Fresh Off the Boat

by Melissa de la Cruz

  Norbert was my mother’s brother’s eldest son and something of a cutup. He had spent his youth racing motorcycles and generally goofing off, but he’d suddenly developed an entrepreneurial streak when he settled down and got married. It was his idea to bring tapes of American reality TV shows to his customers, and the business was a hit. Copyright laws were being flouted everywhere in Asia. Peaches told me she had seen Star Wars III on DVD even before it hit the theaters. None of us thought taping TV shows would be a big deal.

  Norbert’s tour of the back room continued with the same cheerful reveal of each of the room’s hidden storage areas. “Look a window!” he said, but when he pulled up the blinds, it was also stacked with cassettes. There was a false wall in the armoire, several secret compartments in the couch, and several more false windows. Norbert giggled, obviously tickled by the whole idea.

  “Gago!” (foolish boy) Mom had said, bemused at the time.

  Dad had shaken his head and grunted. I’d e-mailed Peaches, to tell her that the latest copy of America’s Top Weight-loss Secrets should be on its way to Norbert’s Spectacular Video Store in Makati.

  It was all supposed to be so harmless.

  “What’s going to happen now?” I asked Dad.

  He hung up the phone. “I don’t know. I just called Tita Delia in Malacañang. Norbert’s out on bail, but the charges are serious. It’s a pretty big fine if he’s convicted. They are beginning to crack down on a lot of things that they usually let slide. Hopefully it will all work out in the end. But we’re not going to be taping shows for a while.”

  Mom’s face was ashen. Her favorite nephew in trouble was bad enough, but now money was going to be a problem, too. The proceeds from our reality-TV VHS smuggling were small but substantial. “Next semester’s tuition is due in a month,” Mom whispered.

  “We’ll find a way. Maybe the JCPenney across the mall will let us open a cafeteria in their store,” Dad said hopefully. So far, the other Sears stores in the Bay Area had proved immune to the charms of Arambullo Food Services.

  I pretended not to hear and walked slowly up the stairs to my room, carrying my hated Soirée dress.

  The next day, I stopped thinking about the video store’s smuggling demise, Norbert’s troubles with the law, and the problems with the cafeteria, since I had more important things to worry about, like a huge geometry exam. It was the last chance I had to pull up my grade before semester finals.

  “I can’t do this anymore.” Claude groaned, banging his head on his open textbook. He looked so adorable, with his blond hair sticking up in tufts.

  He looked up from the book, and Isobel and I burst into laughter. We were sitting in our favorite corner table of Bistro Felix during lunch. Claude was now a regular at our geometry study breaks. I’d asked Isobel if she minded, and at first the two of them were wary about each other but they had started to get along.

  “It is imperative!” Isobel scolded. “The exam is next period!”

  “You’re getting better,” I said to him. “You got problems one through ten right on the practice test.”

  “Yeah, but Izzy lets me cheat,” he said, smiling at her.

  Isobel smiled back, and I felt a little strange, sitting between them. Isobel knew I had a huge crush on Claude, and I also knew she would never do anything to compromise our friendship.

  We were both advocates of the belief that thou shalt not steal thy best friend’s man—even if it was just a crush. Certainly, Peaches and I never had those problems. Peaches was a Jake Gyllenhaal girl.

  Not that it mattered anyway, since Claude was very much Whitney’s new boyfriend. He always came by to pick her up after school, and the two of them had their arms around each other constantly. They looked so perfect together—they had the same shade of hair, and Whitney was almost as tall as Claude. They caused a slight commotion wherever they went. It was as if they were in perpetual lip lock—it made me feel sick.

  Headmaster Humphrey had even warned the student body during Headmaster’s Meeting about “inappropriate actions” on school grounds—the five-block area between Montclair and Grosvernor.

  “There have been some, ahem, complaints. The Board of Trustees has received word about girls in Grosvernor uniforms smoking and engaging in questionable conduct around the city,” he said, his lips forming a priggish little frown.

