Just Like Me
Authors: Nancy Cavanaugh
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Also by Nancy J. Cavanaugh
This Journal Belongs to Ratchet
Always, Abigail
Copyright © 2016 by Nancy J. Cavanaugh
Cover and internal design © 2016 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration © Mina Price
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systemsâexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviewsâwithout permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cavanaugh, Nancy J.
Title: Just like me / Nancy J. Cavanaugh.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, [2016]
Summary: In this story about unlikely friendships and finding your place in the world, three very different girls, adopted as babies from the same Chinese orphanage, spend a week at a summer camp, where the adoption agency coordinator wants them to journal their “bonding” experience.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015027629 | (13 : alk. paper)
Subjects: | CYAC: FriendshipâFiction. | IdentityâFiction. | CampsâFiction. | Chinese AmericansâFiction. | Intercountry adoptionâFiction. | AdoptionâFiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.C285 Ju 2016 | DDC [Fic]âdc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015027629
Source of Production: Versa Press, East Peoria, Illinois, USA
Date of Production: February 2016
Run Number: 5005879
To Chaylee
My one in a million
Dear Julia,
Thank you for so graciously agreeing to share your story! It will be such an inspiration to so many people.
Please use this journal to record and reflect not only on your time away at camp with Avery and Becca and all that you have in common, but also on your personal adoption journey. What you write will be kept private, and when you return, you will only be expected to share with me what you're comfortable sharing. So, I encourage you to be honest with yourself about your feelings.
Sincerely,
Ms. Marcia Callahan
International Adoption Coordinator
Heart, Mind, & Soul Adoption Agency
PS I have included some writing prompts in this journal, but feel free to write about whatever you'd like.
Dear Ms. Marcia,
If I'm going to be honest about my feelings, I'll start by saying that me “graciously agreeing” to share my story is not really what happened.
Mom was all: what a great idea! And I was all: a week of “bonding” with Avery and Becca? No thanks.
Just because our three families traveled to China together with Ms. Marcia and adopted us from the same orphanage when we were babies doesn't mean the three of us have to be best friends, does it?
But Mom insisted that “someday” I'd look back and be thankful for this chance to make my friendship with Avery and Becca something special.
Not likely.
Julia
The camp bus sputtered and chugged up the interstate, sounding as if this might be its last trip. Avery sat across the aisle from me with her earbuds on, practicing a Chinese vocabulary lesson. Becca sat next to her, chewing on a straw and watching a soccer match on her cell phone.
“
Ni hao ma
,” Avery said, her chin-length hair with bangs making her look studious in her thick, black-framed glasses.
When she saw me looking at her, she pulled out one earbud and offered it to me.
Did she really think I wanted to learn Chinese with her?
“Technically the lesson I'm working on is review, but I could teach you the basics if you want.”
I looked around at all the kids on the bus staring at her and shook my head.
“GO! GO! GO!” Becca yelled, pumping her fist in the air as she cheered for Spain's soccer team. Her hair spilled out of her ponytail as if she were playing in the soccer game instead of just watching it. “Booyah!
Score!
”
As kids stood up on the bus to see what all the yelling was about, I slid down in my seat, and the driver gave us that “death look” in her rearview mirror. The one that said, “If I have to stop this bus, somebody's gonna get it⦔
“Hey, Julia!” Becca yelled, holding up her phone. “Wanna watch with me? The game just went into overtime!”
“No thanks.”
Crowding around a tiny phone screen and watching people kick a soccer ball around was not my idea of fun.
My
idea of fun was craft camp at the park district with my best friend, Madison, but Mom said I had the rest of the summer to do that.
Instead I was heading north toward Wisconsin to Camp Little Big Woods, but at least that was better than heading south toward Indiana for Summer Palace Chinese Culture Camp.
As soon as we “graciously” agreed to be the subjects of Ms. Marcia's adoption article, she suggested that the three of us spend a week together making paper lanterns and learning the pinyin alphabet at culture camp.
“It will be a great way for you girls to reconnect not only with each other, but also with your heritage,” Ms. Marcia had gushed.
She loved treating us as if we were two instead of almost twelve.
But I said there was no way I was going to eat Chinese food three times a day and do tai chi every morning, so we settled on the sleepaway camp Avery and Becca went to every year.
