The Girl Most Likely To

Prologue

February 2003

There should be a how-to guide on meeting your online friend for the first time. Setting a date and time was easy enough. I told him to look out for the girl wearing a red shirt and black glasses. But then, struck with the latent fear that maybe the boy I’d been chatting with for the last four years was a serial killer, I threw out the first public place I could think of that had internet access. If I’d given myself some more time and put more thought into it, I would have suggested the library, not the internet café where most of the boys from Commonwealth High School played Counter-Strike The library would’ve been free. Free of cost and of boys who wore too much Axe. The offensive smell was making me woozy.

Alternating commands erupted from stations across the room.

“Go, go, go!”

“Take the shot!”

This wasn’t my brightest moment. If I was about to meet a serial killer, it wasn’t smart to bring him into a first-person shooter LAN party. Even dumber to show up forty-five minutes early. Punctuality was my blessing and my curse.

I found an open station in a dark corner and hid away from the crowd. The last thing I needed was someone from my class seeing me log into AIM. I mistakenly typed “dangracheldang”

out of habit and quickly backspaced. That was the screen name I used if I needed to contact my classmates about homework, but that was rare. As far as my peers knew, I rarely logged into the instant messaging platform. I made sure no one was around when I entered my first-ever screen name: “xxaznxbbxgrlxx.”

When I came up with it, I was fourteen and clueless about the internet. With no good ideas of my own, I riffed off my older sister’s screen name. Angela didn’t mind. She was used to me taking things from her, like her jeans or Alanis Morrissette CD. But xxaznxbbxgrlxx took on a life of her own. She wasn’t quiet Rachel Dang, straight-A machine, always afraid of saying the wrong thing. xxaznxbbxgrlxx could be anyone she wanted to be. She could have an interesting life and friends, free from the grind that came with being at the top of her class.

Things changed when I was scoping out a 626 AOL chat room one night. Angela had left for college and I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Ma went to sleep early because she had to open her hair salon the next day, while Ba went to his print shop to catch up on film he hadn’t processed yet. When I entered the chat, people had moved past divulging their age/sex/location and were throwing out questions typed in alternating capital and lowercase letters. It felt like a bunch of people shouting at the same time.

“AnYoNe fRoM MpK”

“wat is westco?”

“Click here for the new Kai single!”

“lollicup or tapioca express???”

markdog69 left the room

Reading the messages hurt my eyes. I was about to give up when a new chat window popped on my screen.

SuperxSaiyan85: hi

Who was this random guy?

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: a/s/l

SuperxSaiyan85: 14/m/westco. west covina, in case you didn’t know.

SuperxSaiyan85: u?

I wasn’t sure why, but it felt safe to reply. We were the same age, and he lived far enough away from Alhambra. There was no way we knew each other.

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: 14/f/Alhambra. That’s Alhambra, in case you didn’t know.

SuperxSaiyan85: ha-ha. Name?

My fingers flew and hit enter.

xxaznxbbxgrlxx: Call me bb

I wasn’t trying to be mysterious. Stranger danger kicked in, and I gave him the first name I could think of.

SuperxSaiyan85: Call me Goku

That was how we met. We never learned each other’s real names, but I did know this.

He was Chinese American like me, except his family came from Vietnam while mine came from Cambodia. He moved around a lot, mostly in California except for a brief stint in Texas.

He was a Dragon Ball Z fanatic (obviously), and he liked to browse through chat rooms while he downloaded music from Napster.

The guy was looking for a way to pass time while I blabbed on and on about how much I missed my sister, how I was afraid I would never see her again even though she was only an hour away.

Goku mentioned an older brother who taught him how to skateboard, his preferred pastime when he was bored, unlike me.

I didn’t have time to be bored when I had so much homework to do, but if I ever had free time, I channel-surfed like any normal person.

It didn’t sound like much, but we fell into a routine, logging into AIM almost every night around nine.

