by Maurene Goo
“You know how. Everything! I like how sure of yourself you are. You don’t do things to please other people.”
“But you’re confident, too!”
He scoffed. “Kind of. I’m always worried about, I don’t know, being nice or something.” He seemed a little embarrassed by that admission. But it was one of the reasons I liked him so much, too.
“You’re kind,” I said quietly, resting my face on his hand. “I’m not.”
“What?”
I shrugged. “It’s fine, one human being cannot exemplify all the good things in the world.”
Instead of laughing, he frowned. “You are kind. You just don’t like to show it. Like a cranky old man in a village.”
I released a bark of laughter. “Get out!”
He sat up and ran a hand through his hair. Hair so thick I imagined combs shattered upon touch. “You are! You’re like that cranky man who yells at children but then secretly mends their shoes.”
“What!” I couldn’t stop laughing.
“You’re…” he paused. “You’re all tough candy shell. When inside—”
“I’m oozy chocolate? Please.”
Instead of responding, he leaned over, pulling me in so close that our eyelashes practically touched. His lips grazed my jaw and then moved up toward my ear. “Yeah, chocolate. Melted.”
Every bone in my body turned into liquid as I turned my lips to his. He cradled my head gently and kissed me softly. And then. Then he said, “I love you.”
I stilled. My blood stopped coursing through my veins, my heart froze midbeat, my cells were suspended. I couldn’t move.
Uncertainty passed over his face, his eyes still on mine. When I didn’t react, he moved back a little, his body no longer touching mine.
Hamlet loves me. Hamlet LOVES me? Hamlet loves ME? My brain was malfunctioning, wires being crossed, indecipherable signals being passed back and forth, and I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t let me interrupt.”
Both of our heads swiveled to see Hamlet’s grandma holding a tray of fruit in front of the TV. His grandpa was right behind, with a giant bowl of popcorn.
Hamlet blushed. “We were just—”
“Give me a break,” his grandmother grumbled as she tottered back over to the sofa, walking between us and plopping herself down, the tray rattling on her lap. She glanced over at me. “This one is a bad influence, huh?”
I stammered, “What, why…”
“Eat some fruit. Cool off,” she said, shoving the tray onto the coffee table in front of us. We both reached for the tiny forks poked into the pears and ate silently, not making eye contact with each other while the video game started up again.
* * *
That night, I looked through some old photos of Felix and me from when we dated. There was one of us hanging out in some parking lot. Felix with his arm draped lazily around me, both of us smiling in the harsh glare of the lights. I didn’t remember that day, because days with Felix and Patrick always ran together into one indistinct blur.
Felix never said he loved me. Even though we cared for each other, and still did, it never got to that level. We liked a lot of the same things and were attracted to each other at the time. But Felix didn’t dig past a certain depth, and neither did I. Hamlet, though? He was fearless in his digging, in his pursuit of something more meaningful.
Looking at these photos with Felix was bittersweet. The chasm between us from the water-park incident felt unbridgeable, and I wondered if Patrick was right. Were they being replaced?
I texted Patrick and Felix: How are you guys?
The conversation bubbles were immediate. But took forever. I frowned. It wasn’t like them to take that much time drafting texts to me.
Patrick replied first: Good. I requested a child’s neon green cast.
I laughed.
Felix replied soon after: Okay. My parents are being over the top and keep checking up on me in the middle of the night to make sure I haven’t died.
I texted back: Do they know you’re past the danger zone??
They think Jesus was punishing them for letting me date you.
The laughter felt good, and for just one evening, it was like old times.
CHAPTER 25
WHAT
I could feel the force of Rose’s enthusiasm through her texts. For once, my energy level matched hers, my fingers flying on my phone as I texted back: RIGHT?????????!!!!!
I need to process this. Are you home? Can I come over?
It was Monday afternoon and both of us were off KoBra duty.
Yeah, come over
An hour later, we were sitting in my room, Flo in my lap while the fan rattled inches away from us.
“Nothing? You said nothing,” she said, her voice flat.
I fiddled with Flo’s collar, irritating her. One paw pushed my hand away. “Well, I was shocked. And then his grandparents came in the room!”
She groaned. “Hamlet, what the heck? Why would he say that with his grandparents around?”
“I don’t think he was planning it. It just seemed to slip out.”
“Either way, terrible timing.”
“Agreed.” I let go of Flo, plopping down backward onto the bed.
Rose propped her chin on the edge of my bed. “Do you feel the same way?” she asked.
I stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I like him. But … love?”
“I know. So serious.”
“SO serious!”
The breeze from the fan lifted my tank top off my belly, making the fabric flutter for a second. “I feel like that guy in a rom-com who freaks out over the obviously perfect-catch girl having feelings for him. Like, why am I obsessing over a love declaration from a nice guy?”
“Rom-com main characters are old. You’re sixteen. Love declarations are weird.”
This was stressing me out, and my room started to feel oppressive. Rose seemed to pick up on this and said, “Let’s do something fun today.”
“Yes and yes.”
Her eyes narrowed in concentration. “You know, there’s a list of all the trucks entering the competition on the website.”
