500 Words or Less
Page 2
of cheating husbands,
and of the woman
who they saw
as “the other.”
Without Mom
there were no more answers,
nor questions either.
At least, not questions
I wanted to ask anyone
out loud.
Xiaoling
I loved Xiaoling, though
not like a mother.
She didn’t pretend
to be my mom.
She tiptoed around the issue of discipline
and turned the other way when I turned up
at ten a.m. on a Sunday morning.
I wondered if Xiaoling was happy
here in America,
with us,
with my dad.
I wondered if she thought she made the right decision,
to pack her bags,
her son,
her life,
and fly business class to America
to marry a strange, short but successful
software engineer.
I wondered if she loved my dad,
if she saw something in him
that Mom and I
did not.
Dinner
Dad drank
Chianti with his
Szechuan-style steak.
He savored every second.
I sat there
with a polished-off plate
watching Xiaoling pour
Dad another glass.
Silence smothered the table.
It choked the air.
It felt lonelier
than being alone.
Mom never made us
sit at this table.
Dad wafted the fresh pour.
He set down the wine,
and then he said,
“How are your grades?”
“They’re still As,”
I said,
moving the tines of a fork
across oil slicks and streaks of sauce
on an otherwise
white plate.
He slowly chewed
his steak
and said,
“Senior year counts.
Make sure
they stay
that way.”
If my body could dive
into a pile of textbooks
and swim around
and surface at the end
of the year
with straight As
wrung from my body,
then maybe I could be
the perfect daughter to Dad
and Xiaoling.
But I could feel
the parts of Mom
that slid over my shoulders
seeped into my skin,
sat in this chair,
restless
under a Chihuly sculpture
that she selected.
Like a fine wine
When I told my dad
I was applying early
decision to Princeton,
he responded with
“Very good selection,”
as if I had ordered
a fine bottle of wine.
Mom poured herself another
From a bottle of chardonnay
on one of the last nights
before she disappeared.
I side-eyed her behavior,
but she didn’t notice.
She’s stopped noticing
a lot of things.
Like how much
I wanted her
to be the mom
who couldn’t
French braid
my hair
because she sucked
at it,
not the mom
who couldn’t
French braid
my hair
because she was
drunk.
She teetered over to the table
cast in orange light.
“What are you working on?”
“Trig,” I grunted.
She swirled her glass.
“I can help you with that,” she said brightly.
“I know. But I’ve got this.”
I scratched out another answer.
“When I was your age . . .”
“Mom.” I pointed to the textbook
and reached for a pair of earbuds.
She caught my hand.
Her skin felt raw.
“Let me sit here with you.
I promise
I’ll be quiet.”
I pulled away from her.
“Fine.”
Rain smattered against the windows
and drizzled down the drainpipe.
And an hour later, Mom prattled away
about the gossip at the tennis club.
The recent divorcée dating a younger man.
“Twenty-five.”
The hair color of the saleswoman
at Nordstrom.
“Silver with lavender hues.”
Mom mused
about whether she should go back
to grad school.
Finish the dissertation
she never started.
Or maybe learn how to code.
“I could work for a start-up, Nic.”
She was like the evening news,
the hum of a steady voice,
drowning against the sound of rain.
I finished all thirty problems in trig
and moved on to US History.
Dad came home at midnight.
His eyes glazed over Mom
slumped in a chair
and an empty bottle of wine.
“Did you finish your homework?”
“Just did,” I said.
He nodded. “Get some sleep.
It’s a school night.”
He padded back down the hall.
“I can drive you to school tomorrow,”
Mom mumbled.
I packed away my notebooks
and kissed her on the forehead.
“Go to bed,” I whispered,
and she reached for my hand
and squeezed it.
In my room I texted Kitty.
Can I get a ride in the morning?
It’s already morning,
she texted back.
Kitty texted me
Twice
during the awkward
family dinner.