  He looked straight down at where Whitney was sitting, but she didn’t even squirm. She just looked back at him without blinking, chewing her gum and playing with her hair.

  “Okay, concentrate. I give you five minutes to do the next problem. Then we take a cappuccino break,” Isobel ordered.

  “I’m done,” Claude announced, lifting his pencil. “I think I got it right this time.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  Isobel checked our pages warily. She pushed her cat’s-eye glasses up her nose. “Hmmm…not bad, not bad…this one is a little off, but otherwise okay…”

  “What are you guys doing this Friday night?” Claude asked.

  Isobel faked nonchalance, and I tried not to look too excited. We both knew he was having a huge party at his house that night. Whitney tortured the rest of the freshman class by constantly talking about it. Details had been leaked to weloveclaudecaligari.com, so I already knew all about it: they had gotten some famous nightclub guy to DJ, Claude’s older brother was taking care of the keg, and his parents would be away in Mexico for the weekend.

  “I might be going out…” Isobel said.

  “Yeah, I think I have plans for Friday, too.” I shrugged.

  “Too bad. I’m having a party that night.”

  “Oh, yeah? Maybe we’ll stop by.” Isobel cocked an eyebrow. I looked nonchalant.

  “Thirty-three Presidio, in Saint Francis Woods. Come anytime after eight,” he said, scribbling his address on Isobel’s notebook.

  “Okay.”

  “See you then!”

  “Later.”

  He loped off and met Whitney, who was waiting for him in front of the café and scowling at us through the window. We had overheard her calling us Claude’s “loser girl study group” one day, but instead of being embarrassed, Isobel and I thought it was kind of funny, so we had taken to calling each other card-carrying members of the L.G.S.G. I think it bothered Whitney that there was nothing she could do to stop it, especially since she was failing algebra, so it’s not as if she could help him with geometry. She broke into a smile when she saw Claude, who planted a huge sloppy kiss on her lips. Isobel and I traded disgusted looks.

  After lunch I had gym class, which was held in the outdoor courtyard between the school buildings, which had ceased to be a minor annoyance and had become a full-blown nightmare. All week we were faced with the annual Presidential Fitness Challenge. Gros prided itself on having all its girls score in the top ninetieth percentile. But not if I had anything to do with it. So far, I had barely passed each activity. I nervously stood in line, waiting for the next torture, which was balance and coordination.

  We’d each been given a paddle and a Ping-Pong ball, as well as a partner to document your progress. The object was to test your reflexes by bouncing the ball on the paddle twice.

  After everyone paired up, I was left with Sylvia Abernofsky, a skinny girl with buck teeth. She completed the task after several tries. “Your turn,” she said.

  I put the ball on the paddle and flipped it.

  The ball rocketed off the fence with a bang, almost hitting the second graders in the adjoining courtyard. “Sorry!” I said, as I ran over to retrieve it. On my second try, the ball rolled down to the basketball court. I started to feel increasingly uncomfortable as I repeatedly tried and failed to bounce that stupid Ping-Pong ball on the freaking paddle. The rest of the class had moved on to the sprint test.

  “C’mon, Arambullo, hurry up, you can do it!” Miss Farnworthy, our gym teacher bellowed. She was a large, chesty woman with a loud voice and a blond afro, who usually gave me a break.

  “I’m tryin
g!” I said, once again flipping up the ball, only to swipe the air uselessly with my paddle.

  “What a retard,” I heard someone say clearly behind me.

  I turned and looked Whitney Bertoccini straight in the eye.

  She poised her ball on the paddle, gave it a small rap and bounced it up and down twice. “Done!” she said.

  Unnerved, I tried again, but whatever I was doing, it wasn’t right. I just couldn’t bounce the ball. I would fail the Presidential Fitness exam, flunk gym class, and lose my academic scholarship. My parents would kill me. It was surreal.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sylvia whispered. “I’ll just record that you did it.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, thankful for her sympathy.

