Clues to the Universe

by Christina Li

  I’d inhaled it before I knew it. Ro held up something that looked like those fried Oreos Mom would never let me eat at the fair, except it was perfectly spherical and covered with sesame seeds. “Try this sesame ball next.”

  The crispy shell crumbled into a sweet gooey bite.

  This was way better than a fried Oreo.

  “I can’t believe you grew up on this stuff,” I said.

  “Sort of,” Ro said. “We eat a lot of stir-fry. But my other grandparents come visit on Christmas and Thanksgiving, so sometimes I get a lot of shepherd’s pie.”

  “You’re so lucky,” I said. “My mom burns the pasta sometimes.”

  She smiled and looked down. “I mean, I like it, I guess. But it’s . . . definitely different.”

  “What is it like—” I couldn’t put it in words. “Growing up like that?”

  She sighed and looked out. “It’s kind of hard to explain. It was weird when people would come up to my dad at stores and ask if I was adopted. Or when my Chinese grandma asks Mom if my freckles can be scrubbed off. Or when grandparents tell my other cousins that they look so much like their mom, or their dad, and I don’t really look like either. Or when someone guesses I’m Mexican, or South American, or if they don’t even bother to guess in the first place and just ask, ‘What are you?’ I feel like a freak.”

  She sighed again. “But they were so similar. That’s the part no one understands. My mom and dad both liked the same rock bands. They used to go on road trips down the coast. They liked the same awful Italian restaurant. But just because they didn’t look like each other, well . . . some people thought they didn’t belong together.”

  Silence. Used to. Where was her dad, anyway?

  Ro drew her knees up to under her chin. I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t a freak. Or that it would be pretty sad if her freckles were scrubbed off, because they matched mine and because I couldn’t imagine a Ro without freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. I didn’t even know if my parents had ever gone on a road trip. Maybe they had. They probably hadn’t. I wouldn’t know.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “I guess . . . it just wasn’t something I thought about.”

  Ro shrugged. “Yeah, most people don’t have to.”

  “You get these dinners, though,” I said. “And this bun is the best thing I’ve ever had in my life.” I looked up. “So what are these chicken feet you told me about?”

  “Don’t even try,” Ro said.

  “You know I eat all kinds of stuff.”

  She laughed. “You can go see for yourself.”

  We padded into the kitchen. The pantry door was ajar, and I heard Ro’s mom talking to what sounded like . . . her grandma? One of the aunties? She spoke in clipped English. “I just worry about Ro.”

  “Ma—”

  “Aiyah, you should move closer to us. More healthy. Chinese families grow up with their grandparents. And San Francisco’s better than this place. You remember the Chus, right? They’re still next door to us. Good support system.”

  “I can’t,” Ro’s mom said. She sounded exhausted.

  “I know this is a hard time for you,” Ro’s grandmother said. “He was a good husband. Your ba and I are sad, too. But we want to help. The Ling family stays together.”

  I turned to see Ro’s face pale. She was frozen for a minute.

  And then she turned and ran.

  “Ro!” I called, running after her, and the conversation in the pantry stopped. “Ro!”

  I found her outside on the patio, leaning against the wall. Her arms were crossed.

  I stood by her for a few moments. The chill seeped in.

  “Your dad,” I said. “Did he leave too?”

  She looked up. Finally, she said, in a small voice, “He was killed by a drunk driver.”

  I stopped. I exhaled. “Oh.”

  Neither of us said anything. I asked finally, “When?”

  “Last March.” Her voice sounded tight, like she was trying hard not to cry. “That’s why I moved schools.”

  I paused.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what to say after that. My mind raced through all the things you’re supposed to say after something sad happens to a friend. I understand. I’ve been there.

  But the thing was, I didn’t understand. I knew what it was like to have a dad who didn’t show up for birthdays or baseball games. A dad who was generally absent on all fronts and could be in Nevada or Arizona or Greenland for all I knew, but I didn’t know what it was like to have a dad who was there and then was gone.

  Someone who would never, ever, ever come back.

  And so I did the only thing I could do. I opened my arms for a hug, and she leaned her forehead on my shoulder. I kept not saying anything, but I guess she was okay with this. And then a couple minutes later I heard hiccuping sounds, and Ro pulled away and mumbled, “Sorry. I’m getting snot all over your sweatshirt.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I really am sorry about your dad.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it.” Ro said. “About anything. My grandmother’s been trying to push Mom to move to San Francisco because that’s what everyone else thinks is best for us and they keep saying that I love the city. And I do, but I can’t even think about moving. Because that would be like leaving Dad behind.” Her voice rose. “And sometimes I can’t help thinking about it, you know? That night. I try to figure out how fast the other driver was going and if he just slowed down a little bit more or turned more or something Dad might still be here, but he’s gone and I can’t do anything about it.” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her windbreaker. “Sorry,” she mumbled again.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I used to cry about my dad too.”

  She nodded and sighed. She leaned back, looking up. “He used to point those out to me,” she said, pointing up to the inky sky. “Constellations. See, there’s Orion.” She traced a line. “That’s his belt.”

