Fresh Off the Boat Read online

  “Did you guys have fun at the party?”

  What a question. I pondered it for a while before replying. “Yeah. Sort of.”

  “Cool. Catch you later,” he said.

  The day before semester break, there was another bombshell.

  We were all sitting around in homeroom, when the dean walked in and asked to talk to Whitney. Whitney gave Georgia and Trish a look, like, Who me? And it’s probably nothing. Whitney’s parents make huge donations to Gros. But everyone was whispering excitedly. Whitney didn’t come back to classes the whole day either.

  I saw Isobel at the end of the day by the lockers. She had changed into another crazy outfit, this one involving bright Hawaiian prints on a tank top underneath her regulation button-down. She had a huge grin on her face.

  “What’s up?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No!”

  “Incroya—”

  “Isobel! Tell me! Oh God, is it something about the web site again?”

  “Whitney got suspended!” Isobel cheered.

  Apparently, several of the other girls on the “slut” list had very angry parents who made a lot of noise and registered complaints about the notorious web site. The advanced computer class did a little Internet digging, and they figured out who had put it up before lunch.

  “She paid for the site with her dad’s credit card! What an imbecile!” Isobel shook her head. “She should have known she would get caught.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The dean got really mad. They threatened to kick her out, because, you know, the whole Grosvernor Code of Conduct. But in the end they just gave her a warning and suspended her for a month.”

  “Suspended? Who cares? That’s like a vacation.”

  “Yeah and it’s Christmas break soon anyway, so she won’t even miss anything.”

  “Big deal.”

  Isobel arched her eyebrow. “Well, it does mean she’s not allowed to participate in school activities…”

  “You mean?”

  Isobel nodded.

  The Soirée. The Montclair Academy–Grosvernor School winter ball that Whitney had so meticulously planned, with the whole Titanic theme. Speaking of sunken ships.

  For the first time that day, I laughed.

  “V, I have to tell you something,” Isobel said, with a suddenly serious look on her face.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “It’s, uh, about Claude,” she said, a guilty flush on her cheeks.

  And suddenly, I knew what she was going to tell me. I had known all along.

  “He asked me to go to the Soirée with him,” Isobel said, blushing more.

  “That’s great!” I said, feeling a little sad nonetheless. Even if I didn’t like him anymore, it was still difficult to hear he liked someone else, even if that someone else was my best friend.

  “Really? But I thought you had a mad crush on him?”

  “Nah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Uh-huh. Claude’s not really my type anyway.”

  She gave me a quick, close hug—a real one this time, without the fancy air kisses.

  “So maybe we can double-date, then! With you and Freddie, since you’re going.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I told you, I’m grounded.”

  “Oh no!” She frowned. “It won’t be the same without you.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t feel like going anyway.”

  “Want a ride?” she asked, motioning to her Vespa.

  “To the BART station? Sure,” I said.

  I held on to the back of Isobel’s purple jacket all the way to Market Street. We coasted along up and down the steep hills of San Francisco. Sailboats were docked in the bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge glowed in the sunset. It was a beautiful day in December. The air was crisp and there was a smell of chestnuts in the air. I only had a light jacket over my blazer, but I wasn’t at all cold.

  GOOGLE CACHED LIST:

  www.topfiveslutsatgrosvernorschool.com

  1. Vicenza Arambullo

  2. Stacey Bennett

  3. Monica Wong

  4. Claudia Jenkins

  5. Elyse Russell

  THIS SITE HAS BEEN TAKEN DOWN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  18

  Double-Diamond Deals on the Washers

  AFTER FINALS, SCHOOL let out for Christmas break, otherwise known as Ski Week, when all the rich families took their kids to Vail, Aspen, or Sun Valley. Of course, I was headed for the slopes of the Sears cafeteria. Which was fine, since it’s not like anyone in my family knows how to ski anyway. But I hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be so bad. After Claude asked Isobel to the Soirée, Isobel convinced her family not to spend three weeks in France like they always did, so she could stay in the city and attend the Soirée. I’d promised to help her find a ball dress if Mom ever let me out of the house again.

