Chapter One
Chapter One
Kit
“So where are you from?” the Uber driver asked.
The cloying scent from the Black Ice air freshener sat in the back of Kit’s throat. She could see the hairs coming out of his ears. She glanced at her watch.
“Here, I’m from Philly,” she replied. Kit Herzog knew what he really wanted to know.
He looked at her in the rearview mirror. Their eyes met, then he set his gaze back on the road. There was another odor beneath the freshener: dirty hair or skin. She kept her hands on her lap, not wanting to touch any of the surfaces. A new song started to play on the radio.
“You know this tune?”
She nodded. “Teardrops” by Womack her mother played it in the kitchen sometimes. She started to see signs for Roxborough. Not far to go now.
“Great song.” He hummed.
She would be late for Sabrina, but at least Sabrina’s mother would be out. Mrs. Chen worked a Saturday job and Sabrina was always at home alone.
“So hon, are you from Philly? You look, uh, I don’t know, like there’s somethin’ else in there. Like, where are you from from, you know?”
Kit was asked this almost every time she met an adult outside of her family circle.
Mr. Fischer, the new History teacher, got straight to the point at the beginning of the semester.
“What is your ethnicity exactly, dear? Pan-Asian is it? Hawaiian? South American?” He had a habit of putting her on the spot, and she dreaded his class.
Her skin bristled at the thought that the ambiguity of her complexion and eye shape should become an open invitation for questioning.
Cece Daley, with her long legs, platinum-blond hair, and cheerleading squad accolades would never be asked to explain her origins.
“Daddy’s from California and Mom is from Ambler, right here in Pennsylvania,” she would probably say, unprompted.
Kit had seen Cece in the Home Depot on weekends, calling her father “Daddy.”
“So? What is it?” he persisted.
“What is what, Sir?” she asked, her voice sharp.
“What is your background, hon?”
There was no reason for her to hold this back.
She could put him out of his misery in a few words.
But she thought, Why should she explain?
She was still stewing over the fight with her mother that morning, and the kiss with Dave in the basement the night before, and how he had said: “Hey, we’re still keeping this between us, okay?
” She wanted to get to the safety of Sabrina’s bedroom.
She wanted one of those jasmine teas Sabrina always made.
They would watch a movie, talk late into the night—just the two of them, so they could really talk, unlike at her house on Gravers Lane, where she was always listening for the creaking floorboards announcing her mother’s arrival.
“If you don’t mind my asking, of course.”
She thought, Actually, I mind very much .
“I’m adopted,” she replied quietly.
“Tupperware…when I grow up, Kit, I’m going to invest in Tupperware.
” Sabrina sighed as she looked into the fridge.
She stacked and unstacked plastic containers.
“We have so many empty butter containers for leftovers. Does your mom do this? Probably not, I guess. I mean, look at this one. One dumpling. Why didn’t someone just eat it?
And Tupperware is cheap. You can go to Walmart and buy like a dozen sets for nothing.
” She shook her head, replaced the top of the butter container, and put it back in the fridge.
“Oh! I found them,” she said, her voice singing in happiness as she brought out a plate with a picture of penguins dancing on an iceberg.
No dish in their home was the same, unlike Kit’s house, where everything was a full set from Crate there were no messages from Dave.
Sabrina cut the mooncake in half, revealing the shiny, perfectly preserved shape of a heart layered in pink, yellow, and orange-red bean paste.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
Kit shrugged.
Sabrina pushed the plate over to her, offering her the first taste. Kit’s mother had brought her up well; she should have eaten the first mouthful with relish and complimented her host. But she couldn’t remember these lessons in that moment.
“I hate that red bean shit,” Kit said.
Sabrina’s features clouded with hurt. She looked like a girl in a manga comic book, a close-up of her face in the picture box with giant weepy eyes and a wobbly line for tears on the way.
“Don’t have it, then,” Sabrina retorted and forked a big portion into her mouth. The piece was too big, and Kit could see that Sabrina’s pleasure had floated away like a child’s bubble that had burst.
The meaningless hurt caused over a mooncake.
Kit looked at it and thought how she actually did want to try it, she wanted to taste something sweet.
But this had always been their dynamic—Sabrina, the chirpy mouse who would edge too close to Kit’s lair, where she would snap and snarl as Sabrina limped away.
This was her nature against Sabrina’s soft, accepting ways.
She thought of the books she’d seen on her mother’s bedside table, like Nature vs.
Nurture: The New Way to Parent. Sabrina said that she was always taught by her mother, Lee Lee, to avoid taking risks at all costs and respect her elders.
There was no other way in the Chen household; everything came back to these two rules.
But Kit found other ways, and sometimes wondered why Sabrina didn’t try to as well, even if the freedoms in her home were different.
Maybe it was as simple as that, that her parents never enforced the same rules that Sabrina had to live by.
Or maybe it just wasn’t in Kit’s nature to do as she was told.
“What’s up with you? You’re in a terrible mood,” Sabrina asked, her tone cautious, as she poured their tea.
“Yeah, family lunch at the Harrisons’ was annoying.
Dave was there.” Kit wanted to say more, about how he had asked to meet her the night before and they had fooled around in his den while his parents were out.
But the words wouldn’t come. Sabrina’s kindness in spite of her own snappy remarks left her feeling guilty.
“You wanna talk about it?” Sabrina asked, pushing a steaming mug toward her. “I know you guys have some kind of understanding or whatever, but I’m here, I’m a good listener.”
The balled-up jasmine leaves began to unfurl in the hot water.
“You think Dave is a racist?” Kit asked suddenly, dipping her finger into the liquid.
“What?”
“Nothing, never mind.”
“I don’t think so, Kit. I mean, he’s dated different girls. He’s in my political science class, and he’s a liberal,” Sabrina said.
“Yeah, I guess. I just don’t understand why he is so weird about us , you know?”
Kit saw Sabrina searching for the right words to respond.
“I’m like the last person who understands guys. I kissed Seth Hartmann three times before I dumped him, and like, we were hardly even boyfriend and girlfriend…” Sabrina’s voice trailed off.
“I know, I know. But hey, this is your summer, right? And then we have college. We are going to live !” Kit forced a false cheeriness to her voice, but underneath she wanted to cry.
“Do you think so? I really hope so. I’m so ready for high school to be over,” she replied in almost a whisper.
For the first time in weeks Kit shifted her gaze away from her problems with Dave and noticed that Sabrina looked tired.
Something was weighing on her friend. She tried to remember what Sabrina usually did on weekends, but she realized with some surprise that she always assumed her friend was studying or waiting for Kit to invite her over.
It never occurred to Kit that Sabrina’s life extended beyond her blue row house, her studies, and Kit herself.
She looked around the kitchen and saw Sabrina’s Dell laptop nestled and shut on top of the side counter.
The stickers on the cover had started to fade.
The pile of kawaii Japanese corgis looking over their backsides now looked like a fluffy cloud, but the Keith Haring dancing figures and the “So Fetch” and “Hacker Inside” stickers still retained their original colors.
Kit remembered how happy Sabrina had been when Kit had brought them back for her from her vacation to San Francisco the year before.
“What’s up, Rina?”
As Sabrina looked up at Kit, an expression of surprise passed behind her friend’s eyes.
“Oh, I’m just trying to work through some stuff, you know, end-of-year things.”
“Talk to me.” Kit leaned forward. She remembered how her mother would do this when she wanted to encourage her to open up, and Kit congratulated herself for being so sensitive to her friend’s needs.