On the Back Burner (8 page)

“Would you girls like some tea?” Mrs. Cheng asked.

“Ah-mah could show us how to read the tea leaves to tell our fortunes,” Peichi said with a smile.

“No, thanks! I think I’ve had enough fortune-telling for a while!” Amanda said quickly. Everyone laughed.

“Can we make fortune cookies now?” Peichi asked impatiently. “We finished writing our fortunes.”

“I’ll leave the instruction to Peichi’s grandmother,” said Mrs. Cheng. She turned to the girls. “You know, fortune cookies aren’t actually Chinese—they were invented in Los Angeles! But they are so much fun to make. I think Peichi could make them in her sleep!” She gave Peichi a quick kiss. “Dad and I will be at the Minks’ house if you need anything. We’ll be back for dinner,” she said, and she left the kitchen.

Under Ah-mah’s watchful eye, Peichi got out a large glass bowl. While everyone watched, Peichi whisked together two egg whites and some vanilla until the mixture was foamy. Ah-mah preheated the oven to 400 degrees as Molly sifted flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt into the egg mixture, and blended everything together to form a pale, runny batter. Shawn greased a cookie sheet. Then Peichi showed the girls how to pour tablespoons of batter onto the cookie sheet.

“I’m only making five cookies in this first batch—one for each of us,” Peichi said. “You have to fold them up when they are still hot, and it can be pretty tricky if you’re not used to it.” The cookies baked in only five minutes, but Peichi was right—it
was
tricky to fold them into neat little shapes, with the fortunes hidden inside, while they were still hot from the oven. The kitchen was quiet, except for little yelps if the girls touched the cookies too quickly and burned their fingers. But after a few batches, they had the hang of it. It was really fun to hide the fortunes inside and not know who would receive them! Finally, the girls had a tall pile of golden fortune cookies. They smelled great, too!

“Now we are making
jai
,” Ah-mah told them as she took out a bag of ingredients that she had purchased that morning in Chinatown. “It is a vegetable dish. Each vegetable has a meaning. Lotus seed is good luck. The ginkgo nut symbolizes silver pieces. Black moss seaweed is for wealth. This dried bean curd also encourages wealth. Bamboo shoots make a wish that everything will be well.” She picked up a bag of noodles she’d bought. “See these noodles? We don’t cut them, ever! Long noodles symbolize long life, so we never want to cut them short.”

“This is all so interesting.” Natasha said. She’d been writing Ah-mah’s words down in her bright blue notebook. Natasha carried that notebook everywhere in case she got an idea for an article for the school paper. “It’s going to make a great article. Ah-mah, how did the Chinese New Year celebrations get started?”

“Chinese New Year is so old that no one knows for sure,” Ah-mah told her. “There is a legend about a monster named Nian. An immortal god appeared in the shape of an old man, and he rode Nian away so he could no longer frighten the people of earth. Before he left, though, he told people to put up red paper decorations on their doors and windows to frighten Nian in case he ever sneaked back someday. Nian was scared of the color red. So we always remember how Nian was scared away. We also light firecrackers to frighten off Nian.”

“Okay, who wants to toast these sesame seeds in a skillet?” Peichi asked. “We need to get started on the
jai.”

“Um, Manda and I should probably go,” Molly said slowly, looking at her watch. “It’s almost five o’clock, and I still have homework to do.”

Shawn got up from her chair. “That’s right. I do, too.”

“And we have a math test tomorrow, Peichi,” Natasha said. “Ugh.” She carefully tucked her notebook into her backpack.

“Oh,” Peichi said. “Right.” She didn’t say much as she walked her friends to the door.

“Do you have homework, too?” her grandmother asked when Peichi returned to the kitchen.

“I’ll do it later,” Peichi said. “Tell me more stories about Chinese New Year.”

P
eichi never got around to studying for her math test that night. On Monday, though, she thought she had done pretty well on the test. By Tuesday she received her graded paper and discovered she was wrong. The number 60 was scrawled on the top, along with a note from her teacher that read
What happened here? Please see me after class.

“Peichi, this isn’t like you,” Ms. Nelson said. “Is there a problem?”

