Fresh Off the Boat (12 page)

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy what you can do with computers now.”

“Oh, I have your book. The, um, Stephen King? I read it,” I said. I took it out from my backpack and handed it to him.

“And?”

“It was great. I loved it. I got a couple more.” I showed him what I was reading—the newest Dark Tower book.

“Really?” He grinned slyly. “I told you! But you shouldn’t have spent your money. And you should start with the first one. I can lend you my copy.”

“It’s okay. I borrowed them all from the library.”

“Man, you are so square it’s cute.”

I felt my cheeks flush. I loved the South San Francisco library. It was another thing my family couldn’t believe about America—books on loan! For free! Dad said if they had a library like that in the Philippines, all the books would be stolen in a day.

Every week, my family makes a special trip to pick out books. It was another of our nerdy habits I tried to keep people at Gros from knowing about. The library had a lot of Stephen King books, but I also wanted my own copies of my favorites. I liked seeing them lined up on my bookshelves, easily within reach if I wanted to reread them. Books borrowed from the library were valued but ephemeral pleasures.

“Hey, you know they made a movie out of the latest Stephen King book? Usually they’re kind of terrible, but who knows—maybe they got it right this time,” he said, raising his eyebrows so high his shoulders peaked, too.

“Probably not. Those things always suck,” I said.

“Yeah, but there’s
The Shining
. Or
Misery
. You never know, this one could be good.”

“I guess.” I shrugged.

“I saw the trailer—it looks awesome. This guy’s head explodes and it’s, like, filled with this mucky green stuff that glows and, like, takes over. Bitchin’.”

I made a face. “Is it scary?”

“Of course it’s scary. Isn’t that the point?” He looked impatient. “So, you, like, don’t want to see it?”

“I dunno. I really haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, it’s opening next Friday. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

“Oh, all right,” I said, before I even knew what I was saying.

“Great!” he said, beaming at me. Then his face fell. “I forgot—that weekend, I might have to visit my dad in Fresno.”

“Why? What’s he doing there?”

“He lives there. My parents are divorced.”

“Oh, I’m sorry—about your parents, I mean,” I said kind of awkwardly.

“Don’t be. It’s a lot better for everyone.”

I didn’t know anyone who was divorced. None of my parents’ friends was divorced. Divorce was illegal in the Philippines, so nobody got divorced. At least, not in Manila. Couples traveled to the United States or Hong Kong to get divorced. But there were
a lot of “second families” and “Manila wives” (meaning, there were other wives stashed away somewhere else).

“Is it hard, with him away?”

He looked startled that I was asking so many questions.

“A little, yeah. I miss him. It’s weird. But I get to see him one weekend each month, and I live up there during the summer.”

“The whole summer?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. Dad pretty much lets me do what I want.”

I felt a little sad thinking Paul wouldn’t be around in the summer. I knew where I would be: here at the cafeteria making sandwiches, running the register, counting out change.

“So, do you want to go see it together? Um, unless, you know, you’re busy.”

I was so far from busy it was ridiculous. “Sure, why not?”

“I can meet you at the theater. It’s playing in the mall.”

“Sure.”

“Do you have a cell number? I can call you so we can hook up.”

I gave him my number on the back of an old receipt.

“All right then.” He paid me for his Pepsi and walked out of the cafeteria. I waved at him when he looked back through the door’s porthole.

I was smiling so hard my mouth hurt. I still didn’t quite know what happened. Did he just ask me out? Did we have a date? Or was it a friendly thing? I mean, he just broke up with
Laurie, whom I didn’t even know he was dating! Maybe I was just his, like, cafeteria buddy. But what did I care anyway? It wasn’t like I
liked
-him-liked-him.

In any case, I would have to find some way to go to the movies with him. My parents would never allow it. Not that they had anything against him, but it was just part of the rules. My fifteenth birthday was still a month away.

The next day at school I told Isobel about Paul.

“This guy—a, um, friend of mine, kinda asked me to go the movies with him next Friday.”

“Really! What does he look like?”

“Skinny. Tall.” What did Paul look like? “He has brown hair and green eyes and kind of a small mouth, but I think it’s because of the braces. He has a nose that kind of looks like it’s been broken, and he has freckly arms and knobby wrists…”

“Whoa—didn’t need the entire four-one-one, I meant, is he cute?”

