Page 39 of This Time It's Real
“Yourboyfriend,” Emily says, tearing the head off a gummy worm with her teeth. One of her friends gave her an entire packet after lunch. “Caz. My friends really like him too.”
“I’m not surprised. Everyone loves him.” An embarrassing, residual note of bitterness from the ti jianzi game tinges my voice. It’s not like it’sCaz’s fault that he’s so universally adored. That whatever it is I’m deficient in—charm, looks, the ability to draw people in, to make them stay—he has in excess.
Not his fault at all.
And yet the bitterness lingers, like the herbal medicines Ma always brews for us when we have a cold.
“Do you think he’ll play with us again tomorrow? Or the day after?”
Emily’s face is open, hopeful, eager. I have to look away, ignoring the sharp stone in my stomach. The last thing I need is for her to get attached to Caz. Especially when I don’t know how he really feels—if he was so nice because he really likes her, or just likes kids in general, or if it was a onetime thing. Either way, I should really talk to him about leaving my sister out of this.
More cars crawl past us, spitting out smoke.
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “But just don’t get your hopes up, okay? Caz is really busy with his shooting schedule and endorsements and things and . . . and there are a lot of people who want to spend time with him.”
And when my internship ends and his drama premieres, he won’t have any reason to spend time with either of us.
“Oh. Okay, then.” Emily nods, disappointed but already accepting it.
Then she grins and licks the rest of the purple gummy until it’s a shiny, transparent color, the sugary tail sticking to her fingers.
I wrinkle my nose. “That’s low-key very gross.”
She sticks her purple-stained tongue out at me. I pretend to push her off the railing, and she shrieks, laughing.
The parking lot is starting to empty instead of fill now, students tossing their bags into back seats and trunks, doors clicking shut, tearing open packets of chips and Wang Wang rice crackers to savor on the ride home. And still, no familiar car shows up.
It’s not the first time Li Shushu has been late; his schedule is divided between us, Ma, and Ba, and of course Ma is his first priority. The chances are that she had to run off to an emergency meeting with a client, or one of her conferences got pushed back.
But as the minutes drag by and Emily’s supply of gummy worms runs low, I can feel her patience waning.
“So. Tell me about your friends,” I say—to distract her, but also because I’m curious. Because I can’t help wondering how things would’ve turned out if Caz and I hadn’t intervened, if she’d still be left on the perimeter of her friendship circle. It’s a feeling I’m quite used to but that I don’t want Emily to ever experience.
Emily snorts. “You sound like Ma.”
“Yeah, but I’m part ofyourgeneration. I can understand these things. Give you advice.”
“That’s what all old people say.”
I really do shove her this time—lightly, of course—and she teeters for a moment, arms flailing everywhere, before hooking a foot around the rails and regaining her balance.
“Fine,” she huffs out. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. You just haven’t talked about them a lot. And this is my first time seeing you at lunch.”
She kicks a leg out, swinging it into the blue air, toes touching the clouds. “Well, I only started hanging out with them recently.”
“Why only recently?”
“They didn’t know what to think of me.” The way she says it, I realize she’s repeating something one of her friends told her. Probably that Meredith girl. And I know I probably shouldn’t be hating on a nine-year-old, but it still makes me angry.
“How come?” I ask, my voice neutral.
“They . . . weren’t sure where I was from.” Emily’s voice is neutral too, but it grows quieter the more she talks. “Like, there are these girls in my class who only speak Cantonese to one another, and all their families have been friends since kindergarten. And then there’s this other group that’s predominantly American and Canadian, and they’re not really close to any of the local Chinese kids. They’refriendly, but not close. And I’m not . . .” She scratches at some invisible itch on her elbow. “I guess I’m not like any of them.”
We fall into silence. The parking lot is almost empty now, one long, blank stretch of gray. Still no driver, no familiar face.
“That’s a hard word,” I say after a while.“Predominantly.”