“I thought I understood it,” she said. “But I forgot that the decimal point moved over one.”

“Didn’t you study your notes?” Ms. Nelson asked.

She hadn’t, but she didn’t want to come out and tell Ms. Nelson this. “I just didn’t get it, I guess,” she said.

“I’m here on Wednesday afternoons for extra help. Come see me anytime you don’t understand something,” Ms. Nelson offered.

“Okay. Thanks,” Peichi said. “Do you think I could, uh ... take this test over?”

Ms. Nelson smiled gently. “I’m sorry, Peichi, but that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the class.”

“I guess not,” Peichi said softly.

“I’m going to need that test signed,” Ms. Nelson said. “But don’t look so upset, Peichi. It’s just one test. Come for extra help and I’m sure you’ll do better on the next one.

Peichi nodded as she fought back tears. What Ms. Nelson didn’t know was that it
wasn’t
just one test. Peichi had been getting back bad grades all day. The English exam on
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
had been a disaster—she’d gotten a D+ and Mrs. Weyn had written on the exam, “Peichi, did you even read the book?” It was so embarrassing! And that test had to be signed, too. Her parents would
not
be happy about this.

Her next class was social studies. The teacher, Mr. Degregorio, returned the test he’d given at the end of last week. Mr. Degregorio was really funny. He always joked with the kids. But when he returned Peichi’s test, he just put it facedown on her desk and walked away.

Peichi turned the paper over long enough to see an F written on it. Then she turned it facedown again. She was so used to getting good grades that this seemed unreal, as if she were having some kind of school nightmare from which she couldn’t wake up.

“Peichi, you failed the pop quiz, and now you’ve failed this test, which is worth twenty percent of your grade,” Mr. Degregorio asked her after class. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Peichi felt so close to tears that she was afraid if she said anything else, she would start crying right in front of Mr. Degregorio.

Mr. Degregorio sighed. “Well, let me know if you need any extra help, Peichi. I’m always around after school. I’ll need you to bring back that test signed by your parents, okay?”

Peichi nodded, and this time she didn’t think she could fight back the tears. She grabbed the paper off his desk and hurried to the girls’ room. Rushing into an empty stall, she locked it and started to really sob. How could she have allowed herself to get so distracted? Her parents would flip when they saw these three tests. When she pictured their disappointed faces, she began to cry even harder.

“Peichi?” Amanda’s voice came to her from outside the stall. “Are you okay?”

Peichi opened the door. “Not really,” she admitted, wiping her eyes. “How did you know I was in here?”

“I saw your sneakers under the door,” Amanda said. “What’s wrong?”

“I failed three tests and I have to get them signed.”

Amanda sighed. “Ouch! That’s bad.”

“No kidding, that’s bad!” Peichi agreed. “What am I going to do?”

They stood together, not speaking for a minute or so, each of them trying to figure out some solution to this problem. “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Amanda said finally. “Remember when Molly was doing so badly in math a while back? She thought our parents were going to go wild when she brought home some terrible grades, but they didn’t. They just saw it as a problem that needed to be solved and with some tutoring from Athena, Molly has improved a lot.”

“Yeah, but your parents are not
my
parents,” Peichi said glumly.

“What are you talking about? Your parents are really nice,” Amanda reminded her.

“They’re nice, but they expect a lot. I can’t bear to tell them about this. They’ll be so disappointed in me! Last year I got straight As, remember?”

“Promise them you’ll work harder. You have been goofing off sometimes lately, right? So all you have to do is tell your parents that you’ll work really,
really
hard and bring your grades up and I bet they’ll understand.”

Peichi blew her nose. “That might work,” she said. “I will work harder, too. I don’t want to disappoint them and I do
not
want to go to summer school this summer.”

“Come on, let’s go to lunch. You can forget about this for a while. We have gym next and there’s no way you can fail a test there.”

“Okay,” Peichi agreed, “but could you do me one favor?”

“Sure, what?” Amanda agreed as they left the girls’ room.

“Don’t tell the others about this yet. I mean, I’ll tell them, but just not right now. Okay?”

“Okay,” Amanda promised.