The Way You Make Me Feel(11)

While we were waiting on the corner for the light to turn green, a homeless white man sporting a full head of snowy hair and wearing a soccer jersey walked up to us.

My dad held up a hand. “Jerry, I don’t have cash today.”

Jerry cackled, his blue eyes flashing with good humor before he spat onto the sidewalk. “Maybe not you, but Clara here?”

I shook my head. “I wish. I’m about to spend my entire summer working on this guy’s food truck.”

“Bummer,” he said. Jerry used to be a bike messenger in the 1960s. One too many concussions brought him to our neighborhood streets, but he claimed he loved the “yokeless life.”

My dad promised him some food when we were done at the end of the day, and we crossed the street. A couple of blocks later, we passed by my favorite fruit stand, a rainbow-umbrella-adorned cart run by a middle-aged Latina woman named Kara who sliced fruit, then tossed it with lime juice and chili powder. Fruit crack, basically.

“Bom dia, Adrian,” she said with a wink.

He winked back at her. “Buenos días, Kara.”

I rolled my eyes as we walked past. “You’re like freaking Mr. Rogers of Echo Park.”

“That reminds me, been thinking of getting a cardigan.”

I stopped in my tracks. “WHAT?”

My dad kept walking, pulling on his mirrored Wayfarers. “No, Shorty, they’re cool now.”

I kicked a purple jacaranda blossom. “Cool for grandpas like you.”

“When are you gonna learn that I’m just innately cool?” He had the nerve to do a little spin. My dad used to be a break-dancer back in the day; it’s how he got my mom’s attention. With his sweet moves.

My feet flew as I walked ahead of him. “New rule: you must always walk five feet away from me.”

But that only got me to the commissary quicker—and waiting for us, standing in the middle of the parking lot holding a giant Starbucks cup, was Rose Carver.





CHAPTER 6

“Right on time, atta girl!” my dad bellowed, raising his hand for a high five.

Rose awkwardly held up her hand, and he slapped it with gusto. Then she swept her eyes down to her feet, looking away shyly. God. Everyone crushed on my dad. It was so offensive.

We didn’t greet each other. I looked at her outfit, though—sweat shorts over a black bodysuit. She caught me looking at her and said, “What?” Then she adjusted her hair. “Because of this punishment, I have to squeeze in a barre in the morning.”

“Whatever that means,” I said with a yawn.

My dad interrupted us. “Okay right, shorties, here’s the deal. Today’s going to be KoBra 101. We’re gonna go over all the basics, and you’ll also shadow me to get a feel for what a normal day is like. Understood?”

I nodded at the same time Rose replied, “Yes,” in a nice, clear voice. Teacher’s pet until the end.

My dad spread his arms wide. “This mild-mannered parking lot is actually what we food truck people call a commissary. It’s where we park our trucks, plug in for the night, dump out our oil, clean up the trucks, refill our ice, and even keep some of our food in the industrial kitchen back there.” He pointed to a small concrete building in the corner of the lot. The rest of the lot was closed in on three sides by tall pine trees. Although I had never formally worked the KoBra, I’d visited the truck and the commissary plenty of times. With all the truck stuff dumped out here, it was kind of gross, but I always liked it anyway—it felt tucked away from the rest of the city.

“Rose, can you find the KoBra?” Pai asked, arms crossed.

Setting this up like a pop quiz was wise. Rose’s eyes lit up as she inspected the four trucks parked neatly against one of the walls of trees.

She instantly zeroed in on the black one. My dad nodded. “You got it. Let’s go over and introduce you to her.”

I hated when my dad gendered the stupid truck. To retaliate, I called my boobs Brock and Chad, which my dad hated with equal fervor.

We walked over, and Rose’s mouth dropped open slightly.

The truck was painted a glossy black, and an illustration of a coiled snake sat beneath pink neon letters that spelled out THE KOBRA. The headlights were painted to look like menacing eyes, and the grille was a mouth. Gleaming gold. The first time I’d seen it, I felt an intense wave of secondhand embarrassment very specific to kids with parents who tried to be cool.

“Wow,” Rose managed to utter.

My dad beamed. “Isn’t she just completely rad?”

No, Pai, you are not innately cool.

“Very … eye-catching!” She was good, that one.

“If you want your eye to catch gonorrhea,” I muttered. The truck only seated two people, so we got into Rose’s car to trek to a few different markets to pick up produce: onions, parsley, garlic, green onions, red pepper, tomato, and pear. The KoBra did supply pickups Mondays and Fridays and kept most of the ingredients in the commissary kitchen before we prepped on the truck. Thank God that on most non-supply days we started prepping around nine a.m.

“Couldn’t we get this stuff from like, Vons?” I asked as we stopped at one of the markets in East Hollywood’s Thai town. It was a tiny one, owned by a woman listening to a loud Thai talk show on the radio while ignoring us.