Chapter 6

Ella enthusiastically agreed with my crazy plan, and assigned herself the role of campaign manager. I didn’t know how she planned on playing this role in addition to the 3,467 other things she had to get done every day, but she insisted. I had often wondered how Ella accomplished everything she needed to. I suspected that she got by on four hours of sleep. I needed like twelve.

She grabbed her laptop and had started brainstorming campaign ideas with me when the doorbell rang. Trent. I had forgotten he was coming over to hang out. After promising to talk with Ella about the campaign later, I went to answer the door.

I realized that I hadn’t washed my tearstained face when I saw Trent’s alarmed expression. “Uh, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

He looked relieved. I realized the extreme disadvantage of guy friends. They aren’t all that interested in your emotional well-being.

I excused myself to splash water on my face and saw that things were worse than I had imagined. Dark black circles from my mascara ringed my eyes. I looked like the bedraggled love child of a sad clown and a raccoon. Loud music exploded from another room, and I knew what Trent had decided to do today.

When I came back to what my dad calls the “entertainment room,” I saw that Trent had already settled in on the couch in front of the enormous flat-screen TV my dad insisted was necessary even though, other than Dodgers games, I’d never actually seen him watch television. My dad had also insisted on buying a set of speakers that had cost him about a couple hundred thousand dollars. My dad took his music very seriously, as did Trent. Trent and I typically either watched my movies or listened to his emo music on those speakers. He kept talking about stuff like the tonal quality, but all I could hear was the loud.

I also noticed that he wasn’t alone. Ella sat on the couch with him with her eyes closed. Her head bobbed to the beat. They were what my dad would call a study in contradictions. Blonde, tiny Ella with her hair knotted on top of her head, wearing her glasses, dressed in a pink hoodie and matching sweats, looked like the total opposite of Trent with his black spiky hair, piercings, black T-shirt, and ripped jeans.

The song ended, and Trent got up to retrieve his iPhone from the docking station attached to the speakers.

“I really like this live version,” she said.

“Me too,” Trent agreed as he sat back down next to Ella. I noticed he sat much closer to her than he had started out.

“You’ll have to text me what other songs you recommend from the new album.”

“I don’t have your number,” he said.

“Here.” Ella pulled out her phone and handed it to Trent so he could put himself in her address book.

A loud crashing sound came from the kitchen. Carlotta had the night off, which meant my dad was attempting to make dinner. Attempting being the operative word. Ella saw me standing behind the couch. We exchanged looks, and she said, “I’d better go check on him.” Ella handled my dad better than I did.

I flopped down on the couch next to Trent. He had entered his details into the phone and then called himself to get her number. He glanced toward the kitchen and then returned to the main screen on Ella’s phone. He found her music folder and opened it. He started scrolling.

“What are you doing?”

He gave me a withering look, like I should have known better than to ask. “I’m looking at her playlist.”

Trent had this theory that you could tell everything you needed to know about a person just by looking at the music they have downloaded.

“Nice,” he muttered more to himself than to me. I attempted to take the phone back, but he jerked it out of my reach. “Just a second. Let me finish.”

I folded my arms and glared. He shouldn’t be going through Ella’s phone, but I couldn’t get worked up enough over it to stop him.

“Look at this,” he said with more excitement in his voice than I’d heard in years. “She has Saves the Day, the Smiths, and Sunny Day Real Estate on here. She’s the only girl I’ve met whose playlist doesn’t include at least ten crappy songs. Do you know how rare that is?”

He was talking about me. “Your theory is deeply flawed.”

“Says the girl with ten Justin Bieber songs on her phone.”

“There is no need to take the name of the Biebs in vain. You leave him out of this.”

This time when I grabbed for Ella’s phone I got it away from him. I put it on the coffee table. I didn’t need yet another reminder of how inadequate I was.

“So I was planning on going to this poetry reading next week over at Pepperdine. Interested?”

“Blech,” I said. “Listening to a bunch of pretentious wannabe college beatniks reading what they think is great literature? Pass.”

“I just thought, maybe you and me and Ella could . . .”

So he had invited me solely to get access to my stepsister. He was supposed to be my best friend. A burst of anger flared up.

