Unidentified Suburban Object

by Mike Jung

  Instead, she said “Oh, hi, Chloe,” in a voice that sounded like I’d just asked her to clean up a pile of dog poop. She flicked her eyes down at the empty seat next to her, and said “Sorry, you can’t sit here, we’re waiting for Elizabeth and Tracy.”

  “Oh. Okay. That’s okay, we’re just … I just wanted to say hi.”

  “Hi,” Eliza said, not looking at me. “I hate it when people are copycats, don’t you?” she said to Emily, who looked at me out of the corner of her eye and nodded. I felt like I’d just been kicked in the shin.

  “I hate it even more when people are mean,” Shelley said in a low voice. Eliza either didn’t hear or just pretended not to hear, because she leaned across the table and started talking to Emily in whispers.

  “Chloe, let’s sit over there.” Shelley grabbed my elbow and pulled, and after a final, hurt look at Eliza I went along.

  “HOW much is the GeneGenie thing?” Shelley said, interrupting my car crash on memory lane.

  “A hundred dollars,” I said, making a lemon-sucking face as I said it. “Or as I like to say, ten dollars more than all the money I have in the entire universe.”

  “At least you have ninety dollars saved up. I have, like, two dollars right now.”

  “They do something called mitochondrial sequencing, though. That totally sounds like it’s worth a hundred dollars, doesn’t it?”

  “If you have it, I guess.”

  “Thus my plan.” I rubbed the palms of my hands together as the Aquariums Unlimited sign came into view a block ahead.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, actually, just because we didn’t really need one — Dad was always willing to let us work when we wanted to. We might have to scrape algae off of a bunch of slimy tanks, but money was money.

  “Chloe! Hey, dream girl!” Darren said as we entered the store. “Hey, Shelley!”

  “So gross, Darren,” I said. Shelley said hi and smiled at Darren, clearly not thinking it was gross. “Hi, Dad!”

  “Hi, girls, give me just a minute here,” Dad said, not looking away from the test tube in his hand. He squeezed an eyedropper into it, and the water turned blue. Darren gave Dad a double thumbs-up.

  “Nitrite level normal, sweet!”

  “Yes, it’s very exciting,” Dad said in a robot voice. Darren cracked up. Shelley and I traded looks, very entertained by how funny Darren thought Dad was.

  “You girls have a very purposeful look,” Dad said, waving for us to follow him up the stairs. “Let me guess, you need money.”

  “Work, Dad, we need work,” I corrected him. He smiled at us over his shoulder as he dumped the test tube into the big work sink at the side of the room. The constant bubbling and sloshing in the roomful of aquariums had its usual soothing effect on me.

  “Both of you?”

  “Yes, please!” Shelley said.

  “Okay then. I need to scrub algae from a bunch of the tanks, and the plants in the display tank really need trimming.”

  “I’ll trim plants!” Shelley and I said at the same time.

  “The winner,” Dad said, pointing at Shelley.

  “Wait, we said it at the same time!” I said. Shelley didn’t rub it in, but she also went right down to the office to stow her backpack.

  “DAD.” I put my fists on my hips and glared at Dad, but then he did the same thing, sticking his hip out to the side like I did, which looked super goofy. I cracked up.

  “Come on, I’ll help you for a little bit,” he said, kissing me on the head. “You can tell me about your day.”

  I did tell him about my day, leaving out the parts that were too hard for moms and dads to hear without freaking out, as we went past Shelley to the rack with all the catfish and loaches. He nodded and asked a few questions, as he usually does, seeming especially curious about Ms. Lee.

  “You really like her,” he said, scraping a big swatch of algae off the back of the tank of albino cory catfish.

  “She’s so awesome!” I said. “I feel like I can talk to her about anything, especially about being Korean! She’s actually been to Korea, you know.”

  “Hmm,” Dad said, setting a bucket on the floor under the loach tank.

  “She’s really helping me with my Model UN project.”

