Three Keys

by Kelly Yang

  Then Mrs. Welch said, “Did you guys know that Michael J. Fox and Arnold Schwarzenegger worked illegally in the US?”

  “Schwarzenegger?” Stuart asked.

  With that, my classmates instantly dropped immigration and launched into a debate on which was better, The Terminator or Terminator 2. I just smiled at Lupe and Mrs. Welch. They’d both surprised me so much that day. Their comments made me feel like this was my school, no matter what anyone scribbled on the walls.

  I found Jason sitting on the floor in the hall later that day, right below the spot where we’d rubbed off the awful graffiti.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Anything?” I asked, pointing to the wall.

  He scooted over so I could see. No new words. Thank goodness.

  “So you gonna tell me why you kicked me out the other day?” he asked. “I thought we were friends.…”

  “We are friends.” I sighed and sat down next to him. I had about ten minutes before Mrs. Welch sent someone to look for me in the bathroom. “If you really want to know, it has to do with what went down when Lupe and her mom worked for you guys. You kind of kicked her out first?”

  He started shaking his head—but suddenly he gasped, his face turning a mortified red.

  “That was ages ago,” he said. “I was only like eight years old!”

  I took a deep breath, not knowing how to explain to him that even if it seemed like a long time ago in his mind, to Lupe, the memory was still very much alive. The wound had solidified, growing more powerful and pungent, like my dad’s leftover oil.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “my mom’s the one who did that, not me. She’s the one who got all mad!”

  I turned to him. “Like she got mad at me at the motel that day?” I asked.

  There was a flash of guilt in Jason’s eyes. Then he looked down.

  “I’m sorry for that,” he muttered. He looked genuinely embarrassed, and I could tell he hadn’t forgotten about it either.

  “It’s okay,” I muttered back. I leaned over and bumped my shoulder with his. “See, that wasn’t so bad.”

  Jason shook his head. “But I can’t apologize to Lupe now. It’d be so weird.”

  I looked into Jason’s eyes and said, “It’s never too late to say sorry.” I started getting up, but he reached out and touched my arm.

  “Mia, you gotta understand, I was little. And I was scared.”

  I thought about this for a second.

  “It’s okay to be scared,” I finally told him. “But you know what’s even scarier? Realizing something is wrong and not saying anything.”

  Jason glanced at me as I reached to pull him up.

  “You can do it,” I said. “You’ve done it before.”

  I didn’t tell Lupe about what Jason said by the bathroom. She was already on edge walking home from school. I could almost hear her nerves rattling around in her stomach as she went over what she was going to say to the TV reporter in a few hours.

  We got back to find the living room in the manager’s quarters completely transformed. Not only was it dusted and vacuumed, my parents’ bed was gone, making the living room look more like a living room. I smiled, remembering what Lupe once said about how the definition of success in this country was if you had a living room without a bed in it. Well, we finally got there, even if it was only for an hour!

  Mrs. Q went and got some flowers. At 5:30, when the reporter was supposed to arrive, Lupe started freaking out.

  “I can’t do this,” she said, shaking her head and jiggling her legs. “I’ll do the newspaper interview, but I can’t go on TV!”

  We all gathered around, but Lupe wedged her chin between her knees and covered her face with her hands. Hank sat next to her on the couch and promised he wasn’t going to let the network use her real name or show her face—he had arranged it so that they would blur it out.

  “But what if they forget?” Lupe said into her knees. “I could get deported!”

  “I’m going to make sure they don’t forget,” Hank insisted. “That’s what I’m here for. I’m the Marketing Director, remember? You have nothing to worry about.”

  Lupe looked up at him. “That’s easy for you to say! You have papers!”

  I squeezed in beside Hank. “Hey, remember that card you wrote?” I said. “You can’t win if you don’t play?”

  Lupe nodded.

