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M
OM ASKED ME TO HELP OUT
at Cleary Confections the next day. One of her assistants had called in sick, and when that happened Mom usually asked me to take over the cash register so she could focus on the baking. Lan came with me, too. Mom always paid us in cash at the end of the day, and we both loved that.

“I'm up to my neck in birthday cakes,” she told us when we got there. She was wearing her white baker's apron and had her hair tucked under a little net. “And Saturdays are always busiest in the morning. Thanks for your help, girls.”

I liked helping out at the bakery. It smelled warm and sweet and the customers were usually in a good mood. I ran the register while Lan made sure the glass cases were stocked with delicate pastries, colorful cookies and plump fruit pies. We were able to talk and snack and just sit back when things slowed down, and sometimes I took pictures of the especially decorative cakes for Mom.

People tended to arrive in a sudden wave and everything would be hectic for an hour, then the store would be quiet and empty for a while. It was always like that, almost as if the customers planned it that way. It was during one of those vacant
periods that Lan brought up something I hadn't even thought of yet.

“So will your mom be making Tiffany's birthday cake?”

Instead of answering her, I nearly ran to the back room. Lan was right behind me. We found my mom bent over a sheet cake, piping thick white frosting into a shell pattern around the sides.

“Mom, are you making Tiffany Werner's birthday cake?” I asked.

She looked up, startled. “No, this is for the senior center.”

“Her birthday is in March.”

“Oh, Kate, I have no idea. I'm doing all I can to stay focused on this weekend. You can check my planner, though.”

Lan and I rushed to the little office in the back and flipped through the leather planning book that sat on Mom's desk.

“What's the date again?” I asked.

“March 3.”

I found the page for Saturday, March 3. There were two wedding cakes scheduled, three anniversary sheet cakes and a toddler's birthday cake, which, according to the message next to it, was to be shaped like a baby whale. Mom had slapped a yellow Post-it note on the page. “Date is full—no more orders.”

“What a relief,” I said, closing the planner. “Even if Tiffany wanted a cake, they won't take her order. They're doing two weddings that day and I'm sure Tiffany's cake would be more work than those two put together.”

Mom never scheduled more than two wedding cakes in a single day because they took forever to decorate and she had to deliver them herself.

“Can you imagine if your mom was invited to the party and you weren't?” Lan asked with a short laugh. “That would be so awful.”

“I just don't want her to have to work for the Werners,” I said, rolling my eyes. “They'd probably treat her like a servant and complain about every minute detail.”

We returned to the front room, which was still empty, sat down at one of the little café tables and treated ourselves to buttercream cupcakes.

“The invitation ceremony is on Tuesday,” Lan said, pulling the paper off her cupcake.

I corrected her with a smile. “The invitation celebration.”

Lan shook her head. “I hate myself for wanting to go, but I do. This will be bigger than the prom. And did you hear? She's getting Nothing Serious to play.”

Nothing Serious were a local band, but they had recently opened for some big names and were going to be putting out a CD on a major label soon.

“I know,” I said. “It sounds great. But then again, it's going to be all about Tiffany. She'll probably sit on a throne and make people bow or chant her name or something.”

Lan shrugged and took a bite of her cupcake. I knew how much she wanted to go, in part because everyone would be talking about it and in part because Trent would be there. But there seemed to be more to it than that, something she wasn't telling me.

“So why do you really want to go?” I asked as gently as I could.

Lan put her cupcake down on a napkin. “Do you know how many times I've been asked if I'm Chinese or Japanese?” she asked.

I didn't, but I had an idea. I'd been with her many times when it had happened, and she always answered, “I'm Vietnamese-American.” Her parents had both been born in Vietnam, but she had been born in Cleary.

“Or how many times people have referred to me as Oriental?” she continued.

I had made that mistake once, too. She told me that
Oriental
only applied to objects, like lamps or rugs. People were Asian, not Oriental.

