Unidentified Suburban Object

by Mike Jung

  Adam stood up, grinning from ear to ear. I thought he was deliberately not looking at me, which probably would have been a smart move since I kind of wanted to pull his heart right out of his chest and make him look at it, but he glanced at me out of the corner of one eye. His grin flickered, and instead of wallowing in the applause any longer he sat down.

  “Yes, yes, congratulations, everyone — this is the first time in four years we have new first chairs for every section, so well done, you guys. And for those of you who did your best but didn’t get where you want to be, I’m still proud of you for making the effort. Even Abigail Yang lost a few competitions on her way to the top!”

  Something went KABLOOEY inside my brain.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, and it came out REALLY loud, because the room went completely, pin-drop, algebra-test silent. I suddenly had Mr. C’s undivided attention.

  “Excuse me, Chloe?” he said, in a voice that was a little too calm.

  “Do you not know I’m not Abigail Flipping Yang, or can you really just not tell us apart? That would be stupid, since I’m actually here.”

  “Chloe. You need to dial it back right now.” Mr. C’s hands were on his hips, and he leaned forward in a way that I knew meant business, but I just didn’t CARE.

  “What if I wasn’t even Korean? Would you still bring her up all the time, or would you have to find some other violin player to talk about?”

  “Chloe. Mr. Frank’s office, right now.”

  Mr. C doesn’t get really mad too often, but when he does he knows how to yell without yelling, if you know what I mean. When he uses that voice it pretty much goes right through your flesh and into your skeleton. I stared at him for a second, then packed up my violin, got out of my chair with a clatter, and stomped away. I ignored Shelley as I passed the viola players, left the orchestra room, and headed to the vice principal’s office for the first time in my entire life.

  Mrs. McBeal, the school’s office manager, looked up from her desk as I walked into the school office. She was talking to Ms. Wilson, and they both looked surprised when I trudged up to the counter without saying hello or anything.

  “I need to talk to Mr. Frank.”

  “Whatever for, Chloe?” Ms. Wilson was actually one of the youngest teachers in the school — Ms. Lee might have been the only one who was younger — but for some reason she always said stuff like “whatever for” and “oh my stars,” which made her sound a thousand years old. I was even more annoyed by it than usual.

  “Mr. Coppinger sent me,” I mumbled. Wow, that was humiliating to say. Being sent to the office was so humiliating! Which I guess was the whole point.

  “Beg pardon?” Aaack, beg pardon? Who says that?

  “MR. COPPINGER SENT ME TO TALK TO MR. FRANK,” I said, not quite shouting.

  “Well now, that is a surprise,” Mrs. McBeal said with a frown. “Chloe Cho being sent to Mr. Frank? There must be some mistake.”

  I looked at her, and my face suddenly felt like somebody had cranked its temperature up by fifty degrees. I liked Mrs. McBeal. She was always nice to everyone, even kids who were in trouble. I knew she wasn’t being sarcastic, and I had to stop looking at her and look at the countertop instead, because there wasn’t any mistake. I pointed vaguely toward Mr. Frank’s door.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. McB,” I said in a much lower voice. “Is he in there?”

  “Yes, he is,” Mrs. McBeal said. “You’ve really been sent to see him?”

  I nodded, still looking down. I heard a click and a burst of fuzzy noise.

  “Mr. Frank, Chloe Cho is here from Mr. Coppinger’s class,” Mrs. McBeal said.

  The intercom is probably a thousand years old — it’d probably work equally well to just holler — but I was still able to hear Mr. Frank’s response.

  “Who’s here?”

  “Chloe Cho.” Mrs. McBeal might have been saying “two thirty” to someone who’d just asked what time it is, and I appreciated it. All the what-do-you-mean-it’s-Chloe-Cho stuff wasn’t making me feel any better.

  “Okay, send her in.”

