by Kelly Yang
“You look amazing,” Jess insists. “You rocked that dress.”
The phone shakes in my hand. “Jess, you’re not listening to me!” I all but scream. “I don’t want it out there!”
There’s a spell of silence, during which my stomach tightens into a knot as big as the mountain of dirty clothes sitting at my feet.
“Jess?” I ask.
I wait for her voice, and when it comes back on, it takes an entirely different tone.
“You know, you think you’re so above it all. Too good for English class, you gotta test out. Too precious for Instagram. Well, guess what? You’re not that special,” Jess yells. “I’ll do whatever the hell I want with my Insta. It’s my Insta.”
And just like that, she hangs up on me. I sit in bed, wondering what just happened. I stare at my phone. What should I do? Should I call her back? I want to call Teddy, but he’d be so upset if he saw my pics and the DMs from the creepy guys. For the first time it hits me, how utterly alone I am in this big foreign country.
Five minutes later, Jess calls me back. I wipe my eyes as I try to pull myself together and take the call.
“Fine,” Jess sighs. “I’ll delete them. But you owe me.”
I carry my pile of dirty clothes to the laundry room, dumping it onto the floor as I google “How to do laundry” on my phone. I snap a selfie of me sitting on the cold floor and post it on WeChat for my friends back home so they can see—this is my life now. I miss the simplicity of China, not having to deal with Instagram or followers (our WeChat accounts are not public). Thankfully, Jess took all the pics from last night off, but the stress and anxiety of this morning still lingers. What does she mean, I think I’m so “above it all”?
According to Google, the first step is to put your clothes in the machine. I dump my clothes into the washer in small batches, as Dani said, and put in the detergent. When I’m done, I stare at the control panel. Which button do I press?
Dani walks by as I’m trying to decide.
“Hey do you know which button I’m supposed to push?” I ask. She sighs at me, like, OMG, really? I ignore the judgment as she glances down at my clothes in the machine.
“You can’t just wash reds with whites,” she says. “You have to separate them. Haven’t you ever done laundry before?”
“No, I have not,” I inform her.
Dani mouths Wow. She starts pulling out my clothes and throwing them all on the floor.
“Hey!” I protest. “Those are expensive!”
“I don’t care how expensive they are. You still need to separate them,” she says. “Once it’s all separated, call me.”
I have no intention of calling her back. Instead, I sit down on the floor and YouTube “How to do laundry.”
Twenty-five minutes later, I’m still in the laundry room, studying my SAT book, while I wait for the load to finish, when Dani walks by. She glances at my piles of clothes on the floor and the roaring laundry machine, which I’ve successfully loaded by myself. She inspects the setting on the machine—cold wash, cotton, medium batch.
“Good,” she remarks.
As she’s about to leave, I close my book and offer a truce of sorts. “Hey, sorry for my friends yesterday. They can be . . .” I try to find the right word. “A bit much.”
Dani sits with the apology, then nods and points to my SAT book.
“You taking it soon?” she asks.
I tell her I’m studying for the placement exam to get out of my English class, but since I don’t know exactly what to study, I’m just reviewing the SAT book.
“Who do you have again?” she asks.
“Mr. Harvey.”
“Oh yeah, that guy’s useless. You should definitely try to get out,” she says. “But you shouldn’t use SAT stuff to prep.”
She goes to her room and comes back two minutes later with a syllabus from English III.
“How do you have this?” I ask. I thought she was in AP English.
“I . . . tutor a guy who’s in it,” she says. “They’re probably going to test you on how to analyze literature, since that’s what they’re mostly learning in English Three. Poems, narrative nonfiction, that sort of stuff.”
I take my phone out and snap a picture of the syllabus. “Thanks.” I smile, handing it back to her. “If I have any questions, I’ll come and ask you.”
She takes her time responding. The two of us listen to the roar of the washing machine while I worry if I might have overstepped. But then she says, “Okay.”
