Girl Overboard

Home > Young Adult > Girl Overboard > Page 24
Girl Overboard Page 24

by Justina Chen


  “Wang.” The way Mama says that Cantonese word for leader, as though it were a revelation, I know she’s never noticed any of the hidden meanings, the secret symbols, of her name.

  I wrap my arm around Mama’s bony yet strong shoulders, trained and conditioned to bear a heavy burden. No matter what, I won’t let go; my sturdy body won’t let her fall down simply because her stepmother didn’t love her the way Mama deserved to be loved. As we sit there, I silently turn the pages, each photograph whispering, Remember? Remember?

  “Mama, don’t you see?” I tell her, pausing on the photograph of her graduation from Cambridge. “You were always treasured. You were always Yu.”

  This is what I’ve wanted to hear from Mama’s perfectly lined and colored lips: that I’ve always been cherished. It’s strange to hear those words coming out of my mouth, stockpiled as they have been inside me, emergency provisions stashed there by Bao-mu who always believed in me, always loved me. Always knew that one day I’d need to share them.

  With those words, so simply and easily given, Mama’s body relaxes, and she leans into me. And as she remembers, picture by picture, I learn how much I’ve been treasured, too.

  38

  With winter break in full swing, I’ve got at least ten hours each day to dedicate to Ride for Our Lives. By mid-morning the first day back home, my hsuan has morphed into command central, notepads of lists and notes everywhere. After I get off the phone with Meghan, who, true to her word, has figured out most of the logistical details—“It’s the least I can do for everything your mom’s done for me”—I know that if I were up in my bedroom looking into my ghost-detecting mirror, my eyes would be gleaming, I’m having so much fun. But I don’t have time to preen and instead pick up the phone for my check-in call with Lillian.

  “How are the babies?” I ask.

  “Zoe isn’t sleeping, and Amanda’s bouncing off the walls. So it’s chaos here, but no one’s got the heart to tell Amanda to pipe down, not when she’s going to be quarantined for a couple of weeks, you know.”

  “So when’s her chemo starting?”

  “Tomorrow.” Lillian laughs mirthlessly. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? Dr. Martin told me that they have to basically kill the patient in order to save her.”

  “Like avalanche control.”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes you have to set off a couple of small avalanches so you don’t have a huge one.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” After a moment’s pause, Lillian continues, sounding a fraction more upbeat, “So I need some good news. Anything. Please tell me you were wicked enough in Whistler for the two of us.”

  “Well, if you really want to know…”

  “I do.”

  “I was.”

  “No way!” Lillian shrieks.

  “Way!” I shriek back. And then I give her the abridged version of my past. While I’m not ready to provide full disclosure about Jared, something tells me that I’ll spill all to Lillian when the time is right. Still, we do the “ewww” girlfriend shriek together when I get to the part where Jared starts bragging about all his accomplishments. And she does the “you did not!” scream when I tell her about my “no free lunch” comment to him.

  “But I need your advice on something,” I say, pacing a circuit from the door to my light table, past the bathroom door, and then around the sofa.

  “You? You, Miss I’m-No-Free-Pass-to-Paradise? You need my advice?”

  I laugh. “Well, there’s this other boy.…”

  “God, Syrah, how many are you juggling?”

  “It’s not that.” But then I realize, it is, sort of. “It’s my best friend.”

  “Let me guess, that guy at that board shop? I knew you had a thing for each other!”

  “Wait, wait—he’s dating someone else, remember?”

  “Who is so freaked out by you that she’s signed, sealed, and delivered a restraining order on you,” says Lillian.

  “Something like that.”

  “And now you’ve finally realized that you want a free pass to his paradise.”

  “Lillian!”

  But we’re both laughing, and it is almost worth having Age be dating Natalia just to have this conversation with Lillian. Almost.

  “Seriously, though, what do you do when you love somebody enough to set him free, and he never comes back?” I stop doing laps around my studio to stand by the window overlooking an arched bridge.

  “Well, why don’t you tell him how you feel?”

