It's Not Like It's a Secret Read online

  “Omigod, Sana, you look like a freak yelling for the Midwest now!” She giggles. Everyone laughs. “I mean, you do not look like a Midwest farmer’s daughter!” A dense, cold fog blooms in my chest, and all I can do is stare.

  “Oh, honey, we’re not being mean. It’s just so . . . sweet,” Trish says. “It’s like you forgot that you’re like, Asian or whatever. I totally forget, too. But that’s good, right? Like it doesn’t matter that you’re not white, you know? You’re like, one of us!”

  “I guess,” I mumble.

  Emily Whittaker puts her arm around me. “You’re not mad, are you?”

  “Yeah, I mean, it’s not like we’re being racist or anything,” adds Trish. “It’s just cute how you forgot. Come on, Sana, we love you!”

  And with that, all the girls chime in: “We love you, Sana!” What can I do? I swallow my pride and give them a smile. Gaman. Hah. Mom would be pleased.

  With the racism issue safely behind us, the vodka flows, and Trish drifts toward Daniel. Mark appears at my side to escort me to the golf course.

  Oh, right. I’d forgotten about Mark. I study him. He is cute, in a golden retriever kind of way. He’s a swimmer, so he’s tanned and muscular, with chlorine-bleached hair that keeps falling over his big brown eyes. Kissing him might be fun. It would certainly be less complicated than kissing Trish.

  We sit in a circle on the grass, and I find myself snuggled up next to Mark, with his arm draped over my shoulder. Daniel wants to play “I Never,” where one person says something they’ve never done, and everyone who’s done it has to drink. Even if I were able to drink, I’d have to stop now—I’ve never done anything. I’ve never cut class. I’ve never been high in front of my parents. I’ve never crashed my car into a tree.

  Predictably, the game starts getting dirty. I’ve never sexted. I’ve never done it in my parents’ bed. I’ve never done it in a car. “I’ve never done it outside,” someone says, and Trish and Daniel don’t drink. The group starts chanting, “Do it! Do it!” and the two of them grin at each other and stumble off into the darkness to whoops and cheers. The icy fog that’s been hovering in my chest congeals into a hard gray ball. Fine. I scooch in closer to Mark. When he asks me to take a walk around the course, I agree.

  It’s a nice night for a first kiss—a star-spangled sky, the silver bangle of a crescent moon suspended above the trees. We sit silently at the edge of a sand trap, so close our legs are touching. Then Mark leans in to kiss me, and in the moment before his lips touch mine, my heart flutters. Maybe this will be magical. Maybe it will sweep me off my feet.

  But the moment passes and my first kiss turns out to be just a lot of his tongue in my mouth, and all I can think is ick. I put up with it for a couple of minutes in case it gets better.

  It doesn’t.

  His hand strays toward my butt. I push it back. It starts creeping up my shirt. I push it down. Between getting my face sucked off, worrying about where Mark’s hand is going to go next, and wondering what I’ll do when it gets there, I can’t—

  “Relax,” he says. “Stop fighting.”

  “I’m not fighting.”

  “You’re all tense. C’mon, just let go. Have fun.” He moves in again. “You’re so hot,” he whispers. And there’s his tongue again. And his hand. Hands. Must. Get. Out of here. Think. Think of an excuse.

  I push him away, a little harder than I mean to. “Um . . . I feel a little weird kissing you out here. It uh, doesn’t feel very private.” Which is true.

  He nuzzles my neck. “Don’t worry. No one cares.” Also true, unfortunately.

  “Yeah, but . . . maybe another time.” I stand up, and Mark stands up with me.

  “You sure?” he says, wrapping his arms around me and slobbering on my ear. Ew.

  “Uh, yeah. I’m sure. Maybe you can text me.” I twist away and try to smile. Mark shoves his hands in his pockets and walks back to the group with me. He doesn’t look at me again.

  I never should have come to this stupid party.

  At two in the morning, I leave Daniel and Mark playing Thumper with their buddies at the fifth hole, and drive Trish and myself back to her house. As I help Trish to bed, she flings her arms around me and slurs, “Omigod, that was so much fun. You’re such a good friend,” and passes out.

