by Lindsay Wong
This is followed by the unnaturally shrill squealing of Mrs. Chadha-Fu and Samira. From my closet, they sound like excited seagulls. Then I hear a mixed cheerleader chorus of “We got into PRINCETON! And NYU, Brown, and Cornell! PRINCETON! PRINCETON! Samira is going to our first choice! Princeton!”
My heart tumbles into my stomach.
Due to so much unexpected news, this fist-size organ can no longer support its own weight.
I didn’t even know Samira was applying to Princeton.
I didn’t even know that Samira was actually book smart. Sure, she seemed like she would get into college … but then again, I thought I’d get into one of my first choices.
“Congratulations,” my mom finally says, sounding like she has a horrible case of acid reflux. My dad says nothing. I hear him excuse himself to go to the bathroom. Luckily, the Chadha-Fus don’t seem to hear the zombie awkwardness because they are too busy chattering and making plans. But then Samira asks, “Do you know when Iris will be home?”
“Probably very late,” my mother lies. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“Seltzer, please,” Samira says, and I hear my mother asking if anyone would like more coffee. Mr. Chadha-Fu requests another cup with sugar and cream, while Mrs. Chadha-Fu wants to know if we have any pastries.
“Do you mind taking a family photo of us?” Mrs. Chadha-Fu suddenly calls out. “We want to show all our relatives in Singapore, India, Australia, and Malaysia that Samira got into Princeton! It’s not every day that your child gets into an Ivy League school! It happens only once in a lifetime, unless they go on to be a doctor or lawyer!”
I hear my mom say that she’ll bring out some cookies. There’s more chattering, but the delicious Nutella has turned into a soggy cardboard-tasting mush in my mouth. Samira will be attending Princeton in the fall. Samira even has my boyfriend. She now owns my favorite first-date dress, and it would be horrible manners if I asked for it back.
If I don’t know who my former best friend is, how can I know myself?
Aren’t we 99.9 percent defined by our loved ones?
Aren’t we supposed to be identical reflections of our friends?
Looking at Samira was always supposed to be like staring at myself in a Saks Fifth dressing room. We wear the same clothing size and used to share everything, including bras, bikinis, and mascaras. And now, apparently, we share boyfriends. Since the second grade, I have relied on Samira to tell me who I was, but I suddenly realize that I have never known her as a person.
Don’t be self-pitying, I tell myself firmly.
This is only a temporary setback, like something the genius Steve Jobs would face before founding a multi-billion-dollar company named after a fruit found in a supermarket.
I’m on the verge of discovering a great, fantastic new life venture. Being royalty is a legitimate career path. Did Meghan Markle wake up and decide that she would one day marry royalty? From a young age, she probably knew in her bones that it was her destiny.
Once I find my real aristocratic parents and determine my birthright, not getting into college will seem unimportant.
That’s when I hear whispering. Someone is laughing girlishly again. Samira. Maybe it’s the acoustics of the pantry, but I never realized that her laugh sounded like a donkey imitating a hyena.
“Which colleges do you think Iris got into?” Mr. Chadha-Fu asks.
Mrs. Chadha-Fu laughs. “Iris? College? That’s an oxymoron.”
I suddenly can’t breathe. My lungs have disappeared.
This is because most of the people that I once cared about are gossiping about me. In my living room!
“She’s a very nice girl,” Mr. Chadha-Fu announces helpfully.
My face grows jalapeño-hot.
Samira laughs quickly. “I’d be shocked if she got into any. Iris … just … doesn’t have a very high IQ.”
Her words cause me to gasp out loud.
“She has never been good at anything that is important.”
The Chadha-Fus laugh.
I drop the jar of half-eaten Nutella. It makes an unreasonably loud clatter. I try to catch it, but my elbow knocks over stacks of canned tuna and boxes of macaroni and cheese. I accidentally smear Nutella all over the pantry walls.
I don’t know why I’m so shocked by Samira’s words. For some reason, her second betrayal hurts more than the first. I have been nothing but kind and generous to Samira.
