Parachutes Read online

  Hey. Just want to say bye. I’m leaving today . . .

  I pause and delete it.

  “The driver’s picking you guys up at LAX,” my dad says as we arrive at Pudong International Airport. “His name is Tong. We use him all the time.”

  My mom, who is going with me to LA, adds Tong’s contact into her phone as Patrick, our driver, pulls up to the curb. We get out, and Patrick starts unloading all our suitcases—we have so many, thank God we’re flying business. My dad jumps on a call.

  When all the suitcases are loaded onto the cart, my dad gets off his call and we walk into the airport and check in. As the woman at the business-class counter hands us our boarding passes, I hear someone calling my name. I turn and see Teddy running toward us. He’s carrying roses and a card.

  “Claire!” he exclaims.

  He throws his arms around me, a messy embrace of flowers and hair. I wait for him to catch his breath while my parents stare on.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I acted like an idiot.”

  They were the words I’d been waiting for, staring and willing them to appear on my phone. I smile at Teddy and kiss him, a long, wet kiss that makes my dad look away.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  Teddy takes the flowers and presents them to me along with the card. I smile as I take a whiff.

  “I’ll be waiting on Skype every night,” he says.

  “Me too,” I promise.

  I stand on my tiptoes and hug him once more as he whispers, “I love you,” in my ear. My dad walks over, gives Teddy an eyeful, and reminds me that it’s time to go. Reluctantly, I let go of Teddy’s hand. I give my dad a hug, eyes still glued to Teddy. My mom tugs me lightly, and I follow her, waving at Teddy and my dad as we walk through security.

  When I look back, they are both gone.

  On the plane, the tears come. My mom sits across the aisle and is too engrossed in a TV show to notice.

  I make myself wait to open Teddy’s card, slathering cucumber cooling gel on my eyelids to minimize the puffiness from my tears. I drink myself to oblivion, downing glass after glass of champagne. The flight attendant neither notices nor cares.

  When I absolutely can’t stand it any longer, I rip open the card. Teddy has written the words “DON’T FORGET ME” in all caps. Underneath, he has drawn three guys in color pencil. Two are American, one with blond hair and one with red hair. He made the American guys look ugly, with orange skin and pimples all over their face. As if that’s not enough, they’re both x-ed out. The third guy is circled. It’s a self-portrait of Teddy, a smiling Chinese guy with the words “I’m belong to Claire” in English tattooed on his arm.

  I laugh out loud at his grammatically incorrect tattoo and miss him so much I want to press the emergency exit lever and jump out. I start ugly crying all over again.

  This time, my mom sits up. She unbuckles her seat belt, comes over, and puts her arm around my shoulders.

  “It’s okay.” She shushes me.

  “It’s not okay!” I sob. “You’re sending me to a foreign country to live with strangers!”

  My mom digs through her Saint Laurent purse for tissues.

  “You’re making a scene,” she says, ordering me to stop.

  She hands me some tissues and tells me to wipe my face. But the tissue’s too coarse and it only makes me cry more. My mom gives up and goes back to her seat. For the rest of the flight, she buries her face in a magazine and pretends she doesn’t know me.

  Eight

  Dani

  My mother paces the house, nervously chewing on her fingernail as she dusts.

  “Everything must be perfect,” she says.

  We’re in the spare bedroom, trying to move the mattress into my mom’s room. The smell of adobo wafts from the kitchen. We’re switching mattresses so Claire, our guest, can have the good one. I try not to wrinkle my nose as I move the bed. We had found it lying on the side of the street. It was the perfect size and in good shape. But it had been sitting next to a trash dumpster for so long, even now, if you put your nose up to it, it still reeks of banana peels and sour wine.

  The stench brings me to earlier today, cleaning the carpet in Heather’s house. I can’t believe she’s buying her way to Snider. And the fact that a college debate coach would write her speeches for her, trading the most important thing a debater can have—his principles—for cash! It makes me sick, the privilege. If that’s what my teammates are doing, do I even stand a chance?