Ohmygod. Ohmy
God. My parents are letting
me out of the house.
And
The twins are throwing
a party. Please, please
say you’ll go.
An hour later,
with Kitty’s persistence,
I found my way
into an outfit.
I looked like a girl
taking a last stand
on summer.
A cotton shirt
that slipped down my shoulder.
Boy shorts and Rainbows.
A single messy braid
and a makeupless face except for
the dark smudges of eyeliner
outlined over and over again.
“Hot” is all
Kitty said
as she took one look
at me and headed to the car.
Kitty drove
in six-inch heels,
and a miniskirt
that was more mini
than skirt.
“Kitty, seriously,
can you even drive?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Of course I can.
I’m an awesome driver.
I aced my driver’s test,
and I was wearing
these same shoes.”
I worried about all
the poor choices
I had made,
including getting into this car
with Kitty.
“Why would you wear those
to
your driver’s test?”
Kitty shrugged. “Because they were new.”
On not being best friends
If I were thirteen and had to give
one half of a “best friend” necklace,
a broken heart with
be
fri
on one half and
st
end
on the other,
then obviously I’d give it to Kitty.
She was more than a best friend.
But Kitty had an actual best friend.
Her name was Sarah.
Kitty and Sarah have lived next door
to each other
their whole lives,
so I guess that made them
best friends.
Sarah was one year older than us.
So now she’s in college
at Sarah Lawrence.
Sarah went to Sarah Lawrence.
I mean, it’s a common name
and it’s a good school, but
who does that?
Like, were there any Stanfords
at Stanford?
How many Sarahs
attended Sarah Lawrence?
Was it higher than average?
Were there more Sarahs per capita
at Sarah Lawrence
than at any other school?
I tried to be friends with Sarah,
but we didn’t click,
not in the same way
that Kitty and I clicked.
Maybe it was because
Kitty and I
were opposites.
Kitty was a constant bundle
of nervous energy.
It wasn’t usually noticeable until
it was quiet,
and then she was a constant buzz,
like an appliance.
If Kitty were to describe me
She would say, “Nic has black hair
that sometimes smells like a fruit smoothie.”
Actually, no, it’s not black.
It has reddish highlights
and walnut lowlights,
the kind of color that women pay
two hundred dollars
to achieve.
If Nic were an animal, she’d be a gazelle.
She has an elegance
like a dancer, and maybe
if she didn’t hate leotards and pink tights
she would have turned into one.
(Okay, maybe Kitty wouldn’t compare me to
a gazelle.
Maybe she’d say I’m more like
an inchworm,
calculated, precise, inconsequential.)
I knew what Kitty would definitely say, though, because
she was obsessed, in a slightly
politically incorrect
kind of way,
with my genetic makeup.
She’d say that Nic was one of those girls,
who was clearly only half-Asian,
because she looked
less than 100 percent White, and
less than 100 percent Chinese.
She’d say I’m lucky because
half-Asians were always prettier than
white girls like her.
I’d say, “Not always. Remember Tory
in second grade?
She was funny-looking,
and not in a good way.”
Kitty would wrinkle her nose
and give me a look.
“Everyone has beauty, Nic.”
Kitty’s first party
Jenny Pugh—one half of the Pugh twins—
wore a strapless gold dress
that clung to all the wrong curves.
She marched toward us,
clomping her Louboutins
across the marble floor.
“Oh, you’re here.”
Jenny smelled sweet,
like lilacs and cotton candy
and a pitcher of margaritas.
I smiled on the outside.
“Thanks for the invite.”
“I didn’t invite you,” Jenny replied.
She glanced over at Kitty
as if the words extended to her
by default.
“I know,” I said.
I stood unflinching,
but part of me
already wanted
to leave.
But this was Kitty’s first party,
and she didn’t deserve to be ostracized
just because she was
loyal and kind
and friends with me.
Jenny huffed.
“Why are you here?
After what you did
to Ben.
