by Kelly Yang
Jess looks down at her knees and says quietly, “This is why I told you to go and talk to him . . . before he found out some other way.”
My eyes jerk up at her. Wow. The judgment.
“What? I’m just being real with you. If you’d been more careful—”
“I was careful!” I jump up from the couch and shout at her.
I don’t need this right now. I walk over to the door. As I hold the door open, Jess gets up reluctantly from the couch and says she’s so sorry and to call if I need anything. After she leaves, I throw away her scones and coffee and stare at the wall, feeling so alone.
I go to find Zach after school. I tried calling my parents but couldn’t get through. I think back to my mother’s words when she first sent me here, I’m one phone call away. If something goes wrong, I’ll be right over. I want to shout Bullshit! at the sky.
Stepping out of the Uber, I’m disoriented for a second. Zach had said Sun Grove, but that can’t be right. There are no houses in Sun Grove, only mobile homes and tents. I’ve never seen a mobile home up close before, only in movies. I turn around, trying to wave down the Uber driver before he leaves so he can take me out of here, and then I see him. Zach stands next to a trailer, washing out his red swim trunks.
“Zach?” I call out.
His face turns the same shade as his trunks when he sees me. The door to his trailer swings open, and a really strung-out-looking white woman comes stumbling outside calling for him.
“Zach, where the hell are my cigs?” she slurs. I can smell the stench of alcohol on her.
“Go back inside, Ma,” Zach tells her. “I’ll be right there.”
I stare at the woman. That’s his mom?
As Mrs. Cunningham lumbers back inside, Zach turns to me. His eyes look up from the sandy dirt.
“Hey,” he says. His voice is low and laced with hurt. “Dani told me about Jay.”
I close my eyes. My head throbs. That bitch just doesn’t stop! The roots of my hair feel like they’re being pulled out from inside my head.
Zach glances at the trailer, at his mother, sitting by the window watching us. She’s found her cigarettes, and she’s making little smoke rings with her mouth as she studies us.
“You lied to me,” Zach says. “You told me I was your first.”
“You are my first! You have to believe me,” I say. Desperately, I search his eyes. “We weren’t doing anything! We were just sleeping next to each other!”
“Yeah well, in this country, you sleep with one guy at a time,” he mutters with disgust.
“I’m so sorry, Zach,” I say, chin quivering. Before I realize it, I’m full-on crying. The tears gush down my face. I don’t know how to stop. I cry so hard, Zach puts a hand on my back, concerned.
“Whoa, whoa. What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, and he pulls me in toward him. It comes out in bits and chunks, half in Chinese and half in English. In my hysterical state, I cannot string together more than three words in either language without sobbing. When Zach hears the word “rape,” his body goes cold.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Zach says.
He pulls me toward a bench by the side of the trailer. We sit down. One by one, I push out the words, drawing strength from the shock and horror and anger pooling inside me. Zach breathes in and out as I tell him the details. Through the blur of my tears, I can see the rage on his face.
“We have to go to the police!” He jumps up.
“No,” I say, pulling him back down. The last thing I want is to have to sit in a cold, dreary room with some creepy cop as they ask me to show them exactly where Jay touched me.
“We have to,” Zach insists. “We can’t let him get away with this.”
I look up cautiously at him.
“Have you told your parents?” he asks. “What about the school? Have you told the school about this?”
I shake my head. I haven’t told anyone. I’ve just been bathing in a pool of my own shame.
Zach grabs my hand. “We have to go tell the school,” he says.
I appreciate his using the word “we,” but really this is my decision. And I’ve been thinking about it. What if they don’t believe me? I should have gone and gotten a rape test done, but I looked it up, and in order for a rape test to be effective, I should have done it within seventy-two hours. It’s been five days. Any DNA evidence is gone by now.
“It’s going to be okay,” Zach says, scooping me into his arms. As he holds me, I nod into his hair, desperately wanting to believe the words.