  “That’s great, sweetie.” Was that a frown? THAT WAS A FROWN! I decided to unleash my biggest hound.

  “I thought maybe I’d ask if I could interview her husband for my project.”

  It took a second for that to sink in.

  “Interview who?” Dad was netting a sick loach, and he fumbled the net for a second. The loach swam out, and he had to corner it with the net a second time.

  “Ms. Lee’s husband. Er … Mr. Lee.”

  “I doubt very much she’d say yes to that,” Dad said, plopping the netted loach into a small plastic container of water that hung on the edge of the bigger loach tank. “Seems inappropriate to bring her family members into the classroom like that.”

  “What choice do I have?” Saying that, I didn’t have to exaggerate my frustration at all. “I’m the delegate from South Korea, and how many other Korean people are there around here?”

  I leaned back so I could look past Dad’s back and see Shelley. She was looking over one shoulder, and she raised a handful of wet, brown stems and leaves to give me a thumbs-up. She quickly plunged the hand back into the tank and looked down as Dad silently turned and went to the utility sink with the bucket. He filled it with water, staring into it the whole time, grabbed a siphoning tube off the wall, and came back to the loach tank next to me. He propped the bucket of water on a higher shelf, started siphoning the fresh water into the loach tank, and finally turned and looked at me with his arms crossed.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay what?” I finished scraping algae from my tank of plecostomus catfish and put the scraper thing on my tank’s plastic side-hanging container.

  “I think Darren can handle things here for a half hour or so. Once I’m done with this tank let’s take a walk and I’ll tell you a story.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “A story about … ?” I leaned toward him, cupping a hand behind my ear.

  “Just let me finish with this,” Dad said, walking to the top of the stairs. “DARREN!”

  Dad thumped down the stairs and talked to Darren for a minute, but I didn’t hear what they were saying because I was too busy pumping my arms in the air and doing a synchronized jumping-up-and-down thing with Shelley. We only did three jumps, though, and went back to playing it cool when we heard Dad come back.

  “Shelley, how about you go on to cleaning tanks when you’re done with the plants — that okay with you?” he said as he waved me to come with him.

  “Sure thing, Mr. Cho! Darren can help me!”

  I felt a small pang at the thought of not getting paid the same amount as Shelley, but it went away when Dad actually walked out of the store, giving me a come-on gesture when I hesitated.

  I followed him out, and we walked to a little park two blocks away from the store. It wasn’t much of a park, just grass, a few trees, and a couple of benches, but there was a hummingbird and some butterflies flying around, and anyway, I was so amped up that I’d have been fine sitting next to a Dumpster in a parking lot.

  Dad took a deep breath, and I mentally stomped on the urge to pelt him with questions.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “This is a story about your great-uncle.”

  !!!

  The story was amazing. It took Dad maybe fifteen minutes to tell it, and I listened really hard the whole time as butterflies wafted around us and the sun shone down through the trees. The contrast with the story itself was intense.

  “I can’t believe he escaped from a labor camp,” I said, staring at Dad with my mouth open. “I thought that kind of stuff only happened in, like, Nazi Germany.”

  Dad rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. He looked frowny and uncomfortable, and was talking in a hesitant, stumbling way.
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  “No, it still happens in North Korea,” he said without looking at me.

  “Did you and Mom ever go there? North Korea, I mean?” I said.

  Dad shook his head.

  “We had … my … no. I was just a baby when we lived in Seoul,” he said, kind of mumbling. “So was your mother.”

  “So wait, I thought you were older than that when you came here? Your mom and dad died in a car crash, and you were adopted by — ”

  “We should get back,” Dad said.

  “But can you just tell — ”

  Dad tapped his watch with one finger and got up from the bench.

  “There are some calls I need to make, and I should check up on Shelley.”

  Oh right, Shelley, who I’d totally forgotten about. I felt a pang of guilt, then decided she was getting paid for her time, so why feel guilty? Dad was telling family stories, finally!!!