“Who do you tutor?” I ask.
She blushes. “Just some guy.”
Twenty
Dani
Ming laughs hysterically on the phone when I tell her Claire didn’t know how to do the laundry.
“They live in such a different world, the fuerdai,” she says, using a Chinese term to describe the rich second-generation kids of China. “In China, they would sometimes buy thirty tickets or rent out an entire movie theater just so they wouldn’t have to sit next to the rest of us.”
“Wow,” I say, glancing at the wall Claire and I share. I wonder how Claire feels, not just having to sit next to me but to live with me.
“But not Florence though,” Ming says. “We’ve been texting on WhatsApp. You know she lives in a house all by herself? Yesterday she invited me over there and she actually cooked dinner for us.”
“Wow! So you asked her out?” I ask.
“She asked me out,” Ming informs me. “Last week. I wanted to tell you, but you were going through all that stuff with Heather.”
I stare into the phone. “I’m here for you. You know that, right?” I ask. It’s important to me that Ming understands no matter what kind of shit I’m going through, I always want to hear her happy news. “So? How was it?”
“It was great! She’s different from the other parachutes.”
I nod, thinking about the term. Lately, I’ve been thinking it doesn’t apply just to foreign students. Heather and her friends are kind of parachutes too. They all have trust funds and safety nets protecting them if they fall. All I have is me. And if things don’t work out for me, I’d free fall.
“By the way, today, when Kevin came into my room without knocking to give me a package from my parents, I asked him to please knock next time.”
“Good for you!” I say to Ming. It’s so great to hear she’s standing up to Underwear Kevin. I ask her what was in the package, and she says just some Chinese medicine.
She asks me about debate. I tell her about Mr. Connelly’s offer to coach me.
“That’s amazing!”
“Yeah, but don’t you think it’s weird? Being coached on the side by my own coach?” I ask.
“Happens all the time in China,” she assures me. “But never for free. That part is bizarre.” We both think about that for a second.
“He must really believe in you,” she concludes.
I get off the phone with Ming and go to the kitchen to return a glass when I step on something hard in the hallway. I hear a crunch under my feet. I lift my foot and see a hardened contact lens on the bottom of my feet.
Ugh!
Did Claire seriously take her contacts out and just flick them on the floor? I feel like banging on her door—what the hell! But then I think about my mom and how much the $2,000 a month means to her, and I swallow. I kneel to the ground, pick up the hardened contact off the floor, and put it in the trash.
The next day, after my morning-period classes, I duck out early to find Mr. Connelly in his classroom. I have a free period and thought this might be a good time to do our extra training.
“That is, if you’re serious,” I say to him.
“Of course I’m serious,” he says with a smile. As luck would have it, he’s also free until lunch.
The next hour flies by. We run motions, everything from banning junk food to the merits of investing in space travel. Because none of my teammates are around to rebut my statements, he personally debates against me. He throws
me rebuttal after rebuttal, arguments so airtight, they leave me scrambling. The whole time, I’m sitting there thinking how incredibly lucky I am to be trained solo by one of the greatest debaters of our time, ranked thirteenth internationally when he was just nineteen. That’s something not even Heather can brag about.
By the time we’re done, it’s a little after noon when we both collapse onto the chairs. Mr. Connelly tosses me a Gatorade.
“You want to grab a bite again?” he asks. “Off campus? C’mon, my treat.”
I politely decline, shaking my head. It’s already beyond generous that he’s training me privately. Plus last time I was half an hour late for concert band and the entire orchestra had to stop when I came in. Mr. Rufus was pissed.
I tell Mr. Connelly I have to meet up with someone at lunch.
“A boy?” he teases me.
I blush. “Just someone I’m tutoring,” I say.
“Well, I’m sure he’s a very lucky guy,” he says.
I get up from my seat. “Thank you again for the extra training.”