  I went to get it from my room. I found it next to my nightstand, the little card that had helped me so many times last year. Its edges were all worn, and the paper had yellowed, but it still had life to it. Gently, I placed it back in Lupe’s hand.

  “Now’s the time to play!” I said. “We have to hit them with everything we’ve got!”

  “But what if … what if …” Lupe’s lips trembled.

  Hank knelt down besides Lupe. “Remember how I got rejected for the line of credit? Thirty-one bank managers looked into my eyes and said, ‘We don’t like you, and we don’t trust you.’ ” Hank shook his head. “When I got to the last one, I was scared. I thought about giving up. And I’m not saying my fear was anything like your fear right now, because it’s not.”

  Lupe unwedged her chin, listening closely.

  “But I have fear too,” Hank went on. “I have fear just driving down the street, that’s why I put a sticker on my car. I’m afraid of being pulled over. I have fear walking into a grocery store, maybe they’re gonna accuse me of stealing something. I have fear just putting on a pair of sweatpants!” He pointed to his khaki dress slacks.

  I was wondering why he chose to wear them every day, even when it was 102 degrees outside and every single other person was in shorts.

  “I have fear every day,” Hank told Lupe. “But let me tell you something about fear: If you don’t control it, it controls you.”

  Lupe gazed down at the worn-out card. Then she pressed it tightly between her palms.

  “You ready to not let it control you?” Hank asked.

  Lupe’s eyes slid over to the hook on the wall where her father’s work jacket hung.

  “I’m going to be right there,” Hank said. “I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you. Do you trust me?”

  Lupe nodded, slowly.

  “I trust you.”

  Lupe’s interview aired the next day—on Halloween. We all crowded around the living room and watched the footage instead of going trick-or-treating. Lupe’s face was blurred out. You could only see her neck and her shirt. She was sitting in the manager’s quarters, wearing her NO ON PROP 187 shirt that we got at the march.

  “I just want my dad to stay here so we can be a family,” Lupe said in the interview. “My dad’s a good person. He’s never been in trouble before. He works so hard.”

  Her voice was bold and strong. It was like she’d bundled up all her worries and hid them behind cabinets and beds, the way my mom did with loose electrical cords.

  She went on to describe how her dad got up at the crack of dawn each day, climbed onto the roofs of houses and buildings under the hot sun, and never took a single day off—not even on Christmas, when someone (Mr. Yao, I happened to know) demanded José come over to fix the cable so his son (that would be Jason) could watch movies in his room.

  As the camera cut to pictures of her dad, I put my arm around Lupe. I was so proud of her. The last few weeks had been really hard, and I knew she was scared of going on TV. But tonight, she had enough courage to power a city.

  The reporter asked Lupe what she thought of Prop 187. “Do you think it had anything to do with your dad getting picked up?”

  “I think Prop 187 makes it okay to target immigrants,” Lupe replied. “And I don’t think that’s fair. We’re good people. We’re not here to make trouble. We want to work hard and succeed, just like everyone else.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Hank cheered, jumping up and clapping. “Well said!”

  The weeklies and my parents all hugged Lupe when the interview was over and congratulated her on what an amazing, awe-inspiring jo
b she did!

  “Girl, you nailed it,” I said, beaming at my best friend. Lupe grinned and gave me a high five.

  Just then, the phone rang.

  “Lupe!” my mom exclaimed. “It’s your mother!”

  When Lupe heard her mom’s voice on the phone, she started sobbing.

  “Mami!” she cried. “I thought you were dead!”

  As the two of them exchanged words in Spanish, my mom gripped my hand. I tried to make out what they were saying, but my Spanish was limited to the most basic check-in and check-out terms.

  “No, Mami, stay there,” Lupe said in English.

  I’d been hoping that Mrs. Garcia had made it back to the States and was just lost, wandering around somewhere in San Diego, but as Lupe hung up and then sat there, staring at the phone in her hands, I realized she must still be in Mexico.

