Fresh Off the Boat (7 page)

My geometry class is a trip, though. The sophomores—led by
Stacey Bennett, Alice O’Hara, and Rebecca Wallace—went berserk a week ago Monday pretending to do yoga on their desks and totally ignoring our beleaguered geometry teacher, Miss Watkins, who completely lost it. She even threatened to beat them with her chair, which is so not cool, especially since Grosvernor is a snooty private school and Stacy’s parents are on the Board of Trustees. She was fired the next day, and to make a long story short, we lost a teacher but gained a classroom full of boys.

It was too late in the semester to find a decent substitute (one who’d majored in math at Harvard and somehow couldn’t get a job in Silicon Valley), so last week they decided to let us take geometry at Montclair, our “brother” school, taught by Miss Tresoro. There’s been a rumor that the two schools are going to merge into one coed institution, but it’s just wishful thinking. I overheard someone saying that the docents of Gros will never let it happen. Apparently, when schools go coed the girls’ school always gets shafted.

Anyway, the important thing is that

CLAUDE CALIGARI IS NOW MY GEOMETRY PARTNER!

Geometry meets three times a week during A period. Grosvernor and Montclair are on this wacky college prep schedule, where classes are assigned “periods”—A, B, C, D, and so forth. And all the periods get shuffled every day, (although it’s the same
every week) so that sometimes geometry is the last class of the day, sometimes it’s in the middle, and sometimes it’s after lunch. Even lunch is on a “period” schedule, anywhere from eleven
A
.
M
. to one P.M., so that not everyone has lunch at the same time—unfortunately, I seem to have drawn the same lunch period as Whitney, Georgia, and Trish. Someone told me they plan it this way because the cafeteria is too small to have all the students in it at the same time.

Three times a week, I’m going to be sitting next to the cutest boy at Montclair. He’s so popular there’s even an unofficial online fan club created by an anonymous Grosvernor student devoted to chronicling his every move. We were paired up alphabetically, so it was pure luck that I got to sit next to him.

I couldn’t breathe when he took the chair next to mine on Monday. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. It was like being blinded by the sun. There was no way I could concentrate. All I saw was the downy blond hair on his tanned arm. I’ve even memorized the mole on his wrist and how the dimples creased on his left cheek. Like Tobey Maguire, he has this way of squinting which is just plain adorable.

On Wednesday afternoon he waltzed in late, blaming “practice.” Apparently, he failed geometry I last semester for the second time, which explains why he’s a junior in a sophomore class. He’s a totally useless study partner since he understands even
less than I do. And he never has his homework done.

When we sit together, I like to pretend that he’s, like, my boyfriend or something—that’s how close we are. It’s just a matter of time before he notices me—and who knows, he might even ask for a study date, just to cover up the fact that he really wants to hang out and get to know me better. Then he’ll start picking me up after school and we’ll drive off in his car and everyone will be so jealous and then girls in class will start to want to talk to me and invite me to their parties or maybe even let me sit with them in the cafeteria and not get all quiet when I walk into a room, like they were just talking about me but they weren’t saying anything nice.

I spent most of the class daydreaming about how romantic it would be if he suddenly discovered he was in love with me after all this time.

“Vicenza, I adore you,” Claude would say. “I never noticed how well suited we are.”

“Especially since we both know nothing about geometry!” I would breathe.

Then we would kiss, and the lights would go all fuzzy like they do in the movies.

Or maybe he’ll simply ask me what I think of the class and how my day is and where I’m from and how come I have such an interesting name and what did I think of America. And we
would embark on a twenty-first-century Pocahontas kind of romance. Riiiight.

It’s going to be difficult for him to get to know me, though, because he sits with his back to me—to chat and trade notes with Rebecca and Stacey. The three of them gossiped about Lake Tahoe ski trips and black diamond lanes and which mountain rocks and how badly “Becks” took a spill last time.

“Claude!” Miss Tresoro called.

He paid no attention. “Omigod, you were, like, a cyclone down that hill!” He laughed, whooping loudly.

“Shhh! You’re so mean to me!” Rebecca pouted.

“He’s right, though—you were like a snowball. It was so funny!” Stacey added, leaning in so that her long russet-colored hair brushed Claude’s shoulder.