  Mrs. McBeal nodded at me, a single, crisp down-and-up motion. Ms. Wilson, on the other hand, got this look on her face, like she was really sad or something. I thought how punching a teacher was probably an especially bad idea when I was already in trouble, so I just opened Mr. Frank’s office door and went in.

  Mr. Frank looked up from his desk and put down his pen as I came into his office. The windows behind him looked out on the parking lot, so it was a little bit hard to look at him with glare from the sun bouncing off the windshields of the cars and into my eyes.

  “Chloe Cho.” Everyone in school says Mr. Frank is like a robot — when he talks you can’t tell what he’s thinking or feeling. Not at all. Ever. Not even if he’s expelling you from school, although obviously I’d never seen that happen.

  “This is quite a surprise,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He put his fingertips together in an upside-down V and tapped them against his mouth a couple of times. “You’re absolutely the last person I’d expect to see in here. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  No, I thought, but I told him anyway. He sat there without moving and stared at me from behind his big square glasses, his light brown hair in kind of a helmet shape. I was really irritated by the stripes on his tie because they looked like candy canes. I hate candy canes.

  “… and he told me to come here.”

  Mr. Frank tapped his V-shaped fingercluster against his lips a couple times more, then leaned back in his chair.

  “I’m really surprised by this, Miss Cho, and I’m not easy to surprise,” he said. “I imagine your parents wouldn’t be very pleased if I were to call them.”

  “You’re gonna call my parents?” Gah, I didn’t know he did that. There was a whole hidden world of stuff that happens when you get sent to the vice principal’s office. “Do you, um, have to?”

  “No, but I’m considering it. Insubordinate behavior in the classroom is no joke, Miss Cho.”

  I know, I almost said. I really did know, and I had to look down at the floor again. You know what’s not fun, especially when you can’t help yourself from doing it? Looking at the floor because you’re too embarrassed to look up.

  “Especially from a student like you, who’s always been so compliant.”

  Compliant? What did that mean? Obedient? Like a dog?

  “I’m rather interested in talking to your parents, actually. I’d like to better understand their perspective on your education.”

  Okay, that got me to look up.

  “What do you mean, their … perspective?”

  Mr. Frank raised one eyebrow. Maybe he wasn’t used to kids saying anything in these meetings.

  “Meaning, I think there’s always something to be learned from cultures different from ours,” he said. “I can’t imagine this is what your parents expect from you.”

  What did that mean? And how did Mr. Frank have any business talking about what my parents expect?

  “Why not?” I said, feeling my face get hot and not caring that Mr. Frank was the vice principal. “How do you know what my parents expect? How long have you been able to read minds?”

  “Excuse me?” Mr. Frank put his hands on the desk and sat up really straight. I’d finally gotten him to do something other than lean back in his chair with his hands folded like an evil mad scientist, which was probably not a smart thing to do, but screw it.

  “And what are you talking about, cultures different from ours? What are you trying to say? Are you some kind of racist?”

  “Miss Cho.”

  “This stupid town is full of racists, I don’t know why you’d be any different — ”

  “MISS CHO.”

  Mr. Frank was halfway out of his seat, with a severe frown on his face. A thought went flying through my brain — Oh, he looks like a real person when he’s mad! — and I almost said it out loud.

  “I am very, ver
y tempted to issue you detention, Miss Cho. This is unacceptable behavior. Absolutely unacceptable.”

  I glared at him, not feeling apologetic at all, but I didn’t say anything else.

  Mr. Frank stared me down (he tried to, anyway), then slowly sat in his chair again.

  “I’m a fair man, Miss Cho,” he said. “I could punish you right now — I probably should punish you right now — but I believe in taking a student’s permanent record into account, and yours has always been exemplary.”

  Whatever, I thought, but I guess my sense of self-preservation had kicked back in — I kept my mouth shut.

  “Now if you’re ready to hear it, I’ll answer your question: You’re not the only Asian person I’ve ever met, Miss Cho. Koreans have many praiseworthy qualities — ”

  ???!!!

