Chapter 20 - I'll Be a Home for You

Chapter 20

how does she look so pretty rolling her eyes?

(vodka makes me delusional)

Aang

I remember how sweaty my hands were that day, walking to JJ’s locker, clutching a pink camellia. The eighth of March, freshman year. The week before, I had opened thousands of websites that a Google search gave me for Poland, Women’s Day. Most of the ones I read said it’s customary to give Polish women flowers for Women’s Day. The rest was porn. And even the porn had flowers in it.

I strolled up to her, pushed the flower into her hand, and squeaked, “I didn’t know what flowers you liked, but this one is pink. Happy Women’s Day!”

She got so excited. “This is for me?”

“Yes, I-I googled it and saw that everyone in Poland gives flowers? Like dads, uncles, friends. And since we’re friends—”

The smile fell from her face. “You’re giving me flowers as a friend?” She looked almost disappoi—

“Hey!” Bryn pats my cheek. “Are you alive?”

“Huh?” My eyes flutter open. I didn’t realize they were closed.

“Thank god. She would have killed me if you died from one shot of vodka.”

Pink sneakers enter my line of sight. My eyes move up the long legs until I get to JJ’s frowning face.

“What are you two doing down there?” she asks.

“Hi, girl!” Bryn puts her hand out, and JJ hauls her up.

I don’t feel like standing. I’ve had a shot of vodka, what if I get dizzy and fall? And get a permanent brain injury? There goes my attempt at Stanford and San Francisco.

“Why would you give him alcohol? I told you he doesn’t drink.” JJ crosses her arms.

“I gave him one shot of vodka! I even diluted it with water!”

JJ stares at her in horror. “You mixed vodka with water? That’s a sin against Pola—” She purses her lips. “It doesn’t matter that you diluted it. You still gave it to him!”

Bryn shakes her head. “He knew he was taking alcohol from me!”

“What?” JJ’s eyes snap to me. “You knowingly drank alcohol? Are you ill?”

I shake my head.

“Then why did you do it?”

Oh, to find out how you and your ex-boyfriend broke up. Maybe I am a stalker? My eyes flick toward Bryn, but instead of ratting me out, she winks at me. I look back at JJ, who’s clearly waiting for an answer. I could lie to her. But I’m racking my brain and cannot think of anything that doesn’t make me sound deranged.

Honesty is the only thing left, then.

“I can’t tell you,” I mumble, and immediately know I’ve made a mistake.

Panic runs across her face. It’s the same face she made the first time she heard Remy’s parents’ Southern accent. The same face she makes whenever more than three people are talking over each other at Mathletes.

“I can’t tell you,” I repeat louder, my voice carrying over the music and the crowd.

Her shoulders relax, but she’s still frowning. “Why not?”

“I can’t tell you why I can’t tell you.”

JJ opens her mouth, but Bryn interrupts her. “I’m gonna go find Monique. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She adjusts JJ’s tiara and skips away.

“So nothing is off-limits,” JJ mutters before squatting in front of me. She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Look at me.”

Would be hard not to.

“Have you had dinner?” she asks.

I nod.

“Then there’s no way you can already be drunk. It’s in your head.”

“You’re in my head.” Oh god, what did—

Her grip on my shoulders tightens. “What?”

“I mean … I mean, I’m Asian. Don’t we have low alcohol tolerance?”

She huffs. “This is what happens when mathematicians try to read biology papers. You have less than a fifty percent chance of getting the ALDH2 gene mutation. And low alcohol tolerance is not a good description of the condition. Even if you had it, on a full stomach, with your height and weight, one shot of diluted vodka wouldn’t make you drunk. You’re just freaking out.”

Fuck me. She’ll make a hot doctor.

I shut down that train of thought.

She hoists me up. “Let’s get you some water.” She pushes me through the crowd toward the kitchen. “And relax. Your neurons will be fine.”

When we get to the kitchen, also full of people, I gulp down a bottle of water. “You know what? I feel much better.” I keep speaking loudly so she can hear me without stressing out.

“Placebos can be effective for hypochondriacs.” She rolls her eyes.

She looks pretty when she rolls her eyes. “JJ, you’re really pre—”

“Aang?” The voice grates on my ears.

I squash the plastic bottle.

How is he here? He doesn’t go to our school. He doesn’t even live in this town.

People from other high schools were invited.

“Aang?” the voice repeats.

I turn around.

A tall guy with short black hair is staring at me, bewildered. He’s wearing yellow trousers, red suspenders, and a firefighter hat. Isn’t it too cold to be walking around shirtless?

“You’re at a party?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for my reply because he spots JJ behind me. A slow smile spreads over his face, and he walks past me. “Aang, want to introduce me?” He extends his hand.

No, I don’t.

JJ takes his hand with a puzzled expression.

I sigh. “This is Wai Hung. We know each—”

“Just use my English name. You always pronounce the Chinese one wrong.”

My blood curdles. As opposed to him, who grew up speaking Cantonese at home and has a perfect accent, perfect writing, and perfect vocabulary.

“I’m Michael.” He’s still holding her hand. “Aang and I go to the same Chinese school.”

“Same class as well,” I add.

“But that doesn’t say much, does it?” He finally lets go of JJ’s hand. “Aang’s not very good at Cantonese.”

