CHAPTER 2
BB-HATE
WHEN I OPENED THE DOOR to my usually empty dorm room, a gorgeous girl with olive skin and wavy hair (that I was immediately jealous of ) was rearranging the furniture.
Guess she was the replacement for Leslie, who MIT’s roommate-pairing algorithm had originally thought to be The One for me. But they hadn’t accounted for Taiwanese politics. Upon seeing my chopstick-straight hair and black-as-bean-paste eyes, Leslie had asked, before I even knew her name, “Where’re you from?”
Given her similar hair and eyes, her question had startled the words right out of me. I was used to being asked this, but not by other Asians, at least not in that tone. I gave her the answer I gave everyone: “Massachusetts.”
She shook her head at me, annoyed, same as everyone else. I rubbed my eyes in case her Chinese-ness was somehow a hallucination.
Nope.
Instead of asking all the questions flooding my brain—Why does it matter? Well, where are you from? What the hell is your name?—I said, “I’m Taiwanese,” hoping to move past the awkwardness so we could start the lifelong friendship promised me by books and movies.
“Thank God,” she said. “I was worried you were from China.”
Well, that was weird. And a first. “If I were, then would we not be friends?”
She furrowed her eyebrows at me for a second. Then the realization dawned on her face and she sighed, not bothering to hide her exasperation and perhaps even exaggerating it. “That means your parents aren’t native.”
When I stuck my chin out, silently asking what she was talking about, she clarified. “Your family came to Taiwan in 1949, during the Communist Revolution.” A statement, not a question. Then she said the sentence that would haunt me for years to come. “Your family killed my family.”
I gaped. Just stood there with my eyes wide, mouth open—completely incapacitated by the bomb she’d just set off. Finally, I managed to squeak out, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Figures. Learn your own history. When your people”—she practically spat the word—“invaded our home, you massacred us—my grandpa—for no reason.”
“I—I’m sorry,” I stuttered, so overwhelmed by the venom in her voice, as if I had personally wielded a gun in that war.
“And you all covered it up like they always do.” She repacked the T-shirt she had just unpacked. “You don’t get to call yourself Taiwanese. You’re not. And you’re not Chinese either, since your grandparents fled from there. You don’t belong anywhere.”
I was used to being shunned by others for my different-tinted skin, different-shaped eyes, and my parents’ difficulty with ls and rs, but this was completely new. I guess to Leslie, we weren’t the same either. Shortly thereafter, her bed was empty, a constant reminder of how much I didn’t belong.
So even though the new roommate intimidated me with the confidence exuding from every cell of her long, lean, stupidly perfect body, there was no way this could go any worse.
I paused at the door and waved, a nervous grin on my face.
She wiped her hand on her tank top—what was on there?—and stuck it out to me. “Nicolette.”
“I’m Mei.” My hand remained by my side. There was an awkward pause as she dropped her arm and returned to moving her desk. I didn’t want to address the germ-conscious elephant in the room, so I didn’t say anything.
With a smirk, she said, “You’re already better than my last roommate, Chatty Patty.” I wondered what Nicolette would have called her if her name had been Gwendolyn. “She wanted to be BFFs”—Nicolette rolled her eyes—“and none of that will be happening, got it?” She dumped shiny new polka-dot sheets, which were as cute as she was, onto the bed. I cringed at my garage-sale floral bedspread that screamed, I once belonged to an old lady.
“Thanks to her, I’m stuck with you and you’re stuck with me now, k? Sorry to change your single into a double.” She emptied her suitcase on the bed but made no move to put anything away. “Oh, and just a heads-up—I’m gone most nights, so don’t ever wait up for me.”
I shrugged, not sure what else to do.
She nodded. “This is gonna work out great.”
Maybe we were matched up because even the computer knew I’d be too scared to talk to her, just like she wanted. My age alone suggested I was a maladjusted, socially awkward introvert.
Or maybe the computer just sucked.
I felt foolish. I had never been able to show anyone what was really beneath my skin—why had I believed the roommate-pairing algorithm could find the one person to unlock my secrets? Oh for two now.
“See ya, Mei.” Nicolette brushed out of the room, and I had a feeling those would be the last words between us for a long time.
Laughter streamed down the hallway and in through my open door, filling my ears and taunting me. I practiced a friendly smile in the mirror (it was fake and a little creepy), straightened my clothes (still wrinkled and smelled like stale drawer), then slunk down the hall with as much confidence as a Bachelor contestant.
Don’t mention your age, I reminded myself. There was a strange (and often detrimental) human need for the familiar, and that extended to age. In high school, after multiple negative reactions to my being younger—which included some form of slapping an “immature” label on me like a huge I on my forehead—I started avoiding the topic, even awkwardly so, making the situation worse than if I had just answered them. Why won’t you tell me your age? they would ask, worried I was a weirdo, and then, when I didn’t respond, they’d ignore me for the rest of the time because, you know, I was a weirdo.
Maybe college was different, but why risk it? MIT did have their fair share of young phenoms, but I didn’t want to be lumped in with them. I just wanted to be Mei, whoever that was.
