Girl Overboard (3 page)

While Mama works the crowd at another table, slimy Dr. Martin oozes over to ours, resting one hand on Grace’s bare shoulder instead of mine. “Grace, Wayne,” he says.

I take that reprieve as a sign to make my second break for freedom of the evening.

Once outside, I breathe in the cold, fresh air, and hurry along the garden path to my art studio, where Age and I usually hang out. My heel catches on one of the inlaid pebbles in the path. That awful boneless sensation of falling, the same toppling, out-of-control feeling that ended with me blowing out my knee, pulls me to the ground in an all-too-familiar way until Age darts out of the thick shadows to catch me.

I stifle a scream. “Geez, Age! I swear, you must have been a ninja in one of your lives.”

“Call me Zorro-guchi, the only Mexican ninja in the world.” Letting go of my arms, Age strikes a kung fu pose in front of the old pine tree and a small grove of bamboos.

If my mom were here, she’d scan Age from his perpetually mussed dark brown hair (“That’s what a twelve-dollar haircut does for you”) to his chipped front tooth (“You really ought to consider cosmetic dentistry”) and his oversized army green snowboarding jacket (“That
better
not be how Syrah dressed when she used to snowboard”).

But Mama’s not here. I grin at my savior in jeans so indigo blue they’re black and say, “You made it.”

“You think I’d let you enjoy all this fun by yourself?”

I make a face before glancing cautiously over my shoulder in case an overeager event planner is stalking me again.

“That good?” Age asks, grinning.

“That bad. You missed tonight’s entertainment. Me.”

As I give him the gory details of my toast, we make our way down a covered zigzagging corridor and through a courtyard. “So, Zorrito, how was Alpental?”

“Pretty good,” Age says, kicking a pinecone off the path. “I landed a backside seven.”

I’m not sure what shocks me more: that Age, who’s normally so laid back about his feats on snow, is telling me this, or that he nailed a double rotation trick when pre-Accident, neither of us could even throw down a backside five. A light wind blows through the trees. I pick up the pace, worrying about how far I’ve fallen behind Age in snowboarding.

“That’s so great, Age.”

“Yeah, you should’ve been there.” Age’s eyes dip toward my knee. “You sure your surgeon said you were up for snowboarding?”

I can almost ignore the throb in my knee as we cross a humpbacked bridge. Ignoring my own doubt is harder because the thought of launching myself off a twenty-foot cliff into air with nothing but a board under my feet makes me equal parts eager and nauseous.

But a good Cheng never admits fear. “Yeah, Dr. Bradford told me”—I deepen my voice—“ ‘Go snowboard, young woman.’ ”

Age doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even laugh.

Silence laden with hidden meaning stretches between us; only I know how to decipher it. Age can see straight through to my self-doubt. “So when are you going to ride?” Age notices me shivering and shrugs out of his jacket. “Here.”

“No, I’m fine,” I protest, but Age looks at me like I’m an idiot and spreads his hands out so there’s no missing the fleece pullover he’s wearing.

“Thanks,” I tell him, and take his jacket. “Actually, I was feeling a tad naked.”

That’s when I notice that Age is looking at me as if he’s never seen so much of me before. Can I blame him? Frankly, I haven’t seen so much of myself in public before either. I nestle into his cocoon of a coat, wishing that I were hiding in my usual jeans and T-shirt. Or better yet, in my own oversized, androgynous snowboarding pants.

“That bad?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah.”

But the way Age says it, like I look that ba-aad, makes me echo:
oh, yeah.

Geez, where did
that
thought come from? Probably from the same brain-dead part of me that fell for Jared Johanson at my summer snowboarding camp. I duck my head so Age doesn’t catch me blushing and keep walking through the doorway that leads into a pavilion overlooking the pond.

I breathe in deeply, wishing my ever-alert symbolism-detector had warned me that Jared was a wolf in snowboarder’s clothing. To be talk-show truthful, all the signs were there. I just didn’t want to admit to myself that Jared only wanted me to introduce him to my bank account. I mean, like my roommates at camp gloated when they thought I was asleep, “Guess being loaded can make anyone look good.”

A thousand firecrackers stitched together on a celebration string pop loudly, just the way they have for hundreds of years to scare off bad luck.
You’re seven months too late, boys.
My knee twinges in agreement.

“What’s going on?” asks Age.