At first, it was because my mom wouldn’t let me use the dial-up during the day, when she was receiving calls from her friends. But Goku and I kept our schedule after my parents finally upgraded to DSL two years later because by then Goku started a new job, which later turned into two. There were breaks here and there, coinciding with the times he had to move. If we didn’t talk for a while, it was usually because of that. When it was time to create a screen name that was less embarrassing to share, I couldn’t let go of “bb.”

I didn’t want to lose what I had with Goku, a stranger who, in some ways, knew the most honest version of myself because I never censored myself when I was with him.

So when he told me he had finally saved up enough money for a car and asked if I wanted to meet, I said yes and picked this forsaken internet café.

I slipped on the headphones as my Buddy List loaded. Goku hadn’t signed in, of course. There were still forty minutes to go. I debated if I should kill some time by copying my notes for The Canterbury Tales or coming up with new ideas for this year’s prom theme. Senior year showed no signs of slowing down, not when there was still so much at stake. Some of my friends stopped volunteering or showing up to clubs after we got our college applications in, but not me. There were still school awards and scholarships to be won, and it wasn’t the time to start slacking off.

Forget about valedictorian. Commonwealth allowed for multiple recipients, so there were twelve other students in line to receive the distinction. It diluted the prestige, if you asked me. That’s why my eyes were set on winning Student of the Year. The highest honor bestowed upon a graduating Commonwealth student, it was given to the most well-rounded student with the high academic achievement. Despite my rigorous courses, I stacked my schedule with as many activities I could fit into a day. I even volunteered to tutor Danny Phan—the new spiky-haired kid rumored to be the principal’s nephew. I thought it would win me some points with the administrators on the selection committee, but Danny slept through our tutoring sessions, if he bothered to show up at all. He had practically jumped for joy when I canceled today’s meeting. Apparently, becoming the Student of the Year required the patience of a saint.

At this point, my best shot at any unique accolades was Most Likely to Succeed, which was nothing but a popularity contest since it was voted on by the senior class. It was probably going to go to Mariana Sanchez, a varsity water polo player who, like Freddie Prinze Jr.’s character in She’s All That, was both ridiculously smart and well liked among the student body. I had to remind myself that there was no point competing against someone like her, though such a thought had never stopped me before. I always wanted more than I could have.

I had complained to Goku that I wished I could enjoy my last year of high school when he suggested meeting up. It would be fun, he promised. I liked the sound of it, so long as he wasn’t a middle-aged creeper pretending to be a teenager.

I had to stop watching Law & Order: SVU.

There wasn’t anything to worry about. Our relationship wasn’t like that. It had always been platonic. He’d tell me about crushes he had, but confess that he was too nervous to ask anyone out. I’d wished we were friends in real life because it was hard to imagine a boy who wasn’t a horny dork like the guys I knew.

An AIM notification of a door creaking open sent my heart racing. SuperxSaiyan85 was online.

Was he here early too? I smoothed down my hair, even though he couldn’t see me through the monitor.

But as soon as his screen name appeared, it disappeared. Then, to toy with my emotions further, a message popped up.

SuperxSaiyan85: Had to go invisible or else my friends would IM me.

SuperxSaiyan85: you’re here . . . ?

Four years in the making and my first instinct was to duck. This was a bad idea.

SuperxSaiyan85: Are you having second thoughts?

More like twenty thoughts racing simultaneously.

Honestly, I wasn’t scared that this guy would turn out to be a fugitive from America’s Most Wanted. I was scared that I idealized him. Online, he was helpful and funny and nice. That somehow translated into a mental sketch of a cute boy. I had built this guy up in my mind, and what if whatever we had on-screen couldn’t stand up to reality? And what if he did the same to me? I didn’t think I was ugly or anything, but what if he saw me and I wasn’t what he expected either? I started to feel self-conscious about things I never worried about before, like my deep voice, or my jackhammer laugh, as my friend Nat lovingly yet annoyingly dubbed it.

I threw all my stuff into my backpack and shot to my feet, which I shouldn’t have done if I was trying to be discreet. Standing up pulled the cord to my headphones taut, whipping them off my head. They landed on the keyboard with a loud crunch. Maybe it was loud only to me, because nobody glanced up from their screens. They were too busy playing games.