  I peered closer and could make out three bright stars. “Did your dad like building rockets, too?”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “We were supposed to work on it together.”

  And then my stomach grumbled. Ro looked over. “Still hungry?”

  “Nah, I’m fine,” I said, but Ro was already standing up.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “You got any more of those pork buns lying around?”

  “They run out pretty fast,” she said. “Come on!”

  And then we scrambled back to the warmth of the house, where Ro forced a smile at her grandmother as she scooped up two pork buns. We went outside again despite her grandma’s protests that it was too cold. Because somehow, it was more comfortable out there. We heard the lone hooting of an owl and the rustling of the grass and all those sounds I usually didn’t pay attention to because I never went outside just to look at stars. If I could sketch this moment, I’d mix dark against light blues. I’d blend in deep greens for the trees and dark gray for the shadows that stretched across the grass. We huddled in our sweaters and windbreakers, and Ro pointed out the constellations of a big bear and a small bear and what Ro said was supposed to be someone named Cassiopeia but I thought looked more like a flying squid instead. And so we stayed out there for a while, making up our own constellations, like the Intergalactic Octopus and the Massive Flying Saucer, the pork buns warming our hands and the universe in our ears.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ro

  “SO,” MOM SAID, putting all the food into Tupperware boxes. After Benji left with as much food as he could carry on his bike ride home, after all our aunts and cousins had bundled into their cars and left, and after Laolao and Wai-Gong squeezed me tight and patted Mom and told her to call more, the house seemed so quiet I thought my voice would bounce off the walls. “Did you end up inviting our neighbor?”

  “I did,” I said. I’d invited both Mr. Voltz and Benji, but only Benji had shown up. I shrugged. Mr. Voltz had been coming over sometimes to help me out wit
h my second rocket. He’d bring Ellie, who’d curl up in the corner, a safe distance away, and she’d watch us fiddle with the wires. He’d told me stories about how growing up on a farm in Illinois and hitchhiking his way to California before he went to fight in the war. He even made Mom laugh with his jokes. When he smiled, for once, he wasn’t so scary.

  I could see why Dad liked him.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like parties.”

  Mom shrugged. I sat at the dinner table, staring at Mom’s back. I had to ask. I blurted out, “Are we moving to San Francisco?”

  Mom straightened up. She turned around. “You eavesdropped on me?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said. “Benji and I were in the kitchen. But are we?”

  She deflated a little. “No, honey.”

  Whew.

  “At least not yet.” She pursed her lips. “But I’m really thinking about it, baobao. It might be good for us. We’d be closer to family. I loved growing up in the city.”

  My heart sank. I looked down at my shoes.

  “It’s just—” I looked around the walls. I looked at the living room carpet that had softened over the years, at the walls that Dad had painted yellow so it would look more sunny. I looked at Mom’s porcelain vases on the mantel. I looked at the pencil marks on the door where we’d measured my height, in inches and centimeters, every year. We’d practically grown into this home. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

  “I know.” Mom sighed and leaned against the counter. “We’re just going to think about it for now, okay?”

  My mind was spinning. Moving wouldn’t just mean leaving this house, I suddenly realized. It meant leaving here. Leaving school and Benji. Leaving the park across the street and the place where Dad always stopped to show me constellations. I felt dizzy, like everything was moving too fast, too soon.

  Mom reached over to give my hand a reassuring squeeze. I didn’t move. My arms stayed crossed. I didn’t look up from the ground.

  Just then, there was a faint knock at the door. Mom went to answer it. I glanced up.

  “My kids visited me,” Mr. Voltz said, out of breath. “They took me out to dinner, and it went on longer than I thought. I skipped dessert because I wanted to save room. Is it too late?”

  He held out something in his hand with shaking fingers, and I realized that it was a hongbao, a red envelope, the kind Chinese families give to each other, filled with money, to wish each other luck and prosperity in the new year. “I wasn’t sure what to put in here, to be frank,” he said. “I got it on the way back.”

  So he’d wanted to come all along. I took his red envelope and grinned at him. I looked at the containers full of leftovers and Mom’s eyes crinkled with her smile.

  “No,” she said, “you came just in time.”

  This time, I would make it right.

  I’d taken the Expedition II apart and written down five full pages of notes after the last launch. I’d described every single moment leading up to and after I pressed the button. I’d recalculated the math. I’d double-, triple-checked the radio wires. The numbers all checked out. It had to hit 1,620 feet.

  Benji and I had already started working on the science fair poster board. Regionals were less than a month away. We had to make a perfect launch. I needed this. Benji needed this—he had to keep his art class. We needed our results, and we would get them. There was no way I could mess up now. I’d made sure of that. I’d recorded every single measurement I could.

  This time, Benji didn’t joke around as we set the rocket up on the stand and assembled the circuit. He just looked over and nodded, as if to say, Ready?

  I stepped back and pressed the doorbell button. 1,620 feet, I said to myself, over and over again, my tracking device clutched tightly in my hand.

  With a hissing sound, the rocket shot into the air.

  Please work.

  Twenty seconds passed. It was still in the air.

