“Reeelaaax. I’m just looking.” She turned on her heel and walked out of the store, disappointment choking the back of her throat like undercooked rice.
She was back at Kmart again the next morning at nine o’clock sharp.
“Just looking again?”
Ivy jumped. There he was, in the same tacky red polo, like a persistent, noiseless shadow. It was bizarre how quickly he’d located her. The problem was that she’d been caught in the same aisle, holding the same binoculars. Sure enough, a moment later, Roux said, “Why do you want those anyway?”
“Are you following me?”
“Of course I am. You’re a shoplifter.”
“They’re not for me. They’re a birthday present for my friend.”
Roux took the binoculars and checked the price tag—$38.99. A fortune. He handed them back to her. “Some friend.”
Ivy walked in the general direction of the exit, her heart pounding, one hand still casually clasped over the binoculars. Did she have enough nerve to simply walk out and count on Roux’s goodwill toward her, or should she put the binoculars down near the magazine stand, as if she’d changed her mind about buying them? She made eye contact with the cashier. “I’m not ready,” she said haughtily. The old man shot her a look: Too expensive, eh.
A hand reached out past Ivy’s shoulders, holding two crumpled twenties. She turned around.
“What is this?”
“Money,” Roux said snidely, “for your friend’s present.”
“Is this a loan?” Debt, in the Lin family, was akin to slavery.
Roux’s scowl deepened. “You don’t have to pay me back.”
Ivy was dumbfounded. Outside of Nan, Roux was the cheapest person she knew; she’d seen him forage his own trash can for expired Hot Pockets even Mrs. Roman had deemed inedible, and not a nickel on the sidewalk escaped his sharp eyes.
Roux waved the bills in front of her face. “You going to take it or not?” When she still didn’t move, he said, “Jesus, don’t take it then—”
Ivy snatched the bills and handed them to the old cashier, who’d seen the entire exchange.
“Girly, it’s your lucky day. Or maybe every day is a lucky day for you. Say, how old are you anyhow? You look about the same age as my granddaughter, and she’s still learning to multiply.”
You little piggish man, Ivy thought, staring steadily into the beady eyes. You’ve probably lived here your entire life. You’ll die here, in your Kmart uniform, and on your gravestone it’ll say, Here lies a lucky man.
“What’s so funny?” said Roux.
Ivy’s grin deepened. “I didn’t know you could be so nice.” Meifeng always said that a tiger doesn’t give a rabbit carrots from the goodness of his heart, but as the cashier wrapped up the binoculars, it occurred to Ivy that paying for something in the open with money that wasn’t hers was even better than taking something for free in secret—a lesson not even Meifeng would have had the audacity to teach her.
Roux rolled his eyes and said he had to get back to work. But she saw he was pleased by her compliment—the pink of his ears gave him away.
3
SHEN DROPPED HER OFF IN front of Una Kim’s house and Ivy watched until his car had pulled out of the development before she made her way over to Gideon’s. The Speyers’ house was a handsome glass and stone manor on a wide cul-de-sac, accompanied by the pleasing electric buzzing of cicadas.
Gideon opened the door. Ivy felt an explosion of pleasure like fireworks. He was wearing a maroon-colored T-shirt that hugged actual biceps where four weeks ago there had only been skin and bone. Gone was his neatly clipped crew cut; feathery hair now spilled over his temples, covering the upper curves of his ears.
“Happy birthday,” she said, her voice low and breathy.
“You look different.”
“Different how?” Yes! Yes! Yes!
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you outside school.” Gideon had one tooth a little crooked and higher than the others and when he smiled, it gave him a mischievous air, although he was not a mischievous person. He took the present she thrust at him with sheepish surprise. “You didn’t have to bring anything.”
Embarrassment crawled up her face like a rash.
Gideon said they were hanging out in the basement and ushered her inside, even offering to carry her backpack, already so cultivated, so trained, at fourteen. She took off her shoes—“Keep them on,” he said in the same sheepish tone—and then she followed him across a hallway lit with electric torch lamps, the stiff fibers of the leopard-print rug crunching beneath her toes. “What’s that room?” She pointed, unable to resist looking this way and that, trying to imprint into her memories all the details of Gideon’s house to thumb over later in the privacy of her room.
“That’s the study.” Seeing her eager gaze, he showed her the study, the living room, the kitchen, the heavy grandfather clock in the family room that looked like a glass eye following their every movement.
Her own apartment in Fox Hill, she’d always thought of as a place where she ate and slept, a place that belonged to no one, not her, not her family. But Gideon clearly did not share this viewpoint of his house. All the rooms, the furniture, the such-and-such knickknacks they’d bought on various vacations, were “mine” or “ours”; he had ownership over everything. Ownership, Ivy noticed, had a very specific sound. You could hear its authoritative quality in a person’s voice, in Gideon’s evenly paced sentences and clear enunciations. During their poetry recitations last marking period, Mr. Markle, who was also the debate coach, had lavished praises on Gideon for his oratory skills, and Gideon had explained in front of the entire class that he used to stutter and had been enrolled in speech therapy for ten years. “Why, everyone should enroll!” Mr. Markle had joked, and while everyone else had laughed, Ivy had been astounded because she couldn’t fathom that something as easy as talking would require effort and diligence on Gideon’s part, the same kind of effort Nan exerted into her little blue dictionary. She’d assumed everything about Gideon was innate and effortless. Did that mean that ownership, then, was something that could be learned?
In the foyer, they ran into Gideon’s older sister, Sylvia Speyer, a senior at Grove, on her way upstairs, balancing a tray containing a pint of Häagen-Dazs, a Starbucks coffee, and a little tumbler filled with ice and yellowish liquid.
“Where’d you find the cabinet key?” said Gideon.
“In Ted’s penholder. Want some?”
“No.”
Sylvia caught Ivy staring—Ivy looked away, pretending to examine a photo along the staircase of the siblings in their swimsuits, curled up in lawn chairs, laughing toward a setting sun.
“That’s Finn Oaks,” said Sylvia, following Ivy’s gaze.
“What’s that?”
“Our summer cottage in Cattahasset.”
Summer cottage, Ivy added to her repertoire.
“Have you been there yet?”
“No,” said Ivy. She couldn’t look at Sylvia straight on, the loveliness was too blinding.
“Well, Giddy’s always bringing his friends in the summers.”