I kept my head down, trying to hide my face with my hair as I walked toward the exit. There was still a chance I could make it out of here. Later I could pretend I was at home and say my internet glitched.

“Watch out!”

someone shouted from a distance before the warning was swallowed by the sound of muffled explosions and pew pew pew, what had to be part of a team raid. The warning might as well have been for me, though, because out of nowhere some guy wheeled back and flew out of his seat, sideswiping me and making me drop my books and my Sanrio pencil bag.

“Look where you’re going.”

I knelt down and gathered my things.

The perpetrator stopped and helped me up. “Sor— Rachel?”

Danny? Of all people.

“You should be sorry. I wasted an hour waiting for you yesterday. Is this what you’ve been doing instead of showing up for tutoring?”

I immediately felt guilty about scolding him. I sounded like my mom, a thought that made me shudder. It wasn’t his fault he knocked me down while I was emotionally imploding.

“I’m sorry,”

I rushed to say. I could tell my outburst shocked Danny. Rachel Dang, teacher’s pet, never yelled at anyone. “I’m sorry,”

I said again. I tried to readjust the straps of my backpack, but Danny was still holding on to my arm.

What was his deal? His face was frozen, eyes wide like when our physics teacher threw chalk at him when he dozed off in class. Danny finally let go of my arm, leaving goose bumps where his hand had been. With the shock of falling wearing off, I was feeling out of sorts.

Still stopping me from leaving again, he said, too soft to be an accusation, “You.”

The word sounded like . . . recognition. His eyes lingered on my glasses. Self-conscious, I pushed them up my face. Then his gaze dropped to my favorite red shirt.

No. It was impossible.

I shuffled back, leaving room for the unspoken questions I had. From far away, Danny looked like the same guy who wore a gray hoodie and baggy jeans every day, who walked with a slight hunch like his backpack weighed him down, but he wasn’t the same person anymore. Not to me. Not when I knew too much.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Danny lifted his backpack off the floor and moved toward the exit. Because I didn’t have any better ideas, I followed him outside. In the daylight, the shadows on his face were more prominent, like the ones under his eyes. It made sense now why he fell asleep all the time and why he left so fast after our tutoring sessions.

Goku had two jobs, which meant Danny shouldn’t be here right now.

“How are you here right now?”

I asked. Did he get the day off?

“I’m surprised to see you too,”

Danny said, misinterpreting my question. I nodded anyway because my mind hadn’t fully wrapped around the idea that I’d been chatting with Danny this whole time. If I hadn’t volunteered to help Danny catch up with his classes, I don’t think he would’ve ever spoken to me. Despite sharing some of the same classes, our social circles didn’t mix. If we were online, xxaznxbbxgrlxx wouldn’t have any problem jumping into a conversation with SuperxSaiyan85. But now, standing in front of each other, the silence was painful.

This was worse than the time I misspoke at my fifth-grade play and said Chinese New Year was celebrated all over the world except China. “Let’s forget about—”

“Do you still want to—”

Danny said at the same time. He ducked his head to try to meet my downcast eyes. “Is that what you want?”

It was finally sinking in that Danny knew everything about me too. How much I hated being treated like a run-of-the-mill nerdy Asian girl when my dreams were bigger than high school. But the only way to break out of this town was to work my ass off, thus perpetuating the stereotype. He knew how I wished I could be a risk-taker and stand out in some way. So his question wasn’t looking for confirmation. It was egging me on to take a step outside of my comfort zone. It stirred something inside me.

“Where are we going?”

A smile crept over Danny’s face. His face was rarely off his desk, so I never noticed how much his face brightened with that small curve of his lips. “Wherever your heart desires.”

I snorted. It sounded like some corny thing SuperxSaiyan85 would say. It really was him.

Danny tried not to laugh at me, but he failed. “Are we actually laughing out loud right now?”

It was awkward, talking in person, yet it felt familiar and comfortable and strange all at the same time. Like rewatching your favorite movie and seeing a detail you missed before. Any misgivings I had before melted away. SuperxSaiyan85 was my best friend online. Who’s to say Danny Phan couldn’t be my best friend for real?