Tori couldn’t’ make any sense of what Mr. Gao was saying. She wasn’t sure if he was talking incoherently or if her Chinese was that bad.

Probably, her Chinese was that bad.

And, hey, at least he was talking. That was a good sign, right?

She wished she could be sure.

Mr. Gao talked as if he was making sense, and maybe he was. But before, when talking to Tori, he’d always used at least as much English as Chinese, and now he wasn’t. Using any English, that is. Did that mean something had happened to his ability to speak English? That he was disoriented, and didn’t realize it might be helpful?

And Tori couldn’t be sure if this frantic outpouring of words made sense even in Chinese. There was no way to know without having better languag...

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