by Mike Jung
“You do?”
Ms. Lee nodded. “I’m Korean too, you know.”
I cracked a smile. “Hey, I guessed right.”
“Yes. Well, I know we’ve just started to get to know each other, but I was born and raised in the US, so I’m no stranger to feelings of disconnection from my heritage. It’s one of the reasons I studied history. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like to encourage you to keep exploring topics like the one you wrote about, and if you ever want to discuss them with someone other than your parents — ”
Ha! She obviously didn’t know my parents.
“ — I’m happy to meet you here during lunch, or even after school.”
The tidal wave of relief that hit me was a total surprise, and I had to sit there and blink a few times before I could say anything.
“Chloe?” Ms. Lee leaned forward a little, her forehead crinkled. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, that — yes. That would be great.”
“Oh, good!” Ms. Lee leaned back and clapped her hands together once, like a cheerleader. “I’m excited to see what kind of work you produce this year, Chloe.”
“Me too.”
I really meant it! I’ve always liked school, but as I grabbed my backpack and headed for the door I felt more excited about Ms. Lee’s class than about any class I’d ever taken.
Shelley pounced and grabbed my arm the second I got out of the classroom.
“Aaagh! Geez, what are you doing?”
“Waiting for you! What was that all about?” Shelley’s eyes sparkled with curiosity.
I filled her in on all the details as we half-walked, half-ran to the lunchroom. Luckily our usual seats were still free.
“Wow, Ms. Lee seems really cool,” Shelley said. The normal hurricane of cafeteria noise surrounded us as we sat down and hurried to unpack our lunches. “Are you sure it was a Tiger Rabbit ring?”
“I’m totally sure — it had the stripes and everything.” I took a bite of my sandwich and pointed my chin at a table on the other side of the cafeteria, where Olivia Trilby (a seventh grader) was looking at Kyle Masterson (an eighth grader) with a facial expression that could have used a sign saying Sorry, This Brain Is Temporarily Out of Service. “You think she’s been doing that the whole time?”
“Probably. She must really like you, huh?” Shelley looked down at her bag of pretzels.
“Olivia? I don’t think so.”
“Not Olivia, Ms. Lee.”
“I guess. My turn to be teacher’s pet, huh?”
I meant it as a joke, but Shelley didn’t smile. Shelley and I are best friends partly because we’re the smartest kids in school. Teachers love Shelley — she does all her work like I do, but she’s not a loudmouth like I am, ha-ha, and she’s never been in a fight. I’ve only been in one, but I guess that’s more important than the straight As I’ve gotten for, oh, my entire life. Except for one totally unacceptable B-.
“Are you mad?” I stuck my face between Shelley’s face and the table, and grinned at her from two inches away until she smiled. “Are you actually angry because a teacher likes me instead of you?”
“No, and gross, get away, your breath smells.” Shelley leaned away over to the side.
“It’s totally fine that you’re trying to get back the teacher’s pet championship, you know.” I took a bite out of my apple and watched as a short-but-brutal spitball fight broke out three tables away. Shelley snorted.
We were still eating when the bell rang. We hadn’t gone to our lockers after I talked to Ms. Lee, so we half-walked and half-ran to do that before going to next period, which was orchestra.
“Did you hear what Adam said about you?” Shelley said as we walked into the music wing, carrying our instrument cases.
“That I’m gonna destroy him in first-chair competition again?”
Adam Wheeler had a fancypants expensive violin, and the fact that he could play it really, really well made it even more annoying that I had a boring, three-year-old, not-very-expensive violin, but that only made it better that I’d beaten him out for first chair every single year. He was my only real competition too. Sarah Judd liked a lot of the same books as me, but her intonation wasn’t great. Charlotte Beauchamp was a great soccer player, but she was a lot better with her feet than with her hands. Jeremy Ecton was cute in a mopey kind of way, but he always cracked during competitions.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you,” Shelley said, looking at the ceiling. “It’s kind of scary when you go into one of your rages; you look like you’re about to sprout claws and fur.”
