by Maurene Goo
Sweat pooled under my cap, and one thick lock of hair kept tickling my nose as I rushed to get all the ingredients together. “What the heck, is she catering an event in that dumb coffee shop?” I cried, opening the jar of pickled daikon radishes.
“You guys made an extra lombo order instead of picanha!” Rose hollered, her voice panicky and on edge. The three of us were so smashed into that small space that I felt her breath on the back of my neck as she yelled.
Pai was plating another batch of pasteis. “That’s okay, you can—”
“Just deal with it!” I yelled back, at my wit’s end. I lifted up a hand as I said it, and the latex glove that I had been pulling off flew into the air. I swiveled around to see where it had landed, and when I did, I was standing face-to-face (or to be more accurate, face-to-neck) with Rose.
The kimchi-coated glove was plastered to her cheek.
I burst out laughing at the same time that someone outside yelled, “Yo, where my pasteis at?”
“Coming right up!” Rose called out as she peeled the glove away from her face.
“Coming right up!” I mimicked in a high-pitched voice. I couldn’t help it; my stress levels were off the charts and my resentment had failed to die down over the course of the day. In fact, it was increasingly fueled.
My dad was handing out food through the pickup window. “Clara!” he barked in warning.
“Can’t you just do your job?” Rose snapped. “You’re such an incompetent clown.”
Without thinking, I whipped off my other glove and threw it so hard at her face that it made a satisfying smack.
She gasped and clutched her cheek.
My dad stepped between us again. “I swear to God I am going to kick you both out of here unless you calm down. Can you manage to grow up for three seconds and do that?”
Rose nodded, taking a deep breath, smoothing down her shirt again. It was like rubbing the shirt gave her magical calming powers. “Sorry, Adrian,” she said with a little smile.
He looked at me, arms crossed, his forearm tattoo of my birthday written in Gothic font obnoxiously displayed.
I tilted my head back and rolled my eyes as deeply as humanly possible. “Okaaaay.”
Rose went back to taking orders and me to cooking and assembling them. I had just finished wrapping the pasteis up in foil when Rose bumped into me as she reached for the cashbox.
We glared at each other but didn’t say a word, feeling my dad’s eyes on us. But when I turned to hand the pasteis to my dad, Rose stepped back again and her shoulder knocked my head, shooting a jolt of pain straight through my skull.
I grabbed my head. “Watch it, clumso!”
“You watch it!” As she said it, Rose swept her arm and knocked over a bowl full of vinaigrette onto the floor.
We both froze. My dad turned at the sound and cursed. “Are you kidding me right now?” His voice did this funny squeaking thing.
“Sorry!” Rose said as she reached over to grab a towel.
I picked up the bowl. “Has anyone ever told you it’s annoying when girls say sorry all the time?”
She threw the towel on the floor where it landed with a wet splat. “That’s it. I’ve tried to be the bigger person here and let you act like a little jerk to me. But you need to be put in your place!”
Something about Rose’s anger really gave me life. I let out a brittle laugh. “This isn’t Elysian. You have no power here.”
Her face was inches away from mine. “We’ll see.”
The guy who was ordering at the window clapped his hands over his head. “Fight, fight!”
“PARE!”
We all stared at my dad. He shook his head. “I mean, stop. That’s it. You guys are not only acting like kids, you’re affecting business!”
And within seconds, we were both pushed out onto the sidewalk and the KoBra’s door was locked against us. I pounded on it, but my dad refused to open it.
“PAI!” I yelled. “You’re being a total fascist!” I kicked the door and stalked off, throwing my cap onto the ground as I walked away.
Rose followed behind. I was steaming but didn’t know where to go, and I was annoyed that Rose was following me. “Can’t you go to your car?” I seethed as I walked rapidly down the sidewalk. She didn’t respond, but I could still feel her on my heels. Where had she parked? God!
“Too good to talk to me now?” I asked while glancing behind me.
She looked at me, then huffed with frustration. “Will you, like, turn into a toad or something if you stop talking for more than one minute?”