  Miss Farnworthy and the rest of the class were already outside the school grounds running laps around the block so it was easy enough to lie. When they trooped in, Sylvia and I handed in our sheets. I followed everyone to the locker room to change, just in time to see Whitney flailing her arms and pretending to lunge for a ball with an invisible paddle.

  “Omigod! Did it go up my skirt?” She snorted.

  Georgia and Trish were in hysterics.

  “I swear! Is there a bigger loser in the class?! I mean, how hard is it to hit a little ball?”

  I backed out of the locker room and ran to the girl’s bathroom before anyone could see me. I locked the outer door and stood there for a minute without doing anything, hoping no one would need to pee.

  Then I just started crying. The tears welled up my eyes and I couldn’t stop them. I fell to my knees and sobbed. Suddenly, everything seemed too much—not just gym class and Whitney but everything in school, the cafeteria, the party, Claude, my parents, the video store, everything. I didn’t know whom I hated more—myself for being such a dork or Whitney for being such a bitch. I was in there straight through the next period. Several sixth-graders tried to use the bathroom, but I didn’t open the door, and I just hoped they wouldn’t tell the handyman.

  After I had been sitting on the cold bathroom tiles for what seemed like an eternity, I heard a soft knock on the door. “V? Are you in there? V?” I didn’t answer. I sniffled into a paper towel and looked at myself in the mirror, red nose and all. I was still wearing my stupid gym uniform.

  “V? Let me in. C’mon, it’s just me. Sylvia told me you might be in here.”

  “I’m fine.” I laughed hoarsely. “I’m fine, really.”

  “I know what happened. C’mon.”

  “Nothing happened. You should go, or you’ll be late for Sister Chandler’s class.”

  “So what?”

  “Iz, I’m good, really. I just have stomach problems.”

  “Can you just open the door? Please?”

  I reluctantly opened the door and let her inside.

  “You look a mess,” she said.

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Oui.” She started wiping my face with a tissue. She zipped open her pink zebra-print handbag and removed a dainty cosmetic case. She began to powder my nose and chin with a fluffy, oversized makeup brush. “There, much better.”

  “Can I borrow some lipstick?”

  “Of course,” she said, as she started working on my eyebrows. I closed my eyes, soothed by the gentle motions of her hands on my face. “You should not let them affect you so much,” she chided.

  “Can we not talk about it?”

  “We will attend at that party,” she said.

  “I don’t know.” I sighed. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t.”

  “Vicenza,” she snapped. “Pourquoi pas? He invited us! And he owes us after tutoring him.”

  “You tutored him.”

  “La même chose.”

  “You go,” I said stubbornly.

  “I’m not going without you.”

  “Bring Veronique and Leslie instead,” I said meanly.

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be like that. I promise, we’ll have a good time!”

  “Okay, I’ll go, but you have to promise not to be mad.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to the stupid Soirée,” I said, holding my breath.

  “What? Avec qui? Why?”

  “My mom set me up with this guy Freddie—he’s a family friend’s son. She really wants me to go. She thinks I should try to fit in more.”

  “But you promised!”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  She pretended to look annoyed. “Bien. I’ll forgive you. But tu dois être present à la party on Friday.”

  “Maybe.”

  When we finally left the first-floor bathroom, Sylvia told us that she and some other girls in my class had told Headmaster Humphrey what had happened. “Frosh girl found crying in bathroom” was the biggest scandal of the day. Isobel and I bumped into Whitney on our way to Social Justice.

  “I’m sorry,” Whitney said, rolling her eyes. I knew she had been forced to apologize to me by the dean. Grosvernor faculty was like that: they got involved in every issue, no matter how small. The girls’ school I had gone to in Manila was the same. Was there something about the all-estrogen environment that turned administrators into clucking mother hens? At Gros, if the dean had heard you had been drinking at a weekend party with Monty boys, they called your parents to express concern about your “reputation.”

