New From Here, page 17
Just as we’re about to close the tabs, I spot something amazing. “Oh my God, look at this! Undercover shopper at Six Flags!!!”
Bowen frowns.
“Dad’s not gonna be an undercover shopper,” he says.
“Why not?” The job description sounds beyond. “You get to go around Six Flags buying stuff with special marked money!”
“Because! It’s not a serious job!” Bowen says. “Dad’s not changing his career from being a lawyer to being an undercover shopper!”
“Oh, and being a country club supervisor is so out of this world?”
“At least it says supervisor,” Bowen says, pointing to the word on the screen.
I frown. “You’re so obsessed with what sounds good,” I mutter. “We should pick out something Dad actually likes.…”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not going to like walking around a theme park all day with fake money.”
I close my computer. I think it sure beats sitting in an office all day. I shudder at the thought. When I grow up, I am going to get a job that involves walking around. I don’t care what it is. I am going to be a professional walker.
Curious, I ask my brother, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A CEO,” he replies.
“Of what?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Anything.”
I cross my arms and look at him. “You can’t just want to be a CEO of anything. You have to want to be a CEO of something.”
“Fine. I want to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. And make lots of money so Mom and Dad will never have to worry about losing their jobs again. There, I said it.”
Ohhhhh. I guess it makes more sense now, why Bowen wants to be a CEO.
“And when I make it big, everyone in my school will wish they knew me better.” Bowen plops down to do a few more sit-ups as I open my laptop back up and get on Nextdoor.
I gaze over at Bowen, wondering. Why don’t his friends want to get to know him better now? I remember back in Hong Kong, he had two good friends—Oscar and Simon Mitchell. They were the only other Americans at Bowen’s secondary school, and they were twins. The three of them did everything together, until one day Oscar got mad at Bowen because Bowen wouldn’t let him copy from his math test. And Simon took Oscar’s side, leaving my brother alone in the dust with his math test.
Bowen was pretty devastated that his friends picked a score over him. I was proud of him, though. I hope the people at his new school are nicer to him.
But I don’t dare ask.
Bowen gets up from the floor and announces that he’s going downstairs for a snack. He walks to the door. “You coming?” he asks, holding the door for me.
“Not yet. I need to post this thing for Christopher,” I tell him, typing away.
“What thing?” Bowen asks.
I read him my first official post as Christopher’s online publicist.
Honey walnut prawns—get in my belly.
The other day I had the most delicious honey walnut prawns at Uncle Chang’s Sichuan Garden, next to Lucky’s. They were big and juicy. I’m talking JUMBO. You could actually chew them for MINUTES in your mouth. I counted. They also had the best barbecue fried rice I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve had a lot! So head over to Uncle Chang’s if you want some authentic Chinese food!
“What do you think?” I ask.
“I’d take out the part about chewing for minutes. That sounds weird. Which you are,” Bowen adds. “Why are you doing this anyway?”
“Because he’s my best friend,” I tell Bowen. I glance up and ask, “Do you have a good friend at school?”
Bowen thinks for a long while. He starts to close the door as he mumbles, “I’m in middle school. It’s different.”
Chapter 58
Christopher skips over to me at school on Wednesday.
“I saw the post on Nextdoor! Thanks so much! We’ve been getting more phone calls ever since!” he says.
“What are best friends for?” I smile. Christopher bumps fists with me. “And hey, guess what? We officially started applying for jobs for my dad, and this morning, someone responded! Bay Area Legal Aid wants to interview him tomorrow!”
“That’s great ! Was your dad surprised when you told him?” Christopher asks.
“Errr… not exactly.” I confess to Christopher that my dad doesn’t know about his LinkedIn body double yet.
“WHAT???”
“We just don’t want him to get mad and tell us to stop! We’re going to tell him when we have five job offers in hand. Then he can’t say no to moving here.”
“But… how? Who will pass the interviews?” Christopher asks.
