by Susan Tan
When we got to the rink, Ye Ye went to rent us skates.
“Your grandpa’s really nice,” Alien-Face said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I was confused, though,” he went on, “because when you called, you said your grandpa was taking you roller-skating, so I’d thought we were going with your other grandpa—the one who wears a bow tie. You don’t call this grandpa ‘Grandpa,’ right?”
“Well, no.…” I took a deep breath. “I call him the Chinese word for ‘Grandpa.’ Which is ‘Ye Ye,’” I said, saying the last part quickly.
“How do you say it again?” he asked.
“Ye Ye,” I said. And he repeated it.
“Perfect,” I said, impressed.
“Great!” he said. “Also, did you see the dinosaur sticker I put on the back of my helmet?”
Suddenly, I felt better.
And very excited to roller-skate.
* * *
We put on our skates and our helmets, and it turns out that Alien-Face’s mom makes him wear elbow pads and kneepads too, so I didn’t feel funny about wearing mine at all.
Ye Ye is REALLY good at making turns, and he IS an expert at high-fiving whenever we skate by. And Alien-Face twirled, and we made up a game where you did different dares (but you could say no, and they had to be safe, Ye Ye said). So we’d dare each other to try to skate backward or to skate on one leg, and it was all very fun.
And when I fell and Ye Ye said, “Ay yah!” Alien-Face didn’t seem to mind.
We skated for a loooong time, and we didn’t want to leave. But Ye Ye said it was getting late, plus were we hungry? (The answer to that was “yes!”)
“What would you like to eat?” Ye Ye asked as he helped us to buckle into our seats. “I saw a lot of restaurants on our way here—there’s sushi, and a pizza restaurant, and something called Burger Planet.”
Alien-Face and I both gasped.
“Burger Planet!” we said.
“Wah!” Ye Ye said. “So excited! What’s Burger Planet?”
“It’s the best place EVER,” I said. “It has burgers with a secret special sauce that they only make there, and French fries and chocolate milk shakes, and a playground inside, though that’s for little kids. But Mom NEVER lets me go.”
“Mine neither,” Alien-Face said. “Which is ridiculous, because the commercials always say that everyone can find something to love at Burger Planet. So my parents would definitely like it too.”
“Exactly!” I said. “Everyone loves Burger Planet. Please, Ye Ye?” I asked, clasping my hands together under my chin and giving him my biggest smile.
“Yes, please, Ye Ye?” Alien-Face also gave him his biggest smile and put his hands under his chin, just like I did.
Ye Ye laughed. “Okay, but only if it isn’t too far. I’ll call your dad for directions.”
Alien-Face and I clapped our hands and cheered.
Ye Ye called, and I heard “Burger Planet-ah.” And even though Alien-Face had thought “Ye Ye” was a neat name, I hoped that he wasn’t paying attention, in case he thought Chinese sounded funny. (Not paying attention is a BIG Theme with Alien-Face, because he gets distracted A LOT, especially during math.) But apparently that only applies to school. “Burger Planet-ah?” he asked. “Why does he say it like that?”
“That’s just what you do in Chinese,” I said quietly. “You add ‘ah’ to the end of English words.”
“Huh,” he said. “So what game should we play in the car?”
And I smiled. Because car games are always excellent.
By the time Ye Ye got the directions, Alien-Face and I were still trying to come up with a new game. So Ye Ye dared us to chant “Burger Planet” and not stop until we got there.
“No!” Alien-Face said suddenly. “We should chant Burger Planet-ah!”
“YES,” I said.
And we did.
Though by the time we got there, I think Ye Ye wished he’d picked a different dare.
* * *
Burger Planet has brightly colored booths, and you order at a long counter. I wasn’t going to order the special kids’ Out of This World Box (which has food plus a toy inside). I didn’t want Alien-Face to laugh at me, since we’re going to be fourth graders soon and too big for special kids’ meals. So I tried to ignore the big display of all the toys they have.