JJ doesn’t say anything. The kitchen’s too loud, and she probably can’t make out his words. She gives him a tight smile and adjusts her glove. He takes in her whole outfit. His eyes dart from her to me, to the frog eyes on my head.

“You have a girlfriend?” he exclaims, so loudly that even JJ had to register that. He leans toward me. “Always thought you’d go for a Chinese girl.”

My stomach drops. JJ tilts her head, but there’s no way she heard the second part of what he said with the speaker blasting right next to us.

The music pounds against my skull, each beat making the room feel smaller. Someone bumps into me. I try to breathe, but the air is too thick. Michael opens his mouth again.

I turn on my heel and escape the kitchen, barely registering JJ shouting after me. I push open the first door on the right, and a wave of freezing air hits me. My lungs remember how to work again as I walk into the cold.

Massachusetts in early December at ten p.m. isn’t the most pleasant time to be outside. But the other option is to go back inside, where Michael can make me feel like an asshole by telling the truth.

I sit down on the porch steps and look out into the garden.

I have thought before that having a Chinese girlfriend would solve everything. We’d speak Cantonese together. I’d take part in her family’s Chinese New Year, and she could teach me the things I should already know. But hearing Michael say it out loud made it sound so calculating.

I wouldn’t reject someone because they’re not Chinese. Michael barely knows me, yet he’s sure I would. Is that what people think? Acid surges in my throat. Is that what JJ thinks?

I tense as footsteps thump behind me. “It’s freezing.”

My muscles relax a bit as JJ sits down next to me. Her dress hikes up, and the goosebumps spread all the way to the top of her bare thighs.

I have to swallow before I find something intelligible to say. “You can go back in if you want to. I just needed some fresh air.”

“Nah, I’ll stay here. There’s no place I’d rather be than outside in a corset dress when it’s five degrees.” She laughs, but it doesn’t hide the shiver.

She means degrees Celsius. She must be freezing if she didn’t do the math of turning Celsius into Fahrenheit before speaking.

I take my hoodie off and hand it to her. She stares at it for way too long.

I pull the hoodie back. “It-it … it’s fine if you don’t wa—”

“I’ll take it.” She grabs it and pulls it over her head. Her tiara tips to one side.

The cold slowly numbs my fingers as we sit in silence, staring into Brad’s garden. Which isn’t particularly easy, as the only source of light is the fairy lights wrapped around the porch roof.

JJ turns to me. “I like your hair. It frames your face nicely.”

In a flash, my body forgets it’s December. Heat spreads across my cheeks and down my neck. I’m suddenly hyperaware of every strand of hair touching my forehead.

“Why did you grow it out?” she asks.

“Started at math camp. A girl there said I’d look good with longer hair.”

“I see.” She plays with the strings of the hoodie. “Do you keep in touch with her?”

“No. She lives in San Francisco.”

“Oh!” JJ pulls on the hoodie string too hard, and most of it now dangles from the right side. “Well, when you go to Stanford …”

“I don’t think we’ll talk again. She hit me with a canoe paddle.”

JJ’s laugh fills the garden. “At a math camp?”

“Yup.” I lean back, my elbows resting on the steps. “My mom signed me up for one of those sporty math camps without my consent. I was forced to rock climb, canoe, and hike between classes.”

“That actually explains a lot.” She smirks, and I might be imagining it, but her eyes flick to my bicep.

“Explains what?”

“Sorry, can’t tell you.” She leans back to match my position. The bottom of her dress shimmers.

“I like your costume!” I blurt out.

“Thank you.” Her eyes warm up at the compliment, and my heart skips. “Monique negotiated a Pilates class once a month in exchange for her mom buying us the princess costumes.”

I nod like I understand what that means.

Leaning back has set her tiara even more askew. Before my brain can stop my arm, I reach my hand out and correct it. My fingers linger on her curls, and I can’t get myself to move my hand away. And she’s not pulling away, so my hand is hovering awkwardly by her temple.

She angles her head barely eight degrees, and it’s enough that my fingers press against her skin.

“You never corrected him,” she whispers.

“What?”

“You never corrected Michael when he assumed I was your girlfriend.”

“I didn’t?” I’m trying to remember the Michael conversation, but my brain’s fuzzy. The vodka shot. At it again.

“No, you didn’t.” She looks at me through her dark eyelashes.

I want to lean forward.

I snap my hand back.

That door was never open. She might regret what she said last year, but she was right. I’m not her type.

But she broke up with Brad. She ended her perfect cheerleader–footballer relationship. And she did it over a Women’s Day flower. My hand fidgets to go back to where it was.

The back door flies open, and we jerk apart.

“What are you guys doing out here? Do you want to freeze to death?” Remy looks between us. At my heaving chest and JJ’s crazy eyes. “Did you—”

“Aang drank a shot of vodka!” JJ scrambles up.

I follow.

“You did what?” Remy smacks me on the arm. “You did your first shot without me?”

“I’m sorry.” I massage my arm. “It’ll never happen again.”

“Girl, I sure do think so.” He slings his arms around our shoulders, leading us off the porch. “Did you think it was water?”

“No. I just needed to know something.”

“Was it worth it?”

Great friendship we’re having here pounds against my brain, but I can’t help the smile that spreads over my face, the vodka making me delusional. I look at JJ. “You know what, I think it was.”