And then, weirdly enough, it went away as quickly as it had come. Would it really matter if Trent tried to pursue Ella? Despite what she said, Ella had just given Jake up in order to give me a shot with him. The least I could do was share some of Trent’s attention. Obviously nothing would come of it. He’d realize it was pointless soon enough. It might take him longer to catch on, though, because Ella was so nice to everyone.

Not to mention that I knew how much Ella would actually enjoy the reading. “You should ask Ella to go. She loves all that crap.”

He looked surprised. “Seriously?”

“You’ve never noticed those books she carries around by that guy who didn’t believe in capitalization?”

“Are you talking about e e cummings?”

I had no idea. “Sure.”

Ella came back into the room. “Crisis averted.” She sat down on the overstuffed armchair right next to the couch.

“Trent’s going to a poetry reading next week at Pepperdine. You want to go?”

“I’d love to,” Ella said excitedly. “I’d heard about the reading and wanted to go, but Jake would never . . . Anyway, it’ll be fun. I’ll just have to change my work schedule.”

“Cool. Do you want to meet me there at seven?”

I smacked his shoulder. “Way to be a jerk. The least you could do is give her a ride.” I leaned to the side to look at Ella. “He’ll come over here at six thirty to pick you up.”

Ella’s phone rang. She looked at it with a funny expression and said, “I need to take this. Be right back.”

As soon as she left the room, I hit Trent again. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Stop doing that.” He pulled his shoulder out of hitting range. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ll meet her there?”

Trent shrugged and looked in the direction in which Ella had gone. “I didn’t want her to think I was asking her on a date or something. She has a boyfriend.”

“Not for long,” I said, ignoring his bewildered expression. “Besides, Ella’s so far out of your league you’re not even playing the same sport. And you’re acting like you’re ready to propose or something.”

“Whatever.” He scowled at me.

My dad called my name, and I yelled back, “What?”

A few moments later he came in the room, drying his hands on a dish towel. “Dinner’s done. Where’s your sister?”

Stepsister. “Phone call.”

“Trent! You joining us tonight?” my dad asked. Trent’s father was a workaholic doctor, and his mother was one of those never-home socialite types, so he rarely had dinner with them. If he was over, he always ate with us.

Except tonight, apparently. “Thanks for the invite, Mr. Lowe, but I have to get home.” He picked up his backpack, threw it over his shoulder, and without even looking at me said, “See you tomorrow.”

After the front door shut, my dad said, “I’ve never known Trent to turn down food before.”

“Me either.” This was turning out to be one weird day. I got up and followed Dad back into the kitchen, where he handed me plates and silverware to set the table.

“Ella!” my dad yelled. And instead of yelling back like I had, she replied, “Coming!”

“So much for you slaving away in the kitchen.” I pointed to the opened Chinese food containers as I sat down in my spot.

“It’s hot, and it’s much more edible than anything I could make.” To give him some credit, he was chopping up some lettuce and tomatoes. I think he was going for a salad, and I decided not to tell him that salad didn’t really go with wontons.

“Where’s Trent?” Ella asked, texting while she walked. When she reached the kitchen she slid into her chair next to me, putting her phone facedown on the table. “Went home,” I replied.

She looked a little put out. “I wanted to tell him I got someone to cover my shift.”

“Why don’t you quit your job?” I asked as I dumped a bunch of cashew chicken on my plate. “My dad’s got plenty of money. You don’t need to work.”

“Your dad’s done enough for me.” Ella glanced up at my father, who hummed while he chopped. “I’m grateful to him for taking me in, but I have to make my own way. I need to get into UCLA, and I need to get a scholarship.”

“Is that why you work so hard?” I thought of all her volunteering and studying and working.

She nodded as she offered me a pair of chopsticks, which I refused. I never, ever used chopsticks, on principle. My fork worked perfectly fine, thanks.

“Then I’ll have to go to college and keep my grades up and work. It won’t be easy.” She sounded tired.

“You should just ask Dad for the money,” I told her again.

She started piling lo mein on top of her rice. “So that was Jake on the phone. And I broke up with him.”

Whoa. Way to change the subject. My mouth hung open until I realized nobody wanted to see chewed-up cashew chicken.

“I know I probably should have done it in person, but I just wanted to get it over without having to face him.” Ella hated confrontations of any kind. It’s why I’d had to take care of Melanie Robbins at summer camp when we were twelve. Ella wouldn’t. She kind of let people walk all over her.