  Mom still wasn’t speaking to me, which was hard. We had never been mad at each other this long. Plus, Paul continued to avoid the cafeteria. If he didn’t want to see me, then I didn’t want to see him either. Still, I did miss him. I hadn’t noticed how boring it was at the cafeteria without him. Before, I had always looked forward to his visits. Now the day stretched out for hours without any flavor or friendship.

  The good news was that after my grandmother bribed the judge, who was an old friend of my late grandfather, all charges against Cousin Norbert and his video stores were dropped and our reality-tape smuggling business was back, stronger than ever. Dad’s checks were accepted at Costco, and he was even able to take out a loan for a little seed money to launch a new cafeteria. He had finally succeeded in persuading the JCPenney store manager to let us open an employees’ cafeteria in their store across the mall.

  The bad news was that one of my new tasks was to push a loaded cart of supplies from Sears to JCPenney, from one end of the mall to the other. The cart always clacked loudly on the fake cobblestone floor, and there was nothing I hated more than the stares from all the puzzled strangers as I pushed an oversized grocery cart out in public. I despaired of ever being cool.

  One afternoon Dad helped me load the cart, promising to hold down the fort while I made my delivery.

  “Tell Mom I’m going to stop by there when you come back,” Dad said.

  I nodded and steeled myself for the ritual of mortification as I left the cocoonlike safety of the Sears back office and emerged in the blazingly cheerful, fluorescent-lit center of the mall. I wheeled by Ann Taylor, Express, Jeans West, and Contempo, wishing for the nth time that I was just an anonymous salesclerk folding sweaters instead of some glorified delivery girl. I noticed a skinny guy in an Incubus T-shirt sitting on one of the brick benches. I swerved to avoid a pile of trash on the floor, and a few items from the cart fell out. I swore softly as I tried to maintain my composure.

  “Here.”

  I looked up and saw that it was Paul picking up a few stray oranges. He ran after a melon that rolled off to the side.

  “Thanks,” I said, putting the fruit back. “By the way—I wanted to ask you…” I said. But when I looked up, he was gone.

  Well. So much for that. I craned my neck to try to see where he had disappeared to, but he wasn’t anywhere. I sighed and continued my snail’s pace, careful not to lose control of the cart this time.

  The JCPenney store was a lot like Sears, except the cafeteria was located on the second floor instead of the ground level. The cafeteria was a tiny little corner in a back room. Unlike in the Sears store, we didn’t have our own private back room where Mom could cook hot food and where I liked to hide from our customers. My parents had set up a little table with a cash register, rented a professional glass-door fridge, bought a microwave, and hung up a blackboard. I smiled when I saw the Daily Specials sign and Dad’s customary “Havanada!” greeting. It was five o’clock, and there was not a soul in the cafeteria.

/>   “Hi, Mom,” I said awkwardly. We had hardly exchanged a word to each other since the big fight. She had reluctantly given me back my computer when I told her I needed to use it for homework for finals, but my cell phone was still in lockdown, as was my modem connection. “Dad says he’s going to come visit when I return to Sears.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I helped her put the bags and boxes away in the tiny storage closet behind the fridge. As she turned to hand me the soup warmers, I noticed she was crying.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, shaking her head.

  “C’mon, Mom. Don’t cry, please.”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t apologized to me.”

  “I apologized to you that night!”

  She shook her head. “But you didn’t come up to my room to see me afterward. I was waiting for you, and you never came.”

  I had always seen my mother as this larger-than-life presence. She was the most glamorous person I knew—and her wit and her tongue were sharp, I myself had not been immune to her lashings. I never really saw her as a person. I only knew her as my mother. But when I looked at her, so tiny in her dark blue apron, I realized then that she was having as much, if not more trouble, adjusting to life in America than I was. I was fourteen. She was forty. We both had a long way to go.