At first, I meet his eyes and then drop my gaze, knowing that for the last couple of weeks he’s known that I felt close to teetering off Gold Mountain, wondering wildly now if Age is finally asking me about Jared. But how would he know about him? Age couldn’t afford the snowboard camp, let alone the back-to-back-to-back sessions I attended, and I’ve never talked about how Jared dumped me. Not with anyone. A ball of red streaks across the sky before exploding, and I deliberately misread Age’s question.

“Phase Three in Mama’s plans,” I say. “A little fireworks action between the shark fin soup and the oysters.”

“I meant—”

Luckily, that’s when Meghan and her ever-present walkie-talkie head our way. She’s my perfect excuse, one that I grab as if it were a leash, not letting it get away.

“Come on,” I urge Age, as scarlet and gold sparkles dive into Lake Washington. He takes my hand and we run down the path, me on the balls of my feet so that my spiked heels don’t hook any stray pebbles.

A cheer rises from the great courtyard outside the tang where the guests are now gathered to watch the fireworks. Another whiz of green bursts overhead, as Age and I cross under the round moon gate, that symbol of ever-lasting happiness. I cast another glance over my shoulder, but don’t see Meghan anymore. She must have been paged on a more important mission than tracking down a runaway daughter.

“Up here,” I tell Age, veering to the side of the building.

“Where?” While he’s barely breathing hard, my forehead is beaded with sweat. I assure myself, it’s not because I’m out of shape; I’m just anxious about making a speedy getaway.

“Here,” I say, stopping in front of the steps outside of the pavilion, hewn right into the stone, that lead up to the moon-viewing terrace on the roof.

“You kept this from me,” says Age.

He has no idea what else I’ve kept from him. I simply shrug and say, “A girl has to have her secrets. Maintains our air of mystery and all that.”
Maintains our sanity and all that.

As if he heard my thoughts, Age asks, “What’s going on with you?”

“Gentlemen first.”

“You first. Move it.”

I know he wants me in front of him in case I fall. Anyway, my protests die when my heel scrapes along the uneven rockery of the first step.

On the roof, Age and I can see straight down to the barge on the lake where the master pyrotechnician flown in from China moves gracefully, like one of the black-robed
Bunraku
puppeteers who once performed in my house for some charity fundraiser. The fireworks guru leans to his right, and suddenly, there’s a sharp crack. A flash of orange squiggles into the overcast night before it fans out and showers droplets of gold.

Age is focused on the sky as if that’s where he wants to be, carving in and out of the sparkles, these phantom moguls. Moguls that I need to be able to skim over and call fun again.

Without taking his eyes off the fireworks, Age leans closer to me, resting his hands on the wood railing, and quotes, “ ‘The only people for me are the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles.…’ ”

“Who’s that from?”

“Jack Kerouac. He’s my man.”

What I want to ask Age is,
What happens when the only person for you burns out?
And just like that, the sky goes blank with blackness, mirroring what I’m thinking, how I’m feeling. Blank is the way I feel when I think about snowboarding and flying off uncharted cliffs. The way I feel when I think about a future
without
snowboarding. The way I feel when I think about the articles parsing my “incident” in all the snowboarding magazines. A rocket blazes a shrieking path, reaching higher than any of the other fireworks before it explodes, burning a hole into the night just as Jared did through my head and heart.

The fastest way out of dwelling on Jared is dwelling on anything else. So I tell Age, “My parents probably won’t let me ride, no matter what Dr. Bradford says.” The loud blast of fireworks can’t drown out the sigh of relief in my head; I can keep blaming my parents for stopping me from facing the slopes.

Even if Age doesn’t hear my words, he knows what I’m saying because he turns to me, his dark eyes missing nothing. Not even my rationalizations. He bumps my shoulder with his.

“God, this is so stupid.” Looking away, I wish Age didn’t see me tearing up, because I’m scared to ride and more scared not to. “I mean, I’m not good enough to go pro anyway.”

“No, you’re not good enough. You’re great. What did that one rep say? ‘You’ve got potential.’ ”

“You’re the one with potential. You just won’t compete.”

“Could you take a compliment for once? Look, it’s not like your parents will ever know if you snowboard.”

I shrug, knowing he’s right. They’re barely home enough to remember what I look like.

“And Bao-mu’s not exactly going to follow you onto the mountain,” he says with a grin.