I reached into the pocket of my suitcase and pulled out the plastic lacing of the gimp friendship bracelet I had started a few days ago. I had planned to finish it before camp so that I could give it to Madison when I said good-bye to her, but I'd run out of time. I decided I'd try to finish it while I was at camp and mail it to her along with a nice, long letter saying how much I missed her.
“Hey, Julia!” Becca yelled. “What's
that
?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just a friendship bracelet for my friend Madison.”
“COOL!” Becca yelled. “We should totally make those for each other in the arts-and-crafts room at camp.”
She went back to her straw-chewing and her tiny-phone-screen soccer game.
Friendship bracelets for the three of us? I guess “technically” as Avery would say, the three of us were friends. But even though “technically” I had known Avery and Becca longer than I had known my parents, I couldn't imagine ever thinking of them as the friendship-bracelet kind of friends.
What are your thoughts on the Chinese proverb: “An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break.”
Dear Ms. Marcia,
I've been hearing about this red thread for as long as I can remember, but I cannot imagine a thread, of any colorâred, blue, purple, orange, or greenâconnecting Avery, Becca, and me. And if by some chance there really is a thread, I'm pretty sure this trip to camp might just be enough to snap that thing like an old rubber band, breaking it once and for all. Then that Chinese proverb would be history in a whole new way.
Julia
“Hey, aren't we stopping soon for something to eat? I'm starving!” Becca yelled.
Even though Becca leaned all the way across the aisle to talk to me, she yelled because that's the thing about Becca. She pretty much
always
yelled. She only had one volume, and it was soccer-game loud.
We had stopped with our moms at a diner on the way to church to meet the camp bus, and Becca
ordered
and
ate
her own “Fabulous Five” breakfast (also known as the “Paul Bunyan” because it's the biggest breakfast on the menu): pancakes, eggs, hash browns, bacon,
and
sausage. She not only devoured the Paul Bunyan as if she were a lumberjack in training, but also ate the rest of her mom's “Everything but the Kitchen Sink” omelet.
It was no wonder she was the star player on her club soccer team. She was as strong as a football linebackerâsolid muscle.
Last fall when our families had gotten together for a picnic to celebrate the Chinese Moon Festival, the three of us kicked around the soccer ball that Becca had brought along. But five minutes after we started playing, Becca bodychecked me so hard she knocked the wind right out of me. It made me thankful that I lived a couple hours away from Avery and Becca. Their families got together all the time, but since we didn't live near them, we only joined them on special occasions.
“We're stopping in Appleton!” the driver yelled, looking in the rearview mirror. “Probably a little more than an hour from now.”
“An hour!” Becca wailed.
She dug in her duffel bag, rummaging around for something to eat.
“Becca!” Avery yelled.
Now Avery was yelling too because she still had her earbuds in. “What are you looking for? Did you forget something?”
“I'm starving!” Becca yelled.
Avery pulled out her earbuds and unzipped her own bag. The next thing I knew, the two of them were eating something out of one of those cardboard Chinese takeout boxes. I couldn't believe it! Only Avery's mom would pack her snacks in those containers.
Avery brought chopsticks to camp? She even had a pair for Becca, which meant she probably also had a pair for me.
So there they sat on the camp bus eating Cheetos out of a Chinese food container with chopsticks.
As Avery held up her chopsticks, offering a couple Cheetos to me across the aisle, one of the girls in the seat behind Avery and Becca asked, “So you guys were really born in China?”
“
Yeah!
” Becca yelled with her Cheetos breath spewing everywhere.
“Weird,” the friend sitting next to the girl said. “Do you speak Chinese?”
My mom always told me I was only imagining that people wondered these kinds of things about Avery, Becca, and me when they saw the three of us together. But at times like this, I knew I wasn't just imagining it.
Avery put her chopsticks into the Chinese takeout box and left them there while she explained, “Technically, I'm teaching myself to speak it, but the Chinese language is one of the most difficult to learn with its tonal nuances and various dialects. It presents itself as one of the most challenging phonetic endeavors of
all
the foreign languages.”
I could tell by the looks on the girls' faces that they had
no
idea what Avery was talking about.
I
had no idea what Avery was talking about.
Becca woke them out of their dazed stupor with, “Actually we're both learning Mandarin
and
Cantonese!”
