Watching Rick.
I blush. Caught doing something I hadn’t even realized I was doing.
“It’s incredible.” He sees the world in bursts of color and shapes, rather than coloring-book outlines.
Xavier exhales. He was waiting for my verdict—and it mattered to him. But why would he care? Right now, all I see is the guy trying to seduce me with his sketches—and almost succeeding.
Almost.
I push the picture back at him. “You can’t draw me.”
His lashes flicker. “Why not?”
My voice sharpens. “You’re with Sophie. You should draw Sophie.” It would be her dream come true—just as she’s three times more excited to get her glamour shot proofs than me.
“Maybe I don’t want to draw Sophie. Maybe I’m not with her either.”
“Maybe?” I shove my chair back, scraping the floor. “I shouldn’t even be having this conversation!” The teacher glances our way and I lower my voice. “Maybe sleeping with a girl means nothing to you, but it does to most girls, okay?”
His upper lip curls. “Sometimes things aren’t always the way they seem.”
We’re talking in circles. This is dangerous. We’re headed into a weekend that Sophie’s spent every waking minute planning, endured a full-body waxing for—all for Xavier.
Megan will never know half of the bone-crushing agony I felt when she told me she was dating Dan, and there’s no way I’d do that to Sophie.
Xavier leans into me. I catch the spicy scent of his cologne and snatch my arm away, hating myself for the part of me that’s enjoying his blatant interest. Hating myself for the curl of curiosity of what it would feel like to have those soft lips on the places of me he’s drawn.
I tear Xavier’s painting in half, then fourths, then eighths. It’s like stomping on a butterfly to spite the bully who hatched it from its cocoon, but I don’t let on.
Xavier’s gaze follows my movements, but he makes no move to stop me. His expression doesn’t change. Class is ending. Students are clipping damp calligraphy pages to a clothesline to dry.
I drop the pieces onto his notebook, brace my paint-smudged hands on the table, and rise over him.
“Don’t you dare say a word about this to Sophie,” I say fiercely. “You’re her boyfriend. You bought her that rug.”
His mouth sets in a line. He’s used to being accused, as well he should be.
“Just for the record,” he says. “I’ve never slept with Sophie.”
What?
Uncertainty flutters like a trapped moth inside me. The pieces of painting swirl over his hand.
But I’ve heard every detail from her lips myself—all the girls have. I have no idea why, but he must be lying. Thank God Rick never did find out Xavier was my artist—he’d have told Sophie and then what?
“You know what? It doesn’t matter.” With a jerk, I grab my calligraphy book. “And for the record, you’re an asshole. Stop drawing me.”
I storm to the clothesline, clip my page to it, then escape out the door.
But I can’t escape the fear that our weekend has just grown exponentially more complicated.
18
“Where’s Rick?” Sophie tugs impatiently at the skirt of her orange-striped dress, which shows off cleavage to the point that it’s distracting even me. We are standing on the lowest step outside Chien Tan, as the driver loads her suitcase into the back of Aunty Claire’s Mercedes van. She wrinkles her skirt in a nervous gesture. This weekend means so much to her—and as for me, the Wong Rules are taking a back seat to supporting her. Anyways, I’ve only got No Boys/No Kissing Boys left, and at this rate, that one’s going nowhere.
“Aunty Claire’s waiting.” She climbs into the van as Xavier climbs in from the other side, setting an orange Osprey backpack on the floor. I avoid looking at him. “Rick better hurry.”
“I’ll go find him,” I offer.
She grabs my hand and tugs me close to whisper in my ear. “Please. Rick needs to come. Uncle Ted will give Xavier the third degree if he’s not there to run interference.”
“I’ll drag him by his hair if I have to.” I set my dance bag at her feet, but when Xavier reaches for it, probably to add it to the luggage pile, I snatch it back as though he were trying to steal it. Sophie is too busy dialing her aunt to notice.
“Ever,” Xavier begins, but I head off, glad to put distance between us while I can.
It’s funny to be going into a weekend not devoted to sneaking out clubbing. Almost a relief, if I’m honest. The lobby swarms with kids and backpacks headed to visit families, with as many gathered to stay, gearing up for the talent show at the program’s end. Two guys toss Chinese yo-yos. Another pair performs magic tricks with a man-sized rubber balloon.