Heat floods through my neck and prickles across my face like an unrelenting rash. How could I have wasted ten-plus years of gifts and gossip and texts and phone calls and friendship on her? The pantry suddenly feels like a radioactive sauna. Black dots, like chocolate chips, scatter across my corneas.
Is my brain combusting?
Tears are leaking uncontrollably from my eyes. I can’t help it. Maybe my parents are right that I’m a complete, uncategorized disaster. Hurricane Iris, Category 10. A national danger to myself and others.
Suddenly, I don’t care if everyone knows I’m home.
I don’t care anymore.
Bursting out of the pantry and stampeding into the living room, I barely care that globs of Nutella are smeared all over my hands and mouth. I don’t care if I look like a deranged, snack-deprived vampire. I whip out my iPhone.
“How dare you say these things about me!” I sputter. “Here’s your shitty photograph!”
Samira’s smirking mouth drops open. Her entire face transforms into a hideous sweet-and-sour-pork-chop red, and the Chadha-Fus at least have the decency to look ashamed. They avert their eyes and stare at the leopard-print rug on the floor. I quickly take their shame-faced picture. Mrs. Chadha-Fu is holding the college acceptance letter in her lap.
“Get out of my life!” I shout at Samira, whose mouth hasn’t closed yet. “First you steal my boyfriend and then you talk behind my back! You’re right about me not being smart. I trusted you!”
My mom and dad suddenly appear in the living room. They look queasy and horrified, like they both have food poisoning simultaneously. My dad is actually clutching his abdomen and staring at the wall behind the Chadha-Fus. Is he praying to the wallpaper or Buddha?
“I think you should go,” my mom says firmly to the Chadha-Fus, who stand up and race to the door, as if there is a sample sale at Prada.
“Don’t worry, I’ll text you your photo!” I shout at them.
Tears are falling onto my iPhone like there is an actual typhoon inside my eyeballs. But I manage to press SEND and wipe slimy Nutella off the screen at the same time.
How is it possible to feel so abandoned and hurt and alone all at once?
It’s like I’ve accidentally swallowed a whole tube of Nair’s extra-strength hair removal.
This kind of internal pain should not be real.
Suddenly, Beijing looks a tiny bit more appealing than staying parent-less, boyfriend-less, and best-friend-less in Bradley Gardens. If you had to choose between a broken kneecap and a fractured elbow, which one would you choose?
It’s a game of which location would be worse.
10
Forbes Asia Top 30
I can barely sleep on the 15.5-hour plane ride to Beijing.
Even though I’m terribly sad and disappointed in everyone and myself, I have a plan.
In front of me, in addition to my usual magazines, I have bought a special-edition Forbes 30 Asia, which profiles the richest women and men in Asia. Like the Ivy League student that I should be, I’m flipping through it, making a list of potential parents on an airplane napkin. As I passed Hudson News in Terminal 1 at JFK, I had a brilliant last-minute thought that I could be a descendent of some Bill Gates of China.
Whoever said that I couldn’t think outside the box?
I’m determined to prove that my genius has been hiding deep inside me for seventeen years.
Forbes has done all the research for me, and it’s just up to me to narrow down the candidates. Math is so easy when genetics and inheritances are at sta
ke! If this question were on the SATs, I’d have aced it.
Anyway, I’ve successfully vetted the billionaires by eliminating the people who are either too old or young to be my parents, like the whiz kid Cai Teng, who is only fifteen.
At the top of my napkin parent-list is Penelope Xia Xu, who is Shanghai’s #25 billionaire in clothing manufacturing for several lingerie stores in America. She seems like she could be my mother. Her forehead is large and sloped, which is what my fake dad believes indicates abundant success in one’s career. But I’m not sure if Penelope Xu looks fun and spontaneous enough to have a love child with a movie star. She’s so … stern-looking. But sometimes the most unexpected people have the biggest, juiciest secrets. Like my Goat dad.
Then there’s also a tall, slender man called Xie Fei at #12, the head of a big data research organization, and #16 Dai Feng, a short, balding dude who built his own startup construction company. Both of them are average-looking, but they’re the perfect age to be my parent.
