"OK, so where've you been?" Brian folds his arms across his chest, looking like a dad who's caught his kid sneaking back home. That's when I'm struck with the pathetic realization that this is the closest to a father figure I've ever had in my life. "What've you been up to?"
Correction, I'm tempted to say, Jasmine's the one who was up something tonight. I stayed on the ground. I can't stop the giggles that spill out of my mouth.
With one eyebrow quirked up, Brian inspects me like I'm falling apart. "Look, is this camp too much for you?"
That sobers me up almost as fast as if he had just said that he was going to call Mama. Almost. "What?"
"You've never been away from home. You didn't want to be here in the first place." As if Brian notices for the first time that he's just one piece of clothing away from being naked, he turns around from me and grabs some jeans off his desk chair. While he's tugging them on, I see his pecs and think that maybe Jasmine had a point putting Brian on her tick list of men to climb. "And the camp is a lot of pressure."
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Brian, Mr. Ail-American White Guy, has no concept of what pressure is. Stanford is Club Pre-Med with its own climbing gym of a campus and foothills and sculpture garden. My home is a pressure cooker with me locked inside. I'm trying to figure out something reasonable to say when Brian continues, "And you've probably coasted through school, so I can't blame you for not knowing how to work."
Coasted? Abe is the one who's going to go down as the Brainiac in the Ho family annals, not Incomplete Truth Statement me. I'm literally so blown away that I bump back into his side table, knocking something over.
"Sorry," I mumble and right the picture. It's of Brian and some gorgeous Chinese babe in a bikini, a woman who makes the China Dolls look like ugly stepsisters.
"You know, I'm going to have to report this," says Brian.
Funny, weeks ago, I would have welcomed this very scenario because it would have meant, bye-bye Math Camp. "Oh, you can't!" I say. "I know I wasn't supposed to go out tonight --"
"Any night."
"Right, any night. But sometimes I can't sleep." I bend my head down and tell as much of the truth as I can without busting Jasmine. "I had a nightmare, OK? The same one I've had since I can remember, and I couldn't breathe."
Maybe it's that Brian isn't saying anything, that he's listening without passing any judgment, but I admit for the first time, "It was my dad, chasing me, and I didn't know why, only that I had to get away. Isn't that weird since I've never met him?" I sigh, and start shivering. Now that my sweat is drying, I'm cold again. "I had to go outside."
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I expect him to make a joke the way Janie would have. Or rationalize my nightmare away the way Janie's mom would have. Or give me some psychobabble the way Laura would have. Or make a sound of exasperation like Mama would have.
But Brian nods like he understands how things can haunt a person and hands a sweatshirt to me.
"Consider this a warning," he says finally. "Your final one, kiddo."
The last thing I should do now is engage Brian in conversation and possibly give him a reason to rethink his decision. Just grab this free pass from punishment and go. Yawn, tell him I'll catch him in class tomorrow. That would be the smart thing to do. The prudent thing to do.
Instead, I slip on Brian's oversized sweatshirt and ask him, "So why are you being so nice to me?"
"I'm nice to all you kids," he says, but his eyes stray over to the photograph of the China Doll. God, I hope that woman knows how lucky she is to have a guy looking at her picture with such a sweet combination of loving and longing. Brian smiles sheepishly when he catches me watching him and straddles his desk chair, propping his arms on its back. "So your dad's Chinese?"
"White," I correct him. "My mom's Taiwanese."
He looks at me like he wants to ask me something but thinks better of it. Let it go, I think to myself. But I'm curious. "What?"
"Was that tough for them?"
I realize that I don't know. Forever, it seems, I've sketched out scenarios for how Mama drove my father away, how she harped on him until he couldn't stand it anymore. But honestly, I have no idea what really ended them, just as I don't
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know what brought them together. All I know is that life in the scorched aftermath has made me parched for love.
"Mama never talks about him." And neither do I. I seldom let people into my heart, barricading them from really knowing who I am. But there's a reason for Brian's question and I can't believe that I dare to ask, "Is it tough for you guys?"
