Free Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square by Lisa Zhang Wharton

tongue was always in the way when he talked to Meiling.
     
    Then the bee flew away. "My god, if it messes up my flowers, I'll kill it." Father gathered his strength and started chasing it.
     
    "Okay, let's catch it." Meiling shut her bedroom door behind her and followed father into his room. Baiyun found a flyswatter and joined them. Father, whom Baiyun had never seen run so fast, used all his energy and jumped in front of the flowerpots scattered around the far end of the dining room.
     
    "Don't touch my flowers or I'll kill you!" He threatened arms akimbo like a warrior.
     
    Meiling, meanwhile, scampered after me from one side of the room to the other. Baiyun followed her, waving the flyswatter.
     
    "It's here, Baiyun! Here, oh, you missed it. A little toward the right. Here, here. Oh, shit!" Stroke by stroke, Baiyun's technique was getting better. Then all of sudden, the bee landed on the windowsill.
     
    "Baiyun, stop waving the net." Baiyun knew Father would intervene.
     
    "Father, I'll be careful. I promise, I promise."
     
    "Baiyun, aren't you going to listen to me?" He stared at her with two fierce eyes. His hands were clenched.
     
    "Oh, Baiyun. Let your father take care of it. He may have the magic hands." Meiling turned around to her bedroom.
     
    Silence returned to the house again. The excitement the bee had generated disappeared. Baiyun and Father gazed at the windowsill, which was occupied mostly by small flowerpots. With one smack, Father killed the bee that was stupid enough to show up on the windowsill.
     
    Silence this time came with the darkness. The place was as dark and cold as a grave. Father strolled back to his faded brown, old heavy wooden desk.
     
    Baiyun slipped out the door without saying another word. She got on the bicycle and started riding in this pitch-dark sky that hardly had any stars. She could feel the darkness that gradually weights on her and her city Beijing and the whole country. Yet the fresh air had already cheered her up and the paddling of the bicycle made her feel powerful. I will never come back here again, she was telling herself.
     

Chapter 5
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    At 9:00pm, Baiyun got back to her dorm but was too excited to sleep. Meeting Dagong was a pleasant experience for her. Although she knew very little about him besides the fact that he was a nice and handsome young man, she felt that he had the depth to understand her, her eccentric mother and her strange family. She found him easy to talk to and she could open her heart. But she hadn’t known him very well yet, she was telling herself. Tomorrow she would go back to the triangle trying to find out more about the pro-democracy movement. She felt an obligation now. She had now found many more interesting things to do besides studying chemistry. It was like a new chapter in her suddenly opened up. She knew the situation would change as soon as she talked to her mother. Meiling would force her to study TOEFL again. But this was her life. Meiling could not control it anymore.
     
    The sound of loud radio woke up Baiyun in the morning. From the content she soon realized that it was a new campus news broadcasting station.
     
    “When the student marched to the Tiananmen Square last night, all along the road Beijing citizens came out to support them,” said the Broadcaster, “People gave out cases of soda, juice, bread and eggs. The square was full of people sitting in from the night. At dawn, police started to appear. The students demanded that the authorities guarantee their safety and let them enter the Great Hall of the People to pay their last respects to Hu Yaobang. The government only granted the first request.”
     
    “Oh, my God. It’s so early. Demonstration is a good thing. But they shouldn’t disturb our rest.” Li Yan went back to sleep.
     
    Too tired to say anything, Baiyun went back to sleep as well. When she woke up again, everyone had gone. She looked up her watch and it said