Until I saw Alien-Face also looking at them out of the corner of his eye.
“I’ll get an Out of This World Box if you will,” I said.
“YES,” he said.
Then Ye Ye said we could also get chocolate milk shakes, and it was pretty much the best thing ever.
Ye Ye carried all our food over on a tray to one of the booths and made sure we had everything we needed. He raised an eyebrow when he realized the burger was wrapped in paper. But then he shrugged and took a bite.
“This is delicious!” he said, surprised. “What is this sauce? I have to take your Nai Nai here.”
I giggled and then explained that “Nai Nai” was the Chinese word for “Grandma” before Alien-Face even had to ask.
We were all tired by the time Ye Ye drove us home, so Ye Ye put on some pretty music. Alien-Face and I started talking about the third-grade relay race, which is happening just next week.
“I think our class will do a good job,” he said. “Especially because we have all the people who do sports, like John and Yuki and Melvin, though I don’t think he can play basketball right now with his broken arm. But he’s a pretty good runner. And then we have Colleen and Melissa. Did you know Melissa’s supposed to be really good at soccer?” he asked.
“Hmmm,” I said, pressing my lips together. “I didn’t.”
Alien-Face gave me a funny look.
“Why don’t you like Melissa?” he asked after a minute.
“Well,” I said slowly. “It’s not that I don’t like her. It’s just that I don’t think she likes me, and she never talks to me, and she’s always whispering to Colleen and giggling. And, well … I think she’s Plotting to take Colleen away, and to make Colleen her best friend instead of mine.” I said the last part very quickly, and I waited for him to gasp because Evil Plots are very Dramatic.
But Alien-Face McGee laughed.
“She’s not Plotting,” he said. “She’s just shy.”
“What?!” I turned to stare at him. “No, she’s not. She just doesn’t like me.”
“Nooooo,” Alien-Face said slowly. “She’s just shy. That’s why she’s so quiet all the time. And Colleen’s really nice to her, and she’s really good at making people feel like they can talk. You know that,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re her best friend.”
All I could do was blink. I waited for a sign that Alien-Face was joking or making things up.
But I didn’t see any.
We were quiet for a minute after that.
I thought about Alien-Face McGee, sitting by the window across from me.
And all the things he’d noticed—about Melissa, and about Colleen, the person I’m supposed to know the best.
I thought about all the things that I hadn’t noticed or paid attention to.
And suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about Colleen, or even Melissa, anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I said, softly, looking at the seat in front of me, “that I hurt your feelings at recess. I don’t play with you just because Colleen isn’t there. I play with you because it’s fun. Because you’re a really good friend.”
“Thanks,” Alien-Face said quietly. “You’re a good friend too.” And then he grinned. “Also, this day has been the BEST. Next time, you should come over to my house, and we can make snow cones with my dad’s machine.”
“YES,” I said.
And, suddenly, there was a lot to talk about again.
* * *
On Monday, Colleen said, “Cilla!” when I got on the bus, like she always does. “What did you do this weekend? Did you go to Roller Kingdom with your Ye
Ye?”
“Yes,” I said, bouncing up and down, because Colleen would LOVE my Roller Kingdom stories, and I opened my mouth to tell her and then … I stopped.
“Um…,” I said. Suddenly, I didn’t know what to say, and I realized that I was getting funny and blinking a lot.
Like Colleen had been doing with me.
All because I didn’t want to hurt Colleen’s feelings.
“Um,” I said again. “Well, I did go to Roller Kingdom. And then to Burger Planet. But, since you couldn’t come, um, Alien-Face did instead.”
“Oh,” Colleen said. And she blinked and crossed her arms and was quiet for a minute. “So, what skating tricks did you guys do?” she asked. Her voice was fast and funny, like she didn’t care.
“Just some ones we made up,” I said. I wondered if she was mad at me.
“Did you make up games in the ball pit, like we always do?” she asked in that same voice. “Were his games more fun than mine?”
And it all made sense.
