Fresh Off the Boat Read online

  “Omigod! It’s like three twenty! Where is he? We’re going to be late!” Whitney said, holding up her arm and frowning at her Cartier tank watch that glinted in the sun. I nervously twiddled with the frayed strap of the Fossil watch my mom had bought me in Hong Kong for my thirteenth birthday.

  “We could always take the Spirit bus!” Georgia shrieked.

  “You cannot be serious!” Whitney said, crinkling her nose. The three of them dissolved into another round of giggles.

  It was so easy for them—they were the type of girls who probably received a dozen valentines on February fourteenth ever since the third grade. Not to be petty, but they weren’t even that pretty. Oh, I guess Whitney is—she has the kind of hair and skin that glows and the kind of figure (long, slender limbs, small waist) that every girl envies. But Georgia is slightly cross-eyed, and Trish’s ears stick out. I’d noticed Trish looked Asian but had a Spanish last name. “Are you Filipino?” I’d inquired on the first day of school. “Yes” she’d said and turned away. Apart from the two Chinese girls who spent every second together in the computer lab, Trish was the only other Asian girl in my class. But so much for that.

  I had one foot on the step of the bus when a silver BMW convertible powered up the hill and pulled up in front of the school behind the bus. The car was filled with the same boys from the movie theater. Several lacrosse sticks were piled vertically on the backseat.

  “They’re heeere!” Trish squealed. “Omigod! Do I have lipstick on my teeth?”

  Georgia demanded, “Hand me my hairbrush!”

  “Quick! I need to blot with a tissue!” The two of them disappeared in a cloud of hair spray and a frenzy of makeup application. Only Whitney was nonchalant, picking at her cuticles as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  They each straightened up as the car parallel parked in front of them. “Hey, guys,” the girls cooed.

  Whitney stood up and walked toward the car, slinging her Kate Spade messenger bag over one shoulder. “Cute car,” she said.

  The driver, a cutie who looked vaguely familiar, winked at her. “Nice T-shirts,” he said. One of the boys climbed out and opened the door to let the girls inside.

  “Shotgun!” Whitney called, before sliding in the front seat. Georgia and Trish squeezed into the back with what looked like the rest of the lacrosse team. They pulled out just as a red motor scooter shot out of a hidden driveway.

  The BMW swerved to the side to miss the scooter. “Watch out!” someone yelled, as the driver slammed on the brakes and the car skidded for a few feet, clipping the scooter and plowing through the crowd in front of the bus. Girls screamed as backpacks and banners and pom-poms flew everywhere. I was pushed backward, and fell on top of the girl who’d been driving the scooter. We were the only ones hit. She lay sprawled next to me, her legs still wrapped around the bike. I was dazed and disoriented but miraculously unhurt, save my bloody palms and knees, which had scraped the sidewalk.

  “Jesus! Are you guys okay?”

  I blinked and almost fainted again when I saw the concerned face of Tobey Maguire looking down at me. Oh. My. God. Was I dreaming?

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said, not knowing if it was true but feeling the need to reassure him nonetheless.

  The girl and I disentangled ourselves from each other. I was still shaking, but it wasn’t from the accident. I realized it wasn’t Tobey himself but the guy I’d seen at the movie theater Friday night. AND HE WAS GORGEOUS!!! He kneeled down next to us and helped my fellow victim to her feet.

  “MERDE!” she said, taking off her helmet and shaking her hair, which was cut short in a pixie. She wore cat’s-eye glasses that gave her a cosmopolitan air. I recognized her as the French girl who’d just started at Gros. Whitney and her friends had immediately dubbed her Eurotrash because she wore a purple leather jacket with “Cavalli” scripted on the back instead of Patagonia fleece hoodies like everyone else.

  “Sorry about that,” he told her.

  “Next time, please observe where you are going!” she scolded, assessing the damage to her vehicle and dusting gravel off her jacket. She propped up the scooter and inspected it carefully. A torrent of foreign words exploded from her lips when she noticed the mirror was cracked.

  “Oh, man, that sucks,” he said, peering at it. “Listen, tell me your name and your phone number and I’ll pay for it. My insurance will cover it.”