Sixty-Six
Dani
Ming paces back and forth in my bedroom while I text Zach. I was supposed to tutor him today, but he canceled.
“I can’t believe Florence left like that! She wouldn’t even introduce me to her parents as her friend!” she says. “I shouldn’t have told my parents.”
She tries Florence again, but she doesn’t pick up.
“It was so stupid,” Ming cries, lying on my bed and blinking back tears. “Now my parents know my secret . . . and for what?”
I put down my phone. “What’d they say when you told them?” I ask her.
“That I’ve gotten too Americanized and I need to stop.”
Ming’s phone rings. But it’s just Mr. Rufus calling. Ming presses Ignore.
“What are you going to say to Florence?” I ask.
“That it’s over,” Ming says, throwing her phone into the side pocket of her violin case. She curls up into a ball on my bed, pressing her chin to her knees. “For good.”
I reach over and put a hand on her back.
“All my life I’ve just wanted to make my parents proud . . . ,” she whispers as I rub her back. A tear escapes my eye. I feel that. I totally feel that. Ming wraps herself in my blanket. “And now I can never do that.”
“Of course you can,” I tell her, hugging her. But no matter how many times I say it, she shakes her head and says she can’t.
After Ming leaves, I try Zach once more, but he doesn’t pick up. I sit down at my computer and try to go over debate case studies. My team training sessions have been so abysmal, I’m kind of on my own for Snider. Chrome alerts me that I have email. I go to my Gmail and see a group email from Mr. Connelly reminding us of our flight reservation next week and what to bring to Snider. I’m glad he didn’t leave me off the email chain for once. There’s also an email from Google. I’d set up a Google Alert on Phoenix Capital Limited.
I click on the news article, from a Chinese business website.
To facilitate continued expansion of its portfolio assets, international real estate firm Phoenix Capital Limited has raised $128 million in a Series B round backed by Morgan Stanley. The round was led by Hong Kong venture capital firms Dragon Investments and Asia Pacific Capital, bringing the firm’s total equity funding to over USD $378 million. The firm said in a statement the new investment will go to expanding its real estate portfolio in Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, as well as up-and-coming markets such as Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and East Covina, California.
East Covina, California? That’s so weird that we’re in a major press release, on the same list as Hong Kong and Tokyo, which have some of the highest real estate values in the world. I know Ho Chi Minh City is on the up and up, with Vietnam quickly becoming a factory destination for cheap labor. But what do we have?
I open a new tab and load Zillow. Red dots fill my screen, most of them million-dollar homes in North Hills that are for sale or rent. I click on a random one and call the real estate agent listed.
“Xander Vander Real Estate!” the guy answers.
“Uh, hi . . . I got your number from Zillow—” I start to say.
Before I can even finish my sentence, Xander bombards me with a level of enthusiasm I am not prepared for. “Are you looking to buy or sell? I have several houses over in North Hills! All spectacular and within twenty minutes of the esteemed private school American Prep! May I show you some?”
“Actually . . . I just had a question,” I say. “Have you heard of Phoenix Capital Limited?”
Xander thinks for a minute.
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” he says.
“It’s an Asian real estate fund,” I tell him. I scroll through the article. “It says they’re investing in real estate here in East Covina.”
“That may very well be,” Xander says. “We do a lot of work with Asian real estate funds. Most of them are affiliated with Li Incorporated. Are you sure it’s not one of their subsidiaries?”
I scribble down the words Li Incorporated.
He tells me that Li Incorporated is one of the biggest real estate conglomerates in China, and they’ve been investing heavily in the city.
“Why?” I ask. Seems bizarre that Chinese real estate companies would be so interested in our small town.
“Good schools, of course!” Xander chuckles. “Nothing sells houses faster than good schools!”
Sixty-Seven
Claire
My mom lets out a sob when I finally tell her. I have three boxes of tissues on my bed for the call. Still, when she cries, nothing I could have prepared can soak up the pain inside.
