Picture Us In The Light(8)

“I didn’t want you getting all chatty with my parents,” I say over his complaining.

“Aw, your parents love me.”

I roll my eyes. It’s true, though; all parents love him. “Well, too bad for them I’m too selfish to let you.”

“You’re not selfish.”

“In your professional opinion.”

“Don’t get so sarcastic. You’re, like, the opposite of a selfish person. It’s a compliment.”

I feel the words blooming on my cheeks. “I just didn’t want them roping you into a conversation. I know you’re a shitty liar.”

“What would I have to lie about?”

“I told them we’re just going to your house.” Harry lives too far up in the hills to walk, so I always get a ride if I’m going up there. “You know how they are. They’d flip out if I said I wanted to go to San Francisco.” Also, it’s true: Harry lies terribly. At his core, I think, he’s too noble to have any real sense of self-preservation.

Inside the car, Harry unbuttons the cuffs of his sleeves and rolls them in precise, even segments before laying his hands on the steering wheel. A few times—I would die before I told him this—I’ve sketched his forearms, the map his veins trace over them, the tan he keeps even in winter. He says, “I am not a shitty liar.”

I click my seat belt on. “Um, you can’t even say that without your voice getting all weird and defensive, so I think I’ve made my case. Hey—question.” As he backs onto the street, I tell him about my dad’s files. “That’s not weird, right?”

“Uh, a stalkery box of information about some rando? It’s definitely weird.”

“You think so?” I make a face. I wanted him to tell me I was overreacting.

“Yeah, but your parents have always been weird about things.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s weird how they’ve never once taken you home to China, for one thing. Haven’t you been, like, all over the US and—”

“I think China’s probably just too sad for them now.”

“I guess I could see that, yeah.” He shrugs. “Still. They just kind of seem like people with secrets. You went years without knowing you even had a sister, right? And don’t they still never talk about her?” Check and check. “Who were the people?”

“Nobody I know. I don’t even know how my parents would know them.” It’s probably nothing. All the same the road blurs in front of me a second, and I feel a little bit carsick. “So you’d maybe worry at least a little, then?”

“If someone explicitly told me not to? It’s like if I say don’t picture me naked—what’s the first thing you do?”

My cheeks go hot, and then the rest of me. It’s enough to pull me back from the ledge, though, back onto solid ground. I say, “I could’ve done without that visual, thanks.”

He grins. “Be nice. Don’t make me pull over.” We stop at a light on Stelling, and he skims his eyes over me. “Hey, so, uh…nice sweatshirt.”

“Yep.” That was definitely not a compliment. I swear if he says one word about my sweatshirt, I’ll kick his ass.

“That new?”

“Yep,” I say again. I don’t need Harry to confirm for me that in its hugeness and overenthusiastic newness it looks as dweeby as I know it does. I want the gift my parents gave me to be worth what they paid for it, worth how excited they were.

“Rocking those creases. Are you, uh, wearing that when we get there?”

I wasn’t going to, I was going to take it off once I got in the car, but as soon as he says it my plans make an abrupt U-turn. With any luck he’ll spend the whole ride worrying every single person he sees today will think, Why is Harry Wong best friends with a loser in a giant creased sweatshirt? I will wear this sweatshirt at him the entire day. “Yeah. Why?”

“It just looks so…new.”

I know this about Harry: he thinks it’s pathetic in an overeager kind of way to wear anything right after you bought it, or at least to look like you did, so every time he gets something new he washes it twice before he puts it on. “It is new.”

He takes his hands off the wheel to hold them up in defeat. “Okay, whatever. You do you.”

“You’re so generous. Has anyone ever told you that? So generous.”

“Says the guy getting a free ride to San Francisco.”

I roll my eyes. “You’d be going anyway.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I’m just going because you’d be stranded at home otherwise.”

“Okay, (a), you would definitely go because otherwise Regina would kill you, and (b), don’t pretend like you’re not glad to have an excuse. What would you be doing at home all day instead? Going to tutoring?”

He grins in that self-deprecating way of his, his eyes crinkling up. It is, I’ll admit, one of the more charming habits he has. “For your information, I’d be probably going hog wild studying for the SAT IIs. So hold up on your smugness there.”

He probably would be, too. There is basically nothing Harry won’t do in service of Princeton, which is the only Ivy that rejected his sister and, therefore, the only school he wants. It’s why he’s the managing editor of our school paper, second-in-command to Regina, despite being someone who has no real love of writing and who (I’ll just say it) has a crap eye for design. He’s also, this year: ASB president, treasurer of National Honor Society, and the director of the Students Reaching Out tutoring club. He got a near-perfect score on his SATs and has a 4.8 GPA and is nationally ranked (low, but still) in tennis doubles. And this is still as true as it’s been as long as I’ve known him: he’s always the most popular guy in any room he’s in. When I list it all out like that I kind of remember why I used to really hate him.