  “It’s okay,” I mumbled, hoping my eyes weren’t red anymore.

  “Maybe we can, um, hang out some time, at, like, Fisherman’s Wharf or something,” Whitney suggested, a strange smile on her face. Later, I learned that the dean had threatened her with a rare detention unless Whitney tried to make amends by making “weekend social plans” with me as part of her punishment. Her invitation to Fisherman’s Wharf was just another dig. It was a tourist trap, and no one cool ever went there (confirmed by the fact that my family thought Fisherman’s Wharf was the greatest thing ever).

  “Leave her alone,” Isobel hissed.

  Georgia poked Whitney from behind, Trish shot us a murderous glare, and the three of them walked off with their noses in the air. When they rounded a corner, we could hear them laughing.

  “You have to go to the party,” Isobel pleaded.

  I sighed. A part of me wanted nothing more to do with any of them. I knew I was just walking into more drama. But Isobel had stood by me, and I wasn’t about to let her down. And in any event, I had always wanted to go to one of Claude Caligari’s ragers. For once in my life I actually had plans for the weekend!

  FROM: queen_vee@aol.com

  TO: amparo.dellarosa@info.ph.com

  SENT: Thursday, November 19, 6:25 PM

  SUBJECT: party prep!

  Hi, Peach,

  I got your e-mail. Don’t worry about us. You know Dad knows everyone in the Ministry. Hopefully Kuya Norbert will just get off with a light fine and we’ll all be laughing about it soon. The only thing is that from now on we can’t tape any shows. I’ll just IM you who won American Idol tomorrow so you don’t have to wait. School is good, thanks. I think I might run for class president next semester! Anyway, Claude’s having a huge rager tomorrow so I have to help him prepare for the par-tay.

  xxoooo,

  V

  14

  “Party” is Not a Verb

  THE FIRST ORDER OF business was getting permission. Since my parents could be totally unreasonable sometimes, I knew there was no way I would be able to get out of the house with their consent if they knew I was headed to some guy’s unsupervised blowout. And, unfortunately, I’m too uncoordinated to climb out the window. I would have to recruit an unknowing conspirator. One whom my parents would trust in a heartbeat, someone who was practically family and who had already been given the stamp of approval since, after all, he was my date to the until-midnight Soirée. One who could drive.

  Freddie Dalugdugan.

  I called him on his cell and asked if he wanted to hang out on Friday night at our church’s youth band tryouts. I knew he’d say yes because while Freddie might not posse
ss an ounce of athleticism or style, he was also under the mistaken impression he had a great singing voice. Then I told Mom that Freddie and I were going to hang out with the youth group. It would make her feel better to know there would be other kids there. She’d always encouraged me to participate in group activities; I just hadn’t had the heart to tell her I wasn’t part of any group.

  “What time?” Mom asked.

  “There’s a meeting at the parish hall at seven, and then afterward we’re all getting pizza at Round Table.”

  “Just make sure you’re home by eleven.”

  “Can we make it midnight? You know it takes forever to get pizza from there!”

  “Eleven.”

  “All right,” I grumbled.

  But I was still excited that she had fallen for it. I immediately dialed Isobel to tell her we had a ride to the party.

  “Woo-hoo!” Isobel exclaimed into her cell phone. “And I just found the perfect outfit!” I hoped it didn’t involve anything with marabou.

  On Friday I was practically flipping out I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to leave the cafeteria. I asked Mom if we could close up early again, and she said okay. I barreled her out of the Sears doors.

  “I’m so happy you’re becoming more involved in church,” Mom said as we drove off.

  I nodded, too impatient to feel guilty.

  Dad had picked up Brittany earlier and was home from work and studying to get his notary public license. His latest get-rich-quick scheme involved collecting the fees to witness important documents. “Five dollars a signature! Imagine that!” he’d told us. “We’ll be rich!” One notarized document at a time.

  Brittany followed me upstairs to my room.