  “Definitely not an option. Let’s just say I’ve seen what happens when someone comes between a couple.” Fifteen years of being blamed for breaking up a family is all this girl can take. But then it occurs to me that Bao-mu might be on the right track. While I’m not about to take Age away from Natalia, I can ask for his friendship. “How about if I let him know that just because he has a girlfriend doesn’t mean he can’t have a girl who’s his friend, too?”

  Lillian is quiet, and I know it’s not because she’s tuned me out but that she’s weighing my idea. Slowly, she says, “I think that’s great. You’re not telling him to break up with her and you’re not coming between them. But I still vote for telling him how you feel.”

  After debating other possibilities (“putting a feng shui curse on Natalia is not an option”), circling back to Amanda (“let me know if there’s anything I can do”) and Zoe (“when can I meet her?”), and giving each other a pep talk, since there’s still so much to do for Ride for Our Lives (omigod!), I know as far as Age goes, I have to do what I’m comfortable with.

  At my light table, I begin to draw a letter manga-style for Age, inviting him to participate in the amateur snowboard rail jam at the event, unless he’s afraid that I am going to whip his burly-burly butt in the competition. Then, abandoning all bravado, I write the truth, plain and simple and unadorned with any pictures: Age, it would mean so much to me if you just showed up. And then I attach VIP tickets for him, his dad, and his little brothers. And one for Natalia, too. I just hope that he’ll read that as a sign that I want him to be my front-door friend.

  One day, our timing will be right, the stars will align, and Hong Kong will be a distant memory. And when that time comes, I’ll tell Age everything. As I’m about to seal the envelope, I stop, because the hallmark of our friendship has always been about telling each other things we can hardly admit to ourselves. Like how I’ve been a closet snob, too spineless to stand up to my parents and introduce them to Age, the boy who has always had my heart.

  So I rip out the pages in my manga-journal, the ones that I wrote back in Whistler with the blow-by-blow account of The Jared Episode, and slip them inside my letter to Age. I don’t want to hide that old history anymore, at least not from Age.

  39

  With my PowerPoint slides saved onto CD, Rude Q and A memorized, and power parka on, I’m armed, ready, and puffy. According to the daily schedule Mama left on the kitchen table for me this morning, my parents are home this evening, which means it’s time for me to persuade them to support Ride for Our Lives. From the sounds of the argument I can hear yards away, a battle is being waged inside Baba’s studio-study.

  Baba’s voice, stinging, rings into the dark night. “Could you please explain to me how it is possible to lose thirty-five million dollars in a single quarter?”

  Through the windows I see everyone arranged in their normal pecking order: Baba at the head of the table, Mama to one side, Wayne to his other, Grace next to her brother and Mochi on her lap. There wasn’t a memo about a family meeting on the kitchen table, in my inbox, or on my door. Could I possibly have been so disastrous at the last meeting that I’ve been dropped from the cc line?

  Wayne rattles off numbers, using data to brace his deficit: “Sales were up fifteen percent—”

  “But did you even look at their competitors?” demands Baba. If my dad is the emperor of the Cheng dynasty, then Wayne must be his eunuch, whose sole, emasculated purpose is to serve.


  That truth hits me as hard as plowing head-on into a tree. Wayne is living my nightmare where all the possibilities for what I do with my life dwindle down to just one: adding to the Cheng coffers whether or not he yearns to do something different.

  Through the window, Grace shakes her head at me in silent warning. I divine her meaning: danger, danger. Stay out while you can.

  Wayne’s shoulders are hunched over, human origami, so that he’s as small and unnoticeable as possible while Baba rails at him. What should be sweet payback for years of being the big butt of Wayne’s cutting comments is painful to watch. Especially since I remember how Grace told me that she can only remember Baba yelling at the two of them, virtually nothing else from her childhood.

  To create a diversion, I step inside the office.

  “Syrah, do you need something?” asks Baba mildly, like he hasn’t just been berating Wayne.