  “Dad, what else — ”

  “How are you doing with that violin, by the way?” he said, walking back to the store at a much faster pace than we’d taken on the way to the park.

  “My … my violin? It’s great, I love it. It’s the best. I just wanted to ask if — ”

  But dang, we were already back at the store. I realized I’d actually been jogging to keep up with Dad’s superfast walking speed. Dad opened the door, and we walked into the middle of a small crowd of people, all of them talking at once. Darren looked at Dad with an unmistakable expression of relief.

  “Mr. Cho, these people are from the Primrose Aquarist Club, they — ”

  “We have some questions for you, Mr. Chang!” one wrinkled old lady said.

  Ack. I clenched my fists.

  “It’s CHO,” I said in a loud voice, but the old aquarium people were even louder. Dad quickly kissed me on the head.

  “Darren, I’ll take over here — can you make sure Chloe and Shelley get paid?”

  “No problem, Mr. Cho. Okay, Chloe, did you actually work at all today?”

  “Well, yeah, a little … So an hour for Shelley …”

  I gave Darren the details as Dad raised a hand and was swallowed up by the mob.

  “Yes, yes, I’m happy to answer any questions, no, ma’am, we don’t carry that, yes, we should have that by …”

  My usual irritation was overruled by my excitement about being paid and hearing an actual family story from Dad, so instead of punching anyone in the kneecaps I weaved and shoved through the crowd and went upstairs. Shelley was sitting on an overturned bucket, scribbling something in a notepad, and she looked up fast with a guilty expression, but relaxed when she saw it was me.

  “So?” Shelley said, standing up.

  I grinned as I took her hand and socked a ten-dollar bill into it.

  “Awesome, but I meant your dad.”

  I kept grinning and waggled my eyebrows for emphasis.

  “He told you something good, didn’t he?” Her eyes went wide.

  I nodded.

  Shelley squealed, and we jumped up and down again, not even caring if any of the aquarium club people were watching. For the first time EVER, I actually knew something about my family history. Just as important, I was totally getting an A on the first assignment of the year.

  The next week I got another fun surprise — the DNA testing kit from GeneGenie.com. Mom had picked up the mail on the way out of the house for a late meeting, and she left it in a pile on the kitchen table when she got back late, so I didn’t find the kit until I dug through the pile before breakfast the next day. I hurriedly stuffed the kit into my backpack, hoovered up my waffles and ham, then ran to Shelley’s house as fast as I could.

  I never thought much about the rest of our family when I was really little — Mom and Dad told me my grandparents died before I was born, and that neither of them had any brothers or sisters, which was why I didn’t have any cousins, and that was it. It was during a playdate in second grade when I noticed one of the big differences between my house and Shelley’s house. I don’t remember it that clearly, because you know, second grade.

  “Who’s that lady?” I remember asking, pointing at a framed picture on top of Shelley’s dresser.

  “My grammy,” Shelley said. “Want to play Porcupine Fairies?”

  I did, and I forgot about the picture of Shelley’s grammy until the next time I came over, and the time after that, and the time after that. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins — Shelley’s house was FULL of family pictures. Our house didn’t have any.

  Dang it, I wanted some pictures.

  “Wow, perfect timing,” Shelley said as I tore open the package from GeneGenie right there on her front porch. The contents weren’t much to look at — a giant Q-tip sealed in plastic, a plastic collection tube, a pre-addressed envelope that looked like it could survive a nuclear holocaust, and a couple of forms to fill out. Shelley and I leaned our heads together as we read the instructions and tried not to spill the entire kit on the ground.

  “That’s it, huh?” Shelley scratched her head. “Just rub the swab on the inside of your cheek and mail it in?”

  “Well, I have to send in all of the money I made working at the store this week.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have to draw blood or anything like that, right?”

  “I guess not,” I said. “Not very dramatic. Well, here goes.”

