If You Still Recognize Me

by Cynthia So

Genres: YA LGBT & Pride; YA Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

This heartfelt, poignant YA debut is a second-chance summer romance that will steal your heart—perfect for fans of Heartstopper, Some Girls Do, and It’s Not Like it’s a Secret.

This summer, Elsie is finally going to confess her feelings to her longtime—and long-distance—crush. Ada’s fanfics are to die for, and she just gets Elsie like no one else. That is, until Joan, Elsie’s childhood best friend, literally walks back into her life and slots in like she never left. Like she never moved away to Hong Kong and never ignored Elsie’s dozens of emails and letters.

Then Ada mentions her grandmother’s own long-lost pen pal (and maybe love?), a woman who once lived only a train ride away from Elsie’s Oxford home, and Elsie gets the idea for the perfect grand gesture. But as her plan to reunite the two older women ignites a summer of repairing broken bonds, Elsie starts to wonder if she, too, can recover the things she’s lost…

With a beautifully earnest voice and a dash of fandom, this wistful and delightful novel is a love letter to queer coming-of-age, finding community, and finding yourself.

Release date: May 23, 2023

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 384

Sample

1

Ritika lets out a whoop when we emerge from our last exam, and she’s not the only one. The school playground fills with cheers, the sounds bursting like fireworks around us. Ritika chats with Mara and Delphine, her friends from orchestra, while I hover by the gates. I gaze up at the school, its cluster of brown buildings smaller today than they’ve ever seemed before. It wasn’t long ago that they loomed.

I think about standing in front of these gates with Joan, under the tree that has always kept watch by the entrance. I was showing her the school that felt like my whole future at that point. The school I’d be going to without her because she was moving to Hong Kong, where both of our families are from, her dad’s job taking her away from me.

“Do you think I’ll make another best friend?” I asked her.

“Of course you will. But don’t forget me, okay?”

“I won’t. You’ll still be my best friend even if I make another one. I can have more than one best friend, right?”

“Sure. You can have as many as you want.”

I haven’t forgotten her. The reverse doesn’t hold true, though. I wonder where she is now. Even back then, we were already talking about which university we wanted to go to. She liked the idea of college in the US, the sound of Yale or maybe MIT.

I got into Cambridge to study English like I always wanted, and if I get the exam results I need, I’ll be starting there this October.

Time feels strange and malleable, as though my future—university and life beyond that, adulthood—is suddenly so blazingly close that it has burned a hole right through to my past. As if I could walk through those gates, leaving school forever, and arrive seven years ago, under that tree, where eleven-year-old me is standing with eleven-year-old Joan, and I could pull Joan back into the present with me. Drag her by the hand into whatever’s coming next.

I step outside the school gates, but I don’t go anywhere. I’m still here. Still eighteen. The noon sun warming my skin. And behind me, my best friend Ritika is still talking to her friends. Joan is nowhere, and I’m on my own.

 

Half an hour later, Ritika and I are sitting in an All You Can Eat, eating all that we can.

Spring rolls and prawn toasts soggy with grease, various meats indistinguishable from each other, crunchy stir-fried vegetables doused in a glossy sauce. The food isn’t actually that good, but I’m enjoying it anyway, just being in this dimly lit and mostly empty restaurant with Ritika. An ancient fan slowly spins its arthritic joints, blowing warm air in our faces. Our hands get stickier as we wipe our orange mouths on paper napkins and laugh about nothing, brimming with this giddy feeling that rises in us like bubbles in a champagne glass, this feeling called end of exams.

But we’ve promised that we aren’t going to talk about them. We’re done. No use realizing now that we’ve made a mistake on question 3b or whatever. I’m never going to think about maths again.

So we’re talking about the summer. The Summer: capital T, capital S. The biggest summer of our lives, between school and uni.

“We’d better start booking stuff for our trip soon,” Ritika says, spearing a piece of broccoli with her fork. “It’s all getting super expensive already.”

I groan. I’ve only just finished worrying about exams, and now Ritika is bringing up another thing to stress about. “You know my mum says I have to get a job first before I can even think about going on holiday with you.”

“Right.” Ritika points the broccoli at me. “So get a job.”

“Can’t I have one moment to chill?”

“Elsie. It’s not going to get any easier if you keep putting it off.”

“You sound like my mum.”

We make faces at each other. Ritika eats the broccoli. “Why don’t you try that comic

 shop?”