  She looked up at him skeptically and shrugged. “Oh well, it’s not a bother. It is also my fault. I should have been more the vigilance.”

  “No, seriously, I insist. I feel terrible,” he said.

  I was still on the sidewalk, and slowly picked myself up, marveling at the torn jeans she wore under her uniform. They looked just like the ones Hilarie was wearing on TRL the other day.

  “Listen, let me give you my number. Call and tell me how much I owe you, okay?” he said, looking around for a piece of paper or a pen.

  He spotted me still holding my GO WILDCATS!!!! banner. “Can I tear a piece off?”

  “Um, sure,” I said, as he tore off a small wedge.

  I handed him a pen from my backpack, which had miraculously survived the collision intact.

  “Thanks.” He nodded, scribbling his name. I peered over his shoulder. Claude Caligari! (How cute a name is that?) And his phone number (quickly committed to memory). He handed her the paper and she folded and stuffed it into her jacket pocket.

  “DUDE! WE’VE GOTS TO GO! GAME TIME!” A loud voice yelled. The posse in the convertible started honking the horn, and I could see Whitney looking pissed as she peered through the windshield.

  “All right, already! You guys are okay, right?” he asked again. “Seriously, I feel terrible,” he said, patting my shoulder.

  I nodded. “I’m fine, really.” A popular boy touched me! I’m never going to wash this blazer ever again!

  “See you guys at the game?”

  “Sure.” I smiled. The French girl climbed back on her scooter and didn’t seem to notice him.

  He hurried back to the car, taking long, loping strides. I watched as he fired up the engine and drove off slowly, waving to us as he turned the corner. Only then did I realize the Spirit bus had also left. “Oh no!” I said, as the yellow school bus lumbered down the hill. I started to run after it, but my knees were shaky, and my palms were starting to hurt. I didn’t notice until then that little bits of gravel were embedded in my skin.

  “You’re not going anywhere. Vi-chen-za, right?” the French girl asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, amazed that she pronounced my name correctly. My parents named me after the city in the Veneto in Italy, where they honeymooned, and I had yet to meet anyone who said it correctly. I’d learned to answer to “Vi-jen-za,” “Visen-za,” or “Vi-ken-za.” In Manila, they had skipped the issue completely by calling me “V.”

  “I’m Isobel Saint-Pierre,” she said, smiling. “I think maybe we should both go to the clinic.”

  We hobbled back together to the large white Georgian-style mansion that housed the upper form, her scooter rolling silently between us.

  “Cool Vespa,” I said, patting the seat.

  “Thanks.” Isobel smiled.

  “But don’t you have to be sixteen to drive one?”

  “Yes, but I have diplomatic immunity,” she said airily.

  “Really?”

  “Well, I think so. I’m a French citizen. Anyway, I’m fourteen-and-a-half. That should count, shouldn’t it?”

  I didn’t think it did, but I didn’t want to tell her that.

  “You’re from France?”

  “Paris. But Papa moves a lot for work. He is a university professor. We were in New York last year. They wouldn’t let me have a scooter there, since they were too frightened the traffic would kill me. But they said I could have one in San Francisco, even if it’s a little crazy getting up and down the hills.”

  I noticed a Spider-Man sticker on her book bag. “Oh my god, are you into Tobey Maguire,
too?” I asked, showing her the same sticker on my three-ring binder.

  “He is a god!” She laughed.

  Isobel left her scooter on the sidewalk, and we walked through the double-height bronze doors. The elderly receptionist was closing up for the day, but she told us the clinic was still open.

  Inside the great hall, a catering company was setting up for the evening. Grosvernor was a designated historical landmark, and after hours, the school was one of the most sought-after event spaces in the city. A long banquet table was laden with steaming silver buffet pans, plates, and assorted cutlery.

  “Mmm, something smells delicious!” Isobel declared. She walked over to the nearest one and opened the lid. “Shrimp fritters! Très bien! My favorite!” she said, swiping a few with a napkin.

  “Isobel!” I said, scandalized, looking around to see if any of the scurrying tuxedoed waiters or white-jacketed chefs had noticed.