  I used the swab to scrape the inside of my cheek —it felt a little bit like brushing my teeth with a really soft toothbrush, except on my cheek instead of my teeth. I stuck the swab into the plastic canister, screwed the top on, and stuck it all in the indestructible envelope.

  I inspected the form, which had a whole bunch of stuff I couldn’t understand. There was also a pair of lines that made me pause.

  Well now. How badly did I want to know? Enough to lie about my age?

  Yes.

  I flattened the form against Shelley’s front door, wrote 18 for my age, then scrawled my signature across the bottom.

  “You know what would be freaky?” Shelley said

  “What?”

  “If you did one of these and found out you have family members you’ve never met.”

  I nodded.

  “That’s what I’m hoping to find out!”

  We went two blocks out of our way to drop the package into a mailbox, then hurried off to school, where we were allowed to use the whole social studies period to work on our projects. Shelley and I decided to focus on researching the cultural history thing for our own countries so we could do a compare-and-contrast thing with our fake diplomatic identities. We had a ton of notes, a ton of printouts, and a total of fourteen books piled on our desks, and as we plowed through all of it Ms. Lee walked around the room, handing back our primary source assignment.

  I’m never nervous about grades, not ever, so it was a shock to realize how jittery I was about getting my assignment back. It was the first time I’d ever turned in something that was completely based on stuff my parents told me (even if it was just Dad), and my palms were really sweaty by the time Ms. Lee put my paper facedown on my desk. I looked up at her hopefully, but she was already moving toward another part of the room.

  Shelley was furiously scribbling something down out of a book as I turned the paper over. I was nervous, like I said, but I also had my usual tingle of anticipation about seeing a nice, pointy little A at the top of the page. Instead I saw this:

  F — please see me after class

  Everything in the room suddenly looked ten feet farther away, and all the sound in the room got fuzzy and muffled, like I’d just dunked my head in a tub of cotton candy. My heart started thumping like crazy, and the edges of the paper crinkled as I squished them even harder with my clammy hands.

  An F? An F?? WHY?? And not even a “Chloe” at the end of the note, just “see me after class,” like I was some anonymous pukeface who hadn’t been getting straight As her entire life! I must have made some kind of sound — a snarl, or, I don’t know, maybe a whimper — because Shelly looked up
with a concerned expression on her face.

  “What?” she said. I wordlessly held up the paper in her direction as I looked at Ms. Lee, feeling like my eyes were about to pop out of my head. I couldn’t catch Ms. Lee’s eye at first — she was looking in the opposite direction — but she turned around and saw me, looking too pathetic to ignore, I guess. She handed back one more paper and came over to my desk.

  “Are you okay, Chloe?” she said, sounding like she actually meant it even though she’d just stuck a knife between my ribs.

  “NO,” I said. Everyone was talking, and not quietly, but a few heads still turned in my direction. I held up the paper. Looking at the bright red F on it was as painful as if she’d carved it into my arm.

  “How would I be okay? Why … how …”

  My brain got jammed up, and I might have started drooling. I’d never gotten an F before. Fs were for OTHER people.

  Ms. Lee held up one hand, looking calm but firm.

  “I want to talk about it, Chloe, I do. I know this isn’t typical for you. After class.”

  “But I did the assignment! My dad — ”

  “Chloe. After class.” Ms. Lee’s stare wasn’t mean or angry, but it definitely was all business. We locked eyes, and was I gonna let her stare me down when she was being so unfair? No way!

  “Chloe,” Ms. Lee said, and I realized she wasn’t backing down either.

  “Fine,” I said. “I just — ”

  “We’ll work it out, Chloe.”

  With any other teacher I would have just been mad, but this was Ms. Lee, and that made it hurt too. I finally looked down when I could tell I was about to start crying. I dropped the mangled report, rubbed my hands on my legs, and clenched my entire body into a single, giant knot of muscle until the about-to-cry feeling went away.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Shelley with her arm stretched out between our desks.