Girl Overboard (31 page)

At his children’s names, Wayne’s comeback dies, just as I knew it would when I scripted this Rude Q and A yesterday in my hsuan.

“Mr. Fujimoro, who is an important DiaComm exec, may lose his three-year-old daughter, Amanda, because they can’t find a bone marrow match for her. She’s mixed race like Cindy and Jack, so it’s virtually impossible to find a donor.” I forward to the next slide with a pie chart. “As you see, minorities account for only eight percent of the National Bone Marrow Registry. Internationally, the numbers are even more pathetic. The chances of finding a donor match for biracial populations drop drastically because of the unique makeup of their DNA.” I focus on Wayne. “Which means that if Jack or Cindy ever got a disease like leukemia, unless they’re a good match for each other, they might not survive.”

“So what’s your recommendation?” asks Baba, just like I knew he would.

“We’re moving to Hong Kong so you can help define the vision of the mobile world in Asia. Like Grace says, what better expression of mobility”—I smile at Grace for giving me those words—“than world-class snowboarders? You saw for yourself how many people were pushing to get into the Nokia tent at Wicked in Whistler. And Nokia itself sponsored that event because of its large reach outside the hardcore snowboarding community.”

“So you want to stage an event?” asks Mama, cocking her head to the side, already envisioning it.

“That’s exactly right.” I play footage from the evening rail jam session at Wicked in Whistler. “We could organize a snowboarding event, a contest, and bring together the best of the best riders, focusing on the ethnic ones.”

“What’s the payoff?” Baba asks.

I nod because I was expecting that question and summarize the next slide. “With your new role representing American telecom interests in Asia, you have the opportunity to build on your reputation as a visionary in mobility and create a strong public image for your industry. You’ll be the original mobile pioneer talking to the next generation of mobile users.”

In the perfect Hollywood world, an inspirational score would swell as my family falls out of their chairs and surrounds me, declaring that I’m brilliant. Rather than tell me that I’m a little sister worth having, Wayne says, “You’re just exploiting our name.”

No translation necessary. Regardless of what I do, I’ll never be good enough for Wayne. Which hurts. Stupid, I know, but I haven’t prepared contingency plans for this particular objection. Then, like the sign I need right now, Mama toys with her jade pendant.
Yu,
the stone of heaven, its Chinese character made up of the word for leader,
wang,
and one tiny dot. That dot may be as small as a pearl, but it’s as powerful as a period, that full stop at the end of every sentence in my journal. And that’s what I picture now, my pearl of wisdom and power and confidence, because I refuse to topple over from Wayne’s verbal push.

Like any
wang,
I take a chance, veer off-slide, off the groomed tracks of my prepared speech, and speak from the uncharted backcountry of my heart. Without needing Baba’s book, I quote from
The Ethan Cheng Way
: “ ‘Use whatever strengths you have.’ What does the Cheng name stand for? Paving the way, removing impossible obstacles, improving people’s lives.”

At this point in my presentation, I thought Baba would turn to our resident PR expert and ask Grace for her thoughts, collect all the input before making a calculated decision. Costs versus benefits, risks versus rewards.

But instead, Baba checks in with Mama, placing one hand on top of hers. “What do you think?”

Without hesitating, Mama asks me, “How important is this to you?”

“More important than anything I’ve ever done. Amanda is running out of time.”

Like a team, my parents nod, and just like that, the Chengs are in.
That’s it?
I think. All I had to do was ask? But as I see Baba nodding to himself while he looks at the last slide, the one listing everything I still need help with, I know that it’s also because I came prepared and I knew what to ask for.

“Unbelievable,” Wayne mutters under his breath, and collects his papers. “First, this makes no sense on any level—financial, personal, and medical—to get involved. And second, when does this need to happen?”

“A week and a half now,” I answer.

“Impossible.”

“Mama’s event planner, who agreed to help with this event pro bono, says it’s possible,” I reply. “And she’s already made a lot of headway.”

“It’s definitely possible,” says Mama confidently. As
BusinessWeek
put it, where there is a Cheng, there is a way. As if to prove it, she’s already flipping through her Day-Timer, every day blocked out with back-to-back appointments and meetings. I can hear her mind whirring, reprioritizing me to the top. “Not a problem.”