It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. “I don’t know. . . . The guys who work there don’t seem that friendly to me? Like, I’ve never had a bad interaction with them, but I’ve also never had a good one either. I’ve seen them chat with other customers, but they never talk to me. Which kind of puts me off the idea of working there.”

“You do love your comics, though.”

“Only Eden Recoiling, really.” I can’t help but smile because I truly do love Eden Recoiling. “I haven’t read a lot of other things. But I want to read more this summer.”

Ritika grins. “I bet they have a staff discount.”

“Oh! I didn’t even think of that.”

“How are you smart enough to get into Cambridge, but too stupid to even realize that staff discounts are a thing? It’s not fair.” Ritika flicks my arm with a finger.

“Ow.” I flick her back. “Hey, what’s Jake doing this summer? Are you sure you don’t want him to come with us on this trip? Doesn’t he feel left out?”

“Um,” Ritika says. “About that . . .”

The Staff Only door opens with a distractingly noisy yawn, yielding an old Chinese man with a duster, humming something almost familiar. The woman behind the counter, probably his wife, barely looks up at him, too absorbed in an episode of a K-drama playing on her tablet. I know it’s a K-drama because Ritika knows it’s a K-drama. She recognized it instantly from the sounds of the actors’ voices and the background music.

I watch the old man as he walks with shuffling steps, dusting the framed watercolors of lakes and mountains. Vistas of tourist spots in China, I think. Places I’ve never been.

I find myself staring at this man—his wrinkled forehead, his sagging face, his scrawny arms in that short-sleeve white button-down—and suddenly I’m overwhelmed. Like eating something you don’t expect to be so spicy, and it’s fine at first, positively bland, but then it sets your mouth on fire, singes your tongue, licks its flame all the way down into your stomach.

My throat hurts.

I feel a gentle touch on my arm. “Hey.” Ritika’s voice is soft. “You okay?”

I blink and turn back to her, hoping she can’t see the wet shine of my eyes. But she’s looking at the old man too.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Your mum’s back today, right?”

“Yeah.”

Her gaze shifts back to me, and she squeezes my arm, so I assume she has noticed my tears. “How are you feeling about all that stuff with your grandparents?”

How do I feel? I wish I had a breezy answer, or at least something coherent. But the words come sluggishly. “I don’t know. I’ve been too busy with exams to really process any of it . . . but apparently I’m now crying at the sight of random old Chinese men, so yay?”

I fold my paper napkin this way and that, searching for a relatively grease-free patch to dab at my eyes.

“Here.” Ritika pulls out a tissue from her bag and hands it to me. “It’s okay. Better than bottling things up, which—if you want my honest opinion—you have a tendency to do.”

“Do I?”

“You really do.”

I lift my glasses a little so I can dry my eyes with the tissue. “I have no idea why I’m crying. It’s not like I’ve even seen my grandfather since I was ten.” I do remember him, just a little, but it’s very foggy. I didn’t really feel anything when my mum told me he’d passed away. “I mean, I was sad for my mum. But other than that . . .”

“Look, we just finished school forever. It’s all right to be a bit emotional.”

I give her a weak smile. “If you say so.” Searching for an escape from this conversation, I catch sight of the freezer in the corner. Its low, comforting hum calls to me on the edge of my hearing. “I think I’ll get some ice cream. That’ll make everything better.”

The freezer has three big vats of basic flavors—that trio of white, brown, and pink that evokes a childlike excitement in me every time—and fruit ice lollies individually wrapped in clear plastic. I bring a scoop of strawberry ice cream back to our table. Ritika frowns at me when she sees it.

“You don’t like strawberry ice cream.”

“I don’t? Are you sure?”

I put a generous spoonful of it into my mouth and grimace.

Ritika is right. I hate it. Cheap strawberry ice cream tastes like a child’s crayon drawing of a strawberry with no actual fruit involved.

I continue eating it anyway. It’s something to focus on, the task of vanquishing this horrible ice cream.

Ritika rolls her eyes at me and reaches across the table to pat my shoulder. “You can just cry, you know. You don’t have to be so weird about it.”

“Shh. Let me enjoy my disgusting ice cream in peace.”

Ritika chomps on a delightfully noisy prawn cracker for a while. “Hey, do you ever wonder why your family hasn’t been back to Hong Kong in such a long time?”

