Fresh Off the Boat Read online

  “Mon dieu!” Isobel exclaimed. We must have looked a sight—Claude in his boxers, me utterly drenched.

  “What’s going on?” Freddie asked, looking confused.

  “Let go!” I told Claude, grabbing the shower head away from his hand.

  “Nooo!” he screamed, taking it back.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  We both looked up and saw Whitney standing at the doorway between Freddie and Isobel.

  Boy, did she not look happy.

  Behind her was a crowd gathered in front of the bathroom because of all the commotion. Whitney’s face was so red, I could have sworn steam was pouring out of her nostrils. I’d never seen her so angry. Whitney was the queen of cool. She never lost her composure.

  I grabbed the shower head and pushed Claude off me.

  “Give it back, give it back!” he whined, meaning his new toy. Oh well. It was his house. I dropped it in the tub, and he picked it up with a happy smile on his face.

  “Have you been in there with him the whole time?” Whitney demanded.

  “Me? Yeah—we were locked in,” I explained, as Isobel helped me to my feet. I dripped fat wet drops on the tile. So much for my dry-clean-only dress. “It was an accident,” I told her, as Freddie handed me a towel.

  “You don’t say,” she snapped.

  “What’s your problem?” I asked her, still finding a lot of humor in the situation.

  “The whole time? It was just the two of you?”

  I didn’t even know what she was getting at. “Yeah, but it was all a mistake.”

  “Don’t you EVER come near him again!” she screeched.

  “Whatever,” I said, backing off.

  She shoved her way past me and glared at Claude, who was sitting in a couple of inches of water, fumbling with the shower nozzle. “Get up! Get up! And for God’s sake, put some clothes on!” she barked.

  Freddie and Isobel were still staring at me.

  “Can we go?” I said. “It’s way past my curfew, and I am so dead. But first, I really have to find another bathroom.”

  We closed the door behind us, just in time to hear Whitney scream.

  Claude had just found the shower’s on switch again.

  On the car ride home, everyone was silent. “We couldn’t find you for the longest time,” Isobel said. “We looked for you everywhere. And you did not answer your cell.”

  “I didn’t have it on me,” I explained. “I think I might have left it at your house.”

  “Yeah, we were really worried,” Freddie agreed. “So what did happen in there?”

  “I told you guys. I was locked in! By accident!”

  “Are you sure that’s all that happened?” Isobel asked.

  “Of course! What do you mean?”

  Freddie shrugged. It was only then I noticed that there was someone else in the car with us. “Hey, I’m V,” I said.

  “I’m Tess,” she said. She was the girl in Freddie’s beauty pageant picture. “Kamusta na?”

  I said I was okay. I looked at my watch. It was past midnight! My parents would think I was dead or, worse, kidnapped.

  FROM: [email protected]

  TO: [email protected]

  SENT: Friday, November 20, 1:30 AM

  SUBJECT: awesome party!

  So, I just got back from Claude’s total kick-ass bash! I’m still soooo tired. It was a major rager with tons of people. Super fun! His house was like, gi-normous. I couldn’t even find the bathroom! Seriously, you wouldn’t believe it—people were like cannonballing off the roof into the pool and the police came to break it up, just like in the movies! But during the whole thing, Claude never left my side. He was so attentive, we spent most of the party together. It was SO romantic, he told me how much he needed me, and I held his head in my lap and everything.

  Love,

  V

  15

  Diane Sawyer Is Always Right

  I WALKED IN THE door, fully expecting my parents to chew my ears off. Instead, the two of them were sitting on the couch with silly grins on their faces.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I said, hoping I had wiped off all traces of lipstick and mascara at Isobel’s, where I had changed out of my party clothes.

  “Vicenza!” Mom smiled. She stood up and gave me a hug.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It is?”

  “Didn’t you get any of our messages?” Dad asked.