“I have work to do.” As Wayne leaves, harrumphing out the door, a boy locked in a perpetual temper tantrum, I gaze after him wistfully. I think we all do because none of us speaks in the dead silence until Baba says, “You know, Wayne has a valid point.” I hear the Voice of Reason in Baba’s tone. “The chances of finding a donor even with this are very slim.”

“I know.” My Voice of Hope counters, “But so were the chances of you finding me in the snow.”

Satisfied, Baba nods, and Mama asks, “What do you want us to do?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” I say with a big smile. And then, at great length, I tell them.

M
y internal body clock
wakes me the next morning at 6:29. Why do I have to wake up now, be tantalized with the unrequited hope that Age will call and tell me he finally understands why I pushed him away? I wait another minute. No such call. If my letter couldn’t convince him that our friendship was worth resuscitating, nothing will. Crushed and defeated after waiting another full thirty minutes for a call I’m not getting—I’m a slow learner, what can I say?—I head downstairs to find Baba reading the
Wall Street Journal,
and Mama nibbling tiny bites of cottage cheese out of a bowl while poring over a Sotheby’s auction catalog. Odd because at this time of the morning, Baba’s usually working and Mama working out.

“So your sixteenth birthday is coming up,” Baba says while I fix a bowl of oatmeal in the kitchen. Over his newspaper, he’s watching me so intently I think he’s about to interrogate me about my goals and objectives for the next year. Instead he asks, “What’s on your wish list?”

“Nothing,” I tell them as I carry my hot bowl to the table and sit next to Mama. Last year, I had so many birthday wishes: a snowboard championship, a trip with Mama and Baba, a détente with Grace and Wayne, a girlfriend. More or less, I’ve gotten them all. What I never thought I’d have to wish for was Age.

“Then how about this?” With a secret smile, Mama slides a piece of paper across the table to me. There’s a number written on it, and it’s followed by a lot of zeros. Six to be precise.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“The Cheng Family Foundation matching fund for Ride for Our Lives,” says Mama, whose smile blooms full on her face.

“You’re kidding.” When I finally look up from the paper commitment, I catch my parents exchanging pleased looks. But when they start laughing like they’re the ones who won the financial aid lottery, I realize it’s not pride but pleasure I’m witnessing. Just as I’m about to jump up and down and thank them, Baba holds up one finger.

“There’s a catch,” he says.

There always is with Ethan Cheng. But I know that I’m about to learn an important business lesson. I’m game.

“You need to solicit the same amount from other donors,” says Baba as he flips the page in his newspaper.

How am I supposed to drum up another million dollars? I slump to the back of my chair, but then I know. The answer is staring me straight in the face. Betty Yu Leong Cheng, the woman at Baba’s side. Raising a mere million dollars is nothing for my mother, who has been known to raise a heck of a lot more than that for the Evergreen Fund in just three phone calls.

“According to
The Ethan Cheng Way,
always learn from the best,” I tell Mama now. “Can you help me with the pitch? You are the rainmaker.”

Mama swallows another dainty bite and points her spoon at me. “You mean, a snowmaker.”

“What?”

“Excuse me,” she corrects me automatically. “I secured a few snowmakers. At no cost.”

“Mama, you’re amazing!”

The way Mama claps her hands together, grinning, she looks like a little girl who has just been told that she’s a beloved treasure. Maybe that’s all we need. Not fame and fortune for endorsing products, whether it’s a cell phone or a snowboard. But to be endorsed unconditionally by the ones we love most in the world.

“So, if I were you,” begins Mama, pausing for another bite, “I would start with the Dillingers. They’re good for at least a hundred thousand.”

“Mama!” I’m shocked that she’s talking about fundraising in such a crass un-Betty-Cheng like way. But this isn’t business; it isn’t even pleasure. It’s about Amanda and all the other kids who are waiting for a donor to give them their chance to live. So I ask, “Who else do you think I should hit up?”

“You two are dangerous together. I can just see it,” says Baba, shaking his head fondly at us. “This is going to be the most effective fundraising campaign the National Bone Marrow Registry has ever had.”

“How can you say that?” I ask.