“Claude!” the geometry teacher warned again.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Would you like to share what you’re discussing with Rebecca with the rest of the class?”

“Sure!” he said with a huge, goofy grin. “I was just telling Becks that she really should get a Burton board this year. Especially if she’s going to kick my ass when we get to Timberline, which is highly unlikely.”

Miss Tresoro frowned but you could tell she didn’t really mean it. Claude had that effect on everyone. He zigzagged and
tap-danced lightly through life. It was just too bad he couldn’t schmooze his way to an A.

“I really think she should think about a Lib Tech Dark instead,” Miss Tresoro replied. “It’s all about freestylin’, right, Rebecca?” It was all snowbabble as far as I was concerned. But Miss Tresoro was hip. She was down. She wore low-waisted slacks and leather jackets. She was a Gros alumna and she knew her way around. She could let Claude walk in late, let Alice and Stacey whisper between lessons all they wanted, but unlike our old geometry teacher, the class respected and admired her. She would never walk into a classroom with the lights off only to find her students sitting Indian-style on their desks, meditating.

“Good call!” Claude agreed.

“All right, can we please get back to isosceles triangles now?” She turned to the blackboard and class resumed uninterrupted for the next half hour. As the final bell rang, Miss Tresoro handed out the results of Monday’s exam.

I frowned when I saw I had gotten 72 out of 100. I couldn’t afford a C minus in geometry if I wanted to keep my scholarship.

“Damn,” Claude said when he saw his test result. “Do you know this stuff?”

“Me?” I squeaked.

He had never paid any attention to me before. He had said
exactly two words to me since our classes had been merged: “Move over.” It seemed I was taking too much room on our shared study table.

“Um, not really,” I said, showing him my paper.

“That’s a lot better than what I got,” he said, crunching his test into a ball and morosely chucking it into the trash. “If I don’t pass geometry this semester, I’ll get kicked off the lacrosse team. I’m already on academic probation.”

I nodded in sympathy. But I didn’t really know what to do, since I was barely passing the subject myself. But I wanted to help—he looked so glum.

“That’s too bad,” I ventured.

“You said it,” he said. “I’m screwed.”

He picked up his backpack and we started walking out of class together—TOGETHER—as if we do this all the time. As if this is a normal occurrence in my life, that boys, like,
talk
to me. As if we were, like, friends or something.

Geometry is my last class of the day on Wednesdays, and suddenly I had an irresistible, irrational impulse to ask him out or something—
want to go get a smoothie on Union Street?
I could just imagine it, the two of us, sipping from the same biggie cup. He was still chatting about his geometry problems, when I opened my mouth. “Claude?”

But I realized he had already gone. He was running up the
block to walk with Rebecca and Stacey.

“Hey, Becks, wait up,” I heard him call to them. “We bowling tonight? Wanna come out with Tuna and the guys?” He made plans to meet them at Rock and Bowl, the bowling alley in the Haight.

I blushed a lot, and hoped to God he hadn’t heard me call his name. And I felt a little depressed about being left behind, and it was then I understood that it wasn’t ever going to happen with me and Claude. I was just living in my head, like I always do. Claude would never in a million years ever think of inviting me to go anywhere. He’s a popular boy; I’m nobody. He has an online fan club. (With five-dollar membership dues—I had to use my mom’s Visa and tell her it was for a school project. True enough!) People barely remember who I am.

I followed them out of the main doors, feeling completely alone, when I noticed Isobel waiting for me outside.

So she’s not the cutest guy at Montclair Academy, but at least she’s someone who knows I’m alive.

Isobel wanted to know everything about taking a class over at the boys’ school. There really wasn’t a lot to tell. I explained that I never saw anyone other than the guys who were in our class, and with the exception of Claude they were all unexceptional (read: not cute), to her great disappointment.

“How’s that boy?” Isobel asked. She called Claude “that boy
who broke my mirror” but had recently shortened it to simply “that boy.”

“Flunking.”

“Is an idiot?”

“Isobel, just because he isn’t good in math doesn’t mean he’s stupid,” I protested, feeling a little insulted. Isobel was in advanced trigonometry. She was in the accelerated honors math/science program. Her father was a member of the Engineering Department at Stanford.