It has been a long time. When my grandfather’s illness took a turn for the worse, my mum went over there at last, the first time in eight years, and stayed for the funeral. She’s back today, and she’s brought my grandmother to stay with us for the summer because she doesn’t want her to be alone right now. But I haven’t been to Hong Kong since primary school, and all this time I’ve spent away from it now seems as vast and dark as the space between the Earth and the moon.

“It is pretty weird. We used to go every year when I was younger.”

“Yeah, you know me and my fam go to India, like, every other year at least.”

“I used to ask my mum about it, but she always just gave such nonanswers.” 

After a while, I kind of got used to it. Mum’s strained face whenever I asked. Dad’s placid smile. Not this year. Maybe next year.

Ritika sniffs the air. “Smells like family drama to me.”

The old man has moved on to watering the potted plants that line the front window. He carries on humming. And I think, fuzzily, about how my dead grandfather used to sing to me.

 

We leave the restaurant, squinting in the fierce light of the afternoon sun. Ritika tells me she’s catching a bus home. “Get a job,” she says. “Also, movie tomorrow?”

“You don’t wanna hang out with your boyfriend?” I tease. “You barely spent any time together while we were revising for exams.”

Ritika waves her hand dismissively. “You and I are going to be tragically torn apart in three months. I’ll have plenty of time to hang out with Jake.”

After her bus arrives, I start walking to the comic shop. As I’m crossing Hythe Bridge back into central Oxford, I pause, looking over the blue railing down into the green stream below.

Crossing the bridge always unearths shards of memory, like an archaeologist digging up bits of pottery, but the memories get a little more washed-out every time. Maybe the pottery was vividly painted in the beginning, but now the pieces are faded, smudged, their colors and lines fainter and fainter.

My ex-boyfriend rarely held my hand in public. Sometimes, when we were crossing this bridge, he would reach out, his fingers loosely curled around mine, only for the length of the bridge, and stupidly I held on to every moment of it more fiercely than he ever held on to me. Hard to believe now that something as simple as handholding could’ve made me so happy.

I still see him everywhere. Every blond-haired white boy is him.

The buzzing of my phone stops me from getting too lost in my thoughts. I assume it’s just another message from my mum—I’ve had a few of those already today. But when I take out my phone, I see it’s not her at all.

For the past few months, only two things have made my heart race. The first thing was bad. Every time I opened an exam paper, I’d be terrified that it would turn out to be incomprehensible, filled with questions I was unprepared for: I had missed an entire topic in my revision; I had been taught the wrong syllabus; I had forgotten every single thing I’d ever learned. All horrors I’ve experienced in my exam-season nightmares.

The second thing is good. Extremely good. And it’s happening right now.

It’s a message from Ada.

Hey babe, congrats on finishing your last exam! I love you so 

uch and I’m so proud of you. It’s nearly 10 a.m. here and I’ve just woken up—I stayed up late writing you a fic to mark this momentous occasion! I really hope you like it.

There’s a link, followed by a series of orange hearts—Ada’s preferred heart-emoji color. Her preferred color full stop.

I’m desperate to read the fanfic that she’s written for me, but not standing in the middle of the street, especially not on this bridge. I want to savor it. Get home, hole up in my room, lie on my bed, and linger over every word on my phone. Then I’ll read it again on my laptop, where I can easily copy and paste all my favorite parts into a comment and tell Ada in all caps how much I hate her for ruining my life with her brilliant writing when what I really mean is I love you, I love you, I love you.

But I think about what else is waiting for me at home.

I know I’ll have to see how sad my mum is, and I don’t ever want that, but especially not right now. I’ve just finished my exams. I want to be happy.

I’m definitely going to swing by the comic shop first.

Before I do that, though, I let myself revel in the giddy rush that Ada’s message has given me. I’ve got to reply right now.

omg i can’t believe you wrote me something! thank you!!! i’m just going to buy the may issue of ER and then i’m going to head home and read your fic as soon as i can!

Ahh yay! The June issue of ER is out so soon too! You need to catch up!

Have you seen your grandma yet?

no not yet! pretty nervous about it tbh. it’s weird to think about having her stay with us for months. i feel like it’s gonna be so awkward. i don’t remember anything about her

Maybe you’ll really get along! You never know. Maybe she’ll be as cool as my g-ma!

oh, i hope so. tell your g-ma i said hi! anyway talk later when i’m home! i can’t wait to read your fic!

I pocket my phone, and when I start walking again, I have to actively try not to skip. Exams are over, the sun is shining, and Ada has written me a fic.

It finally feels like summer.

