The Longest Summer 【魔鬼吻过的夏天】

2007年写的小说，从未让任何人读过；2008年写了一个英文的故事梗概，今天找简历偶然发现，贴出来和大家分享：

The Longest Summer

 

A Chinese girl named Rima came to a small Midwestern town for her PhD. It was a typical summer night. She had a huge fight with her boyfriend, and ran out from his apartment, unfortunately got hit by a black Lincoln town car on Oakland Avenue.

When she regained her consciousness, she was in Emergency Room with everything just all right, not even a bruise.  The driver was there, an old man with salt and pepper hair, somehow reminded her of her grandpa. No surprise, the police was there too. The real surprise was that they couldn’t verify Rima’s identity.

 

The university, department, and her advisor confirmed that there was no such person. Her boyfriend was with some other girl. It turned out that all her acquaintances didn’t recognize or know her.

 

 
The old grandpa paid the hospital, and also gave her some money. A couple of days later, she was expelled as an illegal immigrant. 

 

 
The first day she’s back in Beijing . She went back her parents’ home. There, indeed, was a girl named Rima, the family’s youngest daughter. A school teacher, happily married a chubby electrical engineer, and had a lovely adorable two-year-old daughter.

 

 
Rima felt that her life was stolen, and she had to find her own identity. Thinking back of her life, she was pretty sure if there was one, and only one person, in the world, who knew Rima, it would be her grandma. 

 

 
Thus she travelled down southwest of China , to the place where she was born and grew up. The village she used to live with her grandparents was totally transformed into a messy town. You probably could find millions of this kind of towns in China . One resembled each other. The house was gone, like it never existed. And nobody knew her grandparents.

 

 
By that time, Rima was in the abyss of despair. There was not much left for her to do, and she almost ran out of money. She started to do all kinds of jobs: waitress, bartender, janitor, babysitter, etc…

 

 
After a while, she decided to repeat her college graduation trip. She’s back to Beijing, and headed to the heart of deep west, then down south to Tibet . In her journey, she met a guitar musician with twelve fingers; a writer with an eye patch, who claimed that he had the third eye in between; and a crippled beggar with the most beautiful face she had ever seen.

 

 
They four together formed a singular fascinating travel group. During the trip, Rima started forgetting why she was doing this trip, just enjoyed their company.

 

 
The day they came to Lhasa , was almost the end of the summer. The autumn was in the air. Rima stood in front of Budala Palace . The air was as heavy as a rusted anchor. Her identity was still missing, but she felt like a new-born baby.