I also tried eliminating people based on their facial features. But then I realized, what if some, if not all, of these gazillionaires had plastic surgery? I can’t eliminate that possibility, can I?
So my final parent list is at fifteen.
Fifteen out of thirty. That’s not bad, is it?
After my fake dad drove me to the US consulate to get my tourist visa for China approved, my fake mom took me to Macy’s to buy “thank-you hostess” gifts for my uncle, aunt, and cousin. I found a pretty pink beaded fringe scarf from H&M and super-fun, humongous hoop earrings for my cousin. Then my parents and I headed to Macy’s makeup counters to buy my aunt a deluxe Clinique moisturizer gift set that has twelve tiny vials of face and hand cream. We even found a nice blanket-soft leather Coach wallet with double zippers for my uncle.
“Listen to your uncle,” my fake dad said in a monotone at Air China’s counter at JFK. He sounded hoarse because he had been talking to my guidance counselor and principal for hours about letting me leave school a month early before graduation. At first they were seriously concerned about my lack of a diploma, but my dad promised them that he would make sure that I received my GED online. At this point, my dad had argued, it was better to “completely throw away a burned holiday dinner and start all over again.” I didn’t exactly understand what he meant, but the school administrators agreed.
“Listen to your aunt and uncle better than you listen to us,” my fake mom said stiffly.
And that’s all they said to me. It was as if a week of disappointment and not-talking about the whole incident had suddenly turned them into robots from a sci-fi movie. At JFK, I was expecting someone to have a moment of true realization: We love our only daughter, Iris, and we just can’t bear to send her away! Instead, there was no goodbye hug or heartfelt apology. They were almost acting as if they were relieved to be sending me far, far away.
This lack of concern at the airport could undoubtedly prove that they are not my real parents. How does my fake dad even know if this is my real uncle??! For all I know, the lawyer making the overseas introductions could have made a horrible mistake and found the wrong person. Isn’t Wang one of the most popular surnames in the United States?
I check my list of Asia’s Richest carefully, then take a photo of it with my iPhone for safekeeping. I feel a gigantic, fizzling rush of adrenaline, like I’m a detective who is on her way to solve an incredibly important personal life mystery.
When the flight attendant comes around with water, I beam at her and hand her my empty soda can and the crumpled-up napkin. My list is safely stored on my iPhone.
Despite being sent a billion miles away from everyone I know, I do want to look my best and make a semi-good impression. For the first time, out of nervousness, I can’t focus on an in-flight movie. I flip open one of the five fashion magazines that I bought at the airport. But I’m too anxious to concentrate on a quiz in Allure about first-date makeup. Who cares about eye shadow when I’m about to become a bazillionaire heiress?!
I also don’t know what my father told my uncle about me.
Already I’m imagining scenarios where they think I’m some horrible, spoiled teenager who is some combination of a McDonald’s cheeseburger and suburban shopping mall.
I love plane rides because it means there’s possibly new adventures and glamorous people waiting when you land. I not-so-secretly love being suspended in air with nothing but movies and magazines and free cookies. It’s also impossible to get work done in these ridiculous cramped seating spaces, so no one expects you to study or read anything serious while flying. I suddenly remember that my mom stuffed a pillow-size GED preparation book into my luggage, but I won’t think about it now.
GEDs aren’t for geniuses who have figured out how to find their birth parents by reading Forbes magazine.
As I fiddle with my earphones, I can’t help but nervously apply my lip gloss and mascara and shimmery blue eyeliner over and over again.
“Why wearing so much makeup?” a voice says.
I flush and turn to a disapproving Chinese lady sitting in the aisle across from me. She’s a bit older than my mom, wearing a gorgeous peacock-print silk scarf. Blushing furiously, I check my makeup in my compact. No one has ever criticized my makeup before! Not even my mom, who always approves, and thinks that unmade-up women are just lazy. What if I shouldn’t arrive in Beijing with a full face of makeup? What would my uncle and aunt and cousin think if I arrived looking like one of the Kardashians?