  “Dani!” my mom yells, jolting me from my thoughts. Her nails are digging into the mattress. “C’mon, put a little muscle into it!”

  “Sorry,” I say. I help her drag the mattress along the frayed brown carpet. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Positive,” she says, “She’s our guest. She should get the nice bed.”

  I can’t believe my mom’s giving up her Tempur-Pedic memory-foam mattress. It’s her most prized possession, the one decent thing my dad ever gave her before he left. They picked it out together. She told me the story a thousand times, how they both lay down on the bed, her with a swollen belly, him with his dirty shoes, which he took off before lying on the bed in the store. Less than a year later, when I was barely six months old, he split. But for that one moment, she said it was like lying on a cloud. And now she’s giving her cloud to some girl she’s never even met.

  “I really think you’re overdoing it,” I say.

  My mom stops moving the mattress for a second. “You’ve never been around rich people before,” she says. A long time ago, my mom worked for a wealthy family in Hong Kong as a “helper.” A helper is what the people in Hong Kong call a maid who lives with you.

  I would have been humiliated if I’d ever been a helper, but my mom still talks about it with pride. How Madam was so important and Sir so successful. How they took her on trips and always stayed in the nicest hotels because “Madam never stayed anywhere less than five stars.” How little John and Bennie, the two boys she watched, were so adorable. She talks about them as though they were her own kids.

  Some days, I think she prefers her fake family to her real one. I think a part of her regrets ever leaving them, coming here and having me. On those days, I sit with my knees to my chest on the rancid mattress in the spare bedroom, thinking of how I’m gonna prove it to her. I’m gonna prove to her that I can do it. I’m gonna make it in this world, even if all those around me are cheating.

  “All right, you guys ready? Heather, you’re up first!” Mr. Connelly announces on Wednesday.

  We’re practicing in the auditorium, and Heather smiles as she gets up and goes to the podium. I squeeze my hands into balls, hoping she won’t use the speech she bought off Coach Evans, that she’ll somehow come to her senses, but she delivers line by line what he fed her. As she recites all the glorious reasons why we should tax inheritance at 100 percent, I almost want to laugh, because I’m pretty sure if we did tax inheritance at 100 percent, she wouldn’t be able to afford the speech she’s just given.

  “Da-amn!” Mr. Connelly exclaims, slapping the seat in front of him and jumping up when she’s done. “That was amazing, Heather!”

  Heather beams.

  I’m next. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. I walk to the podium and try my best to debate the merits, even though it’s extremely hard going up against a forty-year-old, two-time national-champion college debate coach masked as a teenager, which is effectively what Heather is.

  “That was . . . good,” Mr. Connelly says. I feel his letdown as I lean against the podium and squint into the light. “But with a little more feeling next time?”

  I nod, shifting my weight as I take in Heather’s delighted smile. When I get back to my seat, Mr. Connelly turns to me and asks, “Something wrong? You’re usually so on fire.”

  Heather’s totally cheating, I want to say.

  Instead, I shake my head and vow to do better next time.

  At the end of practice, Mr. Connelly tallies up our scores and announc
es who the team captain will be at our next tournament in Irvine. “Heather!” he says. He pulls me aside. “I’m sorry, Dani. I really wanted it to be you. But scores are scores. And Heather’s are higher.”

  Heather walks over, chewing loudly on her gum as she puts a hand on my shoulder. “Oh well, there’s always next time, Thunder Girl!”

  Ming meets me after school. The two of us walk over to the agency together. I kick a rock as I tell her what happened with Heather.

  “That’s so messed up,” she says. “And I thought America was supposed to be different.” Her shoulder droops, tired from carrying her violin case. I noticed she’s stitched the words Fearless Female with string on her violin case. “Joanne’s.” She smiles, catching my gaze, referring to the fabric store one town over. She switches shoulders. “Anyway, you’ll still beat her, trust me. Something at the tournament will trip her up. She can’t memorize everything.”

  That’s what I’ve been telling myself too. Still, the unfairness stings. Ming kicks a rock to me and tells me about her host dad. “Yesterday he offered me a beer. I told him I don’t drink, and he got mad and said drinking’s a part of American culture,” she says.