I hold up a finger. Bowen and I have a plan.
When I tell Christopher, his jaw drops. “Your brother’s gonna pretend to be your dad??”
Okay, so maybe it’s not the perfect plan.
“It’ll be on the phone anyway, and we’ve seen our mom do it a bunch of times! All you do is say ‘that sounds fascinating’ and ‘I’m very collaborative!’ How hard can it be?”
* * *
After school, I walk to the parking lot and see Lea talking to a boy outside her classroom. Once my sister says goodbye to him, I ask her, “Who’s that?”
“That’s Stuart,” she says. “I played with him at recess today.”
“See, boys aren’t so bad!” I smile at her. I’m glad she’s no longer sitting on the friendship bench.
“He’ll do for now,” Lea says, gazing over at the girls in her class huddled together with their colorful bracelets. “I’m still holding out for the girls, though.…”
“What’s Stuart into?” I ask.
“Soccer!” Lea tells me. “Hey, do you think you can teach me some skills?”
“Could I ever!” I grin.
We hop into Mom’s waiting car. The radio is on and we listen as we take off our backpacks. “This just in—CDC is saying that the first possible community spread of the coronavirus might have happened here in the Bay Area.”
My sister and I look at each other. “Oh no!” we both call out.
Mom shushes us as she turns up the volume on the radio. “Reports are saying a person in California who reportedly did not have relevant travel history or exposure has contracted the coronavirus. Officials are not quite sure how the patient contracted COVID-19, and experts are fearing that, in fact, community spread may be happening.”
Lea looks at Mom in alarm. “But we just got here… and I just made a friend!”
“Nothing’s been confirmed yet,” Mom says. “It’s one case. Let’s not panic.”
But I am panicking. I don’t want to have to buy overpriced masks from the Taradippin brothers! As Mom drives over to the middle school to pick up Bowen, I take the hand sanitizer out of my backpack and squirt two pumps out. I give some to my sister, and she rubs it all over her hands and even her legs.
If the virus really is here… can Dad still come?
* * *
I try calling Dad as soon as we get home, but he doesn’t pick up. Mom says he’s probably on a work call. So I call Christopher instead.
“Did you hear about the local case?” Christopher asks.
“What does this mean?” I ask, and clutch the landline phone cord. I tell my friend about the Taradippin brothers and how those earring hoarders have bought up all the masks!
“It ought to be illegal, ripping people off like that,” Christopher says. “We never raise our prices, not even on Christmas, when we’re the only restaurant open!”
I shake my head in dismay.
“I gotta go. I’m helping my mom sanitize all the tables in the restaurant,” Christopher says.
“Are people calling in?” I ask.
“Yeah! Most people want takeout, though,” he says.
“Hey, whatever works!” I smile, glad that my ad is gaining traction.
* * *
That night, I toss and turn in my bed, thinking about the virus and how if it does explode in America, would we have to move back? But that would mean leaving Christopher and a teacher who, for the first time in my life, sees something in me.
The crickets chirp loudly outside our room. It’s an unusually hot night for late February, and we have the windows open to save on air con. With every chirp, I wonder if Dad’s reading the news too. What if he makes us come back? He won’t do that, will he?
Bowen barks at me from the bottom bunk, “Stop rustling around! I need to sleep if I’m going to do well on my interview tomorrow as a fake lawyer.”
“Sorry…,” I say, freezing my body.
I lie as still as I can, trying to hold my breath. According to YouTube, if you don’t have the virus, you should be able to hold your breath and count to ten. I can count all the way up to twenty, no problem. Then I count again, worried I might have counted too fast.
“Will you stop?” Bowen asks. “I can hear you counting!”
“Aren’t you worried? If the virus spreads here and we have to go back to Hong Kong?”
Bowen tosses in his bottom bunk. “It’s not gonna spread here, and even if it does, America has the best healthcare system in the world. Mom said.”