I glared at her. “Don’t be jealous of my charisma.”
She just made a repulsed face.
I continued walking and clenched my jaw. “You do realize that this entire thing is your fault? That if you hadn’t lost your mind at the dance we wouldn’t be in this mess?” We passed by a group of hipster dudes who laughed at my raised voice. I flipped them off.
I could almost hear Rose’s eyes roll. “If you hadn’t felt the narcissistic need to pull a prank at junior prom and make it all about yourself, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
I stopped walking and turned around to face her. “Narcissistic? I was entertaining. It was a selfless act—someone needed to spice up that dance.”
She scoffed and walked right up to me, her posture challenging. “I’ve known you since middle school. You are a classic narcissist. Inflated sense of self-importance? Check. Need for attention based on some issue with your absent mother, clearly? Check.”
I felt an uncontrollable anger rising up—something that I usually had a grip on.
“And, here’s the kicker, you have absolutely no empathy for others. Never wondering if the stuff you’re always pulling might actually hurt other people. Like, did you know Kathy Tamayo really wanted to win prom queen? That her little sister recently got into a car accident and was badly injured and maybe this would have been a nice thing for her to win?” Her voice was louder now.
I felt a brief flash of guilt before anger took over again. “How was I supposed to know that? And it’s not my fault her sister’s hurt or that she didn’t get enough votes! It was supposed to be a joke!” I was yelling at this point.
A sharp whistle interrupted me. “Girls, can you move along?” I looked over and saw a man leaning out of his shoe repair shop. He had an annoyed expression on his face.
“You move along, sir!” I snapped back but then stomped off, leaving Rose standing on the sidewalk behind me.
A bus ride later, I was home, and I headed straight to the bathroom, my heart pounding and my hands clammy. I splashed my face with cold water, trying to wash myself of Rose’s self-righteousness. Who the heck did she think she was? Like she was just so kind and never self-serving! What a load of utter crap. And how was I supposed to know about Kathy freaking Tamayo and her sister?!
Guilt pooled inside me—insidious, unfamiliar, and very unwelcome. I holed myself up in my room and started reading an old John Grisham novel that I had read so many times the cover was creased beyond recognition. Then I blasted girlie Motown and settled deep into my pillows, Flo curling up into a ball comfortably on top of my head.
But when I found myself reading the same paragraph for the fifth time, I tossed the book aside, making Flo growl deeply and jump off my head.
“Excuse me for living, Queen Licker of Butts,” I muttered as I pulled out my phone. I went to Facebook and took a deep breath. In the search bar, I typed “Kathy Tamayo.” When I got to her profile page, I saw photos of her in a sparkly silver dress at junior prom. I scrolled down farther and saw a link for a crowdfunding page for her sister, Jill. The photo accompanying the link was of a little Filipino girl, maybe ten or so. Shiny black hair, big smile with dimples. I bit down on my lip. For Pete’s sake.
I clicked on the link and read about the car accident that had injured Jill a few weeks ago. And then I read about the medical bills.
Good thing I had memorized my dad’s credit card nu
mber a long time ago. I donated thirty dollars on the site. Then I scribbled a note on a piece of notepad paper and slipped it under my dad’s door.
Pai, I owe you $30, you’ll see a random charge on your credit card.
CHAPTER 8
My dad had us take the next two days off. I was excited about it until I realized he wasn’t going to talk to me. He didn’t make Mr. Ramirez check in on me, and he didn’t make me breakfast.
I went out with Patrick and Felix, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I’d never gotten the silent treatment from my dad before.
I tried to butter him up with pizza and ESPN Classic, but he ignored me and went straight to bed. Without eating dinner. The only time my dad skipped meals was when he had mad diarrhea. And even that didn’t stop him sometimes.
On day two of silent treatment, I wore clown makeup and an orange wig, then waited for him to come home, sitting on the sofa in the dark. I knew things were serious when he didn’t react and instead walked straight up to his room. My dad did not kid around with clowns.