  Maybe it’s Baba’s gentle tone, the way he normally speaks to me, that makes Wayne’s eyes go as cold and flat as a snake’s, his Chinese horoscope sign. Or maybe it’s just me. Whatever it is, Wayne snaps, “This is a private meeting. We’re discussing some important issues.”

  “Yes, I know.” My hands feel cold and sweaty as I look at Baba, not Wayne, for permission. “I can come back later.”

  “Actually, we’re finished,” says Baba.

  While Baba leans back in his chair, Wayne glowers at me. Instead of feeling intimidated, I feel sorry for him, this grown man who can only make himself feel like a bigger and better version of himself by whittling me down.

  “What do you need?” asks Baba.

  Quickly, I pop the CD into his office computer and project my PowerPoint presentation onto the large screen on the far wall. My manga drawing of Amanda on her snowboard is practically life-size. I swallow. Looking directly at my family, I tell them what I want: “I need your help.”

  “ ‘Ride for Our Lives’?” Wayne throws down his pen in disgust. “What? I thought we went over this already. We’re not subsidizing your career.”

  “Aren’t we subsidizing yours?” I counter softly, but my gaze doesn’t waver off him. However sorry I feel for Wayne, I won’t play the adoring little sister to his bullying big brother, and I definitely won’t be his willing punching bag anymore. It’s as if Bao-mu is by my side, not letting me forget that I am a Cheng, too, because in a voice that sounds so confident I don’t recognize myself, I say, “This has nothing to do with jumpstarting my career. It’s about saving lives for kids like Cindy and Jack.”

  At his children’s names, Wayne’s comeback dies, just as I knew it would when I scripted this Rude Q and A yesterday in my hsuan.

  “Mr. Fujimoro, who is an important DiaComm exec, may lose his three-year-old daughter, Amanda, because they can’t find a bone marrow match for her. She’s mixed race like Cindy and Jack, so it’s virtually impossible to find a donor.” I forward to the next slide with a pie chart. “As you see, minorities account for only eight percent of the National Bone Marrow Registry. Internationally, the numbers are even more pathetic. The chances of finding a donor match for biracial populations drop drastically because of the unique makeup of their DNA.” I focus on Wayne. “Which means that if Jack or Cindy ever got a disease like leukemia, unless they’re a good match for each other, they might not survive.”

  “So what’s your recommendation?” asks Baba, just like I knew he would.

  “We’re moving to Hong Kong so you can help define the vision of the mobile world in Asia. Like Grace says, what better expression of mobility”—I smile at Grace for giving me those words—“than world-class snowboarders? You saw for yourself how many people were pushing to get into the Nokia tent at Wicked in Whistler. And Nokia itself sponsored that event because of its large reach outside the hardcore snowboarding community.”

  “So you want to stage an event?” asks Mama, cocking her head to the side, already envisioning it.

  “That’s exactly right.” I play footage from the evening rail jam session at Wicked in Whistler. “We could organize a snowboarding event, a contest, and bring together the best of the best riders, focusing on the ethnic ones.”

  “What’s the payoff?” Baba asks.

  I nod because I was expecting that question and summarize the next slide. “With your new role representing American telecom interests in Asia, you have the opportunity to build on your reputation as a visionary in mobility and create a strong public image for your industry. You’ll be the original mobile pioneer talking to the next generation of mobile users.”

  In the perfect Hollywood world, an inspirational score would swell as my family falls out of their chairs and surrounds me, declaring that I’m brilliant. Rather than tell me that I’m a little sister worth having, Wayne says, “You’re just exploiting our name.”

  No translation necessary. Regardless of what I do, I’ll never be good enough for Wayne. Which hurts. Stupid, I know, but I haven’t prepared contingency plans for this particular objection. Then, like the sign I need right now, Mama toys with her jade pendant. Yu, the stone of heaven, its Chinese character made up of the word for leader, wang, and one tiny dot. That dot may be as small as a pearl, but it’s as powerful as a period, that full stop at the end of every sentence in my journal. And that’s what I picture now, my pearl of wisdom and power and confidence, because I refuse to topple over from Wayne’s verbal push.

