Picture Us In The Light(17)

Anyway, at the beginning of junior high, the bulk of my friendship with Sandra was talking crap about Harry. Harry had gone to Blue Hills for elementary school, so this was the first time everyone I knew had been exposed to him, and it was, to put it mildly, a strange feeling watching all the people you thought you knew flock to someone you despised, someone phony and cheaply charismatic. Of Course People Like You If You Con Them Into Thinking You Like Them: The Harry Wong Story.

But Harry was, for whatever reason, completely magnetic. He was (I had to admit it) objectively good-looking, with a strong jaw and high cheekbones and a quick, easy smile that he knew how to aim for maximum effect; he had a friendly self-deprecating way of talking and could, without warning, slip into saying things that were constantly hailed as really deep (once, when Aaron Ishido joked about Brett Lee being the most punch-worthy person in our grade, Harry was like, Nah, man, violence is never cool, and I once heard him argue with a straight face that all racism was rooted in misunderstanding). He was forever laughing and joking around with people, always changing the tenor of every circle he walked into. He was the kind of person conversations stopped for. Which was baffling because, to me, underneath the veneer of aggressive perfection, he seemed thoroughly mediocre. There was nothing interesting or different about him; he was just exactly the perfect prototype of everything Cupertino wanted you to be: smart, polished, rich. He wasn’t different or unique, he was just what everyone else was, only more so, like someone took the rest of us and turned us up to Technicolor.

Also, a full month into the school year (a school year in which we had not one, not two, not three, but four classes together), we were funneled into the same test-review group in history and he’d turned to me with that plastered-on smile and said, “Remind me your name again?”

I know it all sounds petty. To this day I’m not entirely sure why I took such an instant dislike to him, why his very existence felt so personal to me. In my defense, I was a seventh grader, and there’s no such thing as a good seventh grader; all seventh graders are assholes, even the nice ones. Maybe it was just rampant hormones, who knows. Maybe it was how sometimes he bought things at Goodwill and him doing it was somehow cool, proof of him being down-to-earth and unique and environmentally conscious, whereas I knew that if I did it because I didn’t have money it would be a different story altogether. Maybe I was jealous.

But when I really think about it, I wonder if maybe it’s more than that; maybe it’s something that hits close to the deepest core of who I am. I’m not a religious person, but what I have with Harry is the closest thing I have—when I’m with him is when the world is at its clearest for me. I didn’t understand that yet, though, sitting on the bleachers with Sandra, blazing with all those ways I hated him.



Whenever there’s some kind of prize of any kind up for contention, I don’t care who you are: you always imagine yourself winning it. So I imagined Harry saying things like, Hey, I’ve always thought you seemed cool. You want to come hang out at this thing I’m having Saturday? I imagined him bringing up the party at lunchtime. I resented him for taking up so much space in my mind, and resented myself for giving it to him, but that didn’t mean I stopped. I also: liked a few of his posts online and then kept checking to see if he’d reciprocated in any way, nodded at him a few times in class, played four or five pickup basketball games with him and some other guys after school.

The last one was the Friday before the party. We were dispersing, sweaty and spent, when I heard someone call, “Yo, Cheng!”

I turned around and Harry was coming after me. “Wait up,” he said. “I want to ask you something.”

There was a spark in my chest like a lighter. Maybe I’d been wrong about him after all. I would take back all the hateful thoughts I’d had about him and all the things I’d said to Sandra; I would take back my assessment of him as fake. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“Do you have the homework assignment for first period?” he said, hitching the straps on his backpack higher. “I was late.”



The next morning, the morning of his party, Harry posted a selfie of him giving two thumbs up. Celebrating my birthday at Dynasty today at noon, come on by! he wrote. All welcome!!

That was it for me. My rage ballooned. Harry Wong wanted literally everything for himself, including, apparently, the credit for being friendly and inclusive and magnanimous, which—screw that. No one was going to go and feel welcomed because of some vague throwaway comment online.

Did you see Harry’s post? I texted Sandra. I should go just to call him on it.

I’m going! she wrote back. With Regina. You should just come. My mom can come pick you up if you want.

You’re going? What the hell, I thought you hated him.

I don’t have anything against him as a person. I just like watching you freak out about it. A few seconds later she texted, again, You should come.

My heart plummeted down my chest like it was falling through a trapdoor. I had to put my phone down. The weekend spanned itself in front of me. My mom was at the Lis’ house with the twins, who were babies then, because the parents were both out of town on business and so I’d be stuck at home with my dad, who was worse than ever on weekends, answering questions in a grayish monotone voice and staring blankly at the TV, cocooned on the couch in his ratty sweats and unwashed hair.