“Have you seen Rick?” I ask Debra and Laura as they strum on guitar and zither.
Debra’s fingers dance on her strings. “Sorry, no.”
“Maybe upstairs?” Laura sweeps her bangs from her eyes.
Five minutes later, I knock on Rick’s door. It opens with a soft click. Rick’s desk comes into view: hosting a blue retainer case, a half-used tube of acne medicine, and a bar of soap, separated from a mountain of Chinese and American snacks he’s stockpiled—bags of dried fruits, nuts, suncakes, a can of Pringles, six-packs of iced tea. Xavier’s half of the room is more spare: a hamper of laundry, blanket barely dented, as if Xavier’s trying to pretend he’s not here.
“Please calm down,” Rick says. “I told you. My phone’s still broken. The time zone threw me off.”
Rick stands at his window over the burlap sack of rice he bought for weights. His black hair, damp from a shower, darkens the collar of his forest-green shirt. He presses his landline phone to his ear. His thumb rolls along the scar inside his fingers in that gesture of tension I’ve come to recognize.
Even from here, I can hear the girl on the other end:
“I’m sick of your stupid excuses! You and your whole family’s—”
“Jenna, I said I’m sorry. If you could fly out here—”
“If you want to fuck with me, Rick Woo, then you never should have gone to Taiwan. You could have done that right here in my own bedroom.”
I cringe. Try not to let her words paint images in my head that I don’t want there. I half expect him to explode at Jenna—but I’m dreading it, too.
“Jenna, I know it’s hard to be apart. I need you to be patient. Please. Jenna? Jenna—wait!”
Rick swears and drops the phone, his easygoing stance replaced by a body webbed with stress lines. I want to go to him and siphon it off.
Then he slams his fist through the center of his rice sack. Rice grains rattle as they pour from the split fabric onto the floor.
He catches sight of me, and jumps a foot into the air, knocking over his lamp with a crash. The door slams behind me, gusting a breeze that ruffles the workbook on his desk.
“Sorry,” we chorus. I’m not sure who’s more mortified—him or me. He rights his lamp, then kneels and begins to sweep the rice into a pile.
“I’m sorry you heard that.”
“What’s wrong?” I grab his trash can and scoop double handfuls of rice into it.
“I don’t even know. She wasn’t happy I came on this trip. We’ve never been apart longer than a few days.”
“Really?” Even I’ve been away from home for a week, for school field trips. Is that the problem then? She must really depend on Rick. I feel a curl of sympathy. I know a few girls like that on my dance squad: smart, fun, pretty girls who for some reason can’t set foot out their houses without the boyfriend they always seem to need around.
“Didn’t she think about coming on this trip, too?”
“Couldn’t. She’s volunteering at a horse camp for disabled kids. I’m trying to get her to fly out for a week, but she’s terrified of flying.”
“The ticket’s really expensive.”
“Not for her. Her dad’s an executive in the Bank of China Hong Kong.
”
“Oh.” I flush. All my sympathy evaporates—buying an international plane ticket at a hat’s drop, no pearl necklace sold off. I can’t even imagine it. I roll to my feet, brushing rice from my palms. “Sophie and Xavier are waiting downstairs.”
“Crap.” He dumps the last handful of rice into the trash. “I completely lost track of time.”
I shake the sack’s remaining grains back down, then fold it in half and lay it on his desk by a stack of postcards. The top one is inked with Jenna’s name and several lines in bold, blocky handwriting. Her four-page letter, filled with copperplate cursive, rests beside it. I can’t resist a peek. The top page is the last, which reads at bottom:
Shells and I went to Sweet Connections today. Wish you were home already. Still trying to understand why you had to go. I found you a cool song—will save it for when you’re back and we can listen together.
Love you forever.
Jenna
A Polaroid photo shows Jenna with her arm around a girl in pigtails, Pearl’s age, with Rick’s amber-flecked eyes. They’re grinning like a pair of thieves over ice-cream cones. Shelly. Rick’s sister. This girl is totally in love with Rick. Her sweetness feels at odds with the girl on the phone, and yet this letter-writing pal of Rick’s little sister must be the girl he loves—and I’m standing here reading his private mail.
