Finally Eddie’s butt was frozen, and it was just too cold to stay out there any longer. Eddie didn’t want to go home yet, because he still didn’t know how he felt. For one thing, it wasn’t his home; the letter had reminded him of that. He had been starting to think of Alex’s house as his house or loft or whatever the hell it was, and he had started thinking of FA-CUE as his school, but now here was this letter from Mom, who was so sorry, and who did sound much better. Did that mean that she’d want him to go back to Oldham and OHS? He didn’t want that life anymore. And he didn’t want to hate her so much, especially when she was trying to be nice. Because then it was as if he, Eddie, the Kid Who Took Care of Himself for a Year and a Half, was the bad guy, when he was really the good guy here. Wasn’t he?
“So, uh, I’m completely frozen. I guess we should grab a slice and then head home,” Alex said, and Eddie knew he should say “Yeah,” but instead he said, “I don’t really feel like pizza. Is there someplace where we could just sit down for a while?”
“Well, there’s a bunch of stuff in the mall, and some expensive yuppie restaurants on Newbury Street, or … I’ve got an idea. Let’s go to Hanh’s place!”
“You really like her, don’t you?”
“She’s okay,” Alex said, but he was blushing, which wasn’t something Eddie had believed Alex could do. “Her folks run Pho Saigon, and the food is totally awesome, and you get this gigantic bowl of noodle soup for around four bucks. And, yeah, if we happen to see Hanh there, that would be great. Come on, it’s two stops away on the Orange Line.”
Eddie found himself following Alex back to the Back Bay station, going to Chinatown at eight o’clock on a Thursday night to eat a bowl of Vietnamese soup so his cousin could scope out some girl. Even though his life had been pretty insane for more than a year, this seemed to him like the weirdest thing he’d ever done.
Eddie didn’t say much—he was trying not to think about Mom’s letter. Alex, on the other hand, seemed kind of nervous about seeing Hanh, and Eddie understood why. Alex could play off trying to look down her shirt because, let’s face it, every guy in school did that, but there was really no way of playing off showing up at her family’s restaurant.
“Playing it off” was a phrase he had learned at school. He tried to think about school—he still felt like the kids there were really Alex’s friends. But they were people who actually talked to him, people he could lean over to when Tanya came into advisory looking really good and say, “Damn, she is looking fine.”
Not that he had ever actually done that, but Savon had leaned over to him when Tanya walked in one morning and said, “Okay, Left Eye, see, you gotta close your mouth so the drool doesn’t run out. ’Cause if she catches you looking, you’re done, and if Kelvin notices you over here droolin’, he’s gonna blow up your spot all over this advisory.” Eddie had to ask Alex later what “blowing up your spot” meant, but he got that it wasn’t good. He was glad Savon had said something to him because it meant that he cared, sort of.
These were the things Eddie was thinking while Alex blabbed about “Boston’s historic Chinatown, also known as the Combat Zone, don’t worry, though, there wasn’t any actual combat, it was because this is where all the prostitutes and porn stores were, before the same Francis Abernathy who gave his name to our fine school decided to clean things up down here.”
And on and on and on he went. Eddie was actually kind of grateful, because he could kind of tune in to Alex’s babbling whenever his mind tried to wander back to Mom, or Dad in his hospital bed—“I’m sorry I have to go, look out for your mom”—and he felt like screaming that he was so sorry, Dad, he screwed up, he couldn’t look out for Mom, he couldn’t hold everything together the way those kids did in every book they had to read in middle school where the dad or the pet or whatever dies and the kid Becomes a Man.
“Now as you no doubt noticed, there are still two or three porn stores down here, and of course there are still prostitutes down here, did you see those three back there? Not that I can personally imagine having sex with them even if they paid me, but just around this corner is the fabulous Pho Saigon, where the lovely Hanh may or may not be tonight but where we will most certainly enjoy the finest Pho in the greater Boston area, which sounds like something Paulson would say, but …” and Alex kept talking.