“Oh, Claire,” my mom cries. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head even as I force out a “Yeah.”
“Does anyone know?” my mom asks.
“Just some friends.”
There’s a pause. “Don’t tell anybody else,” my mom says. “How will it look?”
I put a fist to my mouth. My mom covers up the phone with her hand. Her muffled voice asks into the phone, “How did it happen?”
“Is that Claire?” my dad asks in the background. I hear lowered voices—I assume my mom’s telling him what happened. My father picks up the phone.
“Claire, it’s me. Dad,” he says. My chin quivers and I try to stay strong. It’s the first time we’ve spoken verbally since the restaurant incident.
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
“Your mom’s just told me what happened,” my dad says.
“Don’t tell your grandmother,” my mom cuts in.
“Of course I’m not going to tell Nai Nai!” I say. I can’t believe they’re even thinking of my grandmother at a time like this.
“Listen to me,” my dad says.
I sit up in anticipation of sympathy and advice from my daddy to his only daughter. He’ll come through. I think back to when I first got home from Korea after my eyelid surgery and he sat with me, telling me how brave I was. He’ll know what to say in my time of need. I know he will. Instead, what I get is, “These things happen. We’re not mad at you.”
Not mad at me?
“Your mother and I will talk to Jay’s family. I’m sure we’ll sort it out,” he says. “The important thing is do not make a scene.”
“No, the important thing is you’re okay,” my mom corrects.
“I am not okay,” I yell.
I hang up on my parents and stand in the middle of my room shaking. I speed-dial Zach, then remember he’s in class. I still haven’t gone back to school, though I keep getting messages from the headmistress’s office asking where I am. Every time I think of going back to school, my stomach twists into a knot so tight, I have to crouch down. I pick up my phone and instead of emailing back the headmistress’s office, I email Ms. Jones, my English teacher.
Hi Ms. Jones,
Can we meet somewhere off campus to talk? I’m going through something and urgently need to talk to someone. Thanks.
Claire
Ms. Jones and I meet at Starbucks. I sit across from her, my hands around a steaming hot coffee mug. As I tell her what happened, I stare into the hot abyss of my coffee, wishing I could fall in. Ms. Jones reaches a hand out to me, gasping. When I get to the part where Jay pins me to the bed, tears drip into my latte. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry again, but my eyes are not capable of staying dry. I don’t know if they’ll ever be dry.
“And then . . . he raped me,” I say, my lips trembling.
“Oh, Claire,” she says, reaching for me with her arms. “I’m so sorry.” As she holds me tight in her arms, she tells me over and over, “It’s not your fault.”
It feels so good to hear that, to have an adult tell me it’s not my fault. I wish I could stay like this, feeling the warmth and comfort of her words, like a shield.
“I’m here for you no matter what you decide to do,” she says, looking into my eyes when we finally both let go. “Have you thought about what you want to do?”
I shake my head.
“I think the first step is to go back to school and tell Mrs. Mandalay what happened,” she says.
“I don’t want to go back.” I shake my head. My fingers press into my coffee mug, feeling the burn on my fingertips. “I don’t want to see him at school.”
“That’s exactly why you need to come back!” she says. “Claire, you have certain rights as a student. One of them is the right to feel safe. If you come back and tell the school what happened, I’m sure they’ll take the necessary actions to suspend or expel Jay for what he did.”
I look up at her.
“Claire, you’re not alone in this,” she says. “The school wants its students to feel protected. Look how quickly they got rid of Mrs. Wallace. They have an obligation.”
Emotion pokes through as she says the words and I want to believe her.
“That’s why they have administrative proceedings and other disciplinary procedures—they have systems in place to protect their students.”
I think about how decisively Mrs. Mandalay kicked out Mrs. Wallace after she wrote that email.