“Yeah, and we can’t use it!”
I hear Bowen pull his covers up. “Well, she’s close to getting a new job. And if she gets it—”
“But what if she doesn’t?”
“She will,” he insists. “Besides, we already gave up the apartment. We can’t go back. This is our home.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“And actually, the teachers at my new school aren’t bad. They said I might be able to test out of the seventh-grade math I’m in now and go straight to algebra,” Bowen adds in the darkness.
“That’s great!” I say to him, plopping onto my stomach. “So you don’t want to go to private school anymore?”
“Well, I still want to go…,” Bowen says, his voice lingering. “But…”
Quietly I voice another worry that’s been keeping me up. “What if Dad can’t come, even after we’ve raised the three thousand dollars?” I close my eyes, imagining a month from now, planes flying with giant masks over their plane noses.
“He will. We’re his family. Family beats virus, any day.”
I smile in the dark and flex my arm, just like Dad, even though my brother can’t see me. I yawn and drift off to sleep, listening to the chirping crickets and replaying my brother’s reassuring words.
“Good night, gege.”
Chapter 59
At school, there’s an eerie sense of worry in the air as teachers scramble to put hand sanitizers in every classroom. Unfortunately, there’s not enough for each individual class, so we have to share with the kids next door. Mrs. Turner puts out a table between our two rooms.
“Please, everyone, squirt a dollop on your hands,” Mrs. Turner urges. We all line up.
Tyler stands ahead of me in line. Instead of a dollop, he squirts almost a full cup into his hands, pouring the stuff like it’s whipped cream.
“Tyler! That’s way too much!” Mrs. Turner says.
“But I want to be extra safe!” Tyler says. “I don’t want to catch the disease!” He glares at me and Christopher when he says “disease.”
“You’re not more safe if you drench yourself in hand sanitizer,” Mrs. Turner says. “That’s not how it works!”
“She’s right,” I say. “All you need is about the size of a quarter. But you have to rub it over your entire hand, so you get every surface, including in between the fingers and under your fingernails, for twenty seconds.”
I show my classmates, remembering all those YouTube videos Mom made me watch back in Hong Kong. I feel proud, like a pandemic expert!
“Brilliant hand sanitizing!” Mrs. Turner praises me.
My classmates immediately start copying me, and we sing “Happy Birthday” as a class, until we reach the full twenty seconds. Christopher turns and is about to give me a high five when he stops. We bump elbows instead.
After school, I stay behind for a few extra minutes to help Mrs. Turner wipe up the goop that’s solidified on the table outside from so many kids squirting hand sanitizer.
“Thanks for helping me clean up,” she says. “I hope you’re liking your new school.”
“I am!”
“I’m so glad. You’re doing super,” she tells me.
I smile, soaking in her words. I look up into Mrs. Turner’s big brown eyes and see my promise reflected back in them. It fills my whole heart.
“Thanks,” I say. “You’re a great teacher!”
“Awww, I appreciate that,” Mrs. Turner says. “I do love teaching. I was telling the district superintendent this morning, I’d be so sad if we had to close.”
“Why would we have to close?”
“Well, you know, in case the virus spreads,” she says.
The possibility of schools shutting down here didn’t even cross my mind! I start panicking, thinking about my siblings and me trapped at home, trying to figure out online school—again!
“You know the part about it that makes me the most sad?” Mrs. Turner asks. “All the children who rely on free lunches going hungry. Twenty-two million kids depend on free school lunches in the US, did you know that? Many of them children of color…” She sighs.
I furrow my eyebrows at the free-lunch part. Am I on free lunch? The cafeteria lady almost never asks me for money; she usually goes “You’re good, hon” whenever I go up to her. I assume Mom’s been paying.…
“Well, hopefully, it won’t come to that,” Mrs. Turner says. Her eyes gaze down at the almost empty bottle of hand sanitizer. “Just wish we could get some more sanitizer.”