The laughter embraced me as I walked into the common room, and my hope soared and straightened my spine. My plastic smile turned genuine as I looked from one pair of bright eyes to another.
Seven students of various ages, races, and genders were spread among the four tattered sofas, separate but together. Almost everyone was wearing apparel featuring TIM the MIT Beaver, and for once I fit in.
“Hi! I’m Mei,” I yelled—well, I thought I yelled. The actual scratchy sound that came out was lost among the chatter. I waved—large, dorky, and in a huge awkward circle in front of me. Not wanting to see their reaction, I lowered my eyes and folded myself into the corner of the closest armchair, the one with the multicolored stains splashed across the pilly fabric. I tried not to think about the parade of people who’d probably had sex there through the years.
The cute girl in the I MY BEAVER T-shirt leaned over and filled me in. “We’re having a debate: C-3PO versus BB-8.”
“What’s a BB-8?” I asked without thinking.
They all stared at me as if I had just asked, What’s pi?
I thought about adding just kidding, but I didn’t have a chance. One girl started laughing immediately. Her neighbor swatted her elbow and hissed, “C’mon, Valerie,” but she just laughed louder.
Suddenly I was six years old again, wearing traditional Chinese garb complete with knotted closures, trying to hold my shaky chin in the air as I was laughed out of the school picture line. Forever the outcast, even at this school of nerdy outcasts.
One boy turned to me. “Don’t pay any attention to her.”
Beaver Lover leaned in again. “BB-8,” she repeated, as if that was all I needed. When she saw my blank stare, her wide eyes mirrored mine. “Star Wars? Have you never seen Star Wars? How is that . . . ? But you’re at MIT. . . .” She shook her head as if she finally heard what she was saying. “Sorry. I mean, that’s totally fine. I was just a little surprised.”
I forced my gaze to meet the rest of theirs as I explained, “I don’t watch many movies.” Only a few, snuck in during the rare moments my parents were out of the house. I went for the most scandalous ones I could find on TV. American Pie. Grease. Tiny acts of rebellion, done mostly to try to prevent incidents like these.
The Caucasian boy across from me nodded along. “Were you sheltered because of your Asian upbringing?”
I squirmed, not liking where this was going. He was completely right, and it seemed he was trying to understand, but something felt off. I shrugged.
“Did your parents, like, make you play an instrument? And you had to go to Harvard or MIT? Practice SATs every weekend? My ex was Korean. We had to date in secret.” He looked down his nose at the rest of us, as if his past made him cool.
I may not have taken practice SATs every weekend, but I did have to take it three times until I got a perfect score. And I played the piano. But I didn’t want to reduce my parents to shallow stereotypes. They may have done versions of what he was implying, but not in the same tone. Since it was all too hard to explain, I simply said, “It wasn’t quite like that.”
A boisterous student in an MIT CREW cap swept in with leftover Bertucci’s pizza from the Student Center. As everyone swarmed the free food, I ducked out. The only thing I knew for sure was that no one there remembered my name.
Not wanting to return to my room since it didn’t feel like home, especially not with Nicolette’s lacy push-up bras and Untameable nail polish everywhere, I tiptoed around the dorm, secretly hoping to bump into someone. Maybe a potential friend.
On the floor below mine, I walked past the library, then saw them. Double doors, shut, unwelcoming, the opposite of the library’s open glass doors on the other side of the hall. I was drawn to the mystery, the secrets behind the metal.
They creaked, signaling their long disuse, and for a moment I worried I would get in trouble. But they weren’t locked. I inched forward into the darkness, then emerged into an expansive room lit by floor-to-ceiling windows.
The dusty tables pushed into the corner and the tray-size tunnel in the wall told me this was Burton Conner’s now-defunct dining hall—the Porter Room, I recalled from the dorm booklet that had arrived with my acceptance letter. (Nerd alert: Of course I had read it cover to cover.)
The emptiness and extra-shiny floors called to me. Something stirred deep in my soul, the mix of excitement and awe that happened when you felt like the stars were aligning even though you didn’t believe in fate.
I kicked off my shoes, one flick of the ankle, then another, and the second my socks met the floor, my movements morphed. I was always a dancer—that was a part of me, not something that could be separated—and alone in this vast space, I stopped holding back.
My pointed feet slid across the linoleum as if they were already intimately acquainted. My curved, extended arms swept through the air, and I leaped, spun, and pas-de-chat–ed my way to the other side of the room.
I had found my safe space. It was worth having to disinfect these socks now. And it was worth having to withstand the disapproving Mǎmá Lu in my head with her pinched lips and hands on her hips. Dancing instead of studying, Mei? Each step is a stomp on my heart. God, she was always so dramatic. I pushed her out and focused on the breeze through my hair, the swishing of my feet, the energy flowing from my fingertips to my toes.
Even though I was exerting myself, my breathing was easier here. Natural. It was the one place I could express myself, be completely me. If only I could find another who spoke dance.