They reached Pho Saigon, which had a big red neon sign in the window. It looked like a cafeteria on the inside: white tile on the floor, red Formica booths. It did not, however, smell like any cafeteria Eddie had ever been in. School cafeterias always smelled like farts and disinfectant, and this place just smelled spicy and nice. The restaurant was about half-full, mostly with white guys who had big dreadlocks and metal barbells through their chins or else big beards that grew out of their necks, eating with their girlfriends, who looked like hippies but were at least kind of hot. Everybody in the place had a steaming gigantic bowl in front of them and expressions not unlike the statue lady’s from the library.
Alex led Eddie to an empty table by the window, and they grabbed the menu from between a bottle of hot sauce and a napkin holder. The menu was in Vietnamese on one side, English on the other, but even the English side made no real sense to Eddie. “So, uh, what’s good?” he asked Alex.
“The fact that I see Hanh back there, and she hasn’t seen us yet,” Alex said.
“Yeah, that’s great, but I was actually—”
“Yeah, I know. Just get the pho with beef. It’s really fantastic.”
“Okay.”
Hanh came over to the table holding an order pad. She looked at them, held back a smile, and said, “Oh no. Bad enough I have to see you guys every day, now you can’t come in here and start talking trash.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Alex said. Just then his phone started to ring. He quickly hit a button to silence it. “I’m just trying to show my cousin here some of the culinary hot spots in Boston. Can we get two bowls of the pho with beef?”
“It’s not ‘foe,’ dummy,” Hanh said. “It’s ‘feuh?’”
“It does sound better that way,” Alex said, “but it tastes great however you say it.”
Hanh started to smile, then forced a frown and leaned way over their table, right in Alex’s face, and whispered, “You’ll be lucky if I don’t spit in your soup. And if you start clowning me about anything in my family’s restaurant in advisory tomorrow, I’m gonna kill you, even you, Left Eye, just for being related to this fool.” And with that she walked away.
“She is so totally into me,” Alex said, and Eddie couldn’t help laughing.
Hanh brought their soup less than five minutes later, and when she placed the bowls down in front of them, Alex quickly swapped them around. “Just in case,” he said, smiling up at Hanh as he spooned some soup into his mouth.
“Joke’s on you. I spat in both of ’em,” Hanh said, but she was grinning this big grin, and Eddie figured, or at least hoped, she was joking. He spooned some of the soup into his mouth, and it was probably the oddest thing he had ever eaten. There were all kinds of spices going on at once, and some of them were kind of licorice-y, which was normally a taste that Eddie hated, but he took another spoonful, and he found that in this case, in this combination, he actually liked it a lot.
“Oh, wow,” Eddie said. “I’ve never had anything like this. It’s really good.”
“Yeah, but don’t say that too loud. I don’t want Hanh to get a big head.”
“See, I can hear you over there, and it would take a lot before my head got as big as your big ol’ pumpkin head over there,” Hanh yelled, and an older guy who Eddie figured was her dad yelled something at her in Vietnamese.
Alex blushed, smiled, and slurped.
Eddie was amazed at how much better he felt after eating. Nothing was different, really, except that he had a stomach full of delicious soup, but everything seemed different. He was in the city, and whatever happened with Mom, he was seeing new things and not trapped in his room alone in the old house
in Oldham, and when you had a full stomach it was kind of amazing how much easier it was to believe that things were going to work out.
Of course, Dad was still dead, and he still had to go home and face the letter on his bed, but maybe he didn’t have to face it alone.
Alex’s phone rang again, and again he didn’t answer it because he was talking to Hanh as he paid the check. As he approached Alex, he held up a piece of paper. “Digits, baby!” he said. “Life is looking good!”
12
Alex was feeling great. He had been a good cousin and helped Eddie out. It was like he had been trying for weeks to figure out what to do, and then he just did it without thinking. And he had helped himself in the process. He wasn’t sure exactly what he would do now that he had Hanh’s cell phone number, but the point was that he had the number, and she hadn’t laughed at him or spit on him or anything.