I laugh, imagining my nanny, who’s even older than Baba, picking her way through hip-deep snow. But Age has a point; Bao-mu has never spied on me the way my parents think she does, keeping tabs on all my minutes when they’re away. So unless I want them to know, my parents won’t have a clue if I blow off school to ride or not. If I slack off on my graduation requirements—say, those thirty hours of community service I’m supposed to have done by now or not. If I fall in love with the wrong guy or not.

“Yeah, but…,” I say.

“But what? Why do you need them to bless your snowboarding?” He keeps staring at me, ignoring the fireworks that flare out before dripping red down the sky. “Or are they a convenient excuse?”

I bite my bottom lip and study the night stars like I’m divining my future. How does Age do that? Eavesdrop on my secret thoughts… at least some of them?

“Have you ever showed them your video?” he asks me, more gently now.

“Are you kidding? The last thing I want to show my parents is my video,” I tell him, shuddering to think about what Baba would say if he knew how many hours I spent over the last couple of months editing since I couldn’t add any footage. See, any serious snowboarder readies a video résumé, bait to hook a sponsor. And that—being paid to ride—is the Holy Grail for everyone, including me.

“All I’m saying is maybe it’s time to show them,” Age says.

“Yeah. Like that would go over well.”

“Your father’s Ethan Cheng.”

“I know I’m related to the Cheng-ulator, thank you very much.”

“So negotiate with him.” Age quotes my dad, “ ‘There’s nothing I like better than a worthy opponent at the negotiation table.’ ”

“You are so…”

“Wise? Insightful?” He pauses. “Worthy?”

“I was thinking, more, frustrating.”

“Thank you.” Age waits a beat before he continues, “Why don’t you broach it with them at the World Championships? You’re still going to Wicked at Whistler, aren’t you?”

“That’s the plan.” As much as I complain about having Ethan Cheng, billionaire, for a father, I know there are more advantages than disadvantages to being his daughter. For one, I don’t have to worry about whether my parents can afford my activities, say, snowboarding, which isn’t exactly a low-cost sport. To snowboard, Age has to work part-time at a local board shop. And then there’s Baba’s position on Nokia’s board of directors, the company sponsoring the world’s biggest snowboarding competition over winter break. As chairman, he has to represent the company at Wicked in Whistler, which is why he presented me with those VIP tickets at Christmas. I tell Age, “I wish you could come.”

“Another time,” he says easily.

I shove my hands into his jacket pockets, feeling who-knows-how-old crumbs in the seams. When, realistically, will his “another time” come? Classical music blares from the elaborate sound system rigged up around the garden. Only my parents would ask the fireworks guru to choreograph an entire show to music that’s better suited for a symphony hall.

Gratefully, I change the subject. “Ever seen fireworks set to Mozart?”

“Could be worse.”

“Like how?”

“Could be country music.” Age grins down at me when I laugh hard because he knows there’s nothing more jarring to my ears than a country twang, ya’ll hear?

See, that’s another good thing about friends. They make you laugh when you want to cry.

“Anyway, I’ll be helping Natalia over winter break,” he says casually, but I notice how he’s looking everywhere but at me.

“Natalia?” At the mention of Age’s ex-girlfriend, the one who couldn’t stand how one word could trigger so many of the same memories between him and me, I realize that friends can make you want to cry, after all.

“Yeah, she asked me out next week.”

“She did?”

He nods. So does my ice-clad heart, adding a
See? See? I told you, you can’t trust anybody.

“We’re helping out Chill,” he says. “It was Natalia’s idea. She was short on her community service hours.”

I bet it was Natalia’s idea. The way to Age’s heart is through his snowboard. Hooking Age up with Chill, Burton Snowboard’s program to give back to the community, is a brilliant maneuver. I can practically hear Sun-Tzu, Baba’s hero who wrote
The Art of War
two thousand years ago, applauding Natalia in his grave.

“Do you want to come with us?” Age asks. “You were talking about how you haven’t done squat on your own community service hours since school began.”

He’s wasting his breath; I’d stopped listening at “us.” “Us” has always been me and Age against the world, or at least against our elementary school playground, where we bonded over being teased as the two shortest kids in third grade. Our “us” was cemented when Age’s dad taught us to snowboard. “Every kid needs just one sport he’s good at, and the bullies will stop harassing you,” he’d intone while driving us to Snoqualmie every weekend and accompanying us on the winter ski bus every Wednesday after school. Amazingly, Mr. Rodriguez was right. The harder we rode, the more kids respected us. It was my first taste of fame.