  “She tried to cross over but the coyotes she hired were bad,” Lupe explained. “They took all her money but wouldn’t help her cross.…” Her voice trailed off.

  “That’s terrible!” I said.

  “She couldn’t call us because she didn’t have any money,” Lupe said. “And when she saw our flyer—”

  “Wait a minute, she saw our flyer??” I asked.

  Lupe nodded. “A woman at a bus station had one. That’s how my mom was finally able to call us—the woman let her use her phone.”

  I couldn’t believe that our little flyer somehow made it all the way down to Mexico and helped Mrs. Garcia get back in touch with us.

  “I’m so relieved she’s okay,” Lupe said, wiping a tear from her cheek. “I really thought she was dead.…”

  My mother scooped Lupe up into her arms and declared, “This calls for a celebration!” She turned to my dad and suggested we lock the front office and all go out for a Halloween dinner. Lupe and the weeklies and I immediately seconded this idea—it was even better than trick-or-treating.

  My dad said, “You guys go ahead. I’ll stay behind and watch the motel.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” I protested. “We never get to go out all together.”

  “But there’s so much to do,” he said, looking wearily toward the laundry room. I knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing he thought every night—that the towels needed to be washed, the sodas needed to be refilled in the vending machine. The recycling needed to be sorted. The pool leaves needed to be gathered. The list was as long as my arm.

  “Just this once,” my mom said. “The towels will still be there tomorrow.”

  My dad hesitated. “But it’ll be more expensive if we all go.…”

  Hank put a hand on my dad’s back. “Once in a while, you gotta live a little, buddy. Otherwise, you’ll burn out.”

  My dad shook his head. “I don’t believe in burnout. That’s an American thing.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes. Instead, I tried to put it to him another way.

  “What about celebrating with family?” I asked my dad. “Isn’t that a Chinese thing?”

  Lupe and I looked up at him with big, hopeful smiles on our faces, and my dad relented.

  “All right,” he said finally. “Let’s do it.”

  As we piled into the car, my mother smiled at my dad, practically giddy with excitement, and he laughed. It was a wonderful sight, seeing my parents both so happy, and I reached out with my hands, pretend clicked, and called out, “Eggplant!”

  This time, my mom held up two fingers and smiled at the camera.

  We took three cars to Country Family Café, a local diner a few blocks away. There were so many of us, the waitress had to move some tables together so we could all fit. After we ordered burgers, salads, and sweet potato fries for the table, Hank raised his glass of lemonade high up in the air.

  “To Lupe on TV!” he said, and we all cheered.

  She smiled. “No matter what happens, I’ll always remember what you guys have done for me.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I shook my head at her. “What’s this no matter what happens talk? There is only one what that’s going to happen, and that’s getting your dad out of jail and your mom back from Mexico!”

  “You really think so?” Lupe asked.

  “I know so!” I said. “You were fantastic!” I pointed to her and announced to the whole restaurant, “Future broadcast journalist right here, everybody!”

  Lupe’s cheeks flushed as several heads turned. “I wish my parents had seen it,” she said.

  “We’ll get a copy from the network,” Hank said. “José can watch it when he gets out. He’ll be so proud.”

  Our food came and I was just reaching for a fry when my best friend’s voice filled the room. We looked up and saw Lupe’s interview was airing again on the big TV in the diner! We erupted in cheers.

  “Wooo!!!” we shouted. “That’s our girl!”

  Two white construction workers in the booth next to us looked from the TV to Lupe. “Is that you?” they asked.

  Lupe froze.

  Everything got really quiet. My hands balled into fists and my stomach tightened as one of the guys got up and walked over to our table. Hank got out of the booth and stood up tall.

  “She’s with me,” he said, staring the guy down.

  My mom reached for my dad’s hand, and I held on to Lupe’s.

  But the guy simply turned to Lupe and said, “I just want to say, I’m sorry you’re going through this.”

