Drawn like a moth to a flame.

It was 2005. A snowy Sunday evening. The snow on the ground was still fluffy and it was noticeably quiet on the streets. My family was sitting in the comfort of my grandmother’s home. The scent of freshly made red bean buns and our traditional ice cream “soup” filled that air around us. We had just completed our Chinese New Year rituals of handing out red envelopes, so we children were free to run around the house and play as much as we wanted.

My cousins, Sophia and Sandra, had lived with me and my family for over a year then since they’d come from Taiwan. My aunt had legally adopted them while their parents had to continue working in Taiwan, since their parents wanted them to have an education in America.

I was always closer to Sophia than I was to Sandra. Maybe it was the age difference – Sophia was only a year older than me while Sandra was two years older than me – or maybe it was that I’d always thought Sophia was nicer. To this day I’m not really sure of which.

As I walked across the living room, my right arm linked to Sophia’s left, I noticed a single candle, apart from the many others, burning by the window.

“Want to see something cool?” I asked Sophia.

“What is it?” she asked, right before I leaped forward and placed my hand millimeters away from the flame of the burning candle in front of me, so close that I could feel its heat crawl along my fingertips. It was only a second before I pulled back.

“I can do that, too!” Sophia exclaimed as she mimicked me and waved her hand in front of the flame. We took turns barely touching the flame for a few minutes, laughing and screaming as if it were a game.

Either I got too excited or my natural competitive instincts kicked in, but I decided to do her one better and touch the flame.

Everything happened so fast – I yanked my hand back as my uncle yelled, “HEY!” at me. I didn’t even realize he was watching us! I could still feel my fingers numb and stinging and my heartbeat ringing and growing louder in my ears before my cousin pulled me back.

“Let’s play something else,” Sophia said, touching my shoulder before I could burst into tears. I nodded as we walked towards the bedroom at the back of the house.

Flashforward 10 years later and we’re not nearly as close as we were back then. She and Sandra moved out of my house a few years after the candle incident because of some unrelated family drama that had occurred. Sophia and I barely talked anymore, and even when we attended the same high school, we spoke very little, except for a few hellos here and there. We may not be close like we were, but we’ll always have the candle incident to remember and share forever.