The Way You Make Me Feel(10)
*
The first Monday of summer break, I woke up to the blinds snapping open and sunlight flooding my room. “Bom dia, daughter!” my dad announced cheerfully, sipping from a giant thermos of coffee.
“No!” I yelled, throwing my pillow at him.
He knocked it out of the way with a soft punch. “Yes.”
When my eyes adjusted to the ungodly amount of light, I saw my dad holding up a KoBra T-shirt and a matching cap. I groaned. “I’m not wearing that.”
“I’m sorry, do you think you have a choice in the matter?”
In this light, my dad looked like a merch-wielding devil-angel—the sunlight haloed around him majestically.
“What time is it?” I grumbled, grasping for my phone on my nightstand.
He took another sip. “Six a.m. We have to replenish our ingredients today, so it’s an early one.”
Ugh.
After dragging out my morning routine for as long as humanly possible, I met my dad downstairs in the kitchen, where he was making fried-egg sandwiches.
“So, I can’t believe you’re actually making me do this.” I set my elbows onto the kitchen counter, my feet kicking at the stool rung.
He cracked an egg over a cast-iron skillet, and it sizzled loudly. “Believe it.”
“You’re being so weird. Since when do you punish me?”
Pai looked up from the stove and leveled his gaze at me. The seriousness of his expression unsettled me. “You know, Shorty. That question itself is kind of a problem, don’t you think?”
“No,” I muttered while taking a sip of the milky Masala chai that my dad made. It was usually the only breakfast I had—Indian tea made with spices in a stained and chipped Dodgers mug as big as my head.
“It’s a problem because I am your dad.” He leaned against the counter. “Something happened while I was in that principal’s office. Rose’s parents? They acted like parents. And I was … embarrassed.”
The tea burned my tongue, and I put it down. “That’s nuts.”
“No, actually, it’s not. I know I was a little punk in school, but I had my reasons. My parents and I—the gap between us was, like, catastrophic. You and I, Clara? We don’t have that problem. There’s no good reason why you should get into so much trouble. The only reason is that I’ve been slacking, trying not to be overbearing like my parents were. But it’s clearly backfired. I’ve been getting my act together for the KoBra, but not with you.”
My dad talking like this made me feel itchy, and I looked beyond him, at a spot on the kitchen wall.
He plopped an egg sandwich in front of me. “I’m not slacking anymore. And it’s starting with breakfast. Eat up.” I wrinkled my nose and lifted the corner of the whole wheat bread. Sriracha mayo.
I sniffed. “Fine.” With every gulp, unease filled me in incremental doses. My dad’s moment of enlightenment didn’t bode well for my plan to get out of this punishment. Pai had told me he would e-mail my mom, but I hadn’t heard from her, so it was most likely an empty threat. Or she didn’t believe him. They didn’t get along, and I knew my mom thought my dad was kind of a nag.
Once I finished the dishes, we headed out. My dad was locking the door when Mr. Ramirez’s curtain flicked open and his face peeked through. “Good morning!” I said loudly. He cringed and closed the curtain.
“Remind me to bring him some food tonight as a thank-you,” my dad said with a sly grin as he shut the screen door.
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to poison it.”
We headed down the steps and said hello to the occasional neighbor on the way out of our complex. It was small, holding only twelve units arranged around a courtyard.
“Good morning, Adrian!” Mrs. Mishra called out as she watered her roses in a lavender Juicy Couture sweats combo. She glared at me. “Clara.”
I glared back at the little old Indian lady. “Mrs. Mishra.” The hose got an extra glare. A couple of years ago she had seen me making out with my boyfriend and drawn that same exact hose on us.
My entire apartment complex was basically a bunch of old-people narcs. Good thing there were only a few things that would actually piss my dad off: boyfriends in the apartment, drugs, and being a jerk to elders. Being a jerk to jerks was sanctioned, but old people were off-limits. My dad asked for very little, and I was pretty good at avoiding any of his major no-no’s. So this sudden, very strict grounding and his forcing me to have a summer job was something new. I hoped it wasn’t an alarming trend.
It was still early enough in the morning that there was a chill in the air. Our summers were brutal scorchers that lasted until Thanksgiving, but the evenings and mornings were almost always cool no matter how hot the day. I hugged my sweatshirt tighter around me as I kept in step with my dad. The parking lot where the KoBra lived, called the commissary, was a few blocks away from our apartment, and Rose was going to meet us there.
We walked down our hilly street filled with duplexes, old Craftsman homes, and small apartment complexes like ours. Just a block down, we hit Echo Park Avenue, one of the main drags in our neighborhood. Palms and mature jacaranda trees lined the street where the beginning of commuter traffic passed by. A coffee shop was already bustling with hipster moms pushing strollers. Right across the street was a little liquor store in a strip mall where two workers were changing shifts for the day—the one off duty getting into his ancient Toyota Corolla, the car protesting with a groan when it started.