The Wangs vs. the World(19)
“So, no chance of a ride to the train station, then?” She stayed silent, no longer even surprised at what he could say. “Okay, I know, of course not. And you probably don’t want to lend me your car, right?” Or maybe his advanced degree of f*ckery could still surprise her. “I’m kidding, Saina. A little levity. You always like that, don’t you?” She sat on her fingers, smashing them against the penny tiles, examined a crack in the grouting between the basin sink and the wall, looked at her toenails, still pink. “Saina, please don’t hate me forever. Please try to be a little happy for us, for me and the baby. I think we might name him James. Good name, right? Solid.” He rattled the doorknob. She stayed very still. “Okay, I’m leaving now. You’ll understand someday.” He rapped on the door. Another moment. “I’m not sorry that I came up.”
And then he was gone.
十
Santa Barbara, CA
84 Miles
NOBODY CAME UP to say goodbye to Grace. Maybe no one knew. Her best friends, Cassie and Lo, were out of school at the moment—in Athens with their Greek class—and the thought of telling anyone else felt exhausting. Later, other students would drop out, their families bankrupted by Bernie Madoff and bad real estate, but right now there was only Grace, and she stood in the front vestibule alone, a pile of bags at her feet.
She wasn’t really used to being alone. That’s what happens when you’re the youngest child and every space you occupy already belongs to someone else: your sister’s clothes, your brother’s old kindergarten teacher, you as the tagalong, like a Girl Scout cookie, waiting to see if you’ll be included in their games. And then you’re the only one to be sent off to boarding school, where every moment is communal: breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the same 125 people who know exactly how you butter your toast and how high you roll up your uniform skirt.
Now this. Everything bad was happening to her before anything interesting happened. She sighed. Wasn’t that just the way life was.
“Hello, dear.” It was Dr. Brown, the headmistress.
“Hi, Brownie.”
Brownie raised an eyebrow. “You know we’re very sorry to see you go, dear.”
Shrug.
“But I’m sure that everything will be alright. Your family will find a way through this.”
Grace turned away. The school was built on a hill that sloped up gently from rows of red-roofed houses. A long driveway wound towards the front arch where they stood; over the suburbs and the cypress trees Grace could see a glimmer of ocean and town, and the highway that led south to home. Except it wasn’t home anymore. She wondered which car they’d be driving to Saina’s and how there’d be enough space for all of their things.
Or maybe all the cars were gone, too. Her dad tended towards small, fast vehicles—he was dismissive about the SUVs that crowded the parking lot on Parents’ Weekend: “Gei bai pang zi,” he’d whispered to her stepmother, and then said loudly, for Grace, “Fat white man, fat white ladies, only they need such big cars. Ha!” Never mind that she’d understood the Chinese—he always doubted her ability to understand the simplest words and then expected her to get allusions to old Chinese poems and pointless ancient sayings—or that everyone would hear him. Grace couldn’t care less if other people’s fat parents heard themselves get called fat. No, what completely annoyed her was that “Ha!” Any time her father said something that he thought was funny in English, he had to add that “Ha!” at the end. Totally irritating.
Brownie tapped her on the shoulder, trying to get her attention.
“What?” Was she expecting a hug? Grace hoped not, fake hugs were so gross.
“Grace, dear, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take your laptop, you know that it’s school property.”
Grace stared at her. “It’s not! We paid for this!” It was supposed to be part of the tuition package—a new laptop for each student, each year, with last year’s donated to the teen center. Except, oh god, now she was a poor at-risk youth. Maybe she could go to the center and find her laptop from last year.
“I’m sorry, dear, but unfortunately it’s the property of the school.”
“Brownie, you can’t take it away. My life is on there! And my dad paid for it, it’s not the school’s!”
“Well, Grace, unfortunately you have not paid for it. You actually began the year without any tuition being paid. We had no reason to doubt your family’s ability to do so, and we know that some accountants are not as vigilant with regards to tuition as they might be, so we chose not to press the matter, which clearly turned out to be a mistake.” She placed a hand on Grace’s laptop case. “It’s too bad that you have to be affected by these adult matters, but I do hope you understand.”
Oh god. This must be what a heart attack felt like. Something seizing her inside, pinching off her veins. Blood kept flowing out but no oxygen could get pumped in; it would keep on happening like that until her heart shriveled into a tiny thing and rattled right out of her chest.
“Fine,” said Grace, shoving her whole laptop case at Brownie. No crying. No. Crying.
The headmistress pulled out the laptop then held the case—really Saina’s old Marc Jacobs satchel—out towards her. Grace shook her head. Brownie sighed.