He felt so good that he totally forgot about their being two hours late and about not answering his phone. He forgot, in fact, to even worry for a second about Mom and Dad being mad, because he’d done such a good thing, so when they opened the elevator door and saw Mom and Dad standing there with their tag-team game faces on, he froze.
“It’s nine-thirty. Just where have you guys been?” Mom said, and Alex could see that Dad had staked out the Good Cop role this time, because he spoke calmly and slowly.
“Now, Alex, one of the things we spoke about when you got the phone was that you were going to need to be responsible about it, and that you would answer it when we called you. You told us you’d be home no later than seven-thirty. The two of you are out on the streets for two hours with us having no earthly idea where you are, why you’re late, or what you’re doing. We wouldn’t have been mad about your being late if you’d only called. The phone was in your pocket, Alex. There’s just no excuse.”
“Anything could have happened!” Mom yelled. “What am I supposed to think when you won’t answer your phone?”
Alex felt himself getting mad, and he was just on the verge of yelling that he had called, that they had to trust him a little bit, that he was sixteen years old, for God’s sake, and that he could spend three and a half hours in the city he’d grown up in without having to talk to Mommy every five minutes.
Fortunately for Alex, Eddie stepped in with a lie so smooth Alex was actually jealous.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Lily, Uncle Brian,” Eddie said. “It was really my fault. You know I got that letter from my mom telling me”—and he choked up a little bit, which Alex knew would help their case a lot—“telling me all the stuff she’s sorry for. I was pretty upset, and so we were just walking around, and I guess I was telling him all about it.” Alex watched as his parents’ faces softened. Eddie was going to get them out of this!
“Anyway, we were talking and stuff, and I guess I got kind of … I mean, Alex was being nice by not answering the phone while I was upset. I didn’t even think that you’d be calling, because I guess I was too upset to think straight. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay, Eddie,” Mom said. “I know how hard it is to read a letter like that. I got one, too.” And she went over and hugged Eddie, and he hugged her back, and Alex could see tears welling up in both of their eyes.
“You still should have called,” Dad said to Alex. “But it seems like you did a really good thing tonight. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Alex said, and he almost felt bad about Eddie lying them out of trouble, but then he thought, well, it was true that they had gone out to do something nice for Eddie, and so that was worth being proud of.
Later, in their room, Alex whispered, “Eddie, man, that was fantastic! Thanks for not saying anything about Hanh! You totally saved my butt! You’re a really good liar!”
Eddie whispered, “When your mom’s a drug addict, you get pretty good at lying. You know: my mom’s not feeling well, she won’t be able to make it to parents’ night because she’s working late, no, I’m not alone, my grandma is staying over, that kind of thing.”
“Aw, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Looks like it was good practice for hanging out with you.” He smiled. “I had fun tonight.”
“Me too.”
“Yeah, you got a phone number.”
“Hey, you got soup! And a full-press hug!”
“Yeah, from a girl who’s leaving town. But it was excellent soup. Anyway, thanks.”
“No problem,” Alex said. He stayed awake thinking about Hanh, and, after a few minutes, he could hear Eddie crying softly in his bed.
The next day Alex and Eddie walked into advisory together. When Hanh arrived, she wouldn’t look in their direction. Alex figured she was waiting to see if he would be a jerk and say something about last night, but he was keeping his mouth shut.
In fact, he decided to do the Eddie thing and just stick his nose in a book so that he didn’t say anything stupid. Savon was doing the same thing, as were Eddie and, of course, Kenisha.
With this many people studying, and a big history test that afternoon, it got to be like a trend, and after five minutes everybody was studying. When Harrison arrived at eight-thirty, he looked around the room like something was wrong.
“Okay, what’s going on?” he said. “Who had a fight? Where’s Kelvin, and who hit him? Aisha?”
Aisha looked up from her math book. “Come on now, Harry, I got more sense than to get suspended because of Kelvin. You gotta give me some credit.”
