Trade Me (22 page)

I look over at him. “You really love your dad.”

“Yes. I’d do anything for him.” There’s a roughness in his voice. “Doesn’t mean he’s not embarrassing, though.”

We drive for a while longer.

“There is one thing I know about my mother,” he finally says. “One thing that is not a part of the public record. And I’ll tell you if you promise to never tell anyone.”

“Oh my God.” I press my fingers against my temples. “You mean, nobody except Maria, right? I can tell Maria.”

“Not Maria. And you can’t ask any questions afterward, either. It’s a strict no-discussion item.”

I shut my eyes. We don’t need more secrets between us, but…I want to know. I want to know too much about Blake Reynolds, and it’s not a good idea.

“I promise,” I say against my better judgment. “But this better be a good secret, and not something stupid that anyone could infer from genetics.”

He smiles. “My dad told me that my mother was the only woman he’s ever kissed.”

“What!? But—”

“Nope, no questions.”

“But—”

“No discussion either.”

“That,” I say severely, “was rude.
Really
rude.”

He glances in my direction. “Okay. Here’s one you can tell people.”

“About your mother?”

“Kind of. You know how most kids, one of their first words is some variant of mother? Mom. Momma. Something like that.”

“I’m guessing that wasn’t the case for you.”

“Why would you think that?” His eyes are glinting. “Because I don’t have a mother? Wrong. Think about my dad. One of my first words was…”

He pauses for dramatic effect, and I have to admit that it works. I lean toward him.

“It was motherfucker.”

I laugh.

He sighs. “Dad was so proud.”

“That’s good, but it still doesn’t make up for what you said before. That was a good secret,” I admit. “A really good secret. I’m trying to figure out how to pay you back for that.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“Unlikely,” I say with a sigh. “My mother tells everyone
everything.
There are no secrets.”

My parents live on the second floor of a concrete three-story apartment building in the middle of Rosemead. Despite my brave words to Blake earlier, I’m all too aware as we pull into the parking lot how my home must appear to him.

Browning weeds poke up through cracks in the asphalt; a crushed beer can decorates the gravel to the side. The sun is setting, giving color to an otherwise nondescript rusting car from decades past, propped up on cinder blocks in the parking lot. I’ve never seen Blake’s childhood home, but I can imagine. It’s nothing like this.

I shake my head. Screw this. I’m not dating him. We’re just friends—temporary friends at that—and three years from now, when he’s running Cyclone, he won’t remember this trip.

He puts the loaner car we picked up twenty minutes ago into park and pops the trunk.

“Well?” he smiles at me.

I smile back, but my expression feels like a tense, coiled thing, ready to spring out of alignment at the slightest provocation.

Before I can say anything, the door to my parents’ apartment bursts open. My little sister darts out, and she dashes down the concrete stairs.

“Tina, Tina!” She cannons into me; I grab hold of her. We squeeze each other hard. She’s getting so big now—she’s just an inch shorter than I am—and she hugs my breath out.

“Stop,” I croak. “Mayday, mayday!”

“I’m so glad you’re here. Can you tell Mom that I am
too
old enough to go to a coed sleepover?”

I give her a once over. “Sure,” I say, “as long as the parents kick it off by caponizing all the boys.”

Beside me, Blake chokes.

“What’s caponizing?”

“Removing the testicles,” I say. “It improves the temperament of the male animal. Try it sometime.”

Blake clears his throat.

“Oh,” I say. “Mayday, this is Blake Rivers.”

We’ve agreed—and by
we’ve agreed
I mean
I’ve insisted
—that we won’t give his real name. No point opening that door. Mom is bad enough when she thinks he doesn’t have any money. I can’t imagine what it would be like if she knew the truth.

“Blake, this is my little sister. Her name is Mabel, but I call her anything that starts with an M. Mayday, Maple, and Muggle are my favorites.”

She wrinkles her nose at Blake. “You can call me Mabel.” Mabel purses her lips and looks at Blake. Blake looks at her right back. Some people say that Mabel and I look alike, and I guess we do, in the most superficial sense. We’re both Chinese. But Mabel’s hair is short and dyed blue, and she wears it pulled over her eyes. Her eyes are set more narrowly than mine. And—this is really unfair, but I swear I am not bitter about this—she is thirteen and she’s already in B-cups. Which, ahem. Is more than I will ever manage.

Mabel shrugs. “Hi Blake. You’re the guy who is definitely
not
Tina’s boyfriend.”

Blake shifts the shoulder strap of his bag. “One of many, I presume.”

“Nope.” Mabel twirls away. “You’re the only one. The rest of the boys aren’t dating her.”

“Oh, well,” Blake says vaguely. “That is an important distinction.”

I try to jab my elbow into his side, but he sidles away.

“And you’re the only she talks about like this: ‘Mom, he’s
not
my boyfriend.’”

Oh, that imitation. It’s just a little too spot on. I raise a finger at her, but she twirls away before I can get her back.

“Come on. Mom is cooking. This is the first time you’ve brought a boyfriend home from college.”

“He’s not my—” I stop, because my sister’s lips are twitching.

“Fine.” I pick up my own bag.

“Lay on, Macduff,” Blake says.

Mabel stops and turns to him. “Hey. Only Tina can call me M-words other than Mabel.”

“Sorry.”

“Tina and her boyfriend,” she corrects. “So you’re okay. I guess.”

“
Mabel.”

My sister grins and clambers up the stairs.

14.

TINA

Mabel wasn’t kidding when she said my mother was cooking. Most of the time, my dad cooks. He’s actually pretty good, so that’s not a problem. My mother only cooks on special occasions, and this, apparently, is a special occasion.