As Ms. Jones reaches over and puts her hand on top of mine, I look into her eyes. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. But you’re a strong girl, Claire. ‘Stronger than iron,’” she quotes from one of my essays. I smile at her from the blur of my tears.
“You’re going to get through this.”
Later that night, my parents call. I ask them if I can move out of Dani’s and check into a hotel for a few days. I can’t live with her anymore, not after what she did to me. They say okay. When I tell them I’m thinking of going to the headmistress to tell her what happened, they’re not so quick to agree.
“Hold on, before you do that,” my dad cuts in. “Let me speak to Jay’s dad next week. If there’s a way to do this quietly . . .”
It infuriates me that he somehow thinks there’s a better way to do this and it involves my silence. “What if I don’t want to do this quietly?” I ask.
“Claire.” My mother’s voice jumps on the line. In the background, I hear the clinging of forks and knives and chopsticks. Are they entertaining? “Be smart about this. We’re just trying to protect you.”
I hear my grandmother’s voice in the background. “Is that Claire? I want to speak to her.”
“No, Nai Nai, now’s not a good time,” my mom calls back.
I hear my mother close the door and she turns her attention to me. “This isn’t like the email with your teacher. If you make a big stink about this, everyone will know,” she says. She holds the phone closer to her mouth and whispers, “Do you really want your name synonymous with rape?”
She hisses the word “rape” like it’s a dirty word that we can’t even say, let alone report. I cry into my fist. It chokes my neck, their shame.
“Don’t do anything until we discuss first,” my dad says.
As my parents wait for me to respond, I think about all the years passed. All the birthday parties where they chose the guest list, not me, all the school photos, where I closed my eyes so there would be no physical evidence of my once single eyelids.
All I’ve ever been to them was a pawn, not a daughter.
Sixty-Eight
Dani
I find the movers at my house when I get home. “What’s going on?” I ask, standing in the doorway as the movers wrap up Claire’s Sealy mattress in Bubble Wrap and drag it along the carpet.
Claire ignores
me and directs the movers to pack up her stuff into boxes.
I follow her to her room. Is this really necessary? We had a fight. And now she’s moving out?
“Look, I didn’t mean what I said . . . ,” I mutter to the carpet. “I was angry.”
Claire ignores me and continues packing. She has her sunglasses on and I can’t see her eyes. She pushes past me to her closet, knocking into me with her shoulder.
“Claire, please!” I call out. I think about my mom and how devastated she’s going to be when she finds out she’s lost her tenant. “My mom’s going to freak out when she comes home and finds out you’re gone!”
“You should have thought about that.” Claire glares at me, taking her dresses from her closet and stuffing them into boxes.
I walk over and try to block her from getting more of her dresses, but Claire mistakes it for me wanting the hangers.
“You want the hangers?” she asks. She takes a plastic hanger and throws it at me.
It hits me on the leg, and I wince. “Ow!”
“Here’s another one!” Claire says, holding up another hanger.
I throw up my hands. “Fine, you want to move out? Move out!”
I retreat back to the living room and watch her from the couch. When the last of the boxes has been moved out, Claire looks around the house one last time. I hope she’ll say goodbye and leave a note for my mom, but she just takes the house key off from her furry rabbit keychain and places it on top of the coffee table. And leaves without a word. No forwarding address. No nothing. Just walks out as hastily as she had arrived.
I throw my head back against the couch, head throbbing. I listen to the silence of the empty house. The hum of the refrigerator. The drip of the faucet. I tell myself I should be happy. No more having to wash her plates or step on her contacts on the floor. Or waiting around for the bathroom while she runs the hot water for an hour to steam her face. Instead, I wrestle with a splitting headache that lasts for hours.
When I wake up on the couch hours later, my headache is mostly gone but an eeriness clings to every surface of the house like a sticky film. I reach for my phone to call Ming. There’s a message from Xander the real estate agent asking me whether I’m still interested in looking at houses.