"Denise wouldn't tell her parents about me for two years."
If Janie and Laura were here, their eyes would widen in disbelief; they would screech, "No way!" But could I blame Brian's girlfriend for keeping him secret? I nod sympathetically and say, shyly, hoping that it won't offend him, "If I brought home a made-in-America souvenir, even one from Stanford, I might as well buy a lifetime pass for all my mom's lectures."
"That just about sums up what Denise thought, too."
"Do they know about you now?"
"Yeah, now they do," he says wryly. "I figured, if we're getting married, we got to come out at some point. I think I scored at least a tenth of a brownie point when I asked her dad if I could marry her. In Mandarin."
"You did?"
"It took me a good month to get the pronunciation right."
"It took me a good month to learn how to say, 'No, I'm not hungry anymore.'"
Brian breaks into a wicked laugh and we smile at each other in understanding.
"God, I could have used that during my last visit to see Denise. Talk about gorging myself," he says, puffing out his cheeks like he's gained fifteen pounds. "Every time I thought we were done with a meal, her mom came at me with something else to eat."
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"That was just her way of saying she liked you," I translate for him.
Brian grins hopefully. "Yeah? Denise told me I better eat it all, otherwise I'd offend her mom."
"Definitely."
"I swear to God, I didn't think I could move for three days after I flew back home." His smile fades a little. "You know what's weird though? Being in Hawaii was the only time I felt blinding white. I mean, almost everyone I met there was Asian. You know what I mean?"
I laugh out loud, thinking about how I feel back home, an alien in my high school. "Oh, my God," I say and perch on the edge of his bed. "I know exactly what you mean."
"Really," he says. Not a question, so much as an open door, an invitation for me to tell the truth.
"Really." At last, I emerge from behind my Great Wall of Chinese Silence and tell Brian what I've locked inside myself: Steve Kosanko, being othered, Mama's no-dating mandate.
"I finally feel like I'm at home," I admit. "Weird, and at math camp."
"Sometimes you just need to expand your Set," Brian says. "You are such a math geek."
"Takes one to know one." At that, Brian yawns and scratches the side of his face, bristly with whiskers. "OK, kiddo, I need my beauty sleep. Unlike some people, I'm not fifteen anymore." He looks meaningfully at me as he stands. "Next time you have a nightmare -- or anything --just get me. Don't go outside."
As I'm slipping out his door with a "thanks," Brian pulls me into his arms and hugs me tight, the kind of hug that says welcome. Welcome in, welcome home, you are always
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welcome. When he lets me go, Brian hesitates and then says, "When I first saw you, I thought..."He shrugs like he's embarrassed. "Well, when Denise and I have kids, they'll probably look like you. The best of both worlds, that's what she always says."
I think about that as I tread lightly up the stairs. The best of both worlds. Usually, I consider myself a greater than or less than statement. My Asian-ness is greater in Twin Harbor. My hips are less than Janie's. I round the corner and pause at the bay window where the sky is growing lighter, sunlight bumping up against darkness. Who would have known that I should view my world as one bi
g, interlocking Venn diagram, which, when you think about it, is like a mathematical version of the yin-yang sign. The real me, the one I've stashed away, is the sliver where the best of my selves -- Asian, white, closet math geek, runner, friend, daughter, girl-in-lust-with-Stu -- intersect.
The sleeves of Brian's sweatshirt, two sizes too big for me, fall past my fingers, and as I push them up to free my hands, I get a good look at the slash of fiery pink cutting across the sky. It dawns on me that Mama has it all wrong. There are some people -- even (gasp!) men -- you can trust without knowing them your entire life.
By the time I slip back to my room, it's almost six. Jasmine is in bed, awake and waiting for me. "Oh, my God, where were you?"
Where was I? Chased by a fat guard, hit by a laugh attack and nearly thrown out of Stanford University Math Camp, never to see the light of the campus ever again, and certainly
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not as a future student. All of a sudden what was so funny in Brian's room is no laughing matter. Before this moment, I had no idea how much I would have given up.