“How did he take it?”

“Fine. He seemed more surprised than anything else.”

“And you’re okay?”

She smiled at me. “Totally fine.”

That dangerous spark of hope had leaped back to life in my stomach. I reminded it that 1) I was still really mad at Jake, and 2) I had zero chance of ever dating him.

It didn’t listen.

I heard my dad singing as he came over to the table and sat down. I made out the words girl and poison. Neither my father nor I had singing skills, but you put up a karaoke machine and we would be the first ones in line. Yeah, we were those people.

“Wait. Why are you singing?” A new, anxious, and uncomfortable feeling commandeered my stomach. My dad only sang for one reason.

“I’m not.” I noticed he didn’t look me in the eye.

“You are. You’re singing one of those 1990s hip-hop songs.”

“So?” he asked defensively.

It only meant one thing. “You’re dating someone.” I saw the gleam in his eye, the corners of his mouth tugging up. Then a worse possibility occurred to me. “Is it someone I know?”

He sat silent for a few moments, like he was deciding whether to tell me anything. “An art teacher at your school. I met her at the open house the other evening. Delightful woman.”

“Not Mrs. Putnam.” His satisfied expression indicated that it was indeed Mrs. Putnam. “Dad! She’s married!”

“Was,” he corrected as he handed me his salad. I passed it on to Ella. I couldn’t think about rabbit food right now. “Her divorce was finalized three months ago.”

“So you’re her rebound guy?” Rebound I could handle. That meant it wouldn’t last long and she might not end up hating me too much when she started hating my dad.

“We’ll see.”

“But Dad, I like her.”

He gave me a wolfish grin. “I like her too.” My dad was pretty good looking as far as fathers go. He had the same mouse-brown hair that I did—I mean, I thought mine was still that color, but I’d been dyeing it for so long I didn’t really remember. We both had the same green eyes and the same fair skin, and we were both tall. But for some reason the height looked good on him, and it made me look like a troll.

“Speaking of women I’ve dated, you have a Skype appointment with your mother tonight.”

Now I really couldn’t eat. “What?”

“She was upset that you didn’t call her on your birthday.”

“Um, it was my birthday. Shouldn’t she have called me?” My dad just shrugged, and I knew exactly how Pearl would have felt about it. She would have thought that because she gave me life, I should call her on that day and praise her for it. “I don’t even want to talk to her.”

“At least you have your mom to talk to,” Ella said in a small voice that made me feel like total crap. What could I say to that? Technically she was correct. My mother was alive, hers wasn’t. But at least she had had a mom. Someone who had loved her and taken care of her and raised her. Bill might not have been the best dad in the world, but he was there every day. Pearl had never even been there.

“You’re supposed to be on the computer with her in”—Dad looked at his watch—“five minutes. Afterward, there’s a Dodgers game on. You want to watch it with me?”

Dodgers baseball was one of the few things that got my dad out of his studio. I grew up watching games with him. It was our daddy-daughter time. But I didn’t know if I’d be up for it after having to talk to my mother. “We’ll see,” I told him.

I knew better than to be late, especially when I’d been told she was already mad. I got up and went to my room to get my laptop and make sure the Web camera worked.

I thought I had lucked out when she missed my birthday, but apparently this was my penance. I hated that I had to talk to her at all, but I was pretty sure my dad had threatened to stop alimony if she didn’t contact me several times a year. Unfortunately, all our conversations were basically about what a disappointment I was and how much I sucked in general.

My parents met at some artists’ retreat/hippie commune. I didn’t know the details because I had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it came to Dad and his ex-wives. I did know that they got married two weeks after meeting. Dad’s excuse for their quickie marriage was, “What can I say? I’m a romantic.” I was pretty sure that’s code for “I’m an idiot.”

They’d divorced ten months later (surprise, surprise) and she’d left me with him because she needed to find herself in New York. Personally, I thought she should go back and check again to see if she could find a nicer version of herself there.

Most of my dad’s divorces came down to one thing—the time he spent in his art studio. No one could handle it. They all wanted more attention, time, and love. None of them could accept him as he was. He’d even married other artists like my mother, who you would think would understand, but then he had to deal with the competition angle. It wasn’t his fault he was so successful, but my mother in particular couldn’t deal.