  “I love you, Mom. You know I do,” I said, starting to cry myself and letting all the pent-up feeling of the last weeks out in a rush. It was just too hard—the silence; the awkwardness; the long, quiet nights when I locked myself in my room while she watched television alone downstairs because Daddy was still at work and Brittany was already asleep.

  “Sige na, sige na,” Mom said. (It’s okay. It’s okay.)

  We held each other tightly. I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t know if I was forgiven, but I was glad to be hugged.

  Afterward, Mom said, “You know, we can’t return that dress, but we could try to get another one.”

  “It’s all right, Mom. I don’t want to go to the Soirée anyway.” This time, I wasn’t lying.

  FROM: [email protected]

  TO: [email protected]

  SENT: Monday, December 14, 6:45 PM

  SUBJECT: hellooo, stranger!

  Dear Peaches,

  What’s up? Sorry I’ve been MIA. Total drama this week. Claude and I broke up. And I’m fine. It’s no big deal. I realized he really wasn’t the guy for me anyway. The semester’s done, but I’m just going to stay home and help Mom at our restaurant. Nothing much to report. Dad says we might be able to come home next year for Christmas! But who knows? Dad always promises things that don’t always come true. But that’s okay. I think sometimes he just says nice things to make us all feel better. Anyway, that sucks your parents decided to go to Europe for break instead of coming to visit here.

  Love,

  V

  19

  One Woman’s Trash Is Another’s Treasure

  CHRISTMAS AT SEARS meant all the salesclerks wore white sweatshirts emblazoned with red stockings that declared NAUGHTY! or NICE! or FILL ’ER UP! Some of the clerks even donned red fluffy Santa hats with puffy pom-poms on the ends.

  At first I was repulsed, thinking about how at Grosvernor we had celebrated the holidays by singing French noëls in the Belvedere. But by the next weekend I had gotten into the spirit of things and I went to work wearing white stockings that read MERRY CHRISTMAS on the right leg and HAPPY NEW YEAR on the left one. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

  But I wasn’t at Sears a lot. Once school let out, almost every day I took the train into the city so I could accompany Isobel to almost every designer boutique in town. Mom and Dad hired their first employee, a Filipino immigrant who was a cousin of a friend of a coworker of Freddie’s mom, who had just moved to San Francisco. I was finally free.

  Isobel and I went to Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Saks and looked at everything, from voluminous princessy dresses to sleek pantsuits. At the Gucci store on Union Square, Isobel convinced me to try on dresses as well, even though I had nowhere to wear them. The salesclerks glared at us the whole time, but Isobel was blithely oblivious to the fact, and kept picking out thousand-dollar dresses from the racks. It was the same at Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel. Isobel knew her parents would never buy her such an expensive dress, but she said it was criminal the way they didn’t let you even try them on even if you weren’t buying them. “Fashion should be for everybody,” she said.

  At Vera Wang, I sat on plush velvet-covered cushions waiting for Isobel as she tried on her dresses for the Soirée. She disappeared into a dressing room with a few choice pieces.

  “What do you think?”

  I looked up expecting to find Isobel and instead saw Carter O’Riordan, who was trying on a heavenly peach-colored column gown. “Is it too much?” she asked underneath folds of chiffon.

  “It’s so pretty,” I said, flattered she would ask my opinion.

  Isobel walked out in a strapless number and said hi to Carter.

  “Are you guys going to the dance?” Carter asked.

  “I’m not,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Oui, I am.” Isobel nodded.

  “Right. With Claude.” She smiled and turned to me. “Too bad you aren’t coming. Margy McCarthy’s having a big after-ball party at her beach house in Marin. You should come,” Carter said, examining her silhouette in the mirror.

  “Maybe we will,” Isobel said.

  “What about you, Vicenza?”

  “Me? Nah. It’s okay.”