  On Sunday morning I get up early. I don’t even bother waking Trish. I just change clothes, pack up my stuff, and text her:

  Hope you slept OK. Too bad we didn’t get to hang out like we planned. See you Monday

  Against my better judgment, I add a heart and a smiley face. Her phone chirps, and I pad downstairs. Mrs. Campbell is in the kitchen, nursing a coffee and, from the looks of her wan face, a hangover. “Oh, hi, Sana honey. I’m sorry I’m such a mess—I keep thinking I’m still young enough to handle more than a couple drinks.” She winks. “I didn’t hear you girls come home last night,” she adds, yawning. “Did you have fun?”

  “Oh . . . yeah,” I lie.

  “Trish didn’t drink too much, did she?”

  “What? Oh. Uh.”

  “Oh, honey, it’s okay. I know she drinks,” says Mrs. Campbell with a smile. “I just want her to do it responsibly, you know?”

  I nod. I wonder if she knows what else Trish may or may not be doing responsibly, but all I say is, “Oh, she was fine. Maybe she had a little too much.”

  Mrs. Campbell tilts her head and smiles—ruefully? Affectionately? “That girl. Just like her mother.” Then, as if seeing me for the first time, her eyes widen in surprise. “You’ve got your bag. Are you leaving? So early?”

  “Yeah, my mom needs me to help her pack today.” Another lie.

  “I wish you and Trish hung out more.” Mrs. Campbell sighs. “You’re such a good influence. You study hard, you get good grades, you don’t drink . . . such a sweetheart.” She sighs again and smiles at me. “We’re really going to miss you, Sana.”

  “I’ll miss you, too.”

  “Grab a cinnamon roll on your way out, honey. They’re delicious. I’m so glad I thought to buy them yesterday—I just can’t face making breakfast right now.” She winks again. Then, as I take a roll and head toward the door, “Do you need a ride home?”

  “No, it’s just a couple of miles. It’s a nice day. I’ll walk.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Campbell puts her coffee cup down and leans forward, as if she’s considering getting up. Her mouth purses into a little frown of doubt.

  “Yes, it’s fine.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” she says. Her face relaxes into a relieved smile, and she sinks back into her chair. “Bye, honey! Oh—try not to slam the door on your way out, okay?”

  I thank her and head out, shutting the door behind me as quietly as I can.

  3

  THE END OF SCHOOL COINCIDES WITH A WEEK of hot humidity and humming cicadas that make the air feel so oppressive, I want to push it out of the way like a too-heavy blanket. But our last night in Wisconsin brings a sudden rush of cool wind, the smell of water, and the splotch-splotch-splotch of the first raindrops on the sidewalk. Mom and I pack the car to the sound of rain pelting the roof of the garage like wild applause for show-stopping flash-boom-bangs of lightning and thunder.

  In the morning, the world offers the scent of wet asphalt and earth, the sparkle of rain on bright green grass, and the magic of shape-shifting oil rainbows in puddles. It’s dawn, the best time to start a road trip. Mom locks the door for the last time, and we roll through the silent streets of Glen Lake in our packed-to-the-gills white Prius. We grab one last coffee at the Starbucks on Kohler Avenue before heading west on I-94 toward California, toward Dad and his new job, toward a brand-new life.

  When I was twelve, Mom, Dad, and I took a weeklong summer trip to Wisconsin Dells, a resort town that grew around the spot where the Wisconsin River has carved its own tiny version of the Grand Canyon—the Dells. It’s only a couple of hours west of Glen Lake on I-94, and everyone goes there for weekend trips.

  Mom was
driving because Dad had returned late the night before from a business trip to California; I sat in the front seat as navigator while Dad slept in the back.

  As so often happens when she drives someplace new, Mom took the wrong exit and got lost. But she didn’t want to wake Dad up, so I fished his phone out of his jacket pocket for her.

  “This would be a lot easier if you’d just let me have a smartphone,” I grumbled, entering his password and tapping on the map app.

  “I don’t need such expensive toy, and you don’t need, either. The regular cell phone for communication is enough for twelve-year-old.”

  “Turn around and go three miles back to the highway.”

  As I played with the map to get a better picture of our route, a text message popped up at the top of the screen. It was in Japanese, from an area code I didn’t recognize.

