Chapter 17 - I'll Be a Home for You

Chapter 17

the most terrible thing happens

(i get invited to a high school party)

Aang

Several days after Thanksgiving, Remy’s holiday spirit is gone, and he’s in the mood to criticize my room décor.

“You could put a nice plant here.” He points to one corner of my room. “And I need to buy you a frame for this.” He inspects a poster of Bruce Lee in a kung fu stance. “Explain to me why you have it?”

“He’s from Hong Kong.” I lean back in my chair, studying the poster. A kid at the supermarket called me Bruce Chan once. He confused Bruce Lee with Jackie Chan. But they’re both from Hong Kong, so that tiny scrap of accidental accuracy made something in my chest unclench.

Getting identity validation from eight-year-old racists. That’s rock bottom, right there.

I turn around in my chair to face the desk. “Please, let’s finish your homework before I lose my hair from the stress.” Helping people with math is great. Unless it’s Remy. I flip the page ofhis notebook. He wrote that seven multiplied by eight is fifty-four. My head spins a little.

“Please wait. No self-respecting Southern belle would pass up an opportunity to make this house a home.”

My hand tightens around his notebook. How does Remy do it? He moved here from Alabama when he was ten. My dad left Hong Kong when he was seven. But Remy still has his accent and mentions the South all the time, while I can’t remember Dad ever talking about Hong Kong.

Remy plops back onto the stool next to my desk. He smiles at the medal hanging on the corkboard above us. “How about we text JJ to see if she wants to join us?”

My heart speeds up. “I don’t know … Is that a good idea?”

“Why not? She’s been driving us to school for a couple of days now. It’s time we all hung out more.”

But what if it’s going to be awkward? What if Thanksgiving was just a fluke, helped by the holiday spirit and the fight adrenaline wearing off, and we can’t go back to how it was before? Remy called shotgun for the past two days, and they’ve spent the rides catching each other up on every single thing that has happened to them in the past year. I stared out the window, feeling bad for being the reason they didn’t experience those things together.

But Remy takes my silence as permission. He grabs my phone from the desk.

“What are you doing?” I try to wrench the phone away from him, but fighting Remy is impossible because he’s built like a giant. Or, in his own words, a linebacker.

He searches through my contacts. “Why did you save her as Józefina-Ibifubara?” He pronounces Józefina as Joe-zeh-fee-nah instead of Yoo-zeh-fee-nah. I don’t think he remembers the correct way to pronounce it since she started going by JJ on the second day of school.

“It’s her name.” Unlike me, her parents gave her a real name instead of one from an American cartoon.

“So is JJ.” He clicks the call icon.

My heart stops at the sound of the outgoing video call. “You said you’d text her!”

“I changed my mind.” He examines me before ruffling my hair. “That’s hotter.”

“Give me my phone. Now.” I launch myself at Remy as JJ’s voice fills the room.

“Hi, Aang!”

Remy throws me the phone. I try to catch it, but it ends up on the floor.

“Hello?”

I pick it up, my hair ruffled even more than before. “JJ! Hi!”

“Hi.” She smiles.

“Hi!”

“Hi?” Her smile turns into a frown.

Remy laughs. I shove him off the stool.

“Remy thought, I mean, we thought … you could hang out with us?” I turn my phone toward Remy, who waves from the floor.

“I’d love to! But I can’t right now.”

A weight settles behind my ribs. I’m not disappointed.

“I’m at Monique’s. The girls are helping me take my braids out.”

Bryn pushes her face into the camera. “It’s an absolute nightmare, by the way.”

“Bryn told her to take the braids out after two months. It’s been over three!” Monique is fighting with a strand of hair.

“We’re also stalking the routines of the teams we’re up against at State. You should see what someone from Whitechapel High posted. The first sequence of the pyramid! Including the transition!” JJ shakes her head. “Amateurs.”

“Stop shaking your head, or you’ll go home like this.” Monique takes out a blond strand.

Half of JJ’s head is blond braids, and the other is a mixture of curly and straight black hair sticking out everywhere.

“There’s no need to threaten me.” She laughs, and my face warms. “What time do you have free period tomorrow?” she asks me.

“One.”

“Me too.”

“Me too!” Remy shouts, inspecting the Bruce Lee poster again. “We should all study in the library!”

“Sounds great,” JJ says.

“It does,” I agree.

“See you then.”

“See you then.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

“Oh my god, just hang up. You’ll see him tomorrow.” Monique grabs the phone, and my screen goes black.

Remy grins at me.

“Shut up. And leave my poster alone.” I walk up to my desk and look at his homework again. His atrocious math weirdly doesn’t bother me anymore. “Let’s finish your exercises.”

“Why are you smiling so much? Ten minutes ago, you were behaving like my homework was your ultimate penance.”

Helping Remy has never been more enjoyable.

My left hand is stained with ink. It’s cramping. There’s an achy indent on my middle finger where I’m holding my pen. I turn the page and start practicing the characters for adjectives.

“The free period started five minutes ago.” Remy sits down opposite me in the library. “How have you already filled …” He looks at my tìhn jih gaak13 notebook. “Fifteen pages?”

“Fourteen.” I don’t look up. “I started at six in the morning.” I stretch my hand to relieve the cramp. “The test is coming up soon, and I can’t fail it.” And if I do better than Michael, I’ll be able to rub it in his face.

“You mean the constructive feedback test that’s at the end of February?” He takes out his sketchbook. “With now being late November?”

“It’s not at the end of February. It’s in the middle of it.” I attempt the first stroke of beautiful, but the ink in my pen has run out. I press harder, but only ghost marks appear.

“Maybe you should have signed up for an easier class.”