Her cooking style can best be described as eclectic. If I were being generous, I’d call her style “Asian fusion.” But that usually evokes the marriage of delicate Asian-inspired flavors with classical French technique. Mom’s food is more like…Asian Frankenstein: Chinese peasant food stitched together into a meal with boxes of random crap from the 99-cent store.

As an example, there’s a dish of lion’s head meatballs, huge round hunks of ground meat bigger than my fist. But instead of serving it in a traditional broth with thinly sliced vegetables, Mom has paired it with Hamburger Helper stroganoff and chopped-up celery. There’s a casserole of canned green beans, oyster sauce, and crisped rice noodles. And there’s a dish of stir-fried vegetables, toasted almonds, and tater tots.

“It only looks horrifying,” I whisper to Blake. “It’s actually really good.”

My mom takes one look at Blake, shakes her head, and heaps food on his plate. “You,” she tells him, before they’ve even been introduced, “need to eat more.”

She doesn’t—thank God—tease him about being my boyfriend. Yet.

“So, Blake,” my father asks as we sit around the table on an eclectic mixture of chairs and stools. “What are you studying?”

Of my parents, my dad is better at small talk, at putting people at ease.

“Economics,” Blake says.

“What do you plan to do after school? Go into business?”

Before Blake can answer, my mother interrupts. “Business school is a waste of money. Do you know how much it is now? Fifty thousand a year. At least. And not so many jobs anymore.”

Blake’s eyes dance. “Funny. My dad says the exact same thing.”

“He must be a smart man. What does your dad do? Tina never told me.”

Blake glances at me. “Computer repair.”

Luckily, nobody asks further questions. “And your mom?”

Blake clears his throat. “She’s not with us.”

I remember the conversation Blake and I had on the way down and tense. I can only imagine what my mother will say.

But my mother just smiles brilliantly. “That’s good! Too many boys your age get spoiled by their mothers. They don’t know how to cook, how to do laundry. Tina is going to be a busy doctor. She’ll need someone to do all that for her. Better if you’re not used to having someone else take care of you.”

I slink down in my seat. Blake is trying not to smile, but he’s not quite successful. “That’s probably true, Mrs. Chen, but Tina and I are just friends.”

It is obvious from the glances my parents exchange that nobody at this table believes that. Not my dad, who smiles beatifically, the way he does whenever he traps someone into a corner. Not my mom, who’s shaking her head. And definitely not Mabel, who snickers.

Possibly not even me.

“Eat more,” my mom advises Blake. “You’re too skinny.”

“Mom.”

“What?” She turns to me.

“Be polite. Please?”

“How is that rude? It’s just the truth. He has eyes; he knows he’s too skinny. And he’s not eating anything at all.” She tsks.

Blake, obligingly, takes a bite of Hamburger Helper. I’m not sure if he’s ever had Hamburger Helper in his life. Well, tough. Too bad. He has now.

“Better,” my mom says. “Good thing he’s
not
your boyfriend, though, Tina. He’s so skinny, I think a condom would pop right off.”

Oh my God. She did not say that. My whole body flushes in a wave of heat.

“
Mom,”
I mutter in a low voice. “Please.”

“Better make him wear two,” she continues merrily. “Just in case.”

I hide my face in my hands. “Gah.” It’s the only word I can manage.

I want to crawl under the table and take up permanent residence. If I did, at least it would distract my mom.

And that’s when Blake starts laughing. Not just chuckling, but full-on belly-laughing. He’s laughing so hard he starts to choke; my dad thumps him on the back, and he coughs.

“I’m sorry,” he finally gasps. “It’s just—on the way down, Tina gave me this huge lecture about how she refused to be embarrassed by you guys. There was this whole spiel about how there were cultural differences and just because you said things that were unusual by American standards didn’t make it wrong. She said that she refused to feel badly about it, so I was just going to have to adjust.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you?” I mutter.

“Sorry, Tina.” Blake pats my shoulder. “But—this one is all you.”

“That’s not a cultural difference,” my dad interjects. “Everyone thought Hongmei was inappropriate in China, too.”

“Yeah,” Mabel chimes in. “Dad embarrasses me in front of my friends at school. But Mom embarrasses me
everywhere.
It’s not a Chinese thing.”

“It is one of my many talents,” my mother says with a modest smile. “I put sand in everyone’s oysters.”

“That’s what Tina says,” Blake says. “So tell me about Jimmy Ma. What’s he up for?”

The appeal we’ve come down to see is the perfect topic of conversation. My mom loves talking about her…work? Her hobby? I don’t know how to think of it. She jumps right in. Blake listens and nods.

And me? Once I get over that flushed, heated embarrassment, I realize that things are worse now, not better. Blake is kind of perfect—drawing my mother out into the most animated version of herself, bringing my father into the conversation, even getting Mabel to talk about music and how she wishes she had her own saxophone. This, I remind myself, is media training in action.

I have to stop lying to myself. It’s more than media training. Blake’s always been easygoing. Hell, I’ve seen his comments on scripts going back a full decade now. He was like this at eleven: complimentary, interested, kind without being weak. He’s probably been serving as his father’s foil his entire life. His father growls about manufacturing and secrecy; Blake learns Mandarin and compliments the factory owner on the side. His father says that an idea is shit; Blake comes back and points out the good in it. This is what he does: he smoothes things over. He’s so good that Mom doesn’t even notice that he’s eating only a fraction of the food on his plate. I wonder if it’s always like this for him, if he’s always fixing things while nobody notices him.