Rick’s staring at his phone, as if he can bring her here by telepathy.
“Rick?” I clear my throat. “Are you still coming?”
Rick starts. “Oh, God.” Seizing his Chien Tan bag, he opens his drawer and crams socks and boxers into it. Then he slaps his bag down on his dresser and shoves the drawer shut. “I can’t take my family right now.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Last Christmas, my sister and I visited with my mom. Every day, I got an earful from five aunts and uncles: ‘Rick, you need to drop that girl like an anvil and find the right one.’”
“They’ve met her?”
“Yeah. The summer before, in the States. My mom fasted for three days trying to get me to break it off.”
“Fasted?” Guilt-wise, Rick’s mom puts Mom and her black pearl necklace to shame. My gut clenches as I remember Dan sprinting down our driveway. How dare they try to dictate who we love? “That’s bullshit, Rick. My parents never let me date either.”
“Oh, they want me to date.” He laughs, a brittle unlike-Rick laugh. “My family’s more traditional than the Qing dynasty. I have twenty-two first cousins, and I’m the only boy with the Woo last name. They’re all depending on me to pass the family name along.” He drags a hand over his face, defeated again. “Just not with her.”
“Why don’t they like her?”
“Stupid reasons.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m sure they are.”
“This year’s going to be ‘What about Loveboat? Two hundred fifty nice Chinese American girls—HOW CAN YOU WASTE THIS OPPORTUNITY?!?’”
I seriously want to kill me some Woo family members.
“Can I do anything?”
“It’s hopeless.” His thumb worries his scars. “The only thing that will get them off Jenna’s back is if I bring home a girl who isn’t Jenna.”
He crashes backward onto his bed, two hundred–plus pounds in no hurry to go anywhere. Sophie is waiting downstairs. Do I go let her know Rick’s not coming and ruin her perfectly balanced weekend? Even without his fasting mom, this family visit sounds like torture. But better than moping alone after that call. And I want to help him—he took me home passed out drunk and never said a word, got me the fan, even if I gave it to Sophie, tried to help me track down my artist, even pretended to be my boyfriend to rescue me from the cupcake guy—
Cupcake guy.
“So, what if you did bring a Loveboat girlfriend home?” I blurt. “Pretend I’m her—like you did for me at the club. That’ll get them off your case, wouldn’t it?”
As soon as the offer leaves my mouth, I know it’s a mistake.
But Rick lifts his head off his pillow. He gives me a speculative look. “You mean, introduce you as my girlfriend to my aunt and uncle?”
I back away, toward the door. “It’s a terrible idea. Forget I said anything.”
“No! No, it’s perfect, actually.” Rick sits up. Grabs his football and spins it on his knee. His eyes narrow. “Really perfect. My family will love you.”
“They will?” Is that a compliment or insult?
“Totally.” He gets up, drops his football. “They can’t say I didn’t try. And when you break up with me a month later, that’s the perfect excuse for why I’m back with Jenna. This could be a way to get them off our case permanently.” His eyes widen, earnest, oddly desperate. “Ever, you really won’t mind?”
Curse me and my stupid ideas. His family must be a murder of trolls to inspire such insanity on his part. And I’m just as insane.
“We’re not going to act like boyfriend and girlfriend, right?” I cringe at the high pitch to my laugh. But I can’t. I can’t hold hands with Boy Wonder.
“Course not. This is Loveboat. Especially with Sophie bringing Xavier, if we tell them we’re together, they’ll believe it. Ever, I owe you one. You’re brilliant.”
No, I’m a fool. But his gratitude is like a bar of dark chocolate. I can’t resist.
“I’ll have to leave early Sunday for my audition.”
“No problem. I’m coming, right?”
“Right.”
“So, no problem.”
“What if Jenna finds out?” Or my parents? After all the rule breaking, pretending to break one—the No Boyfriend rule—feels the most risky, with the most to lose.
He grabs his laptop and opens his email. “The only person who’d tell is Shelly. I’ll tell her not to repeat anything she hears.”
