six
The last time I saw Alan, I still had braces and he was a foot shorter. Now we were stuck together in a small silver sedan
for the next three and a half hours until we reached Los Angeles. He would be my companion for the next week.
“You can call us if you need anything,” Auntie Li said through the driver’s side window to her son. “Drive safe, please.”
“I will, Mom,” he said.
I considered him in side profile. Close up and in detail, since I was not hiding from him in a school hallway. I could see
that he did still resemble the boy I remembered. His voice had, of course, deepened. His slight British pronunciation from
international school in Shanghai had flattened out. His skin had cleared up. His shoulders had broadened, although he was
on the thinner side.
I didn’t know how to feel about him. Thinking about how we’d left things back then still made me angry, but in the same way an ember in a dying fire glowed: a dull red, unless you deliberately blew on it.
We were children, and now we were grown.
I was ready to let it go. Yet I knew that, back in the hallway, he saw me and pretended like he didn’t.
And Morgan had told me he omitted his entire time in Mount Pierce from the history of his life.
Just excised it right out, like removing a clip from a video. What was I to make of that?
He glanced at me sidelong, as we backed out of the driveway and hit the road for real. I took a deep breath and pressed my
lips together, not knowing exactly how to break the silence now that we were alone and no longer doing parentally mandated
small talk at the breakfast table. None of the stuff we had said before counted. I had already forgotten it all.
This was where it was going to start.
He went first. “Long time no see, I guess,” he said mildly.
I almost laughed. Talking to him should’ve made me think of the last time we spoke to each other in Illinois, but instead,
it made me think of the first time. The way his eyes brightened when he saw me, the only other Chinese kid he had met since
moving to America. His opening joke.
“Indeed.”
He was trying to crack the ice, but I was cautious. My heart was still a fist. It would not open so easily for him again.
“Your English has gotten better,” he said.
“Same to you.”
“We are both American now.” He looked at me quickly with a grin.
I offered a polite smile back, revealing nothing. I thought he might switch to Chinese to see how I’d respond, but he didn’t, to my relief. It had become a language of closeness and intimacy for me, something he and I no longer shared.
There was an extended silence as we passed several stoplights. I looked out the window. The sun, still unreal to me. The palm
trees, like paradise. What kind of place was this, anyway?
“Can I tell you something? I was kind of worried about seeing you, to be honest.”
I glanced sharply at him.
“I thought you might still be mad at me. Even after all this time. Is that silly?”
He was testing me. He was making light of everything, to make me the petty one if I weren’t willing to laugh with him. I resented
it. He was always like this. The kind of person who couldn’t bear having someone be mad at him, even if he were at fault.
“Why would I be mad at you?” I asked, playing innocent. Yes, Alan, I thought. Explain it to me. Explain why you were so bent
on acting like I didn’t exist, only to pretend to be my friend again now. If he was going to poke at me, I was going to make
him say it out loud.
He shook his head, retreating. “It was so long ago, I know. We were so young and naive. I hadn’t even seen fireflies before in Shanghai, and I thought they were made up, like fairies or something.
” He was practically blabbering to himself now, his words speeding up as though they had somewhere to go in a hurry.
“It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come from when we first moved to the States.
I feel so different now. I feel like every place you go makes you a new person. Do you feel like that too?”
He was nervous, I realized. It gave me a slight surge knowing this, a mild power trip. It seemed impossible that anyone could
dent his confidence, but something about me did.
“Hey, Alan?” I said, interrupting his chatter.
He stopped immediately. “Yeah?”
“I’m kind of tired. Do you mind if I take a nap while you’re driving?” It was basic courtesy to stay awake as a passenger
and keep the driver company, but I didn’t think he deserved that particular courtesy. At least not right now. He was right
in one way. I was a different person from when he used to know me.
“Okay. Sure. No worries.” He sounded disappointed. “Do you want me to put on music or something? What do you like to listen
to?”
I shrugged. “Driver’s choice. I don’t care.” I pushed my right shoulder into the leather seat and faced the other direction.
Eyes open because I wouldn’t actually sleep. I waited a long time for the radio to come on, but it never did. We drove in
silence, me facing one way, him facing another.