“My pleasure,” he says, reaching over and gripping my hand in his, a firm, unwavering hold that conveys the full extent of his confidence in me, and I’m both thrilled and enraptured. “Do you feel better now?”
I nod.
“Good,” he says. “We’ll show ’em at the next tournament. The other kids can get all the private coaches they want, but it won’t make any difference. You wanna know why?” He leans in.
“Because you’re better,” he says with a wink.
Later that day, Zach and I sit in his old Honda Civic in the school parking lot. He’s offered to give me a ride home. As I buckle up, I smile inside, thinking about Mr. Connelly’s words. I can’t believe I hit the coach jackpot.
Zach looks similarly stoked as he turns to me and tells me about his bio test, the one I helped him study for. “I can’t believe Mr. Schwartz gave me an A!” he says, starting the car. “Even Mr. Schwartz couldn’t believe it!”
I laugh, feet bumping up against a bag of repair tools.
“Sorry,” he says. He scrunches up the bag of tools and tosses them in the back.
“Were you fixing the car?” I ask.
He looks at the tools and doesn’t say anything for a long time, like he’s trying to decide whether to tell me something. “I was fixing our trailer,” he says finally. “My mom and I, we live over at Sun Grove Mobile Park.”
“Oh.” Surprise slips off my tongue. He catches it and looks away.
“We used to live in a house over by Ralphs,” he explains. “But then the property prices started going up and the taxes . . .”
He doesn’t have to explain to me about property taxes. “My mom and I recently started renting one of our rooms out,” I tell him quietly. “We need the money. My dad left when I was a baby.”
What happened? I just wanted to dip my toes in the water. I ended up fully submerged.
“So did my dad. I don’t even think my mom knows who he is,” he says. “She’s not exactly a model mom.”
“Mine either.” I don’t know why I say this. It’s not a fair statement. My mom tries. She wasn’t dealt the best card in life, but she tries.
He turns to me, amused.
“Really?” he asks as he turns on the radio. “Then how’d you end up so smart?”
I shake my head shyly, secretly thrilled.
“I’m just a normal girl,” I say.
He laughs. The sound of his laughter is so addicting, and I try to memorize it. “You are most definitely not just a normal girl,” he says.
Five minutes later, we arrive at my house.
“Do you want to come inside?” I ask him. It feels like we’re on a date. Except it’s four in the afternoon. And I’m hugging my textbooks like a life jacket.
“I gotta go home and help my mom,” he declines. “But how about later this week? Are you free?”
I nod eagerly.
“Great, because I have an econ paper due,” he says.
The anticipation—that he really wants to be with me—and the letdown, only because he needs my help with homework, are both so real.
Be cool, De La Cruz. Be cool. I remind myself I already have a kick-ass coach and a shot at Yale. Any more would be greedy.
“Sounds good,” I say, smiling as I get out of the car.
Inside the house, I find my mom sitting on the couch. She’s home early for a change!
“Look! Claire ordered us some flowers,” she says, pointing to the bouquet of lilies on the coffee table.
I plop down on the couch.
Claire has discovered American online shopping. Every day a new box arrives. So far, she’s ordered pants from Theory, T-shirts, bras, notebooks, makeup. Sometimes, she throws in a little something for my mom, which is nice, but it still doesn’t make it okay for her to flick her contacts on the floor.
“Isn’t that thoughtful of her?” my mom gushes. She leans over and smells the flowers, closing her eyes. “She’s such a good girl, that Claire.”
I roll my eyes. A good girl? Please. I heard her coming home at 3:00 a.m. from a hard night of partying.
“What’s wrong?” my mom asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s just that you’re so into her.” I didn’t want to say it, but it’s true, and it’s a little disturbing.
My mom gets up to make some tea. “She’s our client.”
I snort at the word. Who does Mom think she is, Rosa?
As she puts on the water, my mom takes a breath, collecting her thoughts. “Like it or not, I’m running a business. You’re going to be out of here in a year and a half. And what am I going to do with the extra rooms?”