  I’m about as literate as a first-grader in Japanese, despite Mom’s best efforts and two miserable years of Saturday Japanese school in Milwaukee, so I couldn’t read most of what the text said. I was about to ask Mom to take a look when another message appeared that I could read. It said,

  Hearts and lips? Who would send Dad something like that? It had to be a mistake. I tapped the text and discovered that it was part of a long thread between Dad and someone who was apparently a huge fan of emojis—hearts, kissing smiley faces, shoes, and lips being her particular favorites.

  I looked out the window at the cornfields. There had to be some explanation. Maybe Dad had a niece or a little girl cousin who loved emojis that he’d never told us about.

  Living in the United States. Whose name he hadn’t saved in his contacts list. Who’d texted emojis of a bikini, a wineglass, and the ever-present lips exactly two weeks ago, the morning he left for a three-day business trip . . .

  “Sana, chotto! Tsugi wa?”

  What next, indeed.

  I fumbled with the phone. “Um, go west—take this first entrance ramp on the right. For seven miles.”

  As Mom negotiated the merge, gripping the steering wheel anxiously and casting many a backward glance out the window, irritation crawled up my spine like a snake. She was a terrible driver. For starters, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—keep constant pressure on the gas. She alternated between pushing down and easing off the gas pedal, so that we were always either speeding up or slowing down: vrROOoom . . . vrROOoom. On straightaways, she did what people do when they pretend to drive, turning the wheel quickly left and right, left and right, making a thousand unnecessary adjustments as she jiggled the car cautiously down the road.

  It was maddening. I could see Dad wanting a break from that.

  I looked at Mom and tried to see her as Dad might. She is short—at twelve years old I was already pushing past her. Her hair was true black, not almost-brown like mine, cut in a shoulder-length bob and pulled back on one side—childishly, I thought—with a barrette. She had a classic moon face, a soft oval, with the high nose bridge and long earlobes that I inherited. “Lucky,” she told me once, rubbing my ears affectionately, “and high class,” stroking the bridge of my nose. She was no fashion model, but she was pretty enough.

  I looked back at Dad. Dad, who was always working, who traveled a couple of times a month and always brought back presents for me. Who used to tell me stories, and fling me into the air, and slip me candy when Mom wasn’t looking. But that was when I was little. In the past couple of years, he had somehow faded into just a nice guy who drifted in and out of the background of my life.

  Who were they to each other? Dad always said they’d known each other all their lives. Baba, Dad’s mom, once told me the whole story, and it had sounded so romantic: Dad had gotten very sad and sick while he was in grad school, and Mom had taken care of him, and they’d fallen in love and gotten married. But that was all I knew. It was a long time ago. Did they still love each other? Could they have stopped?

  I decided not to say anything about the text. Not talking about it meant that it wasn’t a big deal. And if it wasn’t a big deal, it might not even be true.

  But even if I didn’t talk about it, I couldn’t forget about it. I checked the number, wrote it down, and later put it in my lacquer box. I Googled it and learned that it had a San Francisco area code. For the next few weeks, every time Dad stayed out late, every night he was on a trip, I thought about the phone number in my box and I gnawed my suspicions to shreds. But I said nothing.

  Months went by. Nothing changed between my parents. No one talked about having affairs. No one filed for divorce. My silence paid off. But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the phone number. Maybe I was still suspicious—sometimes I thought I’d call it one day and find out for sure who it belonged to. But I never did, and the phone number slowly disappeared under my growing collection of sea glass.

  The number is still tucked safely in my little lacquer box, which in turn is tucked safely in my suitcase next to my Emily Dickinson poems. I watch neighborhoods of cookie-cutter McMansions slip by and give way to miles and miles of cornfields as Mom and I lurch and jiggle our way across the state, across the country, away from the land of Midwest farmers’ daughters and toward the land of the California girl.

  4

  IT’S BEEN FOUR WEEKS SINCE WE ARRIVED. FOUR weeks, and I’ve spent the entire time doing nothing, going nowhere, and meeting no one.