  Like any wang, I take a chance, veer off-slide, off the groomed tracks of my prepared speech, and speak from the uncharted backcountry of my heart. Without needing Baba’s book, I quote from The Ethan Cheng Way: “ ‘Use whatever strengths you have.’ What does the Cheng name stand for? Paving the way, removing impossible obstacles, improving people’s lives.”

  At this point in my presentation, I thought Baba would turn to our resident PR expert and ask Grace for her thoughts, collect all the input before making a calculated decision. Costs versus benefits, risks versus rewards.

  But instead, Baba checks in with Mama, placing one hand on top of hers. “What do you think?”

  Without hesitating, Mama asks me, “How important is this to you?”

  “More important than anything I’ve ever done. Amanda is running out of time.”

  Like a team, my parents nod, and just like that, the Chengs are in. That’s it? I think. All I had to do was ask? But as I see Baba nodding to himself while he looks at the last slide, the one listing everything I still need help with, I know that it’s also because I came prepared and I knew what to ask for.

  “Unbelievable,” Wayne mutters under his breath, and collects his papers. “First, this makes no sense on any level—financial, personal, and medical—to get involved. And second, when does this need to happen?”

  “A week and a half now,” I answer.

  “Impossible.”

  “Mama’s event planner, who agreed to help with this event pro bono, says it’s possible,” I reply. “And she’s already made a lot of headway.”

  “It’s definitely possible,” says Mama confidently. As BusinessWeek put it, where there is a Cheng, there is a way. As if to prove it, she’s already flipping through her Day-Timer, every day blocked out with back-to-back appointments and meetings. I can hear her mind whirring, reprioritizing me to the top. “Not a problem.”

  “I have work to do.” As Wayne leaves, harrumphing out the door, a boy locked in a perpetual temper tantrum, I gaze after him wistfully. I think we all do because none of us speaks in the dead silence until Baba says, “You know, Wayne has a valid point.” I hear the Voice of Reason in Baba’s tone. “The chances of finding a donor even with this are very slim.”

  “I know.” My Voice of Hope counters, “But so were the chances of you finding me in the snow.”

  Satisfied, Baba nods, and Mama asks, “What do you want us to do?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” I say with a big smile. And then, at great length, I tell them.

  40

  My internal body clock wakes me the next
morning at 6:29. Why do I have to wake up now, be tantalized with the unrequited hope that Age will call and tell me he finally understands why I pushed him away? I wait another minute. No such call. If my letter couldn’t convince him that our friendship was worth resuscitating, nothing will. Crushed and defeated after waiting another full thirty minutes for a call I’m not getting—I’m a slow learner, what can I say?—I head downstairs to find Baba reading the Wall Street Journal, and Mama nibbling tiny bites of cottage cheese out of a bowl while poring over a Sotheby’s auction catalog. Odd because at this time of the morning, Baba’s usually working and Mama working out.

  “So your sixteenth birthday is coming up,” Baba says while I fix a bowl of oatmeal in the kitchen. Over his newspaper, he’s watching me so intently I think he’s about to interrogate me about my goals and objectives for the next year. Instead he asks, “What’s on your wish list?”

  “Nothing,” I tell them as I carry my hot bowl to the table and sit next to Mama. Last year, I had so many birthday wishes: a snowboard championship, a trip with Mama and Baba, a détente with Grace and Wayne, a girlfriend. More or less, I’ve gotten them all. What I never thought I’d have to wish for was Age.

  “Then how about this?” With a secret smile, Mama slides a piece of paper across the table to me. There’s a number written on it, and it’s followed by a lot of zeros. Six to be precise.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “The Cheng Family Foundation matching fund for Ride for Our Lives,” says Mama, whose smile blooms full on her face.

  “You’re kidding.” When I finally look up from the paper commitment, I catch my parents exchanging pleased looks. But when they start laughing like they’re the ones who won the financial aid lottery, I realize it’s not pride but pleasure I’m witnessing. Just as I’m about to jump up and down and thank them, Baba holds up one finger.

 

‹ Prev