  “Want one?” she asked, popping another into her mouth.

  I shook my head, but it was seriously tempting. I was amazed at her brazenness. My best friend back in Manila, Peaches, is just like me—neither of us would ever do anything to break the rules. We’ve never even jaywalked.

  We tiptoed past a harried woman in a headset barking orders and trudged up the winding marble stairs to the nurse’s office on the fourth floor, Isobel still munching on the pilfered treats.

  “Here,” she said, and before I could protest, she brusquely placed a warm, flaky shrimp in my hand.

  I was frightened—could they kick me out of school for being an accomplice to an hors d’oeuvres thief? But, on the other hand, I was kind of hungry. I nodded my thanks and devoured it whole. I wiped my sticky fingers on my skirt and followed her into the clinic.

  As the nurse cleaned and bandaged our wounds, we compared schedules. I was pleased to learn that besides being in the same English class, we had lunch at the same time—G period, which meant I might have someone to eat with in the cafeteria. Lately, I’d taken to sneaking my sandwiches into the library.

  “Ouch!” Isobel yelped as the nurse applied antiseptic to her scratch. I ended up with matching Band-Aids on each knee but at least my palms had stopped throbbing.

  Isobel offered to drive me home, but I explained I lived in South San Francisco—and not in the Bayview or Excelsior district but in a different town altogether, forty-five minutes away, which declared itself SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO: THE INDUSTRIAL CITY in mile-high capital letters on a hill. Just like the HOLLY-WOOD sign but not.

  We said good-bye, and I watched her ease her scooter out and drive it slowly down the tree-lined block. When she got to the corner, she waved before disappearing down Fillmore Street. I walked up another block to take the bus.

  Usually, Dad picked up Brittany and me from school, but since I was supposed to be going to the game with the Spirit Club, he had already gotten her earlier. They were both waiting for me at his office downtown, a twenty-minute ride on the Jackson Street bus. I liked meeting Dad at his office since his building was across from Market Street, where I could hang out at the Gap, Rolo’s, Tower Records, and Nordstrom.

  The only thing I didn’t like were the pink mohawked punks who loitered around Market Street in full studded-leather-and-torn-T-shirt regalia. I was always a little afraid of them. I didn’t understand what they were calling me at first, but I soon learned it wasn’t very nice. They never failed to comment whenever I walked by—yelling out “FOB!” (fresh off the boat), which infuriated me since I had arrived in this country on a Boeing 747. I managed to hurry by without arousing their interest, however. Perhaps they were having an off day.

  “Anong nangyari sa iyo?” Dad asked, when I arrived at Arambullo Import Trading. He shook his head at me when he saw the Band-Aids on my hands and knees. “Akala ko you were going to the game?”

  “Wala, I fell. I missed the bus.” I shrugged, walking over to greet him with a kiss on the cheek.

  “You should be more careful!” he said. Dad always got angry as a way of expressing concern. When I was little, I was terrified whenever I hurt myself because Dad’s wrath was so much more frightening than the pain of any cuts or scrapes.

  I dropped my book bag on the floor, where Brittany was stretched out, coloring with crayons in a book. “Hi, Ate,” she said, without looking up. My parents insisted Brittany call me “ate” the proper title for “big sister” as customary in Filipino families.

  “V, you know you can just call me V,” I whispered, since I was trying to discourage the habit.

  Dad’s office was just big enough to hold the three of us with all of his furniture. When you opened the door, it hit the guest chair. In the middle of the room was a big black metal desk with a battered old computer he had bought at a garage sale, a phone, and an ancient fax machine. It was so old it still used the shiny paper that spooled through in a continuous sheet that you had to rip off at the top. There was a filing cabinet wedged behind the desk on which Mom had placed a goldfish bowl with one lone goldfish. “For luck!” she said, explaining a Chinese superstition. A ceramic kitten with its paw sticking up stood guard on top of the minifridge. (“It’s supposed to bring in money! Japanese good luck charm!”) There was a pineapple-shaped ashtray and a pineapple-shaped coffee mug. (Hawaiians believed pineapples brought prosperity.) Mom believed in adopting as many superstitions as she could—you never know which one will work, she always said. My dad ran an import-export business, to bring Philippine products to American sellers and vice versa. So far, despite the numerous lucky charms, he’d had absolutely no luck.