2

The Speech Balloon is only a few minutes away in Gloucester Green, sandwiched between a bubble tea place and a dusty antiques shop. Inside, I’m greeted by cheerful blue walls and packed white shelves.

I think I’m alone until someone stands up from behind the till, their back to me. All I see is a blond head of hair.

My heart stops.

I only started coming here after the breakup, looking for something to occupy myself with now that I had all these terrifyingly empty swathes of time. I was armed with a list of recommendations I’d found on Tumblr—comics with prominent queer characters of color. I got into Eden Recoiling so quickly, I barely even remember what else was on that list.

Leo never mentioned he liked comics, but maybe he does and I just didn’t know about it. I never knew him well enough; he was worse than a stranger to me, someone I only thought I knew—

But they turn around, this blond person at the till, and it’s not Leo after all. This person’s hair is different, lighter in shade and in volume, a sunlit cloud floating away from their head. They’re skinnier too.

They smile at me.

I realize that I’m staring, and I look away without smiling back. I end up feeling horribly rude, and I don’t know how to fix that, so I make a beeline for the shelf I know Eden Recoiling is on. The newest issue from May is there. On the cover, there’s Neff, short for Nefarious. Nefarious Warthorn, a male character that everyone in the fandom is obsessed with. He’s white, of course, and lean, with a cruelly handsome face, and he wears a lot of patterned velvet suits. Nobody can tell whether he’s actually evil or not, despite his ridiculous name, and he has a dark and blurry past. Nearly everybody ships him with Hax, the oblivious daydreamer and inventor, a minor character and also a white guy, who perpetually looks like he’s just been deposited by a hurricane, with a dazed expression and straggly hair and grease-stained overalls, one strap unbuckled.

Eden Recoiling is set several decades after an apocalypse, when plagues of locusts destroyed much of the vegetation and then monsters emerged from underground and killed most of humanity too. The heroes of the comics continue to fend off these monsters, while some of the few remaining plants have gained sentience and mobility.

I roll my eyes at the cover, where Neff is apparently talking to a vine demon. Admittedly, I had a soft spot for him when I first started reading the comics, but then I stumbled into the fandom and realized that he’s all everyone wants to talk about, even if there are plenty of characters who deserve just as much attention, if not more.

I take the April issue off the shelf just to look at it because it has Zaria Zero on the cover. I already have a copy; it’s on my desk at home, and I would just sigh at it whenever studying overwhelmed me. Zaria in an emerald jumpsuit, her beautiful dreadlocks streaked with purple, looking up at a night sky with a pink-hued full moon. I can’t help but stroke the cover. Zaria has gotten me through so much. I couldn’t have finished my A-level exams without her.

I put it back on the shelf eventually and go to pay for the May issue.

“Eden Recoiling! Oh my God, I love this series. I don’t know anybody who reads it!”

I am not prepared for this interaction. Usually, when I’ve come here after school, I’ve been served by an older guy with a scruffy beard. Occasionally, there was a different guy, beardless but with long, dirt-brown hair, also older. They’re the ones who never speak to me. The boy in front of me now is probably about my age, and he genuinely seems to want to talk.

“Uh, yeah! It’s great. I don’t know anybody who reads it either.”

Which isn’t true. I don’t know anybody in real life who reads it, but there’s 

a small fandom online and, of course, Ada.

The boy drums his fingers on Neff’s face on the cover. “Ah, Neff. He’s cute, isn’t he?” He says this not with the detached tone of somebody who’s only saying what he supposes my opinion would be, like I would expect a straight boy to say He’s cute—not that I would ever really expect a straight boy to say that—but with personal conviction, an audible swoon in his voice.

I blink at him, and he ducks his head, embarrassed, scanning the comic. “Yeah,” I say, “but I think Zaria’s the hottest.”

He smiles at me now, and unlike when I first entered the shop, I can actually return his smile, even if I’m still nervous.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “All the characters in this comic are extremely hot. It’s a real problem.”

“Yeah, how dare they? Like the world is rebuilding itself after an apocalypse—there’s no way they can possibly look that good! It’s just so implausible. I can’t look half as put-together as them, and the world hasn’t even ended in our universe. Yet.”

He laughs. “You’re right. Don’t they have higher priorities than fashion and personal grooming? Where are all these amazing outfits coming from?”

I set my backpack on the counter, fishing for the right coins to give to him. As I’m sliding the comic into my backpack, he reaches out to touch the acrylic charms dangling from the zip. They clatter together in his hand. “Wow. Is this Zaria? And Mayumi?”