  Scratch that. Mom and I have spent the entire time unpacking, arranging, and rearranging furniture, going to Ikea, Target, and Costco, and meeting . . . no one. On the other hand, it’s not like I had a full social calendar back in Wisconsin. And it’s better than going to math day camp, which is how I spent last summer.

  Today’s list of errands takes us to Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up a bath mat, a step stool, and a duvet cover and new sheets for my bed. When we walk in the door, I do a quick scan-and-count. A Latino couple, a few Asian women, a couple of white men . . . ding-ding-ding! It’s majority minority! Mr. Williams, my world history teacher last year, was always saying how this is happening in America, but I’d never actually seen it until we moved here. I get a kick out of it every time. In Wisconsin, when Mom and Dad spoke Japanese in public, I could feel people not-staring. I couldn’t even linger a few feet away and pretend I was with another family—all anyone had to do was look at my face and hair to know who I was with. But here in San Jose, we blend in. In fact, it’s beyond blending—here, we are completely inconspicuous. We fade into the background—dark hair, Asian faces, foreign language, and all. I love it.

  I’m reveling in our anonymity as we approach the bedding section, which is where life gets difficult. No matter what I choose, Mom points out flaws that, once she’s shown me, I can’t unsee:

  Sky blue with a pattern that looks like dandelion seeds floating across it? “Makes me feel like allergy.”

  Pale gray with a single cherry blossom branch? “Only good for spring.”

  Pure white with a bold arabesque print down the middle? “Looks like Raw-shock.”

  “It’s Rorshach, Mom.”

  “Raw-shock.”

  And then, oh, this one. Powder blue with a deep blue coral plant (or is it an animal?) that grows from the bottom corner and spreads intricate, lacy branches across the fabric. It’s perfect.

  “How about this?” I ask, patting it lovingly.

  Mom runs her own hand over it. “Ahhhn. It makes me feel like sandy, like drippy—”

  “Mom! Can’t you just let me like something without telling me what’s wrong with it? It’s my bed! It’s my room! This is America, Mom. Let me express myself a little!”

  She snorts. “Hah! That’s the problem with America. Be different is cool, express yourself is cool, and don’t care how the other people feel. It’s so selfish.”

  Right. How could I have forgotten? For Mom, different equals disrespectful.

  “Can I help you? Looks like you’re having a little trouble deciding on something.”

  . . . aaand a stupid, useless store clerk has overheard our s
tupid, useless argument. Great. Why can’t she just leave us alone? Or actually . . . maybe she can stay. She’s about my age and height with light brown skin and black hair pulled into a ponytail that spills in waves down her back. Brown eyes, clear and wide, under delicately arched eyebrows. Cupid’s bow lips with a slick of rose lip gloss. A dimple on her chin. Shimmery dark green nail polish at the tips of slender fingers. And the way she stands—not clerkish at all. Graceful. Regal, even. Like she’s a queen in disguise.

  I’m hooked. Who is she? I stand up a little straighter. “ . . . any normal pattern?” Mom is saying.

  “Mom, I really like this one.” My voice is reasonable, well modulated, mature. No more petulant whining. Must impress Fascinating Store Girl.

  “Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it?” Fascinating Store Girl says. “It’s my favorite, actually.” She smiles at me, and my brain goes a little flittery. Fascinating Store Girl and I have the same taste in duvet covers. How cool is that?

  “Oh! Yes, I see. It’s beautiful!” Mom smiles and nods thoughtfully, and even picks up the plastic-wrapped package, but I know from experience that she’s lying through her teeth. I’ve seen her do the fake smile and nod with tons of store clerks, and besides, hundred-and-eighty-degree changes of heart are not her thing. “Thank you for your helping!” she chirps.

  Fascinating Store Girl takes this as her cue to say, “You’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything!” and fade discreetly into the background. Much to my disappointment.

  Mom picks out a sensible blue-and-white windowpane print while I protest (quietly, this time). “Mom, even the store person liked my choice.”

  “Hn. She is Mexican.”

  “What?”

  “If she likes it, then it is Mexican taste.”

  “Mom!”

  Mom is genuinely confused. “What?”

  “How do you even know she’s Mexican? And you say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “I just guessed. Mexican taste is not Japanese taste,” she says simply, as if that explained everything. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.