Was Paul cute? I guess some people might think so. The girls at Sears certainly did. “Yeah I guess…but he listens to Incubus.”

“Quoi?”

“It’s a heavy metal band,” I explained.

“Ah!
Je connais. Comme
‘Headbangers Ball.’ So is it love?” she teased.

“No, we’re just friends.”

“Bon.”

“Do you think it’s a date?”

“Of course it’s a date,” she said as she tried, and failed, to slam her locker door. She kept a mini clothes closet in there, and her wardrobe was always threatening to tumble out in an explosion of pink leather and gold sequins.

“How do you know?” I asked, helping her smoosh in all her clothes and marveling at a Lycra T-shirt with fishnet sleeves that read J’ADORE DIOR in an allover pattern.

“He asked you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, so…”

“So nothing. It’s a date,” she declared, snapping the lock closed and pulling up her black spandex capri leggings underneath her uniform skirt. Next to Whitney, Isobel was always out of uniform. Unlike Whitney, Isobel was always in detention for it. “Who’s this guy again?”

“Paul Hartwell. I told you about him before. He works at Sears. He goes to public school. He’s nice,” I said, trying to play it down. “But, I don’t know, we’re friends.”

“
Très
simple. Guys aren’t friends with girls.” She considered herself an expert in boy-girl relations since she was still conducting a lame long-distance relationship with Sam in New York, even if they both knew it was over. He had stopped IM-ing her
every night, and every time she called his dorm room, his roommate said he was out.

“Observe it this way, V. Do you have any guy friends?”

I thought about Freddie—but he was more a family friend than a personal one. As for Paul, I definitely thought of him as a friend—nothing more. I kind of hoped it
wasn’t
a date.

“Let’s talk about this later,” I said. “I’m late for geometry.”

“Is that boy still in your class?” she asked.

“Who?” I asked. “Oh, you mean Claude. Yeah, he’s still there. Not doing too well though. We get our midterms back today. I think I passed but only thanks to you, Iz.”

I walked quickly into Montclair, following a couple of sophomores in my class and ignoring the curious looks girls always received from the boys there. Some of the guys were total jerks—they’d always wolf whistle or pound their chests and say “hubba hubba” or stick their tongues out lecherously—but lately they’ve gotten used to our presence. Once when they teased us about being “geometry whores” Stacey Bennett slugged one of the boys in the nose. They stopped bothering us after that.

The first bell rang when I was still in the hallway, and when I arrived in class, Miss Tresoro was already handing out the results of midterms.

I took my seat and looked at the stapled graph paper that was
lying facedown in front of my desk. The rules of my scholarship dictated I had to keep an A minus average, and I had A’s in all my other classes, but to keep an A minus, I need to pull at least a B in geometry.

Isobel had been nice enough to spend every lunch hour and free period tutoring me, and I felt confident I had done a little better. But I was still scared. My parents would kill me if I lost my scholarship.

I turned over my test.

B
.
GREAT IMPROVEMENT
was scrawled on the top of the page.

Thank God!

“That’s awesome,” Claude said, seeing my grade.

“Thanks.” I smiled, forgetting that I was too intimidated to talk to him.

“Here—you turn it over,” he said, pushing his test over to my side of the table. “I don’t even wanna know.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yep. Do it.”

I turned over his test.

“What does it say?” he asked.

I showed him.

Another F.
PLEASE SEE ME
Miss Tresoro had written in big block letters.

He cursed vehemently under his breath.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“How’d you get so good? You weren’t doing that much better than me before.”

I nodded. “My friend Isobel—the one you hit with your car?—she’s, like, a math genius. She’s been helping me with my homework.”

“Do you think she could do the same for me, even though I almost killed her?” Claude asked.

Isobel tutor Claude? I felt a stab of jealousy. But he looked so forlorn, with none of his usual swagger. “Sure, I’ll ask her. What time do you have lunch tomorrow?”

“Umm…G period,” he said after consulting his Palm Pilot.

“Ours is, too. You know that French bistro on Fillmore?” It was Isobel’s favorite café. She said it reminded her of home.