Fighting panic, I grab his Chien Tan bag off his dresser and start for the door.
“Hey, I’ve got that.” He grabs for it, but I yank back, snapping a strap.
Bad sign, but I’m already rushing out the door. “What are little sisters for?”
19
A pair of guards in crisp blue swing open wrought-iron gates onto a wide driveway. Our driver pulls through, touching his fingertips to his brow in salute.
Sophie was not exaggerating. The Zhang residence sits in the heart of Tianmu, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Taipei. Along the stone walls, baby-pink rosebushes—“imported from England,” Sophie says—rustle in a breeze. Blue-gray flagstones and English grass carpet the grounds all the way to a two-story mansion of white stucco and green-shuttered windows.
“Hey, Sophie, I need to tell you something.” For the fourth time, I try to catch her attention. Rick and I have been trying to update her and Xavier on the change in our dating status since we hit the road, but between giving Xavier the scoop on her family and now, the mansion, she hasn’t paused for breath.
Our van stops at the foot of a stone stairwell the width of an estuary. A white-gloved porter opens Sophie’s door and she flies out like a sunbeam, squealing, “Aunty Claire! We’re here!”
The update will have to wait. Two barking Shiba Inus, along with two black-haired kids around five and six, hurl themselves at Rick. The boy yells football stats in clipped British English. The girl, despite her picture-perfect rose-print dress cries and babbles—apparently her mother just informed her she’s too young to marry Rick.
“Hey, Felix! You’ve been doing research?” Rick swings the boy onto his shoulder and spins, making him yell. He tugs on the girl’s pigtails. “Fannie, you don’t want to marry an ugly old troll like me.”
“Yes, I do!” Fannie lisps; she’s lost two lower teeth. I laugh. Rick will be a great dad—um, wrong road!—it’s not as though I really am his girlfriend, assessing his potential life-mate qualities. Arg!
Eager to put space between us, I follow Sophie up the steps into a high-ceilinged foyer of white marble tiles and pillars, man-sized vases, a large bonsai tree, a curved stair
case—all sparkling with light from a chandelier the size of a grand piano. A Japanese-style pond, built with flat stones into the floor, swims with orange carp.
“Aunty Claire!” Sophie swoops down on a petite, pregnant woman and plants a kiss on each cheek. Then she threads her arm through Xavier’s. “This is Xavier Yeh.”
“Welcome!” Aunty Claire, swelling belly and all, is stunning in her tailored sea-green qipao and string of emeralds. She bestows the same queenly greeting on Xavier, then on Rick, still bent double with Fannie and Felix clinging like monkeys to his back and neck. Rick detaches himself from his cousins, grabs my hand, and tugs me forward.
“And this is Ever Wong.” Rick’s tone is even, but he somehow sounds . . . proud. As if he’s created me himself. “My girlfriend.”
A stunned silence follows. I can’t look at Sophie or Xavier.
Then Fannie screams and runs upstairs, wailing. Aunty Claire’s eyes grow wide. I’m terrified she’s about to scold Rick. How dare you bring such a mouse home when your cousin brings the Heir to the Yeh Empire?!
Then her arms go around me. Jasmine perfume fills my nostrils.
“Goà-khò!” she cries in Hokkien. My goodness! “Sophie, you should have warned me!” She holds me at arms’ length and drinks me down with gorgeous eyes. “Rick, you should have warned me! Ever, sweetie, my home is yours. Do you have any favorite dishes? I’ll send my maid to the market.”
“No, no.” I find my voice. “No. Anything is great.” And where will all her enthusiasm go when I dump her darling nephew? Sophie frowns and I feel another stab of guilt.
Then Rick’s arm encircles my waist, warm and possessive. “I knew you’d like her.”
“I’m giving you the Eleanor suite,” Aunty Claire says to me. She starts up the stairs, then turns back. “Rick!” she cries, exasperated. “Carry her bag!”
As Aunty Claire heads deeper into her mansion, I snatch my body as well as bag back from Rick. My heart pounds in my throat. His hand and arm have branded themselves through the fabric of my clothes into my skin.
“We’re just pretending, remember?” I whale him in the stomach with my bag, earning an oaf. The guard chokes with a laugh.
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