He transferred to Prep,
you know.”
The red Solo cup tipped
precariously in her hand.
It smelled fruity
and flammable.
Of course I knew.
I tried calling and texting
after Jordan’s party.
I waited by my phone, hoping
that every
single
text
would be
from Ben.
They never were.
I drove to Ben’s house
and saw a moving truck
haul away his family’s belongings.
I saw an agent ram a FOR SALE sign
into the lawn.
Ben no longer went
to Meydenbauer, but
he wasn’t a million miles away.
He was living at an estate
that his mother inherited
somewhere on the edge
of town.
The move had been planned
for months, but
I didn’t think it was possible
with all the technology around us
for someone to disappear
so easily
from our lives.
But with Ben,
I guess it wasn’t that hard.
To Ben,
I no longer existed.
“He won’t even return my texts.”
Jenny pouted.
“You and me both,”
I said.
Jenny was not amused.
“Who the hell transfers schools
before their senior year?”
“It was his parents,” Kitty said.
“They thought he would have
a better shot at an Ivy.”
Kitty shrugged, as if to say,
Wouldn’t you have done the same?
“But the kids at Prep
are freaks,”
Jenny said.
Ben left the circles of friends
he held together.
He abandoned sports teams.
He resigned from student government.
He walked away from everyone,
but he drove away from me.
Jenny scoffed
and glared at me
until her twin sister, Audrey,
wobbled down a grand staircase
slurring indiscernible words,
at a very discernible volume.
“How will Audrey ever survive
college without me?”
Jenny muttered,
clomping her way
to her twin.
I grabbed Kitty by the arm.
“Let’s go find the drinks.”
I navigated our way around
a huddle of senior girls
who loitered in the living room.
Kitty waved at all of them.
A few half smiled in return.
But as I walked by,
they lowered their voices;
they tightened their circle.
They all averted their eyes.
I imagined the thought bubbles
that hovered over their heads.
I thought maybe I would see
screams and taunts
and flashes of
obscenities.
But when the girls
glanced back up,
all I could see
were eight eyes blinking
beneath an empty bubble
because there was nothing
left to say.
I was the ghost
of my former self
who most people
saw right through.
We found handles
Of cheap vodka, rum, and whiskey
wafting toxic smells
on the kitchen counter.
“What do you want?”
I said to Kitty.
Her eyes grew wide.
“Anything. I can have anything?”
“Anything that can be mixed
with what’s here.”
I waved my hand across
a garden variety of mixers—
Diet Coke, Red Bull,
Cran-Apple juice, Crystal Light,
and a bottle of organic soda,
flavor unknown.
Kitty started pouring
everything—
and I mean everything,
including the dredges of empty bottles—
into a plastic cup.
“What are you doing?”
I said.
“It’s my Kitty drink!”
“It’s a suicide,”
I said.
She shrugged, holding up her cup,
admiring the concoction for a moment
before taking a large gulp.
Then she coughed
and sputtered
and said,
“I think it needs more Diet Coke.”
I nodded apprehensively.
“I think you’d better hand over your keys.”
Kitty nodded willingly.
“Okay. You’re the expert
on these things.”
“An expert
on parties
or on alcohol?”
I asked.
She took another gulp
but didn’t answer.
I didn’t want
to be considered
an expert on either.
Both left me
with an aftertaste
that felt like sadness.
I poured myself
a generous cup full
of mystery-flavored
organic soda
and pocketed
Kitty’s keys.
What happens at a Meydenbauer party
“Now what?” Kitty asked.
“You’re pretty much
looking at it.”
Through the sliding glass door,
guys in fluorescent tanks
with unwavering concentration
battled it out over
a game of beer pong.
The coffee table
in front of a flat-screen
had been removed
to make room
for a dance floor.
Sophomore and junior girls
were going fucking nuts
dancing
to R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix),”
while a couch full of guys
from the JV football team
sat on a sectional and stared.