“Yeah, the one with the black-and-white awning?”

“Meet us there at one, and don’t forget to bring your geometry book,” I said.

The next day, I was so excited for our lunchtime appointment, I kept reapplying my lipstick and tried to do something about my hair. Isobel pretended not to care, but I noticed she had put more blush on her cheeks than usual and had hiked up her skirt two more rolls over the waistband so it was practically nonexistent. I didn’t really mind that there would be three of us. It was my first official date with Claude Caligari!

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SENT: Thursday, November 12, 9:55 PM

SUBJECT: finally alone!!

Today Claude and I met for coffee at this really cute French café down the street. He’s so cute. Like me, he reads all the time. We’re both total bookworms. We have so much in common. We both ordered mocha cappuccinos.

I’m so sorry to hear you and Rufi broke up! But at least your parents never found out about it.

I can’t wait for you to get here in December! It turns out Whitney and everyone will be away for break, so you won’t be able to meet them. :-(

Love,
V, AKA Mrs. Caligari

12
Cinderella Problems

I
SOBEL IS NOW
tutoring Claude and me during every free period. While things at school were looking up, back at the cafeteria, I didn’t see Paul for a couple of days, which was kind of disappointing. I was looking forward to seeing the movie with him, even if I knew it really wasn’t a date. I figured he’d probably forgotten all about it, so I was happily surprised when he called me on my cell Tuesday afternoon.

“Hello?”

“Hey, V, it’s me, Paul.”

“Oh, hi!” I said, turning away so Mom, who was in the Toyota with me, wouldn’t hear.

“Where are you guys? It’s not even five o’clock.”

I explained that Mom and I had closed the cafeteria a little earlier for a special errand.

“Can you check the map again?” she asked, peering over the steering wheel as we drove off the highway into the warehouse
district. “Who’s that on the phone?”

“No one,” I mouthed, a little embarrassed that I was talking to a boy on the phone, even if it was just Paul.

“Hold on,” I told him. “It says Fourth Street and Divisadero, Mom,” I said, consulting a faded San Francisco street map. “Oh, there it is.”

“My dad canceled on me this weekend, so do you want to see that Stephen King movie this Friday?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Cool. Should I pick you up?”

I laughed. Why was he being so formal? “I can just meet you there,” I said, hoping to be as evasive as possible since I didn’t want Mom to know I was making plans to meet a boy. I still didn’t know exactly how I was going to be able to sneak out to the movies with him.

“Cool. There’s, like, a little fountain in front that we can meet at,” he said.

“Okay, see you then. Bye.”

“Later.”

I was glad Mom was too busy parking to pay much attention. “Ayayay! Look at that line,” she said, clicking her tongue.

The line in front of the Jessica McClintock outlet store was so long, we had to stand several blocks away from the entrance when we finally arrived. Several women were armed with folding
chairs, bottled water, and decks of cards.

“Are they actually letting people in?” an elegant lady behind us asked.

“I’ve been here since noon. It’s worse than a concert,” replied a dark-haired girl with a tongue ring.

It was Mom’s idea to hit the outlet to buy me a dress for the Soirée. She clutched the extra-ten-percent-off coupon she had clipped from the newspaper and kept checking to see it was still in her pocket.

“Stop it, Mom. Let me hold it,” I said, a little annoyed by her fidgeting.

“Okay,” she said, handing it to me.

But that didn’t work, because then every ten seconds she asked, “You still have the coupon, right, V? Right?”

“Yes, I still have the coupon. What’s the big deal? It’s only ten percent off!” I said huffily.

“Don’t talk back to me that way,” Mom said. “Is that what you’re learning in school? To talk back to your parents?”

I looked down at the ground and said nothing. Mom was really getting on my nerves. She was in my face so much—asking me too many questions, forever getting on me about my clothes, my multiple Tobey Maguire posters on the wall (“The tape will ruin the wallpaper! And we won’t get our security deposit back!” she’d warned me direly). The other day she
interrogated me on why I was wearing a blue sweater to school instead of my usual cranberry one. Like everyone in my class, I had begun to wear a blue sweater like the one only allowed to seniors because Whitney had started doing so. But it’s not like Mom would understand if I told her why.