  Benji and I looked at each other at the same time, eyes wide. But there was no time to waste. I trained my tracking device on the rocket, my heart soaring a little.

  The radio crackled to life.

  Yes!

  For a split second my heart rose. This was the time—

  The rocket trembled and started falling.

  The signals were coming through, but the rocket was already plummeting to the ground. The nose cone popped off, and the parachute shot out, and it was all over too soon.

  We were silent for a moment. Then Benji asked, tentatively, “Was that a radio signal we heard?”

  I nodded.

  “So . . . we did it?”

  I looked up at Benji. “Not quite,” I said. “It reached nine hundred feet,” I said. “It’s supposed to reach sixteen hundred and twenty.”

  His eyebrows knitted in confusion. “But the rocket still worked, didn’t it?”

  I looked down and shook my head. This was the most frustrating part. When you were working on a math problem and the final numbers didn’t come out right. When you got everything right until the very last step.

  Benji let out an exasperated sigh. “I mean, this is pretty good, right? Isn’t it good enough?”

  He didn’t understand. This wasn’t like the Next Best Step. That was only for things that were completely out of my control. I’d built this rocket. I knew it in and out, calculated the numbers, attached the parts myself. I had to make it perfect.

  Dad would have wanted it to be.

  I looked up. “I think the fin wasn’t secured on tightly enough. I saw it wobble in the air. We have to do this again.”

  Benji just stared at me.

  “One last time,” I said. “We can’t just end on this run. Something’s missing, and the numbers aren’t working out. We’ll get it right next time.”

  He just nodded. “Okay. I hope it works.”

  “Me too.” It had to.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Benji

  IF RO’S GARAGE hadn’t been a mad scientist’s lab before, it sure was now. Because now Ro didn’t just want to build any rocket: she wanted to build the most perfect rocket of all time. She was dead set on her numbers working out. We went straight to the garage, and Ro stayed there after I went home. She stared at her drawings and her tools for hours. If this had been a comic book, sparks would be practically flying from her goggles.

  She even started falling asleep in class, and I had to be the one to poke her awake.

  What had this world come to?

  Ro Geraghty was going bonkers.

  “This has to work,” Ro said, right before we launched the Expedition IV. “We’re on our second and last rocket motor, so we can’t launch anything else. I triple-checked everything. I made the fins lighter. I even took out the bolts and glued everything down with extra-double-strength epoxy so it would weigh less.” She looked up at me. “You’re positive there’s nothing else I could have forgotten?”

  I nodded. “We just have to go for it.”

  Ro took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell button. I counted down silently. Please, please work.

  Three. Two. One—

  The Expedition IV launched straight up, trailing a clear line of smoke. Second by second, I clenched my fists tighter, waiting for any hint of a wobble. Nothing. The rocket cleared a clean arc through the sky. The walkie-talkie beeped steadily. Twenty seconds. Thirty, forty. It kept flying. My heart rose to my throat. And then—

  The nose cone popped off, and the parachute billowed out.

  I pumped my fist in the air. “Yes!”

  Finally. There was not a single thing wrong with this launch.

  I ran across the field to retrieve the rocket, unable to stop grinning. Man, I understood why people did this for fun now. I would have hugged this rocket if I could. “We did it!” I said, leaning over the parachute. I straightened up for a high five.

  Ro’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Som
ething’s bugging you,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Eleven hundred feet,” she mumbled.

  She couldn’t be serious. I dropped my arms. “Ro, come on.”

  “It was our last launch,” she said. “And it only got to eleven hundred feet.”

  “So what if it doesn’t get to sixteen hundred and fifteen—”

  “Twenty!”

  “Fine, twenty!” I pointed at the rocket. “Can we just forget about those numbers for a second? It went almost perfectly this time. The rocket launched exactly like it was supposed to! It didn’t crash or anything. You even got your radio signals. Isn’t that good enough?”

  It seemed like it was good enough to get extra credit. At least, I hoped so.

  “We can’t just forget about the numbers,” Ro burst out. “This is how high our rocket was supposed to fly.”

  Why couldn’t she be happy with what she’d accomplished?

  “Then what’s enough for you?” I shot back. “What, are you going to launch a million rockets until one finally works? Why do we have to get this to this crazy height in the first place? You already built this all by yourself, Ro. You’re a rocket scientist.”

  What I meant to tell her was that she was a genius. That she was the smartest person I’d ever met in my entire life, and that included my math teacher and the kid down the block who moved away to become a spelling bee champ. I wanted to tell her that it was all okay.

  What actually came out was: “Come on, it’s just a stupid science fair project.”

  Ro looked up at me, and I instantly regretted every single word that had come out of my blabbing mouth.

  Ro didn’t say a word. She just stood up.

  “Wait!” I said. “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. I—”

  “No, you’re right,” she said, her words hard and bitter. “It’s just a dumb project. Come on. Let’s go.”

  We didn’t say a single word to each other on the ride back.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ro

  IT’S JUST A stupid science fair experiment.

  The wind tore through my hair and made my eyes smart. I could hear Benji faintly calling my name in the distance, but I just wanted to get home.