  “ — not the least of which is a commitment to education that many of our own parents frankly do not have, so — ”

  OUR OWN PARENTS? My parents didn’t qualify as “our own,” huh?

  “ — after all of the sacrifices your parents must have made to come here — ”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” I blurted out. “Just shut up.”

  “EXCUSE me??” Mr. Frank actually got up out of his chair.

  “I SAID, shut up, you don’t know what — ”

  “ENOUGH, MISS CHO.”

  “It’s not enough, you’re an idiot — ”

  “THAT. IS. ENOUGH!”

  We locked eyes, student and principal, mano a mano.

  “One week of detention,” Mr. Frank said, staring me in the eye.

  Fine, I thought.

  Detention, which turned out to be not all that fine, was held in room 134 with Mr. Dombrowski, English teacher and my personal nemesis. The second I walked into the room I could tell the difference between detention and normal class. People weren’t even pretending to study or anything — everyone was talking, sitting on desks, throwing stuff, and totally ignoring Mr. Dombrowski, who sat behind the desk at the front of the room, reading a magazine. Worst teacher ever.

  Of course right after I walked into the room it went dead silent and everybody turned and stared at me. It wasn’t friendly staring — some of the stares looked mean, some of them looked confused, and they all looked surprised. None of them looked friendly, though.

  Like I cared. I stared back, only stopping when Mr. Dombrowski woke up from his coma and actually said my name.

  “Ah, Chloe Cho. You’re new to these parts, aren’t you?”

  “I guess so,” I said, cool as an ice cube. No way was I letting Dumb-Dumbrowski get under my skin.

  “Well, find yourself a seat, and good luck.”

  I spotted an empty seat up front — of course, none of these people would ever choose to sit up front if they could avoid it — so I trudged over and more or less fell into it, dropping my backpack on the floor next to me. The boy in the seat next to me leaned in my direction. I didn’t lean away from him, but I didn’t bother reacting to him until he spoke.

  “What’d you do?” he said. I finally turned to look at him.

  “None of your business,” I said.

  “You’re just, you know, Chloe Straight-A+ Student Cho, but you have detention! What’d you do?”

  “I talked back to a teacher, okay? Are you happy?”

  “Oh,” he said, looking disappointed. “That’s it, huh? That’s kind of boring.”

  “… with Shelley Drake, but not anymore …”

  What?? Somebody in the back of the room was talking about me and Shelley.

  “You should totally start a trash-can fire or something, just to REALLY blow your reputation,” said Annoying Kid.

  “Shut up!” I said, trying to hear the conversation behind me.

  It was no good, though — whoever’d been talking about me and Shelley was talking about something else. Either that or I just couldn’t hear them anymore.

  I never knew before how boring detention is. You’re allowed to do homework, but I didn’t feel like doing homework, and I didn’t have a book to read, so there was nothing else to do except pick spitballs out of my hair, which I had to do twice. I felt the first one hit my head, but just barely, and the burst of idiotic giggling from the back of the room was a pretty obvious clue about who’d done it. I picked the disgusting little glob of wet paper out of my hair, dropped it on the floor, and glared at the back of the room as I wiped my hand on my leg.

  “Face front, Miss Cho,” Mr. Dombrowski said, and I spun around to look at him with my mouth open in shock.

  “Why are you calling ME out?? They’re the ones throwing spitballs!” I pointed furiously over my shoulder with one thumb.

  “Nobody gets special treatment in here, Miss Cho, not even you,” Mr. Dombrowski said, leaning back in his chair.

  “But I didn’t DO any — ”

  “Miss Cho, I know you think highly of yourself, and I know you don’t have problems questioning authority, and that’s all well and good, but I’m hearing some uncharacteristic things about your recent behavior. There are no pedestals in this room, Miss Cho, not even for you.”

  I sat very, very still. No teacher had ever spoken to me like that before. Ever.

  “Do your time like everyone else, Miss Cho. Keep your mouth closed, do your time, and it’ll be over soon enough.”