“And you gotta stop calling me Harry, but okay. So what’s going on? You guys are so studious you must be up to something.”
“Now see,” Aisha piped up, “this is the kind of institutional racism we have to deal with. Room full of black kids is quiet, something must be wrong, somebody’s sellin’ crack in the back of the room.”
Harrison was so easy to get this way, Alex thought it was almost unfair. Harrison got all flustered, and his face turned as red as his hair, and he started sputtering, “Now … listen, Aisha, I don’t think it’s fair to—”
“I don’t think it’s fair to call me a black kid!” Hanh said. Before he could think out whether it would look like he was defending Hanh, Alex added, “Yeah. See, that’s the problem with being a minority in this school. We’re just completely invisible to the majority culture!”
He and Hanh locked eyes for a minute, and then he looked away, hopefully before anybody noticed that they’d been looking at each other. Aisha and Gisela began to answer Alex at once, both yelling simultaneously.
“Well, Harry,” Eddie added, “it sure isn’t quiet now.”
Eddie had never spoken to Mr. Harrison before, so now the entire advisory stared at him in awe. There was a moment of silence, and then gales of laughter, with Alex, Savon, and Gisela high-fiving Eddie and slapping him on the back.
“Okay, now he’s a real member of advisory 212!” Gisela said.
Harrison just stood there with his mouth hanging open. Finally he said, “Well, this is great, I’m so pleased you guys have this wonderful bonding ritual. Make fun of the advisor, you’re in. Do you remember that I’m writing college recommendations for you in a couple of years? You should start kissing up now if you want to get me to say anything nice at all.” He delivered this whole speech like he sounded really tired, but he was smiling by the end of it. “Now, we actually do have a ton of stuff to talk about today because, as you may have heard, there was an incident of plagiarism. Fortunately, no one from this advisory was involved, but that means we need to have the plagiarism conversation yet again, so who’d like to open the floor with some comments?”
“Come on, Harry,” Gisela said, “why do we have to have this conversation again just because Rodney gets caught copying because he’s not as slick as certain students in the 212 advisory?”
Savon faked a fit that involved him coughing out “Alex” three or four times.
Harrison answered with “As long as plagiarism is a joke to you, we will keep talking about it. What you don’t get is that it
’s not only wrong but can get you in huge trouble.”
“So?” Gisela answered. “See, this is how this school is mad corny. Because you can’t just talk to the kid who’s in trouble, you have to talk to everybody. Right? I’ve never copied anybody’s work in my life, because I got too much pride for that, but now I gotta listen to people lecturing me. Sorry, Mr. H., you know I love you, but you keep giving the boring lectures—and I’m doing what I’m supposed to do! It’s like y’all think we’re all guilty because one person does something stupid.”
Harrison looked stumped. He was just about to muster a response when Kelvin came running through the door, panting.
“Yo, sorry, Harry! You know, my cousin got beef with some dudes in Codman Square, so I can’t take my normal bus, you know, I don’t want to get shot for something my fool cousin did, so I had to walk all the way to Ashmont …”
“Shoot,” Gisela said, “Ashmont got its own problems.”
“Yeah,” Kelvin said, “but I got no connection to either side of that beef, so it’s cool for me.”
“Yeah, cool for a dude,” Aisha said, “but mad guys be hanging out there talking about ‘Hey, shorty, what’s your number?’ and ‘Why you gotta walk away like that?’ I hate that place. That’s why I take the bus all the way to Dudley.”
Alex listened and said nothing. He was embarrassed because this was the city he thought Eddie had been expecting when he moved in. He also felt kind of weird because he lived in the same city as everybody else, but he could pretty much go where he wanted, and he never worried about who had beef with who.
Harrison was looking at his papers, and then he looked up and said, “Oh, Alex, can you step out with me for a second? I just have to go over some items with you.”
Alex got embarrassed as everybody else in the room sent up a chorus of “Ooooohs.” He walked into the hall with Harrison.
How Ya Like Me Now Page 7