  “No…um, and I would have called but I didn’t have my cell on me. Freddie’s car stalled on the freeway. He called Triple-A but no one came for hours…” I babbled. Freddie and I had agreed we would both blame car troubles for missing curfew.

  “We know. Tita Connie called and told us,” she said. Good old Freddie.

  “So you weren’t worried?” I asked suspiciously.

  “No, no. Freddie’s a good boy.”

  This was so unlike my parents. Even with Freddie involved, I couldn’t believe how mellow they were acting. Where was the lecture? The yelling? My parents had sat me down for five hours when I came home from the mall with a second piercing in my left ear. Dad had threatened to cut off my allowance forever, and Mom had said she had never been so disappointed. They both questioned what kind of evil influence “America was exerting on our daughter.” Just because I had gotten a second hole in my ear! It was a moot point since it got infected and I had to take the earring out. And here I was, walking in after my curfew the first time I had ever been out on a Friday night and they were cool with it? What was going on? Had they been replaced by aliens?

  Mom was beet red and couldn’t stop laughing. Dad was practically beaming. The two of them were acting seriously strange.

  “Mom, are you drunk?” I asked.

  “A little…a little. Daddy made some margaritas.” Mom giggled.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded. My parents never drank. Mom was practically allergic—every time she had a sip of wine her face turned purple.

  “Should we tell her?” Dad asked.

  “Why not? She’ll find out soon enough.” Mom laughed.

  “What?”

  The two of them turned.

  “WE WON THE LOTTERY!!”

  “WHAT?”

  “We won! Look, look!” Mom said, waving a piece of paper in the air. “We found it in the mailbox when Daddy finally got it open!”

  “We did?” I didn’t know what to think. I was seized by wild, irrational joy mingled with anxiety. Had we really won? Or were my parents simply out of their minds? It seemed too good to be true. But then Dad was so firm in his belief that one day things would work out for us, I was tempted to believe him. Why would my parents play such a cruel joke on me like this? My heart began to flutter wildly. Were all our problems with money truly over?

  Dad began shouting. “I told you! I told you!”

  “Dad’s numbers went through? Did we really win?” I asked, my voice squeaking. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I couldn’t breathe. We won LOTTO??? This was crazy.

  “No! No! The numbers, no! But, yes! We won! Here, look!” Mom thrust an envelope in my hand.

  “‘You may be a winner!’” I read aloud, my fingers shaking. It was a letter from the Publishers Clearing House, saying Mr. Jose Rizal Arambullo may have already won the grand prize of twenty-five million dollars in the annual sweepstakes. It almost made sense, since Dad certainly subscribed to a lot of their magazines. But as I continued to read the fine print, I began to realize my parents had made a colossal mistake. A disgustingly stupid, pathetic, moronic, absurd, only-an-immigrant-could-make-it mistake.

  “We didn’t win,” I said flatly, folding the paper.

  “What do you mean? It says we’re the top finalists! And that we may have already won,” Mom said, her voice quavering.

  “It says you may be a winner. It’s not quite the same as actually being the winner. And, anyway, if Dad had won, there’d be, like, a camera crew and Ed McMahon her
e. Where’s Ed McMahon, Mom? It’s just a scam, I can’t believe you guys fell for it. Diane Sawyer did a story on it on Primetime the other night.” Diane Sawyer had done a total exposé of it, and if they didn’t believe me, I knew they would believe Diane Sawyer.

  “Are you sure?” Mom asked.

  “Hindi tayo nanalo?” Dad asked. “Bakit?” (We didn’t win?! Why?)

  I explained to them how these companies worked, sending false, misleading information to bolster sales of their products. “It’s totally bogus, Dad.”

  “Bow-gus? What does that mean? Stop talking slang!” Mom said angrily.

  “It means it’s bunk, it’s a fraud, it’s a lie. There’s no twenty-five-million-dollar bounty waiting for us at the end of the rain bow!” I was quickly forgetting my relief at not being grounded for life and was becoming increasingly annoyed at how naïve my parents were acting. Wasn’t I supposed to be the kid here?