  “So what’d you do?” I ask.

  “Well, he started screaming and yelling, and one of his kids started crying. So I took a sip.”

  Whoa. I stop walking. I know we’d been joking around a lot about Underwear Kevin, but this sounds serious. Forcing a minor to drink? I ask Ming if he’s done it before.

  Ming shakes her head. “No,” she says. “And, really, I can handle it. Trust me, I’ve seen worse.”

  I don’t know what that means. “Why don’t you tell the school about it?” I ask. “They might be able to switch you to another host family.”

  “I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. The school’s been so kind and generous already,” she says.

  We walk along the quiet, residential streets. I look over at Ming. We still haven’t had a chance to talk about what she told me. “So do your parents know . . . that you’re gay?”

  “No way,” she says. “Hopefully they never will.”

  Ming kicks another rock, and I study her face.

  “How about at school?” I ask.

  “You’re the first one.”

  Wow. I guard the honor with my heart.

  “I’m so proud of you,” I say.

  Ming smiles as she lifts her hand to shield the sun out of her eyes. “Thanks,” she says. “It feels pretty good.”

  “Are you going to start telling people?” I ask.

  “Maybe.” She shrugs. “But not back home.” She lets out a long, labored sigh. “China’s not like here. My family will never understand.”

  As she looks up at the palm trees and the vast blue sky, I think about how difficult things must have been for her back home to want to leave her family and come live with strangers in a foreign country.

  Nine

  Claire

  We arrive at LAX. The driver picks us up in a Mercedes SUV. I sit in the back, gazing out the window at the palm trees and the many people walking around in flip-flops.

  “Why does everyone here look like they just woke up?” my mom asks, frowning at the pedestrians’ sweatpants.

  “Welcome to America! Where everyone walks around in gym clothes and nobody goes to the gym!” the driver says cheerfully.

  My mom shakes her head at the people while I pull out my phone, tap on the Amazon app, and start shopping for flip-flops. When in Rome and all.

  “Don’t even think about it,” my mom says, grabbing my phone. “I will not have my daughter dressed like a slob.”

  “Hey!” I protest, reaching out a hand for my phone.

  She gives it back and turns to the driver. “What else is different?”

  “Oh, a lot of things. You gotta be careful, especially at night. People have guns here,” he says.

  It takes us two and a half hours to get to East Covina, California, where my school and host family are. I thought the Shanghai traffic was bad, but it’s nothing compared to Los Angeles traffic. By the time we arrive, it’s already 6:00 p.m., too late to go to the school, so we head directly to the host family’s house.

  I notice there are many signs in Chinese in East Covina. Shops, restaurants, even banks have signs written in Chinese. If it weren’t for the palm trees, I’d say we were still in Shanghai. Famished, I point to one of the restaurants, Sizzling Sichuan Garden, and ask if we could stop and eat there. My mom shakes her head.

  “They’re expecting us,” she says. “I’m sure they’ll have prepared dinner.”

  We arrive at the host family’s house ten minutes later. It’s much smaller than our villa in Shanghai. It barely has a yard and is sandwiched in between two much larger houses.

  My mother turns to me and remarks, “Bad feng shui,” as the screen door screeches open and a Filipina lady steps outside. She’s petite and has a bubbly face, which reminds me of Tressy, and I instantly miss her.

  “Are you the Wangs?” Mrs. De La Cruz asks. She beams and goes to shake the driver’s hand. “You must be Mr. Wang.”

  “No, no, he’s my driver,” my mom cuts in, laughing at the thought. My mother studied drama and English in university, so her oral English is actually decent. “I’m Mrs. Wang. This is Claire.”

  I smile politely.

  “Claire, it’s so good to meet you! I’m Maria De La Cruz,” she says. “My daughter, Dani, is just your age.”

  I follow her gaze to the house and see a skinny girl with thick wavy hair and glasses, holding a book, standing behind the screen door. Mrs. De La Cruz, meanwhile, picks up one of our suitcases and starts moving it inside the house.