I called my mom the second night of the deep freeze, needing sympathy from someone who would understand.
I had to FaceTime because my mom refused to do anything else. When she picked up, raucous laughter rang out before she could say hi to me. The video on the phone was wobbly and I winced. “Mãe!”
“Clara, one sec!” I heard her laughing, the camera on her face but also moving wildly. I turned my head away to avoid feeling nauseated.
Finally, she steadied the camera on herself—all tousled hair and perfect brows. “Hey, filha, sorry. We’re in the middle of this shoot for Whimsy.”
“What’s Whimsy, and where are you?” I was already annoyed at not having her full attention.
A flash of sunshine from the window behind her blinded me for a second. “Whimsy’s a new online styling service, and I’m in Brooklyn!”
“You are?” I felt myself cheer up, just knowing she was in the same country as me. “For how long?”
“Leaving in a couple of days, actually. Have this trade show in Italy.”
I flopped down onto my bed and stared at the dusty yellow light streaming through my threadbare curtains. “Oh, this little ol’ thing in Italy.”
She laughed, her teeth white and recently veneered by some fancy dentist who sponsored it when she live-Storied the procedure. “We’ll go together one day and stuff ourselves with pasta.”
My eyes closed, imagining a day when I wasn’t stuck in LA all summer, desiccated as the plants.
“So what’s going on?” she asked, interrupting my brief daydream of eating gelato in a cobblestoned alley.
“Pai’s pissed at me.”
“Uh-oh. What did you do?”
“Why would you assume it was me?”
Her sharp bark of laughter made me cringe. “Give me a break, Clara.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Well, my first day on the truck with Rose didn’t go so great.”
“I can’t help but think that might be an understatement.”
It was hard to fool my mom because we were so similar. Every time I tried to gloss over something or play it cool, she called me out instantly. “We just got into a fight. What else is new? Rose and I have never gotten along.”
“You’re going to have to, though. You’re working with her all summer, right?”
Flo decided this was the perfect time to hop onto my chest, her sturdy paw digging into my boob painfully. I winced but let her stay there because I was always at her mercy. “Yeah. But don’t worry! I’m going to try and make it to Tulum, no matter what.”
A low voice on the other end interrupted before my mom could respond, her gaze drifting somewhere to the left of her phone. Suddenly, Brooklyn seemed light-years away.
“Clara, I have to run. But don’t worry about Adrian; you know he always gives in. Wear him down!” With that, she gave me, or the phone rather, an air-kiss and was gone.
I went to bed that night still feeling unsettled and craving a giant bowl of spaghetti.
* * *
Thursday morning I was woken up by blinding sunshine again. I squinted and saw my dad taking a sip of coffee next to the window.
“You have fifteen minutes to meet me downstairs, Shorty.”
Relief pulled me out of bed at record speed. My dad was waiting for me with an avocado toast and tea in a thermos. Not my favorite breakfast, but I didn’t complain. I was just happy that he was talking to me again.
He pulled on his shoes, a pair of pristine black Nikes with neon green stripes running down the sides. “Okay, today we’re doing two of our regular stops. Rose is meeting us at the first stop. And I swear to God, Clara, if you two don’t figure out a way to work together, I’ll have a bigger punishment in store.”
I bit into my toast. “Yeah, yeah.” I hid my excitement at being back on speaking terms with my dad, the bread covering my smile.
* * *
After prepping the food, my dad and I headed to Pasadena, which was just northeast of us. But to get there, you had to take the Western United States’ first freeway, the 110. Pretty cool, except the lanes were about as narrow as a bicycle and the on- and off-ramps were two feet long and often set at ninety-degree angles to the freeway.
And this time, I was driving.
“This is, like, terrifying,” I said, my sweaty hands clutching the steering wheel.
My dad patted my shoulder. “You’re good. I taught you how to drive this freeway last year.”
“Yeah, in a normal car, not the KoBra!”