  “I mean, even if you don’t feel like going to the ball, I totally get it. But you can always just come to the party. I wouldn’t even go to this thing, but my mom is totally making me,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “I’ll think about it,” I allowed, smiling.

  Isobel shook her head at the black strapless dress and emerged a few minutes later from the dressing room wearing a wedding dress complete with a big, poofy, cupcakelike skirt and a lengthy train.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “It was left in the dressing room. I couldn’t resist!” Isobel giggled.

  “Now that is a dress,” Carter agreed. “But if you wear that, I think Claude is going to have a heart attack.”

  The next afternoon, disgusted with the slim pickings at all the shops, we hit every thrift store in the city, but when nothing turned up, I took her to the Salvation Army in South San Francisco.

  “This is the best!” Isobel said, filling her basket with groovy 70s style tracksuits, dirndl skirts, wool gauchos, and a vintage Hermès bag. “How come you never inform me about this place?”

  We each left with tie-neck polka-dot blouses, embroidered cardigan sweaters with mink collars, and a pair of 40s-style Mary Jane shoes.

  But no Soirée dress.

  Nothing. We came up empty. We just couldn’t find the Dress. They were all too short or too long, too big or too tight. Or not Gallic enough. It seemed a completely hopeless enterprise. Until the day before the Soirée, when I suddenly got a brilliant idea…

  This time Isobel took the train all the way out to the suburbs to visit me at Sears, and I had fun showing her all the cool things about my job. She couldn’t believe there was so much food at our cafeteria—and that she could eat anything she wanted. She stuffed herself full of pastrami sandwiches, and I even taught her how to work the register. She gave everybody a cheerful “Bonjour” when they walked in. After we closed up shop, we took the bus to my house.

  “Your house is so cute,” she said. “I love all the patio furniture in the living room. C’est très avant-garde!”

  I grinned, happy that Isobel didn’t think we were freaks. I didn’t mention that plastic furniture was all that we could afford.

  “Come on up,” I said, and took her to my room. “I have something for you.”

  I pulled it out of the closet and showed her.

  “Do you think you can maybe do something with this?�
�� I asked.

  An hour later, Isobel put on the DRESS.

  “You look gorgeous,” I told her.

  “You think?” she asked, pursing her lips.

  “It’s insane.”

  She was wearing the same dress Mom had bought me to wear to the Soirée but with a few Isobel-style variations. She had made dozens of vertical slashes in the hem, so instead of three proper layers, there was just one crazy explosion of tulle. And she had moved the butt bow, sewing it in a crossover style on the front bustline. It was crazy, kooky, wild, and very French. It looked perfect on her.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” she asked.

  “No, it’s a gift. Take it.”

  “I can’t believe that all this time you owned this amazing dress!”

  “Well, actually, my mom picked it out.”

  The last day of break, Isobel and I went to see Claude play lacrosse in the final championship. Since he passed geometry for the first semester, he was off academic probation and back on the team. I’d gotten my own grades in the mail, and was happy to see I passed geometry I with a B. Dad joked that it ruined the perfect pattern of my straight A’s, but I was relieved to have kept my scholarship. We saw Tess, Freddie’s girlfriend, in the stands and went up to sit next to her. I guessed she was there to see Freddie, who was still managing the team.

  “GO WILDCATS!!!” Isobel cheered, waving her orange-and-blue pom-poms wildly.

  Claude looked up and waved when he saw us in the bleachers.

  It was kind of weird not to be in love with him anymore. It left me feeling a little empty, since there was no one to fantasize about. No more writing my name with his in my notebooks or wondering if our kids would inherit his nose and my hair color. But it was gratifying to see how happy he and Isobel were. She said she would even teach him how to hold his liquor. She was French, so she knew all about that.

  A thunderous cheer exploded from the opposing side. The St. Stephen team was running up the field, passing the ball between them expertly, and the forward shot the ball straight for the Montclair net. It flew in an arc, and seemed a sure hit. The crowd gasped, then erupted in cheers when the Wildcats goalie caught it just in time.