The Wangs vs. the World(20)

“Please, Grace. Your attitude won’t make this any better. You know we don’t want your bag”—they stared at each other for a moment, Grace refusing to move—“but we will need the power cord.”

“I know. Fine. It’s in here.” Grace dropped to the floor in lotus position and pulled her checkered rollie down so that its outstretched handle clanged into the brick floor. Jamming her hand into the side of the bag, she felt her way past the soft layers of her tank tops and dresses and jeans, searching for the white cord. “Wait, it’s not here. No, I know it is.” She looked up. “I’m not lying, okay?” Tears prickled against the back of her nose, crowded towards her eyes, threatened to pool over and spill. It took three more tries before her hand connected with hard plastic and she pulled out the cord.

Grace looked at Brownie again. The headmistress was staring at her cryptically. It wasn’t pity on her face. She wasn’t looking at Grace the way that Rachel had, with that totally cloying combo of pity and guilt. This was something different.

“Are you going to let me download my stuff, or does that belong to the school, too?”

“Of course you can download any personal information. I know you probably have quite a lot of photographs of, well, of yourself.”

“Yeah. So?”

Brownie sighed. “Grace, just go ahead and do whatever you need to do.”

Weird. She was acting weird, like she was the one who deserved to be upset or something. Maybe she just didn’t understand style blogs.

Grace powered the laptop on and plugged in her backup drive.



Finder > Grace Home > Photos > Morning > September.

Select All.

3,212 photos.



She dragged the folder over to the icon for her drive and dropped it in. A progress bar popped up. Two percent. Three.

Grace looked up at Brownie, who was tapping at her phone, probably trying to figure out text messaging or something. “You don’t have to wait out here. I’ll bring it over to the office when I’m done.”

Brownie hesitated. “It’s alright. I’m sure you’d rather not be on your own at the moment.”

Ha. “Um, I don’t mind being on my own. And it might take half an hour to copy everything over.”

“Then that’s what it takes.”



“Hi, Gracie, Daddy here now!”

A car door slammed, and Grace looked up from the screen to see her father climbing the brick steps towards her, arms outstretched, shouting loud enough for the whole school to hear.

No! She wasn’t done yet. There were still five more folders of self-portraits, plus a bunch of street style shots that she took of kids at school. Maybe it would go faster if she copied a few batches at a time. Quickly, before her dad could get all the way up the steps, Grace dragged two more of the folders in the Morning file over and tensed as she waited for another progress bar to pop up.

“Xiao bao! What’s wrong, heh?” Charles put a hand on Grace’s head and then slowly crouched down next to her, using her shoulder for balance. He was out of breath from the sprint up the stairs but, Grace knew, he didn’t want to get his linen pants dirty. “Hey, don’t sit like that, Meimei,” said Charles, pointing at her outstretched legs. “Always cross knees, okay?”

Suddenly, Grace felt deeply embarrassed. She didn’t want her father to know what she was doing, didn’t want him to know that he hadn’t paid for the computer. He must know, of course, but he didn’t have to know that she knew that he knew.

“Welcome, Mr. Wang.” Brownie rose from the bench across the entryway, where she’d been sitting for the past twenty minutes. Grace felt her father wobble and kept her head down, willing the computer to go faster. Half a moment later, he had sprung up and was heading towards Brownie, hands outstretched.

“Ah! Headmistress Brown! It is lovely to see you again, though the circumstances are quite unfortunate! Is Grace giving you any trouble?”

“Dad! How is any of this my fault?”

“No, not your fault,” said her father quickly.

“Oh no, Mr. Wang, Grace has been handling herself in a way that befits her name.”

Still spinning. The little Mac wheel of death. The files were never going to finish copying over and her father probably wouldn’t wait. She could see Babs in the station wagon—why the station wagon?—staring straight ahead.

“That’s the car that you kept? Why, Dad?”

Her father shrugged. “Ama gave back to us.”

“Are we going to switch to Andrew’s car?” It was a Range Rover. That probably made more sense.

“No, no. Ama give this back, we give that back.”

“Dad, what do you mean? Give it back to who? Isn’t it his?”

“Gracie. Bu yao zai shuo le, okay? We talk later.”

Rebellion burned in Grace’s chest. Her father wanted her to be on his side, to smile and wave and skip in front of Brownie so it would look like nothing was wrong, but he was the one who sold her out first with his “Is Grace giving you any trouble?” Of course she wasn’t. He was the one who was giving them all trouble, all the trouble was always about him. He was the one who’d freaked out and packed her off to boarding school two years ago just because she’d fallen for a boy. Diva Daddy, Saina sometimes called him—she and Andrew had a whole song about it, complete with jazz hands. Babs should have been the diva, but instead it was her father.