  In Manila, my parents had owned one of the nicest restaurants in Makati, and my dad had been an investment banker who owned his own company, Arambullo Investments. He had the biggest office in the building on the top floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows and white shag carpeting. He had three secretaries: one to take calls, one to file, and another just to order Christmas gifts. The few times I’d visited my dad at his office, I was always amazed—everyone, from the bank tellers to the messengers to the receptionists and VP’s seemed to know who I was. “Mr. Arambullo’s kid, right?” “Oh, the daughter of the Big Boss!” Mom said that everyone at the office was scared of my dad, so I liked marching in, bursting in on his meetings or while he was on the phone or with a guest. Dad would shush me, but he would never ask me to leave. Instead, I would sit on one of the black leather couches next to the conference table and look out at the view or else admire the framed pictures of lions and waterfalls that I’d drawn which were his office’s sole decoration.

  “Can I go to Nordstrom?” I asked.

  “No, I’m done here,” Dad said, pulling out his briefcase. He placed a few file folders inside. “Bri-tta-ny, pack up na.”

  My sister nodded and started carefully putting away her things. Brittany is very particular about her stuff. We once had a huge fight when I tore a piece of paper from her notebook and left the little frayed edges on the ring. Unlike me, she hates to make a mess.

  I glanced at paper on the top of my dad’s desk. It was a memo about Philippine lumber being a great source of wood for pencils and rulers. “Ask about our low prices and international delivery.” In the three months we’d lived here, he’d only been able to sell one order of pencils and one order of rulers to a school-supply company in Minnesota.

  Brittany and I waited in the dim hallway while Dad locked up his office. He always wore a suit and a tie to work, even though he was the company’s sole employee. He looked tired and drained. His suit jacket was frayed at the edges. According to my parents, moving to America was supposed to be our “new adventure”—halfway between an exciting journey and a long-term vacation. We never really talked about home, and never once did anybody in my family ever mention how much they would like to go back there. Or how much we missed it. Not only was I homesick for my friends and our extended family but I also longed for our old life. But my parents made it clear that it wasn’t an option, although I still didn’t really understand why not.
r />   In any case, leaving Manila did seem pretty final. My mom cried when we sold our house, and I’d sat quietly while neighbors and strangers appraised our things and put bids on them—my parents’ wedding china and silver, the custom-made carved napa-wood coffee table, the Viking range.

  On the way out, like he always does, Dad stopped by Gino’s deli to buy a lottery ticket. He always plays the same numbers: 7, 29, 22, and 6—our birthdays. Dad was inspired by a Filipino man he knew who won the lottery. Mang Pedro used to be our gardener in Manila until he moved to Texas. After he hit the fifty-million-dollar jackpot, his grown children immigrated to America to be with him. When they arrived at the airport, they showed the INS officer the newspaper clipping of their father holding up the humongous check, to prove that they could afford to live here. True story. Dad still thinks this could happen to us.

  Alfonse, who owns Gino’s deli, solemnly wished us good luck after handing Dad his daily lottery ticket, and the three of us walked to the garage under the building where the van was parked.

  On the way home, I thought about my dad and the lottery obsession. He was so sure we would hit the jackpot one day. Maybe delusion ran in the family, because my knees still ached from almost being run over, but all I could think about was how Claude’s hand had pressed gently on my shoulder. If he hadn’t almost killed me, we would never have met. Claude Caligari—I savored the syllables in my head. He has the nicest eyes, I thought. And he had really looked concerned about my welfare, not just scared that he might get in trouble or anything.

  We drove by the marina before we hit the freeway. In the distance, I could see boys in brightly colored orange-and-blue jerseys shouldering their sticks and walking off the field. A few girls in Gros uniforms were walking toward the dependable yellow school bus parked on the corner. I squinted, but I couldn’t see a silver convertible anywhere.

  The game was over. I wondered who won.

  FROM: [email protected]

  TO: [email protected]

  SENT: Monday, October 5, 9:30 PM