She could come with me—New Haven’s not yet completely gentrified. I’m sure we can find a cheap two-bedroom apartment somewhere off campus. When I suggest this to my mom, she frowns.
“You don’t know if you’ll get in,” she says. Which stings. A lot. “And I can’t be by your side forever. You have to go out and live your own life, not worry about taking care of me.”
“You take care of Lola and Lolo,” I mutter.
My mom walks over and puts her tired, wrinkled hands on my shoulder. “I know, my anak,” she sighs, calling me by the Tagalog word for “child.” “But I don’t want you to be burdened with the same.”
I would never think of her as a burden. As she pours her tea, I curl up on the couch at the warm spot where the afternoon sun shines in, gazing at Claire’s lilies.
Twenty-One
Claire
The English test went better than I thought. As Dani predicted, it tested me mostly on literary and poetic devices. I won’t get the results back for another week, but I’m feeling good. I even told my mom about it. I smile as I reread her response on WeChat.
Wow! That’s great! I’m proud of you!
I put away my phone in Mr. Harvey’s class and look over at Jay. Neither of us have said anything about the fact that he paid for my waters in the cafeteria. I was going to thank him, but then I waited too long, and now it’d be too awkward to bring it up.
In class Jay is quiet. I notice he sometimes smiles when he’s texting on his phone, which makes me wonder if he’s texting his girlfriend. Jess swears he’s single, having done a huge amount of detective work on WeChat and Weibo.
She’s mostly gotten over my asking her to take down the pics, though she still brags that she increased my following by 430 percent in one night.
Every day I stare at my 520 followers. Maybe they’ll move on. I haven’t posted anything since. Or maybe they’ll stay and I can reap the rewards of “having a following,” which Jess says is just as important for one’s future in the US as getting into better English classes.
I haven’t told Teddy about any of the crazy Insta stuff. He wouldn’t understand. He only uses WeChat and limits his posts to personal friends.
I tell the girls when we’re out at dinner that Teddy and I started sexting.
“Claire!” Thei
r eyebrows shoot up, impressed.
“Damn, girl,” Jess says, cutting into her beef. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
They ask me for details, and I tell them we’ve been doing it ever since the night at the club, 6:00 a.m. California time, 9:00 p.m. Shanghai time.
“I like the sweet texts I get from him afterward,” I say. Sometimes Teddy sends me a bunch throughout his night, which make me feel less lonely throughout my day.
“They’re so sweet afterward, aren’t they?” Jess adds. She takes one last bite of her beef and puts her fork and knife down. She gestures to the waitress she’s done.
“Oh, wait, don’t throw that away.” Florence points to the thick piece of beef still left on the plate. “We can wrap that up and give it to the homeless.”
“You wanna feed Kobe beef to the homeless?” Jess starts cracking up, putting a hand on Florence’s delicate shoulder. “Whoever ends up with this girl is one lucky guy.”
Florence hands the waitress the plate to box up. “How do you know I haven’t already found this person?”
We stare at her. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”
Florence blushes and shakes her head. “No, I’m just kidding. I haven’t.”
The waitress returns with the doggy bag and the check. We all throw down credit cards, except Nancy, who digs inside her bag.
“Ugh, I forgot to move my credit cards from my other bag,” she says.
“Don’t worry, girl, I got you,” Jess says, reaching for the check.
Later, as we’re getting into our Ubers, I think about how nice it is that my new friends didn’t judge me for the sexting. My girlfriends back home definitely would have judged.
Teddy’s waiting for me later that night. We stay up late fooling around on Skype. The next morning, I come out of my room so flushed, I skip breakfast with Dani and her mom and instead grab a muffin at school.
The varsity swim team is in the cafeteria early in the morning, eating breakfast too. There are seven guys and three girls. I watch the way they eat, devouring their pancakes and eggs like there’s no tomorrow. I miss that about swimming. I used to be able to eat like that.