I sat up. “And?”
“Maybe we can check them out. See what we’re up against.”
My mind took that suggestion and spun through other ways to make it more interesting, like prank roulette. By the time it landed on an idea, I was brainstorming.
* * *
“Is a wig completely necessary?” Rose asked, her voice low and skeptical.
I browsed through the wig bin at my favorite thrift store. “Is anything ever necessary?”
“Hi, Clara!” The woman behind the counter waved at me, her eyebrows drawn high and dramatically, her fake mole shifting on her upper lip as she smiled widely at me.
I waved back. “Hey, Erin!” I glanced at Rose next to me. “I’ve purchased many a disguise here.”
“I am very much not surprised,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she picked up a neon orange bob with her fingertips.
“We’re spies today. We need to be fully covert,” I said, eyeing an electric blue pixie wig.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t we going for inconspicuous here?”
“No way. Just unrecognizable.” I pulled the blue wig on and looked at her. She grinned and gave me two thumbs up.
Rose picked a long, wavy, blond-streaked wig with bangs. She looked amazing in it and I made her take a billion photos. As we sorted through the racks for clothes, she got more and more into it. Clothes were definitely her forte.
When we left the store, I was wearing a short polyester shift dress with geometric patterns. Very 1960s go-go girl. Rose was decked out in a long white caftan with little laced-up booties straight out of Little House on the Prairie. We both wore large sunglasses that obscured our faces.
Rose couldn’t stop giggling, self-conscious as she drove us to the first stop: No Pain No Grain, a grain-bowl truck in Ho
llywood. Rose parked her car at a metered spot, and the sun beat down relentlessly on the tops of our wigged heads when we stepped out.
I tugged at my dress. “Ugh, should have considered the weather before choosing this piece o’ crap unbreathable fabric!”
Rose was scrolling through an iPad. She had, of course, mapped out all the trucks and made a very thorough checklist. “Okay, so their specialty is making healthy, ‘clean’ bowls full of obscure veggies and various free-range or grass-fed meats.”
“Sounds like the worst.” I peered at the truck through my sunglasses. Their line was minuscule, and it was full of Hollywood’s finest clean-eaters—mostly thin and most likely wealthy as well, judging from the menu pricing. Before Rose could protest, I jumped into line and targeted a young white woman with wavy red hair who was wearing a crop top and loose linen pants. “What’s your favorite thing here?” I asked with a heavy vocal fry.
She glanced at my hair and then my outfit, visibly startled. Probably not the usual clientele she found at her ol’ reliable grain truck. “Well, I usually go for farro topped with okra, black beans, and a sprinkling of gomasio.”
“Interesting. Are you a vegetarian?” I asked.
Glancing around quickly, she leaned in a bit and whispered, “No. Between you and me, I don’t actually think their chicken is free-range.” Her eyebrows lifted.
I raised my own. Quelle horreur. “Are you for real?”
“For real.” A firm, knowing nod. “But their veggies are grown in their own garden, and they’re heavenly.” I stored that fact away. Strengths: veggies. Weaknesses: chicken. We bailed before it was our turn to order, already moving on to our next destination, the Frank ’n’ Frank truck, which served, you guessed it, fancy hot dogs. My dad and I both loved this truck, so I braced myself for some stiff competition. We surveyed the long line before us. It was peak lunch hour, so that wasn’t surprising.
“Hm … this truck doesn’t even give you options,” Rose pondered as she glanced at the menu scrawled on the side of the shiny white truck in neon green. “There’s, like, one hot dog, and you get grilled onions on it with various condiments.”
I nodded. “Their hot dogs are freaking delicious, that’s why. Why dilute the product?”
Rose stood there looking like a serious cult leader in her caftan. “Not too different from the KoBra, we keep it minimal, too.”
“My dad knows his strengths,” I said. Because we were both hungry, we grabbed a couple of hot dogs (Rose discovered she could actually get a vegan one, bleh) and sat down at a nearby bus stop bench shaded by a large magnolia tree.
“This is fun,” Rose said between bites.
“You sound surprised.”
She shrugged. “I never know what I’m getting into with you. And … I still don’t get why we need to wear costumes, but whatever.”
I pointed my hot dog at her. “Aha! You say ‘whatever’ because you know the costumes are purely for fun. And could it be that you’re embracing hijinks right now?”
“Calm down, Clara,” she said. “You’re so annoying.”
“I know,” I said with a laugh. A bus pulled up, and we watched some people unload before it drove off, the exhaust fumes spewing some debris up into the air. I waved it away from my face. “Thanks for hanging out with me today.” It was getting easier and easier to say things like that to Rose without having to crack a joke, too.
“Of course.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “I know what it’s like to need a distraction when you’re worried about stuff.”
I was hesitant before I asked, “So, is that how you cope with your anxiety?”
And to my surprise, Rose didn’t shut it down. She fiddled with her straw. “Kind of. Sometimes I think it’s just me being a worrywart? I’ve always been this way. I worry about everything. And sometimes the dumbest stuff keeps worrying me, days and weeks after.” A breeze hit us then, and it felt so good. She lifted her face up to it. “It’s like this pitch-black field where I’m forced to walk, and I know there’s a giant hole somewhere waiting for me. So I’m constantly thinking about it, when I’m going to drop into this pit.”