Colleen was jealous. Just like I was jealous of Melissa. And maybe she worried that Alien-Face would be my best friend, and she wouldn’t anymore.
But I knew, all of a sudden, that that’s not how it works.
I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder.
“No one can be you, Colleen,” I said.
Slowly, her arms uncrossed, and she put a hand on mine.
“Thanks, Cilla,” she said, her normal Colleen-voice back. “No one can be you, either.”
The bus rolled on, and we sat there, talking and laughing about our weekends, and soccer, and Burger Planet.
Two best friends.
* * *
A few days later, Ye Ye did take Nai Nai to Burger Planet, just like he’d said he would.
Nai Nai said the hamburgers were cooked too much.
But she liked the French fries. And the special sauce.
Which makes sense.
Because there are some things that everyone can understand. Like how great roller-skating is, and new games and fun times with your Ye Ye. And even getting a little jealous when your friends make new ones. And how you have to learn that just because they make new friends, it doesn’t mean they’re not yours anymore.
And of course, that everyone can find something to love at Burger Planet-ah.
9
TEAMWORK ISN’T (ALL THAT) BAD
Usually I don’t really like teamwork.
The idea of it is nice, of course. But in school, whenever a teacher says “teamwork,” you know it means there’s going to be a project with lots of other kids, and sometimes these can be fun (when they’re with Colleen or Alien-Face, for example), but sometimes they’re stressful (when you’re with Tim #2 or John Mulligan, for example, because they’ll just be silly and then you have to do their work for them).
Or teamwork comes up in gym class when it comes to things like kickball, and I think we’ve already covered my feelings on kickball.
So I was NOT looking forward to the big third-grade relay race, with all the third-grade classes competing against each other.
Because Mr. Flight said it was all about class spirit and teamwork, and everyone knows what that means.
The morning of the race, I wondered if I could pretend I was sick. But that didn’t work, and my mom just said, “Let’s go, Young Lady,” when I told her I might be getting a cold or pneumonia or the bubonic plague so should probably stay home to be safe.
Then, when Mr. Flight said, “Okay—it’s time!” I wondered if I could pretend to faint or trip and say my leg was broken or falling off.
But Colleen was next to me bouncing up and down and saying, “I’m so excited!” So the next thing I knew, I was outside.
There were A LOT of students on the field because we have three third-grade classrooms, each with a team name that the teachers had picked out for us—Mr. Flight’s Falcons, Ms. Scofield’s Sea Horses, and Mr. Garabaldi’s Gerbils. These were GREAT names, so at least there was something good about this race, I told myself.
Ms. Gladden, our gym teacher, got up on a crate to start organizing the race. Even though I don’t like gym, I love Ms. Gladden—she’s funny and strong, and she likes to use BIG and fancy terms like “brave souls,” and “the victors” and “a test of agility,” which I usually appreciate because they add Drama. But when Ms. Gladden started using words like these that morning, they actually just made my stomach feel even more fluttery.
“All right, third graders,” Ms. Gladden shouted. “Are you ready for the big one, the stuff of legends, the third-grade RELAY RACE?!” Everyone cheered so I tried to cheer too, but I didn’t do that great a job. Which is too bad because a legend is a type of Classic, so I should have been cheering loudest of all.
“Okay, here are the rules,” Ms. Gladden went on. “Every orange cone on the field marks a different activity. The first class to complete all activities and to make it across the finish line in the final frog-jumping dash will win.”
Tim #2, who loves sports, said, “Awesome!”
“Are you ready, third graders?” Ms. Gladden shouted.
And John Mulligan jumped up and down and said, “I was born ready.”
He and Tim #2 were smiling, and lots of the third graders were looking excited.
“Now, to start,” Ms. Gladden said, “I’m going to tell you about all the activities, and I’ll give you a chance to volunteer for the game you’ll compete in. There’s going to be a little bit of everything—racing, basketball, even some soccer.” (“Yes!” I heard Colleen whisper next to me.)