When our parents introduced him to me and Sam, I was nine. The adults left the kids to play in the basement while they cooked
and gossiped upstairs. We defaulted to speaking Chinese with Alan.
We had never met this kid before, but he brimmed with confidence, as though we were already close friends rather than total strangers. He brandished a pack of cards out of his pocket right away and asked if we wanted to see a magic trick.
“I need someone to be my assistant,” he said grandly.
I was standing partly behind Sam, skeptical already of this boy’s bright energy. I wasn’t used to new kids coming on this
strong, and it had been a long time since I’d made a friend. I hardly remembered how.
He pointed at me. “How about you?”
“Me?” I didn’t move. “What do I need to do?”
“It’s easy. You just have to pick a card. And I’ll read your mind.” He was so theatrical.
I looked at Sam. At two years older, he was less intrigued by this setup. He was losing interest in hanging out with his kid
sister by the day and thought everything I liked was childish. He rolled his eyes, which made me a bit more determined.
“Okay.”
Alan fanned out the cards face down. “Pick one and look at it. Don’t show me.”
I slid one out from among the lineup. Six of spades.
“Remember it?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Put it back.”
I complied.
He shuffled the cards once, twice, three times. “Now I’m going to pick the card that you looked at.”
I watched him, fascinated, as he carefully thumbed through the deck. After a few seconds, he triumphantly pulled out the six of spades. “Was that your card?”
I clapped, thrilled at this incredible sorcery. “How did you do that?”
He bowed. “A magician never reveals his secret.”
Sam’s eyes were sharper than mine. “Come on,” he said loudly. “Are you serious?” At first, I thought he was also impressed,
but his face was twisted into a frown. “You just flipped the last card in the deck upside down and then had Stella put the
card in the other way so it would be the only card facing up after your shuffle. Stella, you didn’t see that?”
He always noticed things when I didn’t, or was able to discern how to solve a problem when I couldn’t. He was sharp-eyed and
logical. The scientist. I was always the one who wanted to believe in miracles.
“Was that the trick?” I asked Alan.
He colored slightly but kept his composure. “I’ll never tell.” He winked at me. “You want me to show you another one?”
Sam scoffed. “This is juvenile. I’m going to play video games.” He stalked off upstairs, leaving the two of us.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling responsible for my brother exiting so rudely. “He just thinks I’m boring and pathetic. It’s not you.”
Alan shrugged. “It’s okay. He doesn’t want to be friends with me.
I can be friends with you.” He said it as though it were a forgone conclusion rather than something I had any say in.
“I know more card games for two people than three.” He grinned cheekily, having already rebounded from my brother’s rejection.
“Maybe the trick was to get him to ditch us all along, so I’d have the right number of players. He didn’t figure it out.”
I laughed in surprise, which seemed to please him. It felt nice to be chosen.
That was how it started. The way we connected was easy. I barely had to do anything at all.
Alan was the kind of boy who loved introductions and finding a way into your heart. He was like sunshine in summer. You couldn’t
deny him. All you could do was bask in his glow.
After two hours of driving, we stopped to refresh, stretch our legs, and eat something.
He tapped my shoulder blade lightly. “Wake up,” he said. “Noodle soup okay?”
My belly, as though responding on cue, growled.
He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
I followed him into a dumpy-looking building in a strip mall. His rangy stride was still the same, shaped by a slight slouch.
He had clearly been to this place before. There were several different booths inside, offering lit-up menus on display. Like
a shabby food court. All the options offered different types of noodle soup. Roast duck, red-braised beef, pickled vegetables
with pork, seafood. We both ordered and got our bowls within five minutes.
I was ready to be skeptical about the presentation, but the first scalding spoonful wiped away any doubt. It was delicious. Back home, I wouldn’t have been able to get food like this unless we drove two and a half hours up to Chicago.
“Good, right?” Alan said. “We always used to stop here on the way to LA. There’s a great boba shop two doors down we can hit
up before we get on the road again, too.”
He slurped loudly. It was immediately noticeable to me. I had spent so long adjusting my table habits when I moved here to
eat more quietly, after one of the kids at school mocked me for eating with my mouth open. I still watched my manners scrupulously
while eating in public. I’d probably always be self-conscious about it.