  “It’s not true? The letter? But it’s on official stationery. There’s even a seal on it!” Dad said indignantly.

  “Why would they lie? Why would anyone do that? It says we may have already won. All we need to do is send out for more magazines and we can claim our prize,” Mom argued.

  “I’m telling you, Mom. Diane Sawyer said it’s a scam.”

  “Diane said? Are you sure? Diane really said that?”

  “Positive.”

  My parents looked at me doubtfully, but Diane Sawyer’s word was unimpeachable in our house. They idolized her. She was their only source of news, next to Regis Philbin, Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Meredith Vieira, and all the rest of the women on The View.

  When the truth sank in, they began to get angry. “They shouldn’t be allowed to send letters like this! That’s a crime!” Dad said.

  “Imagine that, telling people they might have won the sweepstakes!”

  “We should sue!”

  “Buti nalang we didn’t tell anyone yet. Imagine how embarrassing that would have been! Thank God we waited for you!”

  “Mga tarantado!” (What wickedness!)

  Dad tore up the letter in a million little pieces in fury. “That’s what I think of that!” Then he looked at his watch. “Ayayay, it’s one in the morning!”

  “What are you doing home so late anyway?” Mom asked, suddenly focusing on the fact that I had broken my first-ever curfew.

  I should have kept my mouth shut.

  It took the better part of the weekend to cheer my parents up from the depression that not winning twenty-five-million dollars had wrought. I could overhear them talking in the kitchen while I did my homework. Things were looking bad. Cousin Norbert was under investigation, so the tape-smuggling business was still on hold, and my dad still hadn’t had any luck convincing the other Sears stores in the area to let us open up an Arambullo Food Services in their employees’ cafeterias. Dad’s import-export business was bringing in zero, and Mom had stopped selling homemade longanisas after Tita Connie and Tito Ebet asked for a “sales commission.” The “commission” from selling the sausages to their friends practically wiped out any profit my parents could derive from the business. Meanwhile, rent was due and the tuition bills were looming.

  On Saturday, Mom didn’t even come to the cafeteria with me. She had fallen ill with a cold, possibly from all the excitement. Dad had to drive me to Sears, and on the way there, he was philosophical about the entire thing.

  “You know, V, the thing is, we didn’t really think we had won,” he said, one hand on the steering wheel and the other draped over the open window.

  Dad was weaving in and out of traffic, cutting people off, and turning left and right without signaling. It had taken him three tries to get his driver’s license. Dad complained that Americans followed “too many rules.” In the Philippines, such things as traffic signals and turning lanes were nonissues. On the off chance that Dad was caught by the police, he would slip them a five-hundred-peso bill with his driver’s license. But Dad already had two points on his American license; he couldn’t afford another speeding ticket.

  “Careful, Dad, you almost hit that post,” I said, gripping the armrest of my seat tightly. I had never noticed how badly Dad drove back home, since everyone else drove the same way. I decided I preferred the American way, especially when the van suddenly racked up and down on speed bumps, which Dad drove over blithely without slowing down.

  “But there’s no saying that we didn’t win, either,” he said. “I sent the thing away.”

  “You ordered another magazine, Dad?” I groaned.

  “US Weekly. I don’t give up,” he said cheerfully. “Mark my words, one day, we will win. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “If you say so.”

  “So, how were the tryouts?”

  “All right,” I hedged. “It’s really competitive. I don’t know if we made it. Think Mom’s going to be okay?” I asked, changing the subject. I still couldn’t believe I’d gotten off so easily.

  “Oh yeah. She’ll be fine,” Dad said, whistling. “It’s just a cold.”

  Dad drove into the Costco lot. We had to pick up a week’s supply of food and paper goods for the cafeteria. Plus, Dad and I loved visiting Costco for the free food samples.

  “Look! Little hot dogs—let’s get some,” he said, just as we had stacked several bags of frozen chicken breasts on our cart.