I tried to smile for her, but it was hard because I’m not good at ANY of those things.
“We’ll have some activities where we’ll double up, so everyone gets a chance,” Ms. Gladden explained. “But every student will need to participate in at least one activity. And I want to hear LOTS of cheering. Remember, a good team sticks together, because everyone contributes to the win.”
And I swear that I heard John Mulligan say, “Yeah, right,” and I saw him roll his eyes and look at Melvin and his giant (AMAZING, bright green) cast. And I thought I saw other skeptical looks too, and saw a few people look my way, and already I knew that Ms. Gladden was wrong. I would NOT make a good team member, and no one wanted to stick together if it meant having me play. So I tried to make myself smaller where I stood.
Ms. Gladden came to sort us into activities, class by class, starting with ours.
“Now, to begin,” she said, “we’ll need three brave souls to compete in the opening zigzagged relay.”
“Me, me!” I saw Tim #2, John Mulligan, Lina Mirza, and a few other kids raising their hands, because they love running.
“Lina, John, and Tim,” Ms. Gladden said.
“Then,” she continued, “there’s the basketball bog challenge. In this race, you’ll need to make five shots before moving on to the next round.” Melvin sighed and looked unhappily at the ground, and she picked Jeannie Kishi and Becky Davidow.
The list of activities went on and on. Colleen volunteered for soccer ball kicking, Alien-Face volunteered for the balance beam race, and Melissa volunteered for the final frog-jumping dash. And Melvin kept sighing because Ms. Gladden said he couldn’t do the balance beams or anything with jumping, because he might fall and hurt his arm.
We were getting toward the end, and there weren’t many activities left, and I wondered if maybe Ms. Gladden would make an exception and not make us all participate, because everyone knew I would NOT be contributing to the win. I could see Melvin also looking kind of nervous, and John was saying, “Can I do three things? I’ll win them all!” And I wondered if there would be something for me, and—
Then Ms. Gladden said, “Now, in the second-to-last activity, I’ll need two brave souls from each class to participate in … the chopstick race!”
“Huh,” I said.
“You will have to make it across half the field, racing as you hold a peeled grape in a pair of chopsticks,” Ms. Gladden went
on. “Then, you will pass the grape off to your teammate, using only your chopsticks, and your teammate will finish the race. But if the grape is dropped at any point, both runners will have to start again at the other side of the field.”
“Wow,” Tim #2 said, “that’s hard.”
“Wait.” Melvin looked at me. “That’s all?”
“I … I think so?” I said. Melvin looked at his cast hand, wiggled his fingers, and grinned.
“So, any volunteers?” Ms. Gladden asked.
Melvin and I looked at each other. Then, together, we raised our hands.
“I was born ready,” Melvin said.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Me too.”
The other classrooms were sorted into activities, and soon, Ms. Gladden was blowing her whistle, and we went to take our places. I followed Melvin toward our spot in the field. Just behind me was Melissa, who would be starting the final frog-jumping run close by us.
She didn’t look like she wanted to talk.
So I almost kept going, staying just ahead of her.
But I remembered what Alien-Face McGee had said.
And I noticed her frowning look. The one she has anytime she has to give a book report in front of the class, or share her work with the table.
So I slowed down, and in a moment, we were walking side by side.
“You’re going to be great at the dash,” I said.
“Really?” She looked at me, surprised.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen you play hopping games at recess. You’re so fast.”
“Thanks.” She tried to smile but didn’t quite lose that worried look. “I just wish there weren’t so many people watching. Having other people around can make me really nervous sometimes. I’m kind of shy. I even get scared before every soccer game.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. And then, “You know … I’m shy too.”
“What?!” Melissa actually stopped walking. “But,” she said, “but it seems like you always know what to say.”
“Wow,” I said. That was a BIG compliment. “Thank you.” I grinned.
“I never know what to say,” Melissa went on. “And sometimes I really want to tell someone what I think or want, and I just can’t.”