“Oh ha-ha, you’re sooooo funny. Come on, now you HAVE to tell me.”
“I don’t think he was trying to be a jerk, just so you know.”
“Spill it!”
There was the usual bottleneck in the doorway to the orchestra room as everyone stowed their bags and stuff in the cubbies just inside the door. A second mosh pit had formed in front of the storage closets where the big instruments (cellos and basses) were kept. A lot of the other band geeks were in hearing range, so Shelley leaned over and whispered right into my ear.
“He told Jeremy that you always win first chair because Asians all have a violin-playing gene, and how’s he supposed to beat that?”
I could almost feel the surface of my eyeballs giving off steam as Shelley’s words sank into my brain.
“What? Seriously?”
The mosh pits were breaking up as everyone headed for their seats, and after a few seconds of weaving my head to see around people I saw Adam, carrying his violin case and sitting down. In the first-chair seat. In MY seat.
“Oh, that weasel-faced little preppypants,” I said, not bothering to whisper. “I don’t care how expensive his violin is, he’s going DOWN.”
I didn’t actually want to play violin at first — I was way more interested in stand-up bass. There’s a Tiger Rabbit video where the whole band pretends to play stand-up bass at the same time, with a little spin-the-bass-around dance move that’s just awesome. During the summer between third and fourth grades Mom took me on my first visit to String Theory, the music store and one of my favorite places in town, and when we got there I left a vapor trail as I went for the stand-up bass in the corner.
“Chloe, let’s look over — ”
“It’s an acoustic bass, Mom! Look how big it is!” I stared up at the bass, which was probably two feet taller than I was at the time.
Mr. Smithfield, the owner of the store, had (and still has) an incredibly shiny bald head, like a skin-colored mirror. He smiled at Mom, who was in the middle of the room with her whole body tilted toward the section with the violins, and came over to me.
“Hello!” Mr. Smithfield said. He put a hand gently on the bass, like it was a person.
“Hi, how much is this bass?” I said.
“Chloe, I think you should start with something more your size — ”
“You have good taste in instruments,” Mr. Smithfield said. Yay for Mr. Smithfield!
“This Ferrante upright bass is a thing of beauty, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother’s right, though, it’s too big for you, and it’s not a starter instrument.” Boo for Mr. Smithfield. He turned to Mom and did a little bow.
“What are we really thinking about for our future concert musician?”
“Violins,” Mom said firmly.
“But Mom — ”
“You must be big fans of Abigail Yang, HA-HA-HA!” Mr. Smithfield threw his head back when he laughed.
Mom played Abigail Yang’s concert recordings all the time at home, in fact. Also Jonah Park’s cello music and Jenny Chung’s piano music, but twenty-two-year-old, seven-year professional Abigail Yang was the all-time classical music winner and champion at the House of Cho.
Mom nodded with a smile. “She is the best violinist in the world, after all. And of course she’s Korean.”
“Just like me,” I said, not knowing what kind of grief Ab
igail Yang’s Korean-ness would hold for me in the future.
“Power to the Asian sisters!” Mom did a little fist pump at shoulder height, then held her hand out to me for a high five. I slapped her palm without even thinking about it.
“Mom, why can’t — ”
“Let’s look at the violins for now, honey,” Mom said in her supernicest voice, which still worked on me in the summer between third and fourth grades.
“Oh, okay,” I said. The violins were nice, and eventually I stopped caring about the stand-up bass and started to love my violin — practicing for one to two hours per day (three before concerts) creates a bond between a musician and her instrument, you know, and back then I still thought Mom’s “power to the Asian sisters” thing was funny. Then in fifth grade Adam showed up with a violin that he could barely handle and oh, the jealousy was like being stabbed in the neck with a fork.
I nodded and smiled and said “hey” to people as I homed in on Adam and his precious violin, which was probably handcrafted under a mountain by dwarves, it was so expensive. I circled around and stood in front of him, behind the big black music stand with the stenciled “GMK8” spray-painted on it, and gave him my best freeze-ray stare.
