Chapter 7 Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
Is there anything quite so dramatic as being sixteen?
I’ve lived an entire lifetime of drama, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t.
Seeing Ellery kissing the mysterious, beautiful girl, I stood there, frozen, for quite some time.
Then the drama caught up with me and I turned and rushed off—very dramatically, I might add, all pounding heart and burning face.
I ran until I was pretty sure I was out of sight, then I leaned against the wall and covered my face with my hands.
I didn’t cry. I’d only known Ellery for about an hour, and even with all the drama pulsing through my veins, I was aware that it was a bit early to be sobbing over her.
Still, there was an undeniable sadness inside me, an emptiness that took me by surprise.
It’s stupid, I told myself. I just needed a friend, that was all.
Once I caught my breath, I straightened up and walked away.
I wandered to a bulletin board, where I spotted a flyer for badminton club.
Open to all. In Indonesia, everybody plays badminton.
We kind of kick ass at it. Compared to other Indos, I did not kick ass at badminton, but I was pretty decent.
The first meeting was tomorrow at six p.m. I headed to class feeling slightly less like I was being swallowed by a dark abyss.
The next evening, Iris dropped me off at school, grumbling, and told me to get a ride home because she was not picking me up at nine p.m. I said fine, then made my way to the gym, wondering how the hell I was going to get home afterward.
But once I stepped foot inside the gym, I forgot about all my problems.
The gymnasium was huge, big enough to fit eight badminton courts, and all eight were filled with people playing badminton. Shuttlecocks soared through the air, back and forth, and shouts echoed around the space. A white lady wearing a tracksuit waved me over and said, “First day?”
I nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Magnolia Chen.”
“Great to have you, Magnolia Chen. I’m Coach Anderson. Have you played before?”
I nodded again.
“Cool. Let’s see…you can have that court right there, I think they’re wrapping up soon. And Winnie here will play with you.”
Winnie turned out to be a FOB just like me, though she was from Hong Kong. Her English was so heavily accented I could barely understand her, and after a few minutes of struggling to speak to each other, we settled on speaking Mandarin. She was relieved.
“You speak terrible Mandarin,” she said, “but it’s still better than my English.” There was no trace of meanness when she said it; she was merely stating a fact.
“Thanks. Yeah, it’s really hard to get rid of the Indonesian accent when it comes to Mandarin.”
“Stick with me and you’ll be speaking Mandarin like a native before you know it.”
“Or maybe you’ll be speaking English like an American,” I said.
Winnie chuckled. “I doubt it. You know, I went to high school here.”
“Whaaat?” Okay, so not at all a FOB like me. I stood corrected.
“Yeah, it was vicious. I hated it.”
I thought of Winnie with her thick accent navigating her way through an American high school that was filled with people like Iris, and I grimaced. “Well, you made it.”
“Barely.” Then she smiled. “But, yeah, I did make it.”
The court opened up then, and we started our warm-up.
From the way she moved, I could tell she grew up playing badminton.
You can always tell from the way they swing their arms—people who grew up playing would swing from the shoulder, their movements fluid, their whole body twisting effortlessly as one with the racket.
Those who picked it up recently swing from the elbow.
I hadn’t realized just how homesick I’d been until Winnie and I started hitting the shuttlecock, and I felt so energized, a surge of happiness filling my entire body from limb to limb.
When we started the game in earnest, we were both grinning, our eyes wide, our feet flying across the court.
Each time my racket hit the shuttlecock, my whole body heard and felt the satisfying thwack of it and gave me another shot of endorphins.
Winnie won by three points, but I didn’t even feel like I’d lost.
“That was a great game,” Winnie said, coming to the center to shake my hand.
I was beaming so hard that my cheeks were hurting.
“Where are you from?” someone said from the sidelines. An Asian guy with a jawline that could cut glass.
“She’s Chinese-Indonesian,” Winnie said to him. She turned back to me. “This is James. Don’t let him give you a hard time.”
James gave me a once-over, and my stomach flipped in a way that had nothing to do with badminton. “You’re decent.”
“Thank you.”
“Watch my game?” he said, and the way he asked was so cool and yet sincere that I found myself nodding before I realized it.