“Your great-grandfather was part of the group who came to the Gold Mountain to build the railroad,” says Baba, lowering the business section to the table. “A few years after those men built the railroad, which radically changed commerce and transportation, they were excluded from America.” His voice may sound even-keeled, but I sense the outrage behind his words. “You just never know when your luck will change. So you don’t have to be the best or the smartest or the richest person in the room, but you have to be the hardest worker. Never giving up is how you make your own luck.”

“Surviving,” I say.

“Survival,” corrects Baba. That word rings with the same steel as the railroad tracks that my great-grandfather must have hammered. Survival—I wonder if that’s what propelled Baba through his career. That need to work himself to the top. Or was it to prove that he was more than the grandson of a manual laborer? “It’s why we named you Syrah.”

“What? I don’t get it.”

“The syrah grape grows in France’s Rhone River valley, where it has to endure intense summers and then the winter wind, the mistral,” explains Baba.

“It’s a survivor,” says Mama.

A survivor like my mother, who thrived despite Weipou’s best efforts to starve her spirit, and like my father, who eked a legacy out of nothing to honor his own manual-laboring grandfather.

“Remind me to tell Lena that the guest quarters need to be prepared for the Leongs.” Mama raises her eyebrows when I drop my spoon and Baba coughs. She demands, “What?”

“Excuse me,” I correct her with a smile, “but since when are the Leongs visiting?”

“Since I invited them to Ride for Our Lives.” Unconsciously, Mama runs her jade pendant back and forth on the gold chain, so that the crane runs amok, uncertain which way to fly. “It’s just one night.”

“Thank you,” I tell Mama, swinging around to their side of the table to hug her first, and then Baba. “These are the best birthday presents ever.”

When I settle down in my seat again to finish my now-cold oatmeal, Baba shakes out his newspaper, Mama goes back to reading about the next Tang horse on her acquisitions list, and me? I savor the traces of their loving smiles as they glance at me when they think I’m not looking.

M
uscle memory is the
only thing that gets most students and teachers through the first day of school after a long break. In my first period English class, I learn that lethargic brains are to homework what atrophied hamstring muscles are to exercise. Now, me, on the other hand, my brain has worked through my vacation, all pistons whirring as I try to keep track of everything that needs to be checked on and checked off before Ride for Our Lives. With only six days left before the Big Day on Sunday, I have zero seconds to spare.

My hand shoots up the moment Mr. Delbene asks in journalism, “During our long vacation, I hope that some of you spent a few minutes thinking about our newspaper. Anyone with a new idea?”

In the back of the room, Chelsea mutters, “What is she? The Lillian Fujimoro clone?”

Why bother responding when I don’t really care what Chelsea thinks and I’d rather focus my energy on what’s important: Lillian.

“I think we should publish a special edition newspaper to galvanize”—love that word!—“support for Lillian.”

“Why?” asks George, looking around and only now noticing she’s missing. “Where is she?”

“With her sister in the hospital.”

“Yeah, probably throwing another party,” Chelsea snipes.

“Actually,” I say, “her little sister needs a bone marrow match if she wants to beat her leukemia.”

“I had no idea,” says Mr. Delbene.

All is quiet on the Chelsea front. Instead, her mouth is open, guilt-stricken into silence. So she had no idea either, even though her mom was the one to hook the Fujimoros up with the best pediatric oncologist in town. If her mom hasn’t communicated this to Chelsea, chances are something is broken in the Dillinger home, and Chelsea, as much as I don’t want to admit it, might be another girl who’s slipped overboard without anyone noticing, too.

“So what’s your proposal?” asks Mr. Delbene, who’s rocking up and down on his feet the way he does when he’s excited.

That’s my opening to tell everybody about Ride for Our Lives and then show them the copies of my first-ever manga column.

“So what if we distributed this via e-mail to everyone in school and ask them to forward it? Through a little viral distribution, we might just reach someone, somewhere, who’ll be the perfect match for Amanda. What do you think?” I ask, growing more and more uncertain as I wait, wait, wait for people’s reactions.

Finally, George says, “This is brilliant.” And then, as if this were his idea in the first place, he says, “Blog meets service learning. You know, most kids our age don’t read the newspaper.”