“Hey, Chloe.” Adam smiled up at me, as if he wasn’t a total jerk. He’s shorter than me, and his eyes are weirdly far apart, but he does have a friendly smile. Jerk.
“Hey, Adam.” I nudged my chin in the direction of his chair. “You’re in my seat.”
“Oh, I had a great summer, thanks for asking! How about you?”
“It was fine.” I stabbed the air to one side with my thumb. “Out.”
“Wow, who died and made you Evil Orchestra Queen?”
“Nobody. I hear you’ve been saying crappy stuff about me.”
Adam finally stopped smiling, which made me feel better. It was harder to be mad at him when he was being all friendly like that.
“Who said that?” Adam said with a frown. “Whoever said it’s a liar, I haven’t ever said anything bad about you.”
“It doesn’t matter, just get out of my seat.”
Adam leaned way back and raised both hands to face level, palms toward me.
“Whatever, Chloe. I don’t know what your problem is, but here, take it.”
Adam shook his head as he got up, dwarf-crafted violin in one hand and unicorn-skin violin case in the other, and moved. All the other seats were taken so he ended up sitting right next to me anyway. I heard him muttering as I got all my stuff out, and I remembered what Shelley said right before she told me what Adam said: I don’t think he was trying to be a jerk.
It doesn’t matter, I thought. I don’t care that he’s always been friendly to me …
I darted my eyes around the room without moving my head, wondering how many people were secretly thinking, Oh look, Chloe “Tiger Girl” Cho strikes again!
Ugh, I actually did care. I sat down, feeling like I’d just eaten something and my stomach was in the process of sending it back up.
Everyone except me and Adam was jabbering away, but things quieted down pretty fast when Mr. Coppinger, the orchestra director, came out of his office and stood in front of the room. Mr. C was one of the rare teachers who most of the kids in school actually liked enough to listen to.
“Welcome back, troops!” Mr. C said in his booming voice. He’s pretty short and skinny, so it’s always kind of a surprise to be reminded how loud his voice is. “Nice to see so many familiar faces, even those of you bold enough to claim first chairs before we’ve had any actual competitions.”
He looked at me and waggled his fuzzy brown eyebrows. I smirked, and he smirked back. That smirk was the kind of thing that made kids like him.
“Let’s cut right to the chase.” Mr. C brought his hands together with a loud SMACK, then rubbed them together like he was trying to start a fire. He grinned, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his conductor’s baton.
“Oh, I just know everyone’s been practicing this summer. Chloe, you’ve been doing your best Abigail Yang impression, right?”
Sigh. I looked over my shoulder at Shelley, who was two rows back with the other viola players. She very slowly put one palm over her face. Mr. C is cool, but every year it’s the same Abigail Yang thing. At least he was consistent.
“Oh, I don’t have to do an impression — I just act like myself, since we’re practically twins.”
I tried not to let all the sarcasm show in my voice, but I don’t think I made it. I heard Shelley give a muffled snort.
“Okay then, before we get started let’s take care of some business. First let’s welcome all of our new musicians. This is officially the biggest the George Matthew K through 8 Orchestra has ever been!”
Everyone started clapping, and I (and all the other returning orchestra members) looked around. There were at least ten new faces, including a couple of people’s little brothers and sisters I recognized from around town. They were probably all fifth graders, but they looked like they were in kindergarten. Little kids. I sniffed.
“I know all you old-timers will help our newbies learn the ropes. Make them feel welcome, okay?”
“Oh, definitely,” Todd Schumacher said with an evil hoot.
“Be nice,” Mr. C said. “Moving on! Like every year, we’ll have first-chair competitions starting in a couple of weeks.”
The room broke out in applause again. This time I turned all the way around to look at Shelley. She pointed at me two times, really hard, like she was trying to stab me with her finger. I pointed at myself and made a wide-eyed who-me? face.
