels a lot like an Asian version of your standard, big-time network reality TV show. The only thing that seems familiar to me about it is . . . me. Chris said that he hadn’t even watched this show before. Could it be that the network people behind the show did some national survey of Asian grocery stores and found that what the people there want is no different from what the viewership of any other TV channel wants? It feels like I’m the victim of an extraordinarily elaborate prank, or I got off the plane at the wrong part of the multiverse. I don’t know what’s going on.
But I do know one thing.
This is not what I signed up for.
Of course my mom wasn’t going to let me have a peaceful last morning at home. I already had to get up early for the eight a.m. flight, so it’s not like I was expecting to feel my best. But I thought that maybe since her only daughter was leaving for the summer, she might be able to hold the lectures in. I forgot about Murphy’s Law. I should have known that if I was leaving New York on June 17, shit was bound to go down the night before. While I was sleeping, the New York Korean grapevine was lighting up with hot gossip about Jessica Um, last year’s “it” girl, she of the ten AP classes and 1600 SATs. She dropped out of Harvard, and not the good kind of dropping out, where you start the next Facebook or whatever. Rumor has it that she got kicked out for plagiarizing an essay. And there’s nothing my mom loves more than a scandal.
“I knew it. I just knew it!” my mom tells me, as I brush my teeth in front of the mirror. “That girl always had a bad side. She thought she was better than everyone. People like that have no respect for the rules.”
There’s no use reminding my mom that last year, she was practically frothing at the mouth to congratulate Jessica at church; she ambushed her in the back pew, shoved a gift into her hands (a watch from Anthropologie, because she insisted on spending over one hundred dollars), and begged her to share her admissions secrets.
“Don’t be like her,” my mom continued. “It’s better to go to a state school with your head held high than be a cheater. That shows you what kind of family they are. If you want to know where she got it from, that’s no secret. Her mom, Mrs. Um? Always smiling, but such a nasty woman in her heart!”
I want to laugh at the way my mom goes all out over gossip. But she doesn’t like it when I do that. I clear my throat and nod so she’ll see how seriously I’m taking her advice.
“Remember when you get to your television show, you’re representing the family. Don’t be too loud, or too rude. Don’t be a show-off. But also, take a cab from the airport, not the bus, and make sure everyone knows about it.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Give me a call when you get to the house. Just so I know you arrived safely. After that, twice a week is fine. No need to talk every day.”
“We’ll be hanging out when I first get there. I’ll call you in the morning. And once a week should be plenty. I’m not even going to be gone for that long.”
She lets out a sigh, like I’m being difficult. Then her eyes widen, as if she’s suddenly seeing me for the first time. “That’s what you’re wearing? Sweatpants? Go change!”
I’m wearing my comfy clothes, like I always do for long flights. It’s definitely no big deal, but with my dear umma, it’s always one thing or another.
“I’ll change after I land. What do you want me to do, wear a dress on the plane?”
“Go change now. Don’t be so careless! It’s important. Especially if you’re going to be on TV.”
“Give it a rest, Mom!” I snap. Not that that’s going to get me anywhere. My mom always has to have the last word.
“You have such a bad temper. Like your father. You better control it, otherwise your housemates won’t like you.”
So yeah. Now I’m irritated. I’d like to tell my mom that this is exactly why I decided to ditch New York for the summer—so that I wouldn’t have to get lectured every five minutes. When I’m at home, every little thing I do wrong gets pointed out, corrected, from the way I chew my food, to the way I hang up my clothes, to the tiny drops of water that I leave on the bathroom mirror after washing my face.
Yeah, sure, table manners and being clean are important and all that. But it’s the implication. It’s the way my mom slips in those little digs about my temper, or my attitude, like these tiny little slips in discipline are evidence of my essential badness coming through.
The flight to the West Coast is unbearably long, and when we touch down at LAX,
I’m cranky and slightly nauseous.
I step out of the terminal and get blasted by the dry heat. Whoa. This is new. I feel like the air is actively sucking the moisture out of my pores. My skin is not going to do well here.
It’s still cool to be in LA, though. The land of enchantment. The palm trees looming over arrival pickups feel almost kitschy, ...
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