That sounded like a literal nightmare, and it hit me then how seemingly perfect people were just as messed up as everyone else. I stayed quiet so she would keep talking.
“Sometimes, I can’t … live in the moment. I’m always thinking of what-ifs and the terrible things people could be thinking about me.” She looked up at me. “I always think everyone’s mad at me. All the time. And it’s like, I don’t really care? But I do. It’s hard to explain.”
“You mean, like your parents?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I mean, yeah, of course I worry about what they think. But literally everyone. Like a stranger on the street. If I say something dumb to a barista, it bothers me for weeks. If someone doesn’t respond to a text or e-mail right away, I’m convinced I did something wrong. I feel as if my brain’s trolling me.”
“Your brain is a jerk.”
She laughed, the sound filled with relief. “It is.”
“Do you want me to give your brain a talking-to?” I joked, but inside I felt a flare of sympathy and frustration for her. Rose’s shallow breathing—it was a way for her to calm that troll brain down. I knew that dealing with something like this wasn’t as simple as hanging out with friends to forget your worries, but I was glad to be that friend for her these days.
We finished up our hot dogs and headed to our next destination, a lobster-roll truck in Glendale. As far from the ocean as you could get in LA, but I guess things didn’t always make sense.
CHAPTER 26
A few days later, my dad hopped into the truck, where Rose and I were setting up for the day. “Ladies,” he said, giving each of us a nod.
“Man,” I said with an exaggerated bow.
Wearing a stiff new Dodgers cap, my dad rubbed his hands together. “All right, how did yesterday go?”
Rose grinned. “Great. We ran out of pork, so we stopped by the store and got more ingredients on the way back.”
He gave me a little sideways hug in greeting. “Good job, my ladies.”
“Please stop saying ‘ladies.’ Blech.” I elbowed him in the side.
“And!” Rose exclaimed, holding up a finger. “We had our best day ever, money-wise!” She and I bumped fists, then did a little dance.
I looked at my dad for his equally celebratory reaction, but instead he had this strained expression on his face.
“Hello? Pai? Aren’t congratulations in order?”
He ducked into the driver’s seat before answering. “Yeah, definitely! All right, let’s head over to Mid-City before traffic gets bad.”
I glanced at the clock. It was almost five. Fat chance.
Nearly an hour later, we arrived at a craft fair set up on a big parking lot off Wilshire.
As my dad and I prepped the food, I glanced at him. “So, what’s up?”
My dad kept his eyes on the green bell pepper he was chopping. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you acting all weird?”
He made a face but didn’t look at me. “I’m not?”
“Yeah, you are.”
He sighed. “Sorry. I just have a lot on my mind right now.”
“What is it?” I asked, a little nervous. My dad rarely stressed out in front of me, and it only really happened when things were serious.
My dad finally looked at me. “The investor I was counting on for the restaurant just backed out.”
I felt a knot form in my stomach. Growing up without much money, it was still an instant reaction—a wave of dread passing over me every time my dad worried about finances. “Oh no. What does that mean?”
“It just means that after all my work and planning this summer, everything may have to be put on hold.”
I blinked. “Sorry, Pai. That sucks.”
“What about the competition?” Rose piped up from the order window.
I wh
ipped my head around and stared at Rose with huge eyes, telepathically telling her to shut up.
“What competition?” My dad glanced over at me.
Rose looked at me apologetically. “Sorry, I know you wanted to keep it a secret, but it could solve everything, right?”
A tiny flare of hope shot up into my chest. Maybe Rose was right. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise, but…”
“Clara.” My dad’s voice was short with impatience. “What’s this about?”
I looked at Rose and she nodded, her eyes supportive. I took a deep breath. “Well, there’s this food truck competition on August eleventh—”
“I know what competition you’re talking about,” my dad interrupted, his voice clipped. “And no, I don’t want to enter that.”
“Why not?” both Rose and I yelped.
He tossed the bell pepper scraps into a compost bowl. “Because. It’s a circus. I don’t have time for it.”
Since when did my dad have this attitude? I frowned at him. “What? What do you mean? What could possibly be the risk? If you win, you win ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!”
“So what, Clara? Do you know how many trucks enter that thing? It’s nuts, the chances of winning are so slim, and I don’t want to go through that headache. Plus, the deadline to enter probably passed.”
I felt Rose’s eyeballs digging into my skull. “I already entered us,” I whispered.
“What!” Pai yelled, making me startle and drop the spoon I was using onto the floor.
Rose immediately tried to de-escalate the situation. Something she probably learned in the Young UN Club or something. “Clara wanted it to be a nice surprise if we won, Adrian! It was—”
“I don’t care! You did this without my permission! Are you two out of your minds?”
The silence that followed was like a vacuum—the air sucked out of the truck, my ears ringing with the absolute voidness of it all. Betrayal and disappointment were so heavy in my chest that I could barely breathe. It was unfamiliar, and I didn’t like it.