Chapter 60
Bowen jiggles his leg anxiously on the way home.
“Will you stop?” Mom asks. “You’re making me nervous. I have my second interview later today!”
Unbeknownst to Mom, Bowen also has a big interview. In exactly twenty-eight minutes.
“Sorry. But seriously, drive faster.”
Mom turns and asks Bowen, “Why are you always in a rush these days??”
I clear my throat, trying to change the subject. “Did you know twenty-two million kids depend on free school lunch?” I ask Mom, thinking about what Mrs. Turner said. Biting my lip, I wonder out loud, “Am I on free school lunch?”
“No,” she says, glancing in the rearview mirror. “But I was when I was a kid.”
As she drives, Mom tells us that after the awful summer living in their car, she and Lao Lao and Lao Ye finally managed to get a small one-bedroom apartment in San Diego.
“Still, it wasn’t easy. I’d save my chocolate chip cookie from school every day for Lao Lao and Lao Ye,” she says. “I remember I’d put it in my pocket, and all day long, I’d worry about it getting squished. And I couldn’t play sports, either, because I had no health insurance.”
“Like us!”
“Well, no, not like you guys,” Mom says, slightly embarrassed. “Our situation is temporary. I’m going to get a new job—that’s why I have my second interview.”
“Was it embarrassing, having free lunch?” Lea asks.
Mom shakes her head. “To be honest, I was more embarrassed about my name.”
“Julie?” we ask.
“I wasn’t always called Julie. I used to be called Wei Wei.”
“That’s your Chinese name,” Bowen says. He chuckles and asks, “Remember the time at the San Francisco airport, the guy looked at your passport and he mispronounced it ‘Why Why’? He was like, ‘Your mom and dad must have been really surprised when they had you!’ ”
Bowen stops chuckling when he sees the look on Mom’s face.
“Imagine getting that as a kid. All the time.” She looks away, like the pain of the experience hasn’t quite left. “Sometimes, even the teacher made fun of me.”
“The teacher??” I lean forward. I can never imagine Mrs. Turner doing that—she’s the kindest, most patient teacher on the planet. Whenever one of us mispronounces a word during class read-aloud, she always winks and says, “Hey, tomato, tomahto!”
“Is that the reason you changed your name to Julie?” Bowen asks.
Mom nods.
“I finally decided enough, after I had a professor in college who refused to call me Wei Wei.”
“He refused to call you by your name?” Lea asks, her chin dropping to her booster seat.
“Yeah. He said my Chinese name was a joke and he renamed me Will,” Mom says, shaking her fist.
“Is that who Will is?” Bowen asks. “Knox and Lea found the essay in your closet!”
Mom is so surprised, she drives right over a large pothole.
I immediately add, “We didn’t sell that, I promise! We put it right back!”
Mom sighs at the traffic light. “That was me. Will,” she says, holding up a hand. “He couldn’t even be bothered to give me a girl’s name.”
“I’m so sorry, Mommy,” Lea says, reaching for the back of Mom’s seat.
“The guy sounds like a jerk,” Bowen says. “Is he still teaching at Berkeley?”
“Luckily, no. You know why?” Mom asks. “I fought back. I told the department head about his behavior. And a year later, he was removed.”
We cheer in the car.
“The point is, there are going to be people in life who try and make you feel bad for being different. Don’t let them,” Mom says as she pulls into our driveway. “I wish I’d embraced my name growing up, but it took me a long time. It wasn’t until much later in life that I finally found pride in my roots.…”
She smiles at us in the rearview mirror. “That’s why I gave you each such unique names. So you’ll always remember and be proud of where you’re from.”
I catch my brother’s reflection as he mouths his name under his breath: Bo-wen.
Chapter 61
All right, let’s do this!” Bowen says, dialing the number for Bay Area Legal Aid when the three of us get upstairs. I’ve got Dad’s LinkedIn résumé open and the number on my notepad.
