“You can’t tell my mom I ate this,” I say to her. “Tell her I’m so upset I haven’t eaten a thing.”
Tressy promises she won’t. She’s good like that, always has been. Excitedly, she points to the box. “Are you going to open it?”
I wipe my fingers on a napkin and open the box. It’s a baby-pink Prada bag inside. Calfskin leather. I stroke the soft pillowy leather, mind going to what outfits would go best with it, and close my eyes as I pick up the card. Please let it be from Teddy.
Dear Claire,
Hope you like the bag. You can wear it in America!
Love,
Daddy
I toss the card and the bag back in the box.
Tressy looks confused. “What’s wrong?”
My mother walks in through the door as we’re talking. “Oh, Claire, good, you’re home. I just had lunch with your nai nai. She thinks you going to America is wonderful!” My mom points to the box. “Is that—?” she asks excitedly.
“I’m not keeping it,” I say.
“What do you mean you’re not keeping it?” She frowns. “Do you not like it?” She inspects the bag. “It is rather pink. You can always return it and get something else.”
My mom is the queen of returning gifts and pocketing the money. This, in fact, is how she first started dating my dad. He’d buy her stuff, which she’d accept so she could return it and send the money back to her mother. Even now, she jokes about the hypothetical scenario in which if my dad ever leaves her, she’d sell all her Birkin bags, which can fetch anywhere from HKD$80,000 to $800,000 in Hong Kong, and invest the money in a nice apartment.
She walks over to me and puts her hands on my shoulders. “This is a good opportunity,” she says. “Do you know, when I was your age, I would’ve died for the chance to go to America. . . .”
She glances out the window at the artificial lake in front of our house, and I catch her reflection in the window.
“Why didn’t you?” I ask. Sure, returning gifts is a nice cushy gig, but why didn’t she go for her own dreams?
“It would have been different if I had been a boy. . . .” She sighs. “Or if I had had one.” She adds the last part so quietly that I almost don’t hear it. But then I do, and it grinds into me.
“I can’t help it if I’m all you guys got,” I say.
According to Tressy, after my mom had me, she tried to get pregnant again, but each time it always ended in miscarriage. I was too little to understand, but I remember once hearing my grandmother talking about it, how it was such a pity my mom couldn’t give my father a son. My mom dropped the teacup she was holding onto the ground. It was the only time I’d ever seen her publicly get mad at my grandmother.
Watching my mom grimace now, I know the pain has not entirely left.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I say. “I just . . . I don’t want to go to America.”
“I know,” she says. “I don’t want you to go either. You’re all I have.” She reaches and touches my cheek with her hand. When she speaks again, her voice is full of resolve. “Which is why you have to go.”
I shake my head. “What if something goes wrong?” I ask.
She takes her iPhone out from her purse. “I’m one phone call away. If something goes wrong, I’ll be right over,” she promises.
I glance at her phone, trying not to think about the fact that half the time when I’m here and I call her, I can’t find her because she’s getting a massage.
“Who am I even going to be living with?” I ask.
My mother smiles. “The De La Cruzes,” she says. “They have a daughter just your age. Her name is Dani.”
Six
Dani
At lunch the next day, I grab me and Ming some seats in the back. I can’t believe she never told me she’s gay. Does she have a girlfriend? Does anyone else know? But before I can ask her any of these questions, Zach walks over. It takes me a moment to process he’s here, standing in front of me.
“Hey,” he says, setting down his tray of food.
My mouth’s full of sandwich, so I can’t say hey back. I search the cafeteria for Ming and see her over by the sushi corner, pocketing soy sauce packets.
“You were great last night,” he says.
My cheeks preheat like a Thanksgiving oven. So he was there!
“Did you mean all that stuff you said?” he asks.
“What?”
“About how it’s wrong to track people. Just because someone’s dumb at one point doesn’t mean they’re always dumb. Do you really believe that?” He peers at me with wide blue eyes.
“It’s just not . . . like . . . ideal . . . is . . . I don’t know,” I say. Why is it that when I’m in front of a podium, I can come up with these eloquent lines and when I’m off the stage, I can’t seem to find the words and end up sounding like a frog?
Zach pops a potato chip in his mouth.
“Me too,” he says, nodding as he chews. “What you said.”
I smile. Now we’re two frogs.
“Hey, would you like to tutor me sometime?” he asks.
My face crumbles like my mom’s puto seko that’s been left out.
“It’s just you’re really smart. You’re always reading when Mr. Rufus isn’t looking,” he says.
Victory! He’s been watching me too in band!
“And I need to maintain a 3.0 for my sports scholarship.”
“I’m on a scholarship too,” I say.
“But you’re like brilliant. And I’m . . .” He laughs nervously. “I guess you could say I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I’m more like a spoon.” He looks down at the plastic utensils on my tray. “I just thought because of what you said in your speech, maybe you’ll want to help me . . . but if you don’t want to . . . you know what, forget it!”
“No, no, no,” I say. My fingers reach for his tray. Stay. “I’d love to help you.”
“Really?” he asks.
“Yeah, of course.” I ask him what subjects he needs help with as Ming starts walking over to us. She sees us talking, stops walking, and turns and goes back to the sushi corner.
“Everything,” he confesses.
“That’s fine,” I tell him. I pull out my phone so we can exchange numbers. “We’ll make a schedule.”
“Thank you so much,” he says. He flashes me his dimpled smile, and I feel my dopamine pathways flood. “I can’t believe you’re being so nice.”
I want to tell him that’s not it. It’s because I like you. That’s why I look forward to band even though I hate band, just so I can sit next to you for forty-five minutes every other day. That I’ve been deliberately trying to get worse at flute just so I stay last chair and get to sit next to you. But I don’t tell him any of that today. Instead, I smile and say, “Of course.”
Later that day, I’m kneeling in a house in North Hills, blotting up the spilled wine from a dinner party, when I look up and see Heather, my teammate from debate. She’s standing in the living room, opening the door for an older guy. Is this her house? I pull up the surgical mask that Rosa makes me wear.