“What about her?” the first girl asked.
I knew she was pointing to me even though I had opened my journal and pretended to write in it so I could stay out of this conversation.
Just then we went over a huge bump. The kids in the back of the bus squealed, but even so, you could still hear Becca's answer because she yelled, “ONLY ENGLISH!”
“But yes, she's from China,” Avery answered. “Just like us.”
I wanted to stand up and say, “No. No! I'm not just like them. I'm me! Julia!”
But in that moment I wished I were a little more like Becca because then I
would
yell it. I would yell it so loud that everyone would know that I didn't want to spend the next seven days being compared to Avery and Becca.
But since I am
not
like Avery
or
Becca, I kept my mouth shut, kept my head down, and actually started writing in my journal for real.
“You guys look like sisters,” the second girl said.
I pressed harder with my pen, almost putting a hole through the page I was writing on.
Avery went on to explain, “Technically, to a Caucasian accustomed to the particulars of their own race, seeing three females of Asian descent in the same time and place will always present itself as if those three beings from a different ethnic group are related, but it is only because the observer is not as in tune to the slight differences in skin coloring, facial shape and size, and facial features⦔
Did Avery have to give an elaborate academic explanation to every question anyone asked?
I kept writing in my journal with my right hand and crossed the fingers on my left hand, hoping there would be other girls in our cabin that I could hang out with. Avery and Becca could do all the “bonding” they wanted, but that didn't mean I was going to.
What are your thoughts about your Asian heritage?
Dear Ms. Marcia,
No offense to Asians or to China or to anybody, but I'm American from head to toe.
Avery and Becca can be as “Chinese” as they want, but for me, it comes down to this: they like pot stickers, and I like pizza.
That's why last January, when I did my personal heritage report for school, I got a C+.
I wrote that I was half Italian, half Irish, and half Asian. I know that equals more than a whole. I'm not stupid, but my dad's Italian, and my mom's Irish, and I'm their daughter. So doesn't that make me a little bit of both, even though I was born in China?
I just didn't think writing that I was only Chinese would have been the truth. But the day Mrs. Fillmore handed back our reports, she asked me to stay after class to talk to her about it.
She waited for the other kids to leave, and then she told me it seemed like I'd been struggling with the heritage project ever since she'd assigned it. And I don't know if it was the Italian part of me, the Irish part of me, or the Asian part of me, but I started to cry. Thankfully, Mrs. Fillmore felt sorry for all of me and told me I didn't have to talk about it if I didn't want to, and she let me leave.
But later she wrote a note to my parents: “Julia seems to be upset over something related to our recent heritage project. You may want to talk with her about it.”
She wrote a whole bunch of other junk too, but the point was that she thought I was “troubled” just because I didn't stand up and cheer for being Chinese.
The note was in a sealed envelope, so I had to sneak downstairs the night Mom opened it and dig it out of her purse just so I could see what it said.
The next day, I overheard Mom talking to Dad about it. He said Mrs. Fillmore was full of herself and that she should mind her own business. He also said, “Julia's fine.”
When Mom tried to talk to me about it later, I just told her I was upset that I'd only gotten a C+ when I'd worked so hard on the project, but I knew Mom didn't believe me. The thing is, I really wasn't even sure why I had cried.
But Mrs. Fillmore's note made Mom worry. So that's why, when you called with your idea for a story about Avery, Becca, and me, Mom said I should be “thankful” for such a “unique opportunity” to “bond” with my “Chinese sisters.” I knew what she really meant was that she was hopeful that my time with Avery and Becca would help me work out all the things I was “troubled” about without her having to sneak me off to see a therapist.
Julia
PS Mom is also thankful that I'll be spending a bunch of time with Avery and Becca because they're the kind of kids who write personal heritage reports that earn A+'s from teachers like Mrs. Fillmore.
PPS What Mom and Mrs. Fillmore don't know is that before all of Mrs. Fillmore's “research this” and “research that” I never thought much about my Asian heritage. But ever since Mrs. F.'s “let's dig into our roots to find out who we all really are,” I've been wondering about things I wish I never would've wondered about. And the real honest truth is that I'm afraid your adoption story and a week of “bonding” with Avery and Becca might make me wonder about those things even more.