I nod. I bought them from this fanartist I really admire. The Neff charm sold out within a few days, but I looked last week and there were still Zaria and Mayumi charms left. Ugh. It upsets me that they don’t get nearly as much love as Neff does.

I wish I could draw but I can’t. I can’t write fanfic either. I’ve tried before, but I’ve never managed to finish anything worth posting. The only thing I can do is leave enthusiastic comments on other people’s fanworks, and sometimes I make graphics: mood boards, aesthetics, and gifs, what people call “edits” on Tumblr.

Eden Recoiling doesn’t have a movie or TV adaptation, so I can’t make gifs of it exactly, but I take snippets from other things with actors who could play characters like Zaria and Mayumi, and overlay them with quotes from the comic and pretty effects. Even if Zaria and Mayumi aren’t the most popular characters, I still tend to get over a hundred likes on my posts, which means they must be all right. Ada always gushes about my edits too, so I’m encouraged enough to keep making them.

She has the same Zaria and Mayumi charms. I bought them for her as a Christmas present.

“I love these—they’re so cute! You must really be a huge fan. I’m Felix, by the way.”

His expression is just as sunlit as his wispy white-gold hair. I look past him and see the piece of paper stuck to the wall: Staff Wanted.

I make up my mind

 and reach into my bag for my CV.

“I’m Elsie,” I say.

 

As I leave the shop, I text Ada again, my stomach bubbling and my hands shaking. I’ve never given my CV to anyone before or met another ER fan in real life.

ahh there was this guy working at the comic shop i’d never seen before and he was really nice and he also loves ER! it was so cool!

That’s amazing! So did you hand in your résumé then?

yeah! you know i was kind of iffy about it at first but this seemed like a sign!

Aw I really hope you get it, that would be incredible!

Oh and look what I just saw on my dash!

A link appears. I open it up, and it’s a Tumblr post by a woman called Sara whose username I instantly recognize. She belongs to the contingent of Neff/Hax shippers; one of her novel-length fanfics is regularly hailed as a classic in the fandom. I’ve never seen an Eden Recoiling fanfic recommendation list that doesn’t mention at least one of her works. According to her bio, she’s in her late twenties and lives in California.

In this post, she’s cosplaying Neff Warthorn in one of his customary velvet suits, hair neatly coiffed, and somebody else is cosplaying Hax, sporting a bedraggled look and sooty overalls. Against a lush floral backdrop, Neff is down on one knee, proposing to Hax. And what a picture they make, Neff’s flawless composure a delicious contrast to Hax’s unkempt delight. The caption reads: I proposed to Macy and she said yes! So of course we celebrated with a Neffax enGAYgement cosplay shoot!

A ring emoji caps off the post.

Sara and Macy are the dream. Two years ago, when Ada and I had just started chatting, Sara was in the middle of writing the fanfic that propelled her to fame. Macy commented on every chapter. She lives in Washington, DC, but she happened to be visiting California for a work trip, and she posted about it on her Tumblr. Sara, curious about this person whose comments were basically fueling all her writing by then, was looking at Macy’s Tumblr and spotted that post. They met up in LA and found that they got along better than they could ever have expected. And by that I mean they fell head over heels in love.

Two years later, they’re still doing the long-distance thing, but Macy is planning

planning to move to LA eventually, and now they’re engaged.

Sara and Macy have a mini-fandom of their own, and Ada and I, even with our slight grudge against Neffax shippers, still count ourselves as part of it. They’re just adorable. Whenever they do Neffax cosplay shoots together, you can see their chemistry in every photo. There’s always lots of heart eyes and crying in the comments, people saying things like I want someone who looks at me the way Sara looks at Macy.

THEY’RE. ENGAGED??

Yeah! Why do they gotta be so cute? And what do I gotta do for this fairy tale romance to happen to me?

I could be this for you, I think. You don’t have to do anything except ask me. Instead I write:

i’m sure it will happen to you someday, you’re a princess <3

<3 Aw thanks

Also I love their Neffax cosplays and all, but why does nobody ever cosplay Zaria or Mayumi around here? I mean, we both know why, but still. It’s so frustrating!

we could

I send it before I can even think about what I’m saying, and with my heart in my throat, I add:

like, imagine if we ever met up and we did a zaria/mayumi cosplay

Oh wow, that’d be awesome! ...