“Geometry is
trop facile
. It’s just logic and theorem.”

She handed me a DVD she’d burned on her iMac of an underground cult alternate ending of the first Spider-Man movie some Internet freak spliced together that was only available online. “This one is buggin’. Tobey’s got his shirt off in all the added scenes!”

“Awesome!” I said, grateful for the present.

“Come shopping on Polk Street?” she asked, hopping on her Vespa. “There’s new stuff at Trash and Vaudeville.”

“Can’t,” I said. “I have to help my mom at the cafeteria.” School let out at three, and just that morning my parents broke the news that from now on I was expected to help cover the six o’clock dinner rush. We had started to close a little later on weeknights to take advantage of the mall food court closing at five.

“
Tant pis
. Next time.” She kissed me on both cheeks, something I was still getting used to, and drove off down the hill, waving.
“A bientôt, chérie!”

“Au revoir!”
I chéried back, blowing multiple kisses to the wind.

“Those two are such freaks,” I heard Georgia say behind my back. I refused to turn around, because I didn’t want her to know I had heard, and I didn’t want to hear Whitney agree with her. I was too embarrassed because I believed they were right.

WWW.WELOVECLAUDECALIGARI.COM

Heads up people! Sighted at Rock and Bowl on Wednesday night, C.C. himself with a big group. Was that Stacey Bennett with another hickey? Did Tuna and Trish hook up over malted milk shakes? Who cares? Is this site called welovetuna.com? Nooo. We hear C.C. scored a big 240! Not just a great lacrosse forward but the guy to beat on the lanes, too! Our sources tell us he has a new girlfriend, as yet undisclosed. Maybe it’s one of the Gros girls in his geometry class? Has Monty gone coed? Hell, no! But a few lucky gals are being shipped over for math class. Talk about higher education! So keep your eyes peeled, chiquitas! And check out the latest pics from the Montclair vs. Warrington game! Hubba-hubba, hottie!

7
The Reality of Another Weekend at Home

O
N THE RIGHT
-
HAND
TV screen, a blond, overweight woman in a tight-fitting bustier was arguing with her interior designer, a hyperkinetic gay man who was insisting she allow him to sew silk-screened portraits of her on her couch pillows; on the center screen, former celebrities were bickering over who had eaten the last of the yogurt in the fridge; and on the left screen, a real-estate mogul with a really bad comb-over was chewing out a group of sullen aspiring MBAs.

Our living room was home to three television monitors and VCRs—the better to tape reality shows with. As part of Dad’s import-export business, he exported VCR tapes of the latest American reality shows to Filipino video stores. Filipinos can’t get enough of the reality craze, and since local stations were so behind they were broadcasting only the second season of
Survivor
there was a thriving black market for newer, smuggled
American reality-television shows. I know, because I used to be a rabid consumer of the same. The video store at the megamall would always call the minute the latest episode of
The Bachelor
or
American Idol
arrived from the airport.

I never thought that I would be on the other end of the supply chain. My cousin Norbert owned one of the biggest video store chains in Manila, and Dad knew a friend who knew a friend who was a pilot on Philippine Airlines. Captain Punsalang could easily smuggle the tapes into the country, and a thriving cottage industry was born in our living room. I was the best taper in the family, meaning I could watch three different shows at once and expertly pause the VCRs when the commercials came on to create a seamless product. In fact, I was too good. We got a request from Norbert saying that his customers actually wanted us to keep the commercials in. It turned out people were just as fascinated by the latest advertising campaigns as by the shows themselves. Filipinos had just discovered rotisserie barbecues.

One thing about Filipinos—we love trends. When the ballroom-dancing craze swept the nation, everyone from eighty-year-old grandmothers to second-graders learned how to foxtrot, cha-cha, and tango. My friend Con-con’s mother left her dad for her twenty-two-year-old ballroom dancing teacher. When pashminas were in vogue, we swathed ourselves in those
woolly wraps in every color—regardless of the outside temperature. You would walk around the city on a typically hot and humid day, and you’d see all the women from Forbes Park and Dasmariñas wearing pashminas and fanning themselves silly.