“The point is, I'm always kind of on the outside, you know? My dad is pretty traditional, my friends are almost all American, and I fall somewhere in between. I don't think anyone sees me as one of them.”

I began to protest, but she shook her head. “I don't mean you, Kate. But everyone else…” Her voice trailed off. “I just thought that if I was invited to this party it would mean something.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. It would mean that I was just like everybody else, you know?” Her voice was soft and she stared at her half-eaten cupcake instead of looking at me.

I did know, in a way. I knew that my friend was hurting and that she wanted something badly. I felt sort of helpless. What could I do? I knew what would make Lan happy, but I had no way to get it for her.

We were bombarded with customers around noon, and Mom had to deliver one of the cakes, so we stayed busy for a while, but the entire time I was ringing orders up all I could think about was a way to get Lan an invitation to Tiffany's birthday party. If she wanted to go, I told myself,
I would do everything I could to help her. Even if it meant sucking up to Tiffany Werner.

 

T
HE PARTY CAME UP AGAIN
as I ate dinner with my parents that night.

“By the way, why were you and Lan so interested in my orders earlier?” Mom asked. She had finished icing her cakes on time, her customers were happy and she was in a good mood.

“Oh, that. There's this girl from school who's having a huge birthday party in March. We just wanted to see if you were making the cake.”

“Am I?”

“Nope. You are not making Tiffany Werner's cake.”

Dad looked at me. “Did you say Werner?”

I froze with my fork in midair. “Yeah.”

“Is she having her party at the country club?”

I knew what he was going to say. My mom might not be going to the party, but my dad would be.

“You're handling the security, aren't you?” I asked miserably.

“Not exactly. They're hiring a private security company. But the manager of the country club asked me to keep officers in the area.” He raised an eyebrow at Mom. “Apparently, this is a very big party and he's afraid that the kids might get out of hand. We'll be keeping an eye on the roads.”

“Are you going, Kate?” Mom asked.

“I don't think so,” I said. “The invite list is kind of exclusive.”

Mom cleared her throat. “I see. Well, you don't want to go to a party like that anyway, do you?”

I shrugged. My social standing at Cleary High School was not something I wanted to discuss with my parents at dinner. I also did not want them feeling sorry for me. There's nothing worse than parental pity.

“You could have your own party here,” Dad suggested.

I groaned. Their intentions were good, but my parents had no clue. “Thanks, but I think I'll be fine. Lan's probably not invited, either, so we'll just hang out that weekend.”

“Well, that's nice,” Mom said. She and Dad exchanged a meaningful glance at one another and then tactfully changed the subject to taxes and W-2 forms and other completely boring matters, so I tuned them out.

After dinner I went upstairs and downloaded pictures from my camera. I'd taken more than I'd realized, snapping shots here and there throughout the week. I created a new file, then pulled it up so I could watch a slide show of the images.

Most of the pictures were of Lan, but I'd also taken some around school and outside. Eden Alder had asked me to take a picture of her sitting at the newspaper table, and I'd taken one of Trent standing on top of his car. I e-mailed that one to Lan.

I thought about Lan and the party. I wanted to go just to see the spectacle and so I could say I was there, but at the same time, I didn't want to feed Tiffany's obese ego. Did an invitation mean that I actually belonged to something? Or did it simply tag me as a sheep in Tiffany's ever-growing flock?

I wanted Eli's take on it. He was always able to express his thoughts more clearly than I could. And he was so comfortable with himself. It was as if he never questioned who he was or what his place was within the world, or at least his place
within the tiny universe of Cleary. Would I ever be that comfortable in my own skin? I often worried that my shirt was out of style or that someone would point out that I'd worn the same pair of jeans to school twice in one week.

I deleted some of the blurry pictures and tried to lighten some of the darker ones. The last picture on my screen was of Eli. I'd forgotten I'd even taken it. I had been testing my camera at Something's Brewing, trying to see if the red-eye remover button actually worked, and I'd asked Eli to look up from his computer. As soon as he turned in my direction, I'd snapped the picture.