“Is there something wrong?” I ask hesitantly.
The woman shakes her head sternly at me. “Too young! Too much makeup!” she says again. But she has a full face of powdery white foundation and garish Santa Claus lips, so she shouldn’t be complaining. But maybe teenage girls don’t wear a lot of makeup in Beijing. What if everyone is boring, uncolorful, and plain-faced? I desperately want to fit in.
That’s always been one of my biggest problems.
I have wanted to match others since my first day of kindergarten. I’ve always wanted to be liked. If I’m not included, well-thought-of, and accepted by others, then who am I? What happens if not one single person likes me in Beijing? Will I simply disappear?
Nervously I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.
Rummaging into my purse for my makeup-remover wipes, I suddenly realize that I’ve forgotten to pack them. I splash cold water on my face, but mascara leaks all around my eyelids, leaving splotchy streaks. Horrified, I continue to stare at myself in the mirror. Time freezes, like someone has pressed pause on an especially terrifying horror movie. I don’t know how long. I don’t recognize the girl staring back at me. I’m paralyzed by her anguished expression. Her feral Tiger features. Her uneven mascara stripes. I want to scream.
I grab toilet paper and rub my face until someone raps on the door.
“There’s someone in here!” I shout.
Honestly, people are so impatient. I’ve only been in the bathroom for less than twenty-five minutes!
“There’s a line,” the voice calls, rapping again.
“Someone is in here!” I shout back.
Don’t they know I’m having a personal emergency?
Seriously, what if I was having nonstop diarrhea?
It could very possibly happen, since everyone knows that air travel is full of germs and airplane food leads to salmonella.
But the constant rapping on the door makes me flustered.
I swivel too fast in the very cramped bathroom, and clang! I somehow knock the contents of my purse—a tube of MAC lip gloss, mascara, iPhone, passport, toothbrush, tweezers, and wallet—into the toilet bowl. I freeze. If food drops on the floor, there’s a three-second rule, but what happens if all your personal belongings fall into a public toilet?! How long until it’s considered too hazardous to retrieve them? Twenty seconds? A minute? Two minutes and thirty seconds?
What do I do???!!!!
Should I flush it all away?
Shuddering, I let out a wail and
decide to try to save my iPhone with its life-changing list. My destiny is on that phone. But it’s drenched with blue chemical water and I don’t even want to touch it.
The knocking on the door escalates.
“Are you … okay?” the voice asks. “Do you need assistance?”
I exhale loudly. How many more hours to Beijing? Can I somehow ask them to stop the plane? Does a toilet blockage constitute an international emergency?
“I’m fine!!!” I mumble-shout.
The cramped plane bathroom makes me claustrophobic and dizzy.
I touch my forehead and tell myself not to panic. For a second, I think my forehead is expanding horizontally, and looking a bit like Penelope Xu’s, top 30 billionaire. Upon closer inspection, the girl in the airplane mirror looks extremely hungover. A messy doppelgänger of the usual super-confident, put-together, and highly optimistic Iris Wang. I don’t even recognize myself. I stare closer at my reflection. That’s when I see it: new hairs, long and spidery-looking. Tiger whiskers.
Groaning, I tell myself that I’m just overexhausted, overheated, and probably hallucinating. It’s just shitty PMS and not my Tiger curse, which seems to be spiraling out of control lately.
Reaching into the toilet bowl, I pluck the remaining items out. Like a present for someone you don’t care about, I clumsily wrap them in a wad of extra-flimsy airplane tissue paper. Surely my iPhone and personal items will be dry by the time we land in Beijing.
11
Chauffeur
Nervously I collect my luggage and trudge to the waiting area.
There’s an overriding smell of fast food, stale airplane air, and imploding excitement. It feels like I’m on a giant cruise ship.
Admittedly, it took a long time to get my bag, as the Beijing Capital International Airport at the start of summer vacation is like two JFK airports crammed into one. Imagine if the population of New York City were all fighting to claim their luggage. Or if a bank were suddenly just handing out stacks of free money to all their customers.