A request came in from my mother, and I let out a deep sigh before I clicked the “Accept” button. An image of Pearl Li Mitani appeared on screen. My mother is one-half Japanese. She has smooth, creamy skin, long black hair, and cat eyes that tilt slightly upward at the outer ends. Like I mentioned, I look exactly like my dad. I apparently didn’t inherit anything physical from her. Dad once said that if I hadn’t looked so much like him, he definitely would have had a paternity test done. The day you find out your mother was a skank is a very sad one.

She was also the opposite of every stereotype you might have of Asian women. Instead of being sweet, polite, or submissive, she’s loud, rude, judgmental, and in your face. I blamed her for all my negative personality traits. Plus she was a really crappy mother. She made those tiger mothers look like kittens.

“Your hair is ridiculous.”

No hi, how are you, I miss you. Nope. We started with the insults.

I dealt with her the only way I knew how. “Why, thank you, Pearl. Your hair looks lovely as well. It’s always nice to get a compliment from your mother.”

It frustrated her, as it always did when I ignored her attempts to get a rise out of me. You basically had to ignore 99 percent of what my mother said, or you’d get so mad you’d come up with increasingly creative and inappropriate ways to make her be quiet. Do not ask me how I knew this.

“Are you padding your bra?”

“Oh my Buddha, Pearl. No, I’m not.” I folded my arms across my chest. That lets you know how long it had been since she’d last seen me. And I enjoyed sneaking in an “oh my Buddha.” She found it offensive.

“How are your grades?”

“My grades are fine. It’s only the second day of school.”

Ella crept into my room behind me, and I could see her from my camera. Which meant my mother could see her too. “Forgot my laptop, sorry,” she whispered as she hurried out.

“Ella’s still there, I see.” Pearl had never liked Ella. It reminded me of how sunlight repelled darkness. The two couldn’t coexist.

“She lives here.” Unlike you, I refrained from adding.

I wondered what way the conversation would go now. Odds were she would either yell at me about not honoring my Japanese heritage or interrogate me about applying to Wellesley.

To my surprise she asked, “Is anything new happening at school?”

I felt a pang of regret that we didn’t have anything approaching a relationship because even if I never admitted it to anyone else, I would have loved having a mother I could talk to about Jake Kingston. I wanted advice. I wanted to know that I was normal. I wanted to know that things would get better, that I wouldn’t always feel so helpless and hopeless where he was concerned. I wanted to talk about how Jake had made me feel earlier today.

But I couldn’t.

I had to tell her something. “Um, I decided to run for senior class president.”

“You’re running for senior class president?” Only she said it the same way someone else might say, “You’re going to eat dog food?”

“Yep.”

“Be sure to emphasize that you are Japanese American.”

And there we had it. We’d taken a slight detour to get there, but we had arrived.

“I’m just American, Pearl.” Her eyes narrowed, and I knew it was time to move in for the kill. “I mean, I don’t know what good it does me to be one-quarter Japanese. I didn’t get any of the good traits. I suck at math. I’m uncoordinated, so there’s no way I could ever be a ninja, and I think Harajuku fashion is weird. On the flip side, though, I am a very bad driver.” To be honest, I was proud of my heritage. But I would never let Pearl know that. It’s why I refused to tell her about my anime/manga obsession. She’d take too much satisfaction in my loving something Japanese, and then lecture me about wasting my time on such a meaningless art form. Because the sculptures she made out of actual trash were so much more meaningful and important.

So instead I gave backhanded stereotyping insults, hoping it would tick her off enough that she wouldn’t speak to me for another six months.

“Mother,” she corrected. She wanted me to call her “Mother” as a sign of respect, so I basically called her Pearl every chance I got. I guess I’d called her Pearl one too many times.

I knew what she was doing and why, but I chose to play dumb. “Mother? Is Grandma there with you?”

“No, I’m reminding you to call me Mother.”

“Sure thing, Pearl.” I knew this made me sound like a total brat, but anyone else in my position would have done the same.

She glared at me and then said, “We will resume this discussion when you stop being so deliberately obtuse.” She disconnected from our video chat.

I let out a squawk of indignation. Had my own mother just called me fat?