Looking at the image on my screen, I smiled. I had caught Eli off guard, and he looked startled. Even with his surprised expression and disheveled hair, he was cute. Not that he'd care if I told him that.

People like Eli and Trent and Brady seemed naturally impervious to the opinions of others. They could speak up in class and not be afraid that someone would snicker or mock them. People like me, on the other hand, always questioned themselves. What if my opinion was wrong? What if someone challenged me and I couldn't defend my own thoughts? It was better to keep your mouth shut and listen, I decided. If only Lan had done the same thing and not jumped into the debate against Tiffany in history class, maybe she would have a chance at being invited to the party.

But I knew Lan better than that. If she had something to say, she said it. After what she told me the other day, I wondered if she had learned early on to stand up for herself, to define herself to others before they could sling their stereotypes at her.

I turned off my computer. “Stupid party,” I muttered. How had one meticulously organized event been able to cause so much turmoil? And part of me knew that it wasn't over.

The chaos was just beginning.

 

T
HE STUDENT BODY OF
Cleary High School was completely consumed with the impending invitation ceremony, a real live camera crew and, of course, Tiffany Werner herself, who attracted gasps and stares wherever she went. She pretended not to notice, but I knew Tiffany was relishing every second of the undivided attention. The mysterious graffiti paled in comparison to a nationally televised sixteenth birthday extravaganza, so we put the gorillas out of our minds.

Apparently, they didn't do the same with us.

The day before Tiffany's “invitation celebration,” which she actually advertised with a half-page ad in the
Cleary Chronicle
—Find Out if You've Been Chosen was the headline, done in a formal, flowery script above a professional photo of Tiffany wearing a diamond tiara and a wide, toothy smile—another gorilla appeared in town. This time, it was painted on the side of an old bank with the caption “When money speaks, the truth keeps silent.” The gorilla was identical to the ones on the side of our school. I was confused. After our school had been painted, the gorillas had moved out of state. Had the person responsible returned to Cleary? And if so, why?

News of the gorilla sparked yet another morning debate in Mr. Gildea's class, with Tiffany taking the position that all graffiti was simply an illegal waste of time and Brady arguing that freedom of expression should not be limited to pen and paper. Then another guy jumped in, saying that the gorilla
actually helped draw attention to an abandoned and neglected building.

“Maybe the city will finally do something about it,” he said.

The bank had been empty for years and now mainly served as a place to park and make out behind. Kevin and I had gone there once a week when we were dating. The thought made me feel lonely. It wasn't that I missed Kevin. I missed being part of a couple, having someone to sit close to and talk to and feel warm with.

The debate went back and forth for a while until Mr. Gildea said it was time to wrap it up. “Final thoughts,” he announced. I was waiting for Lan to say something. I knew she was trying to stay out of it so she wouldn't offend Tiffany and ruin her chances of getting an invitation, but I also knew she was dying to join in the discussion.

Brady raised his hand. “Simply because someone's art hasn't been sanctioned by the government does not make it illegal or insignificant,” he said. People nodded. Brady had a way of making things sound good.

Tiffany sighed loudly. “Just because someone has freedom of expression does not mean they have freedom to ruin or destroy someone else's property.”

Lan finally jumped in. “Painting something does not ruin or destroy it,” she said, keeping her voice calm. I caught a glimpse of Brady beaming at her. He no longer sat in the back; instead, he had moved several desks closer to my best friend. I wondered if she'd noticed.

We moved on to a chapter review, but the debate stayed with me throughout the day. I brought it up with Eli at work.

We had just filled a huge order of over a dozen different
drinks for a guy in a business suit. He watched us closely and demanded that we double-check all the lids to make sure they were on tight. I figured he was taking them back to his office and was afraid they might spill all over the leather interior of his tiny silver sports car.