  We munched our way through the special salsa, the fish crackers, the ginger mayonnaise, and the mini pizzas.

  “No need to get breakfast!” Dad said.

  The flat loading cart was stacked with towers of paper plates, Dixie cups, and napkins. We had several huge slabs of cold cuts, from ham to turkey breast. We began to unload on the rolling counter at the checkout. “Could you make sure not to tax us on the paper goods?” Dad asked. “They’re for resale.”

  The clerk nodded and resumed punching numbers. The total flashed as small red letters on the cash register: $334.40. Dad wrote a check and handed it to the clerk. She punched in several numbers and waited. “I’m sorry, sir. We can’t accept your check,” she said.

  “What?” Dad asked, a hand on his wallet. “Why?”

  “Sorry, sir, it says check unacceptable. Do you have a credit card? Or there’s an ATM machine over there,” the clerk said.

  I stood behind Dad. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

  Dad took the check back nervously. “No, no. Let’s go.”

  “Let’s go?” I asked dumbly. I didn’t understand.

  “I said let’s go,” Dad said in an irritated voice.

  I followed him out to the parking lot. It had taken us a good hour to shop for the supplies. We climbed into the van. “They wouldn’t take my check,” Dad said, almost to himself.

  I was scared. I couldn’t understand what just happened. Had we run out of money? What was going on? And what were we going to do? We were low on nacho chips and turkey breast, paper plates, and Kit Kat bars. How would I run the cafeteria without them?

  “Is everything okay?” I asked. I suddenly understood the desperate hopefulness my parents had showed last night. Things really were bad since the video store was raided. I tried not to think about it.

  “It’s okay,” Dad said. “We should have cash by tomorrow—we’ll do the shopping then,” he assured me, but I sensed a note of doubt in his voice.

  Dad dropped me off at Sears. I set up everything like I always did, and wished Mom were around to help me with the sandwiches. It was difficult having to run the register, sling drinks, and put together orders all by myself, and trying to explain why we didn’t have certain things on the menu was making me edgy. At the end of the day, I was practically wiped out from exhaustion. I sat on the table behind the counter and stretched my legs. My foot hit something small and metallic.

  I looked underneath the table. It was my missing cell phone. It must have fallen out of my backpack yesterday afternoon even before I got to Isobel’s.

  I pocketed it and looked up to see the doors swinging o
pen, happy to see a friendly face underneath a bright red baseball cap. But instead of coming up to the counter for his Pepsi, Paul just walked straight to the back. I heard him drop coins into the machine and the whirr-flop of the soda can as it fell to the bottom. I heard the door slam as he exited through the back door.

  Ooookay. That was strange. What was going on? Not even saying hello and then totally ignoring me. I pulled out my cell phone to complain to Isobel, and I noticed the message light was blinking.

  “You have four new messages,” the electronic machine voice said. “First message, Friday, 7:15 P.M. To play, press one.” I pressed the button.

  A guy’s deep voice.

  I dropped the phone. Oh my God.

  Last night was Friday.

  The Stephen King movie!

  Paul!

  I ran out the door after him. He was drinking his Pepsi by the open stacks of products, near the Craftsman drills and tool sets. “Hey!” I said.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, turning away.

  “Paul, please, I’m so sorry about last night. It just slipped my mind. I am so lame. I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It’s cool.”

  “It’s totally a big deal for me. I’m so embarrassed. I hope you didn’t have to wait too long.”

  “Really, it’s no big deal.”

  “Look, things are really weird right now…my family is like, falling apart… My Dad’s check was rejected at Costco… Last night they thought they won the lottery,” I began to ramble incoherently. “I’m just so out of it…”

  “Look, don’t even worry about it,” he said.

  “Okay.” I shrugged. There was a long, awkward silence. I felt so bad. I couldn’t believe I had completely forgotten about it.

  “Hey, are you done with those books I lent you?” he asked abruptly.