  There was a very, very low giggle from the back of the room, but Mr. Dombrowski pretended not to hear it, and I sank into my chair in defeat.

  It’s going to be a long week, I thought.

  Three mornings later when my alarm clock went off I whacked it randomly a few times until it stopped, lay there for five minutes until it went off again, hit it again, lay there for five minutes until it went off again, then put the pillow on top of my head when Dad knocked on the door.

  “Go away,” I said from under the pillow.

  “Excuse me?” Dad’s voice said from the other side of the door. “Honey, it’s time to get up. Also, your alarm clock is making me feel a little agitated.”

  “I’m up, I’m up.” I sank a little deeper into the bed.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Mmmmffrrgghh,” I said, facedown on the mattress.

  I heard the door opening even though I hadn’t said yes — sheesh, no respect for privacy in the Cho household! I lifted the side of the pillow closest to the door.

  “DAD!”

  “I knocked,” Dad said. “Breakfast is on the table.”

  “WHAT IF I WAS NAKED IN HERE?”

  “I saw your mother give birth to you, honey; nothing will ever be as shocking as that.”

  Oh, gross. Now I’d have that image in my head all day.

  “Are you okay?” Dad said, sitting on the bed like he did every night at lights-out.

  I squashed the pillow back down on my head.

  “This isn’t like you, Chloe.”

  “Mummumng mime bee,” I said into the mattress.

  “Honey, I really can’t hear you, can you take the pillow off of your head, please?”

  I thought about it, then shoved the pillow to the side of the bed, trapping it between my body and the wall.

  “Nothing’s like me,” I said.

  “I don’t understand what that means,” Dad said. He stroked my hair with his hand, but I shook my head violently and he pulled his hand away.

  “What does that even mean, this isn’t like you? I’m not Korean, I’m not even human — everything I thought was me was all just made up.”

  Dad took a deep breath through his nose.

  “It’s true you’re not Korean, and I’m sorry that we kept that from you for so long,” he said quietly. “But it doesn’t change who you are.”

  Yes it does.

  “I’m sorry you’re so upset, though. I understand.”

  No you don’t.

  Dad leaned over and kissed the back of my head.

  “You still need to get up, honey. Breakfast is on the table.”

  He got up and walked out of my room, le
aving the door wide open. Typical. I could smell bacon, though, and I realized I was actually hungry, so I only waited another ten minutes before dragging myself out of bed.

  Mom and Dad were both finished eating, and Mom had all her work stuff already on her when I dragged my sorry, best-friendless carcass to the table. Mom and Dad kissed, which didn’t gross me out like usual because what did it matter? What did anything matter? Let ’em suck face till the sun exploded.

  “There’s our sleepyhead,” Mom said with a half smile. I grunted at her in response, which would normally get me a comment about manners and stuff, but this time Mom just kissed me on the cheek, whispered “I love you” into my ear, and went out the door.

  I sat down at the table and stared glumly at my place mat. It was the same plastic Rocket Cats place mat I’d had since I was five. It was scuffed up and faded, but you could still see the Rocket Cats pretty clearly, jet packs firmly on their backs, blasting off to fight crime in Calico City. I wondered how the Rocket Cats would feel if they found out they were actually stingrays or centipedes. I’d always loved that place mat, but suddenly I felt like throwing it out the window. Dad put a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast right in the middle of the place mat, and depressed or not, I wanted the bacon, so I picked up a piece with my bare hand and took a bite.

  Dad sat across from me with his favorite coffee mug, the one with the logo of the Georgia Aquarium on it, cradled in both hands.

  “Something happened,” he said, taking a sip.

  I shrugged, finished chewing my bacon, and swallowed.

  “Shelley and I had a fight.”

  “Oh.” Dad put his mug down. “That hasn’t happened very often, has it?”

  I snorted.

  “NOTHING that’s happened lately has happened very often before, Dad.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to patch it up with her.”

  I glared at him, suddenly feeling both depressed AND mad.