  “C’mon, let me show you to your room,” she says. “I have it all ready for you!”

  We follow Mrs. De La Cruz inside. I mumble hi to the girl as we pass, and she mumbles hi back. Clearly she’s as psyched about me being here as I am.

  The living room is tiny and sparsely furnished. There’s a gray couch, a coffee table, a cabinet with a cross hanging above it, and a TV. That’s it. It’s so bare, it reminds me of the inside of Tressy’s room. I still remember the first time I stumbled inside. I was six. I remember looking around, at her small bed and wardrobe, and being confused. I asked her why she didn’t sleep in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs, and she answered because she’s not a member of the family.

  “Of course you are,” I had insisted. She spent more time taking care of me than my own mother did.

  Tressy bent down and put her warm hands around my small cheeks. “Oh, sweet child,” she said.

  Later that night, I asked my mother if it would be all right if Tressy moved in to the room next to mine.

  “No way! She’s a maid. She needs to sleep in the maid’s quarters,” my mom said.

  “But her room’s so small,” I said.

  My mother crouched down in front of me and looked in my eyes. “It’s small for us, but it’s big for her.”

  The memory weighs in my mind as my mom stands in the De La Cruzes’ living room.

  “How long have you guys lived here?” she asks Mrs. De La Cruz. Dani sits down on the couch.

  “Oh, a long time, madam. Since before Dani was born. It was her father’s house,” Mrs. De La Cruz explains.

  My mom looks around the room. “And where is Mr. De La Cruz?” she asks.

  Mrs. De La Cruz gazes down into her hands. “He left us, madam . . . a long time ago.”

  My mother stiffens. Mrs. De La Cruz has just uttered her literal worst nightmare. Now she really can’t stop staring at her.

  “So it’ll just be us girls,” Mrs. De La Cruz says brightly. “Would you like to see your room, Claire?”

  I nod.

  Dani gets up from the couch and leads me down the hallway. She asks me what grade I’m in, and I say eleventh. She’s also a junior at American Prep.

  “Oh, that’s great,” I say.

  She compliments me on my English, and I shake my hea
d shyly as she opens the door to my room.

  My room, like the living room, is modest, with a queen bed, a small bureau for my clothes, and a desk. But at least it has a window, and as Dani reaches to open it, I instinctively reach for her to stop—No, it’s too polluted outside—then remember we’re not in Shanghai anymore.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  Dani smiles. The first smile since we arrived. I sit down on the bed—sink down, rather, it’s way softer than my bed in Shanghai—and Dani pulls up a chair. I ask her what the teachers at American Prep are like.

  “Some of them are really good, like my debate coach,” she says. “Others . . . could be better.”

  I inhale with jealousy at the word “coach.” And then it dawns on me. My mother and grandmother aren’t here breathing down my neck, telling me what to do. Maybe I can swim again.

  “Are there a lot of Chinese kids?” I ask.

  “Oh yeah,” Dani says.

  Our mothers walk in. Mrs. De La Cruz sets my suitcases down, and my mother pushes down on my bed with her hand, feeling the firmness of the mattress.

  “Everything looks good,” she says to Mrs. De La Cruz, who seems genuinely happy to hear my mom say that. Then my mom turns to me and says in Chinese, “So Tong’s going to take me to a hotel and—”

  “Wait a minute, you’re not staying here with me tonight?” I ask.

  My mom looks at me. “There’s only one bed!” she says.

  “We can share,” I fire back. Frantically, I get up from the bed. Please don’t leave me here with these strangers, I plead with my eyes, at the same time readying myself for the all-too-possible scenario of her ditching me for the spa.

  Mrs. De La Cruz jumps in. “You can have Dani’s room, madam. Dani and I will share. You don’t mind, do you, Dani?”

  Dani scrunches her face. Oh, she minds.

  “That won’t be necessary,” my mom says. “We’ll be fine in Claire’s room.”

  My mom kicks off her Marni sling-back pumps, and I’m almost tempted to grab them so she can’t leave.