I found a spot and sat down next to the court.
Already, from the way James held his racket—so casually, like it was a mere extension of his arm, I could tell he was going to be really good.
By the end of the first rally, I realized I was wrong.
James wasn’t just good, he was devastating on the court.
Is there anything hotter than a guy dominating at a sport?
Yes, of course, I immediately developed a crush on him.
I was sixteen! All anyone mildly attractive had to do was look my way and smile, and I’d be planning our wedding date.
At the end of the evening, James said, “Did you drive here, Magnolia?”
I shook my head.
“Do you need a ride?”
I was about to say yes when Winnie appeared. “I’ll give you a ride. I live right by you.”
I hadn’t actually told Winnie where I lived, but something in the way she said it made me say, “Okay. Thank you.”
Later, as we walked to the parking lot, she said, “How old are you?”
I hesitated, wondering if I should follow Iris’s advice and tell her I’m eighteen. But I got the feeling that Winnie would see right through me, so I told her the truth.
She shook her head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.
We get plenty of people your age at PCC.
From Taiwan, Singapore, whatever. Always look so lost. They come here because it’s a good community college, and also it’s so close to San Gabriel, which I’m sure you’ve figured out is basically like ninety percent Asian. ”
“Do I really look lost?”
“Yeah. Like you’re looking for a big sister to guide you. That’s okay, I’ll be your big sis.”
“I have a big sister.”
“You do? Why isn’t she picking you up, making sure you get home okay?”
“She trusts me to make my own way home.” The words felt hollow coming out of my mouth.
Winnie side-eyed me. “You’ll get your driver’s license soon. But until then, you should be more careful. James is a good guy, but he’s sort of a player. Last semester alone, two girls quit the badminton club because he broke their hearts. And he’s nineteen. That’s quite a bit older than you.”
“Okay.” Maybe most people would be annoyed and find Winnie patronizing, but the thing is, at sixteen, I liked being taken care of.
I was always looking for older sister figures in life, always looking for someone to tell me it’s okay, they have my back.
That was one of the reasons why I was so horrified when Iris told me to stop calling her Cici.
When we got inside her car, Winnie said, “Let me guess, you live in San Gabriel?”
“How did you know?”
“That’s where most of us live.”
We chatted easily the whole way back to my place, and Winnie was right, by the end of the twenty-minute drive, my Mandarin really was better.
The words were flowing out smoother, and the Indonesian accent was less apparent.
I was good at picking up accents, and already I found myself pronouncing a couple of words the way Winnie did.
“Come by on Saturday evening,” she said. “It’s not official club time, but most of us play then too. I’ll pick you up at five.”
Happiness flowed from my chest all over my body, and I told her I was in.
I waved as she drove off, then startled when someone called my name.
I turned to see Ellery. In an instant, my muscles, tired and loose after badminton, froze up.
Oh my god, what is she doing here? Within the space of a single second, a million thoughts crammed their way through my mind, each one more ridiculous than the last. She knows Iris! She got lost! She followed me home!
“Hey, what’re you doing here?” she said, her hands in her pockets.
“Oh, uh.” It took a moment for my brain to settle down enough to form a coherent sentence. “I live here.” I gestured at the apartment complex next to us.
“No kidding! What? That is unreal!”
“Oh?”
“I live here too. See?” Ellery took out her keys and unlocked the side entrance.
My brain stopped functioning for the second time in half a minute. She. Lives. Here. Too. She lives here too!
“I’m in block A. What about you?” She said it so casually, as though we didn’t just discover the best news in the world.
“Block D.”
“Cool. Oh, hey, is that a badminton racket?”
I looked down at my shoulder, where my forgotten racket bag was hanging. “Oh. Yeah. I just came back from the school’s badminton club.”
“Nice. I won’t keep you. I’m sure you’re exhausted.”
I was exhausted, but I was also wired from everything that had happened tonight.
Nothing like this ever happened in Indonesia.
First of all, nineteen-year-old guys never popped up and asked me to watch their games, and big sister figures never appeared to drive me home, and lastly, I definitely never ran into anyone cool at my housing complex.
But Ellery was probably eager to leave, so I said, “Yeah. Good night.”
“See you around, neighbor!”