  It took us a second to realize that was it. That’s all the man wanted to say. As Hank sat back down, Lupe thanked the man and offered him one of our sweet potato fries.

  Later that night, in our room, Lupe asked me if I could hear her heart hammering when the guy walked over to our table. I couldn’t; I was too busy listening to my own. It felt so weird to go from total terror to surprise kindness, kind of like one of those roller coasters where you think you’re going forward only to lunge backward. At the thought of roller coasters, I smiled. I wondered if we could finally go to Disneyland to ride Space Mountain after the trial. If we won. When we won. I turned my head on the pillow to face Lupe.

  “Hey, I’ve been wanting to tell you, but with everything going on …” I took a breath. “Jason feels really bad about what happened.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “You think you could ever forgive him?” I waited for her reply and gazed out the window, watching the clouds float across the glowing, full moon.

  “Well, he hasn’t exactly apologized,” Lupe finally said.

  “Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

  “Maybe.”

  I smiled at the moon, thinking about how nice that would be. Then maybe Jason and Lupe and I could go to Disneyland together!

  “Good night,” Lupe said, yawning.

  “Good night,” I whispered back.

  “You know what tomorrow is, right?” she asked. “Tomorrow is November.”

  I nodded in the darkness. In less than one week, Californians would vote to decide Lupe’s future. I hoped that when they went into the voting booths, they’d pleasantly surprise us, just like the kind man did at dinner tonight.

  Jason walked up to me and Lupe at school the next day.

  “You were so great on TV last night!” he said to her.

  Lupe and I glanced at each other. “How’d you know it was her?” I asked. “The face was blurred out.”

  “Please, I could recognize that living room anywhere,” he said. “I’ve been there a million times, remember?”

  Oh, yeah.

  Jason turned back to Lupe. His voice quieted as he looked down at his hands. “There’s something I need to say.… I’m sorry about the way I treated you, back when we were little. It was wrong.”

  Lupe lifted her eyes slowly.

  “I should have stood up for you,” Jason said.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I …” Jason swallowed. “I was too scared.” He glanced at me. “But as someone recently told me, what’s even scarier is not saying anything about it. I hope I’m not too late.”


  I marveled at him. He really had changed bucketloads.

  “Will you be my friend again?”

  Lupe nodded. As they shook hands, I put my arms around them both and looked on with pride.

  Later that day, Jason came over and helped me stuff letters to more congresswomen and congressmen while Hank took Lupe down to San Diego again to visit her dad. As he worked, Jason told me his family was going to move next week into a smaller house.

  “But you’ll still go to the same school, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, licking an envelope.

  “That’s good. Have you seen the new house?” I asked. “What’s it like?”

  Jason shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said simply. Without saying anything more, he reached over to turn on the radio in the living room. The voice of the radio show host filled the air.

  “And did you guys hear the interview last night of the little girl whose dad’s about to be deported?” the host asked.

  Jason and I both looked up. “Lupe’s on the radio!” I shrieked. Jason got so excited, he threw all the stamps in his hand up in the air. It was a confetti of stamps!

  “His name is José Garcia,” the host went on, “and he’s a cable repairman with no criminal record. His daughter says he’s never taken a single day off, not even on Christmas. Can you imagine that?”

  Jason shouted at the radio, “Hey! For your information, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was on!”

  Yeah, and it became Honey, I Have to Work on Christmas.

  “And now the poor guy’s facing deportation. If he gets deported, he may never see his daughter again. His daughter, by the way, what an incredible girl. Straight-A student, super articulate,” the radio host said. “I was so impressed with her. I’ll tell ya, I couldn’t do that when I was her age, stand there so poised and speak so eloquently on TV.”

  Jason and I grinned at each other. “Go, Lupe!” we cheered.

  The cohost spoke then. “It just goes to show, if Prop 187 passes, that’s the kind of kid we’re going to be kicking out of our schools. Is that what California really wants?”