Mr. C held up both index fingers and raised his eyebrows.
“So here’s how it’s going to work.”
Mr. C gave a rundown of the first-chair challenge process. First chair for every section is up for grabs at the start of every year. If you want it, you sign up to compete for it. Everybody who signs up plays the same piece for Mr. C. The person who gives the best performance, aka me in the violin section, wins first chair, which means playing the first-chair parts on all the songs (harder, but more interesting), and playing all the solos (totally fun and exciting).
“And I know some of you grizzled orchestra veterans think it’ll be a piece of cake to win first chair like you did last year, but don’t get cocky. I just know everyone practiced really, really hard over the summer, correct?”
Mr. C fake-frowned in a way that made all of the hair on his head look like a single huge clump. Everyone laughed. Mr. C glanced quickly at me, then to my right. I glanced that way too — Adam looked excited, and when I caught his eye he gave me a stare I recognized. It was his I’m-totally-going-to-win stare. I smirked back as Mr. C rubbed his hands together.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get started! Take out the first piece in your folders and …”
As the sound of rustling sheet music filled the room, Adam leaned just barely in my direction — a millimeter or two, no more — and whispered, “You’re going down this year, Cho.”
I snort-laughed. “In your dreams, Wheeler.”
“Sure, whatever. I’m just saying.” Adam started tuning his violin with a smile.
I started tuning up too, not even a little bit worried. The only thing that would keep me from winning first chair would be getting abducted by aliens. It was a done deal.
Walking to Dad’s fish store takes fifteen minutes longer than it does to walk straight home, but asking for a new violin is always a high-priority thing, so I made the hike to downtown Primrose Heights.
Aquariums Unlimited doesn’t look like much from the outside — there’s a pile of dusty-looking fish tanks in the single tall window, and the sign with the picture of a fancy goldfish hanging over the door is faded — but once you get inside it’s pretty great. The store is kind of like a big hallway. It’s not very wide, but it goes way back into the building. It’s really hot in there, so everyone who works there wears T-shirts and shorts most of the time. Dad wears pants becaus
e he’s the boss, I guess.
I pushed the door open and walked in, passing the cash register on the left and the rows of saltwater tanks on the right.
“Chloe! What’s up, dream girl?” Darren Speck started working for Dad in high school and never stopped — he’d been there for five years in all. He smiled, winked, AND pointed at me with his hands shaped like finger guns, because he’s just that cheesy.
“Ew, I’m not your dream girl,” I said, smiling back at him. “Is my dad here?”
“He’s in back with a customer, but I think — yup, here he comes. Hi, Mr. Dietz, can I ring that up for you?”
Mr. Dietz (father of backup soccer goalie Jill Dietz) plopped a couple of water-filled plastic bags on the counter. He glanced at me, raised an eyebrow as if I was doing something strange by just being there, and turned back to Darren. It wasn’t like Mr. Dietz and I had pinky promised to be best friends forever, but if I was a cat I would have puffed up my tail and bared my claws.
When I was little and school was closed for some reason — teacher training, yeti sightings, or whatever — I would sometimes spend a big chunk of the day at the store with Dad, partly because it meant no babysitters, and partly because I just loved it there. On one of those days in second grade Mr. Dietz came into the store with a giant sack of plants. I was reading a book in the office with the door open, so I had a direct line of sight to Dad behind the counter and a partial view of Mr. Dietz in front of it.
“I don’t appreciate having to come back like this, you know.”
Nice. Not even a lousy “hello” from Mr. Dietz.
“Stan, like I said on Sunday, you were here as a vendor. Customers who are spending money in the store have priority over vendors. You can understand that.”
Mr. Dietz grumbled something under his breath.
“Stan.” Dad planted his hands on the counter. “Come on. Lick the fish or lick the bait, it’s — ”
“Lick the fish or lick the bait?”
I wouldn’t have admitted it for a million dollars, but I felt as confused as Mr. Dietz sounded when he said that. Lick the fish? What the heck was Dad talking about?