“Nah, you got this.” If only his confidence in my driving skills was at all warranted.
We finally got off Murder Freeway and arrived at our destination in one piece: an office park filled with grass, big shady trees, and depressing 1980s architecture. “Oh, so this is where your youth goes to kill itself,” I announced as we pulled in.
As we parked the truck alongside the curb by the lawn, I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye: an Asian guy my age or so standing on the corner, holding one of those arrow-shaped signs that advertise a business. It said JAVA TIME and had a hand-painted illustration of a mug of steaming-hot coffee.
I wanted to look away from the secondhand embarrassment of it, except I couldn’t. This guy was good. He was tossing the thing up in the air and catching it behind his back. Then when he got sick of that, he did a backflip and held the sign up with his feet while doing a handstand.
“What in the world is that guy putting in his ‘java’?” I asked with a snort of laughter.
My dad followed my gaze, then grinned. He jumped out of the truck and hollered, “Yo!”
The guy caught the sign in the middle of spinning it around the top of his head like a helicopter propeller. “Hey, Adrian!” he called out. He trotted over to us—his step light, his body agile and bouncy. Like a Labrador. He and Pai exchanged an elaborate fist bump involving fingers wiggling, slapping, and some weird elbow tapping. Okay, bros, we get it.
Then he glanced over at the truck, and I almost choked.
Upon closer inspection, the Labrador was very good-looking. Not my type at all—I usually fell for guys who looked a little malnourished and tortured. This guy was the picture of health and vigor: broad-shouldered with the lean yet muscular build of a runner, thick hair cut short with a few wavy locks flopping into his eyes, high cheekbones, and the nicest skin you ever saw on a male—he was practically glowing. He was like the photo you would find when looking for a stock image of “happy handsome Asian teenager.”
“Hey, you must be Clara!” he exclaimed, walking over to the truck with a giant, toothy grin. His very sharp canines seemed to glint against the sunshine. I blinked.
Smile still firmly in place, the Labrador deftly placed the sign against his hip and held his hand out. “I’m Hamlet Wong.”
I stared at his hand then looked up at him. Who in the world our age shook hands? I held up my hand in greeting instead. “Hi. Your name’s Hamlet?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah,” he answered, unfazed.
“Why would your parents do that to you?”
My dad, who was standing behind Hamlet, shook his head. “Clara.”
I feigned innocence. “What! It’s an honest question!”
Hamlet shrugged. “Oh yeah, I understand. My parents, uh, liked the idea of naming me after a prince.” He laughed loudly, startling me.
My incredulity was genuine. “A Danish prince who no one else in the entire world is named after?”
Before he could reply, Rose popped up next to me, magically. She must have gotten here before us. “Hi, I’m Rose Carver,” she said as she held out her hand. Her smile was dazzling. Why was I not surprised when they shook hands.
Hamlet’s eyes lit up even more than the lit-upness they already were. “Oh wow! I didn’t know there was a new employee!”
My dad leaned in the doorway to the truck. “Well, these two are working the KoBra this summer as punishment.”
“Really?” Hamlet’s eyebrows practically rose into that amazing hair of his. “What’d you guys do?”
I looked at Rose. “Let her tell the story. She’s really unbiased, like Fox News.”
She did this little head flip—if her hair had been longer, it would have whipped my face. “We got into an argument and almost … well…”
“You attacked me. And we almost burned the school down,” I said flatly.
Hamlet did a little surprised hop, raising a fist up to his mouth. “No way!”
Rose made a face at me. “Don’t exaggerate.” Then her eyes flitted over to Hamlet—a split second of self-consciousness. “We didn’t burn it down! And anyway, we only fought because she pulled this prank at junior prom—”
“What kind of prank?” Hamlet’s head swiveled toward me and his eyes sparkled. “I really love prank stories.”
I frowned. It was like the time a lady pointed at my bloody-bunny T-shirt and said, “I love creative shirts.” The truly earnest made me so uncomfortable. I muttered, “I reenacted the end of Carrie.”