"We shouldn't have gone tonight," I say, dropping her backpack next to her bed.
"How can you say that?" Jasmine blinks. "Tonight was amazing."
Maybe for her, but not for me. I wonder if I'm allergic to adventure, because as I recount my ordeal, Jasmine alternately gasps and giggles.
"It's not funny," I tell her.
"Are you kidding?" she says and does a great imitation of an out-of-shape security guard, juggling a donut, as he chases me. I can't help laughing. My night, as Jasmine replays it, sounds like an action flick with me in the Kung Fu Queen starring role. Not the supporting one I usually play in Janie's dating adventures or Laura's environmental protesting ones.
"So where were you?" I ask, a note of suspicion in my voice.
"I hid in one of the stained glass windows."
"You did not." My eyes widen. "That's, like, two stories up."
"No kidding. God, it was small, three feet tall, max. Anyway, as soon as Fat Man was gone, I climbed down and walked around. But you were long gone." Jasmine props herself up on an elbow and spots her backpack. "Oh, good, you have it. I was worried that you didn't."
What about me? Wasn't she more worried about me than her backpack?
As if Jasmine was eavesdropping on my thoughts, she says, "I knew that you would be OK."
"How did you know that?"
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"Because you're smart."
It's a vote of confidence I'm not used to hearing. I'm so drained, too tired to even put on my pajamas, that I crawl into bed with my clothes on.
"Wait a second. What are you doing wearing Brian's sweatshirt?" Jasmine demands.
"I was in his room just now, almost getting thrown out of camp, remember?"
"So... what else did you and Brian talk about for, what, two hours?"
But my conversation with Brian is tucked safely behind my Great Wall of Chinese Secrets, and no one, not even a buildering nutcase, is going to scale my defenses to retrieve it. For some reason, I want to keep it to myself -- that Brian believed in me, Patty Ho.
"His fiancée." I tell the half-truth with a perfectly straight face. It is somewhat true.
Jasmine's questions come fast now. "What? How do you know? What does she look like?"
"She's really beautiful, Chinese, from Hawaii."
I would have thought that that would send Jasmine reeling into a new world of could-have-beens, but no. Her voice is flat. "Oh, he's one of those."
"One of what?"
"A white guy with an Asian Woman Fetish," she says. I can almost see her crossing him off her tick list. Just like that. Not because he's taken, but because of his label. "You know, those freaks who are only attracted to Asian women. Like we're exotic, sex-crazed and subservient." She snorts. "Or like we're interchangeable, every one of us, all the same."
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Here's the thing: I don't know Brian's dating history, whether he's only gone out with Asian women or if he's country-hopped. What he is or isn't doesn't change how I hug Brian's words to myself. I'm the best of both worlds. And, I think, there's nothing wrong with that.
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22 * Color Theory
When I wake up, I'm not in the mood to be told anything, least of all anything about math. But it's Monday, and it's back to math lectures and problem-solving.
The only problem my brain can handle on two-and-a-half hours of sleep is what to eat for breakfast. Maybe spilling my guts has emptied me out, because I'm starving. I glance at the door, finding more pink sticky notes with messages that Mama called and a new one that Abe wants me to call him right away. I know I should call -- at least get back to Abe -- but I head out the door instead. The last two things in the world that I want to do right now are to listen to Abe complaining about how Mama's nagging could qualify as a new Olympic event (welcome to my life, O Honored Son) and to listen to Mama's billion and five questions about whether I've met any nice Taiwanese boys and why I haven't called and if I've seen Auntie Lu yet. Answers: no, because, and no.
So the only message I pluck off the door is the one from Jasmine to meet her in the cafeteria. I make my solo trek
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across the street to the FloMo dining room, telling myself that I'll call Mama and Abe later.
