by Kelly Yang
My mother looked away and didn’t say anything for a long time. A plane flew overhead, and the picture frames on the wall shook.
She looked in my eyes.
“Because it’s freer here,” she finally said, which didn’t make any sense. Nothing was free in America. Everything was so expensive.
“But, Mom—”
“One day, you’ll understand,” she said, kissing the top of my head. “Now go to sleep.”
I drifted to sleep, thinking about my cousins and missing them and hoping they were missing me back.
After my mother got fired from the restaurant, she got very serious about job hunting. She called it getting back on her horse. It was 1993 and she bought every Chinese newspaper she could find. She pored over the jobs section with a magnifying glass like a scientist. That’s when she came across an unusual listing.
A man named Michael Yao had put an ad out in the Chinese newspaper looking for an experienced motel manager. The ad said that he owned a little motel in Anaheim, California, and he was looking for someone to run the place. The job came with free boarding too! My mother jumped up and grabbed the phone—our rent then cost almost all my dad’s salary. (And who said things in America were free?)
To her surprise, Mr. Yao was equally enthusiastic. He didn’t seem to mind that my parents weren’t experienced and really liked the fact that they were a couple.
“Two people for the price of one,” he joked in his thick Taiwanese-accented Mandarin when we went over to his house the next day.
My parents smiled nervously while I tried to stay as still as I could and not screw it up for them, like I’d screwed up my mother’s restaurant job. We were sitting in the living room of Mr. Yao’s house, or rather, his mansion. I made myself look at the floor and not stare at the top of Mr. Yao’s head, which was all shiny under the light, like it had been painted in egg white.
The door opened, and a boy about my age walked in. He had on a T-shirt that said I don’t give a, and underneath it, a picture of a rat and a donkey. I raised an eyebrow.
“Jason,” Mr. Yao said to the boy. “Say hello.”
“Hi,” Jason muttered.
My parents smiled at Jason.
“What grade are you in?” they asked him in Chinese.
Jason replied in English, “I’m going into fifth grade.”
“Ah, same as Mia,” my mom said. She smiled at Mr. Yao. “Your son’s English is so good.” She turned to me. “Hear that, Mia? No accent.”
My cheeks burned. I felt my tongue in my mouth, like a limp lizard.
“Of course he speaks good English. He was born here,” Mr. Yao said. “He speaks native English.”
Native. I mouthed the word. I wondered if I worked really hard, would I also be able to speak native English one day? Or was that something completely off-limits for me? I looked over at my mom, who was shaking her head. Jason disappeared off to his room, and Mr. Yao asked my parents if they had any questions.
“Just to make sure, we can live at the motel for free?” my mom asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Yao said.
“And … what about …” My mom struggled to get the words out. She shook her head, embarrassed to say it. “Will we get paid?”
“Oh, right, payment,” Mr. Yao said, like it hadn’t dawned on him at all. “How’s five dollars a customer?”
I glanced at my mom. I could tell that she was doing math in her head because she always got this dreamy smile on her face.
“Thirty rooms at five dollars a room—that’s a hundred and fifty dollars a night,” my mom said, her eyes widening. She looked at my dad. “That’s a lot of money!”
It was a humongous amount of money. We could buy hamburgers every day, one for each of us—we wouldn’t even need to share!
“When can you start?” Mr. Yao asked.
“Tomorrow,” my mom and dad blurted out at the exact same time.
Mr. Yao laughed.
As my parents got up to shake his hands, Mr. Yao muttered, “I have to warn you. It’s not the nicest motel in the world.”
My parents nodded. I could tell it made no difference to them what the motel looked like. It could look like the inside of a Greyhound bus toilet for all we cared; at $150 a day plus free rent, we were in.
Three Keys was a book that took me many drafts to write, even though I’ve been living and breathing it for many years. I wanted to get the emotions of Mia and Lupe just right, because those feelings—worrying about one’s immigration status, being preoccupied by doubts and fears I couldn’t say out loud to my classmates but sat very much in the pit of my stomach, wondering whether I was “American enough,” whether I was “too American,” “not Chinese enough,” “too Chinese”—were fears I had growing up, yet I never saw represented in any of the books I read.
In finding the courage to write about these experiences and finally giving voice to these emotions, I want to thank the following people, without whom this book would not exist:
First and foremost, my literary agent, Tina Dubois, who read and encouraged me with each draft. Every day, when I sit at my computer, pouring my most vulnerable self into my words, I picture you on the other end reading them, and it fills me with such comfort and joy. I’m so grateful to have you as my agent.
To my editor, Amanda Maciel, thank you for guiding me with each draft. Thank you for getting this story, getting the characters, and getting me. It is pure joy working with you. Your thoroughness and thoughtfulness, love of character, and ability to unlock what still needs to be done on a story with a single question blows me away. I am so lucky to have you as my editor—thank you for embracing this book with your whole heart.