“There was no easier class.” I grab a new pen, and it glides on the paper. There’s just something about writing with a fresh pen …

“There was Introduction to Cantonese and Intermediate Cantonese.”

“Exactly. There was no class other than Advanced Cantonese.”

Remy opens his sketchbook, his expression resigned.

Maybe I’m not the best fit for Advanced Cantonese when the other four kids in my class are heritage speakers. But I did the easier classes before. I sat there on Saturdays surrounded by elementary school kids. They got better. I didn’t. No matter how hard I try, I don’t get better.

So no. There were no other options but to enroll in Advanced Cantonese, sit at the back of the class twice a week, and try to understand one out of twenty words spoken. At least I’m surrounded by high schoolers. Call me crazy, but it’s more dignified being laughed at by a high school senior than a third grader when you mix up the tones and say dick14 instead of dog.15 Why was I saying dog? I don’t have a dog.

I press the pen to the paper and go back to practicing characters. I’m writing out the first stroke of beautiful16 when JJ flops onto the chair next to me. “You’ll never believe what happened after our call.”

“What was it—” My voice hitches. The pen slips, the stroke gets too long, and the character loses its meaning.

The braids are gone. Her black curls cascade to her shoulder blades, swept back into a half-up, keeping the bulk of her hair away from her face. But there are some coils around her temples, getting into her brown eyes. She smiles at me, and my vision fills with dark spots like I’m staring into the sun.

“Aang, are you listening to me?”

I blink, and the spots disappear. “I’m sorry?”

“I know your head is with your Cantonese homework, but I need your attention for like two minutes.” She leans over with her phone. Our shoulders touch. I put the pen down.

“I don’t think that’s what he’s distracted by,” Remy mutters.

I give him a warning look and fix my eyes on JJ’s screen. I’m watching a guy throw a girl up in the air and catch her feet with no other bases helping out. She ends up standing in his palms at his shoulder level.

My eyebrows shoot up. How did they do that?

“This is Southfields High, one of our rivals for State. I can’t believe they’re adding a partner stunt into their routine! Their difficulty will skyrocket!” JJ keeps replaying the video, her eyes glued to the guy. “He’s so strong.”

I grit my teeth.

“I tried getting Brad to do a partner stunt with me once, but he’s not cheerleading-coordinated.” She relays the story to Remy, and my teeth grind harder with every word. I’m literally right here. And she won’t ask me if I want to do it. Does she think I’m not strong enough? I can be strong enough.

“And then his wrist gave up, but instead of letting go of my foot and—”

“How about we do that?” I interrupt her.

Her brow knits together. “What do you mean?”

“State is more than two months away. We could stay longer after school and learn …” I wave vaguely at her phone.

“Partner stunts,” she says.

“Yes, we could stay longer after school and learn partner stunts. You still need to prove to Coach that you can fly. That’d help, right? And surely we should match our competition to have a better chance at winning State, and you know winning will improve our chances for Stanford and Columbia.”

She stares at me with a blank expression. “You want to do more cheerleading?”

It will definitely take time away from Cantonese. That’s fine. I’ll just start waking up earlier. “Yes, I’m happy to do even more cheerleading. For Stanford.”

The smile that spreads across her face will be worth the five a.m. alarm. “A partner stunt … and the difficulty …”—she’s jumping in the chair—“and flying … oh my god … thank you so much!” She throws her arms around my neck.

My hands instinctively settle on her back. The smell of vanilla knocks the air out of me, the same way it did on Thanksgiving.

“JJ!” a voice calls out from behind us. Brad’s striding to our table in his varsity jacket.

She starts pulling away, and for a split second, my hands tighten around her, and I think I should hold her where she is and stare Brad down.

I let go and shuffle my chair away. Don’t let your mind go there. We’re just becoming friends again.

“Hi!” She grins at Brad. “What are you doing here?”

“Searching for an embroidery book.”

Remy’s head whips up from his sketchbook. “You like embroidery?”

“Yeah, it’s super relaxing during game days. You like it, too?”

Remy nods, leaning forward. I frown.

“I’m Brad.”

“Remy.”

“Love the name.” Brad winks at him.

Remy’s cheeks turn pink, and he plays with his pen.

I frown some more. I think I know what’s happening, but I don’t think I understand what is happening.

Brad rests a hand on JJ’s shoulder. He does a lot of resting for someone who’s supposed to be an athlete. “My mom’s managing a brand trip in Miami and taking my dad with her for flower arrangements. Which means I’m throwing a party.”

“Finally!” JJ claps her hands. “It was making boring around here.”17

My lips curl up. She makes English sound more interesting than it actually is.

Brad tilts his head. “Yeah? Either way—”

“Getting!” JJ interrupts him. “It was getting boring around here.” She chuckles awkwardly. “Sorry.” Her knee bounces under the table, and I fight the urge to rest a hand on it. What I’d do to make such small mistakes in Cantonese.

“Don’t sweat it.” Brad bumps her shoulder. “The party is in two weeks on Saturday. Costumes mandatory.”

“But Halloween was a month ago” slips out of me.

Brad gasps, clutching his heart. “I don’t need a reason to throw a costume party!”

“So true.” Remy nods.

Brad smiles at him. “You two want to come?”

“Yes!” Remy shouts before I even register the invitation.

“See you all at the party, then.” He walks toward the art section.

JJ and Remy start throwing costume ideas at each other, while I look down at my notebook.

What just happened?

13 田字格

14 鳩 (gāu) [extremely rude]

15 狗 (gáu)

16 美麗 (méih laih)

17 In Polish, a literal translation of It was getting boring would be It was making boring (Robiło się nudno)