Not to be paranoid, but everyone stops talking the second I step into the cafeteria. People look at me like I'm a problem set they're trying to solve, but they're having a hard time reconciling the variables. When Anne breaks off her conversation with Harry at the über-math jock table to study me, I know she knows. What I don't know is whether she's told her mother. Acid churns in my stomach. The way the kids are gossiping about me this morning, Mrs. Shang clearly needs to brush up on her pass-the-bad-news skills.
Robotically I microwave some oatmeal, a poor substitute for the rice porridge that I normally eat at home, pre-Tonic Soup days. As I carry my plastic tray into the dining room, I try to look as blasé as possible, as if I'm used to kids talking about me, rather than flying under the radar the way I usually do at school.
Anne sidles up to me. "What our moms don't know won't hurt them."
I almost drop my tray but tighten my grip on it, looking at Anne closely. Something is different about her. "Your hair," I say.
Anne flushes, her hands brushing over her short hair. "I cut it off. My mom's gonna kill me."
"I like it." And I really do. It's amazing what hacking off a couple of inches does for her face. Her face with brown eye shadow and barely there lipstick. "You look great."
Then I spot Jasmine, holding court at her usual table, which doesn't include Brian. He's nowhere in sight, probably sleeping off his late-night counseling session with me. I'm
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relieved. I didn't want to face him now that he knows more about me than even Janie and Laura do.
My stomach tenses for what's coming next. Jasmine doesn't disappoint, announcing, "Here she is. The woman of the early morning hour."
Before I can self-combust into flames, before I can tell her to shut her mouth up -- as if I were capable of doing that -- the table starts clapping, like I'm some mascot of the math camp.
Stu drags out the empty chair next to him. "Have a seat, you badass."
And my badass, hapa butt parks it next to him, feeling right at home.
"Some adventure last night." His admiring look is a dead ringer for the way Mama had looked at Abe as soon as she opened his admittance package.
I catch Jasmine's eye. She grins at me, her partner in climb. Jasmine was right. Design-your-own-flavor is infinitely more tasty than being a vanilla-bland good girl. So color me cool, I smile back at Stu and toss my hair in a good imitation of Jasmine.
"Yeah," I say and shrug. If you've been chased by one security guard, you've been chased by them all.
Kids from other camps drop by our table, hoping their summers will get an infusion of fun through osmosis with the Kung Fu Queens. I know I've reached a
new social strata when Katie, who has treated me like I'm less socially acceptable than a Wal-Mart-clothes-shopper, suggests that we grab dinner off-campus tonight. By the time breakfast is over, it's agreed. Our Research Project group is cutting out for some sushi.
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***
Somehow, we talk Brian into driving us to a sushi spot in downtown Palo Alto, just a few minutes off campus. After all, we need to get some Research Project planning in; so why not over dinner somewhere where we won't be interrupted? Interestingly, Jasmine invites herself along, making me wonder if she's breaking her no-lusting-after-white-guys-with-Asian-Women-Fetishes rule. With Katie practically sitting in Stu's lap in the backseat of Brian's car, I only wish that he had a no-dating-white-girls rule.
The restaurant is tucked in a quiet side street off the main drag of boutiques and bookstores. There's no sign over the door, just a norm, a narrow piece of blue fabric with a subtle chrysanthemum pattern. Inside, the place is about as big as a dorm room, crammed with a couple of tables, a compact sushi bar at one end and woodblock prints too small for the large, blank walls. A step up from a joint, it's an ex-pat hangout packed with Japanese businessmen. In Mama-ese, this is a good one.
The sushi chef behind the bar calls out, "Shamasei!"
"It's crowded," says Katie, self-consciously tucking her hair behind her ear and shuffling closer to Brian.
What she means is that it's crowded with people who look different from her. I'm so used to computing the Asian-to-white person ratio wherever I go, that I know instantly what's making Katie squirm. She's the only white girl in the restaurant.
Welcome to my life in reverse at high school. I can't really blame Katie for feeling like raw fish out of the water in this sushi restaurant. I've always felt like an
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