To my greater Scholastic family: Talia Seidenfeld, my publisher David Levithan, my amazing publicist Lauren Donovan (LOVE YOU!), Ellie Berger, Erin Berger, Rachel Feld, Julia Eisler, Lizette Serrano, Emily Heddleson, and Danielle Yadao: Thank you so much for championing me and my books!
To Maike Plenzke and Maeve Norton, who once again did an amazing job with the cover!!! Maike, your cover art made Mia, Lupe, and Jason come to life in a way that took my breath away! I’m so so beyond grateful to get to work with you!!!
To John Schumacher, thank you for giving Front Desk such an enthusiastic, warm hug and booktalking it to librarians and kids all over the country!!! Your support means everything to me!!! Thank you for sharing your love of books with the world and championing reading and librarians!!!
To all the Front Desk fans, I am so humbled by the response to Front Desk, and I take the responsibility to carry on Mia’s story very seriously. Front Desk was a book that got rejected by every publisher but Scholastic. The reason that Three Keys exists is because of YOU. Thank you to all the librarians and teachers who read, recommended, taught, and talked about Front Desk—you made this happen. Thank you for sending such a strong message that you want books about immigrants, that you CARE about diversity, and that kids from all walks of life deserve to see themselves represented in books.
As a teacher, some of the classroom scenes were heartbreaking to write, but they reflect the sentiment and mind-set of California at that time. I am grateful to my own elementary school teachers, who thankfully never treated me the way Mrs. Welch did. I am also grateful for my thirteen years in the classroom as a writing teacher and my dear friends and colleagues at the Kelly Yang Project, John Chew and Paul Smith, for their continued support and encouragement.
To my greater ICM team, John Burnham, Ava Greenfield, Roxane Edouard, Ron Bernstein, Bryan Diperstein, Alicia Gordon, Tamara Kawar, Morgan Woods, and Alyssa Weinberger, thank you for bringing me and my stories to the world. John, thank you for working tirelessly on my deals every day. I am honored to be one of your clients.
Thank you to my publishers around the globe—Walker Books, Kim Dong, Dipper, Omnibook, Editorial Lectura Colaborativa, and Porteghaal Publishing. To my lawyer, Richard Thompson, thank you for your wisdom and your guidance. Thank you for going on this wild journey with me. I
t comforts me so that I have you in my corner.
Many thanks to my dear friends and early readers Wayne Wang, Alan Gasmer, Ian Bryce, Irene Yeung, Peter Jaysen, and Alex Slater. A million thanks to Arthur Levine and Nick Thomas for acquiring this book. Major thanks as well to Yanelli Guerrero and Daniela Guerrero, as well as to Dr. Stephany Cuevas for reading and reviewing an early draft of Three Keys.
I am forever grateful to my dear friends Angela Chan and Anoop Prasad of the Asian Law Caucus for their knowledge and insight into immigration law. The Asian Law Caucus runs free legal clinics at their center in San Francisco every week in the areas of immigration, particularly deportation, housing, workers’ rights, criminal justice, national security, and civil rights. If you or a relative are experiencing legal issues surrounding immigration and need assistance, please contact (415) 896-1701 or go to: advancingjustice-alc.org.
To my family, particularly my mom and dad, who came to this country with $200 in their pockets and toiled day and night so I might have a better future. Thank you for stepping bravely into the unknown with me and keeping me warm with love throughout all the ups and downs. To my kids, Eliot, Tilden, and Nina, thank you for cheering Mommy on. Eliot, thank you for reading every draft of Three Keys and telling me your thoughts on each one.
To my husband, Steve, thanks for listening to my stories and always making me feel like I’m the most entertaining girl in the room. To my dear friend and mentor, Paul Cummins, thank you for inspiring us all. I cherish our friendship deeply.
Finally, I would like to thank my school librarians. I am living, walking proof in the power of librarians to change lives. In Three Keys, Mia’s school lets go of their school librarian due to budget cuts, and Mia suffers immensely in the aftermath. I put that scene in because I am profoundly worried about budget cuts affecting librarians, because if it weren’t for school librarians, I would not be here today.
I hope my books bring hope and comfort to children of all different backgrounds and walks of life, just as the librarians in my school brought me.
KELLY YANG is the author of Front Desk, which won the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by multiple organizations, including NPR, the Washington Post, and the New York Public Library. Yang’s family immigrated to the United States from China when she was young, and she grew up in California, in circumstances very similar to those of Mia Tang. She went to college at the age of thirteen, eventually graduating from UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School. She is the founder of the Kelly Yang Project, a leading writing and debating program for children in Asia and the United States. She has written for the South China Morning Post, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic. To learn more about her and the Front Desk books, visit frontdeskthebook.com.
Copyright © 2020 by Yang Yang
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While inspired by real events and historical characters, this is a work of fiction and does not claim to be historically accurate or portray factual events or relationships. Please keep in mind that references to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales may not be factually accurate, but rather fictionalized by the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, September 2020
Jacket art © 2020 by Maike Plenzke
Jacket design by Maeve Norton
Author photo by Denise Pontak
e-ISBN 978-1-338-64816-4
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