It is lab day again in chem. Beth and I are hustling, bumping elbows because there is a lot to set up in this experiment. We are supposed to suspend a stoppered test tube over a Bunsen burner. I adjust the clamp on the test-tube holder and then concentrate on sticking the thin glass pipette through the hole in the rubber stopper. I must have pushed too hard because I hear a splintering crack from inside the stopper.
“Argh,” I say, removing the pipette. Small shards of glass tinkle out.
“What’s up, girls?” asks Mr. Borglund as he lumbers over to our lab station.
“I broke a pipette,” I say. “I’ll pay for it.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” He peers strangely at Beth and me through his Coke-bottle glasses. “You Orientals are always trying to save money,” he says, smiling a suddenly evil grin.
“Huh?” I say.
“Are you Chinese or Japanese?” he asks. I look at him. Then I turn and see that Tomper has stopped what he’s doing and is looking straight at me. Right into my eyes.
“Korean,” I say softly.
“Oho, you Koreans!” Mr. Borglund rumbles like a thunderstorm gathering speed. A few curious heads pop up in the lab.
“You Koreans wok your dogs!” He explodes into high-pitched giggles, his mirthful face inches from mine.
This can’t be happening, I think. I have a crazy urge to pull the chain of the emergency shower so I can melt and flow down the drain.
Mr. Borglund walks away, still chuckling.
I blindly try to stab another pipette into the stopper. My stomach lurches, as though trying to get out of my body.
“The burner’s set up,” Beth says without looking at me. We are moving gingerly now, avoiding elbow contact at all costs. I want to tell her that being Oriental isn’t catching.
“Ellen,” Tomper says. He is not grinning. His eyes are steel blue. Or are they steel gray? I bet my eyes are as flat as mud-colored disks. The way they always are. I turn my back on him, on the world, and I don’t look up for the rest of the hour.
“Ellen, you’ve got to tell me what’s wrong,” Jessie says frantically. I am poised for a quick getaway: books, gymnastics stuff all packed and ready. But big blobs of tears ooze from my eyes.
“Here,” she says, handing me a fluffy wad of tissues and taking my knapsack. “You’re coming home with me.”
At her house, Jessie lugs a two-gallon tub of vanilla ice cream from the freezer. She nearly strains her back putting a scoop through it. Then she opens a can of cherry-pie filling and globs the viscous too-red stuff on top of the ice cream. With a sweep of her arm, she clears a bunch of gloves, hats, and records off the kitchen table, puts down the bowls, and hands me a spoon.
“Now that we are in the right environment,” she says softly, “will you please tell me what’s wrong?”
I dig into the ice cream. When the first cold spoonful enters my mouth, I find it strangely satisfying.
“You’ll never guess what ha . . . happened, Jess,” I say. A stray tear plops onto the sundae with a small splash.
“Tell me,” she says.
“I broke a pipette in chemistry.” I hiccup and shove another spoonful of sludge into my mouth. “Then Mr. Borglund came up to me and said I didn’t have to pay for it—that he knew Orientals try to save money by doing stuff like ‘wokking’ their dogs.”
“What!” Jessie yells, catapulting a piece of ice cream to the floor. She rips out a paper towel and starts hammering at the floor with her fist. “I can’t believe it,” she snarls. “What a fucking asshole!”
My toes curl up in my socks. This is an adult we’re talking about. The teacher. I look at my sundae, which is melting into abstract art.
“Did you tell the principal?”
“What?” I say. “Tell him what?”
“Tell him what Mr. Bigot Borglund said to you.”
“Come on, Jess, he’s the teacher,” I say. “And what am I supposed to say, ‘Mr. Borglund was telling jokes in class’?”
“That stuff isn’t a joke,” she fires back. “Why do you think it’s okay because he’s a teacher?”
Because I’m supposed to respect my elders, I am thinking. Because I need an A in chemistry, and I’m too afraid to make waves.
“I really think you should tell the principal,” she says.
“I can’t.” The truth pops out, like a fish onto land. “I mean, what will it do? They won’t fire him.”
“He should know that it hurts you, that jerk. Plus, kids shouldn’t have to listen to that stuff.”
I think of Tomper. Then I think of Mom and Father. How would they react? I’m sure it wouldn’t be good. Father would probably be worried that it’d somehow wreck my chances for Harvard.
“Do you want some coffee?” Jessie asks.
“Sure,” I say.
Jessie throws two microwave coffee bags into the oven. When it dings, coffee aroma fills the tiny kitchen. I like the bitter jolt I get when I take the first sip.
“Has stuff like this happened before?” she asks, coffee steam curling gently around her nose.
There have been lots of times. They have fallen so far apart in the years of my life that I seem to be able to push away the hurt of one long before the next one happens.
“A few weeks ago,” I tell her, “Brad Whitlock called me a chink on the bus in front of all the other kids.”
“Oh my God,” Jessie says, putting down her coffee. “Did you say anything back to him?”
“No,” I say weakly. “I sat down.”
“Oh, Ellen,” she says. “Why didn’t you tell him off?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know what to say.”
“You should’ve said anything,” she says. “Any four-letter word that came to mind. That scum deserves it.”
“Oh, Jessie,” I say, laughing for the first time today. “I wish you had been there.”
“Me too,” she says. “I’d have broken his eardrums. What an unbelievable jerk.”
“But I am different, right?” I say.
“You’re the same old Ellen,” she says. “I’ve never thought of you as being different—in a bad way, that is. You are different because you’re so smart.”
“Why do you think people hate me?”
“They don’t hate you,” Jessie says. “They’re jealous.”
“But I’d never say mean things to Marsha Randall, even though I’m totally envious of her,” I say.
“Exactly. You’re not that type of rotten scummy person,” Jessie says. “Besides, don’t be envious of her. I smell a rat every time I smell that ‘Les Temps de Paris.’” She says it like Less Temps dee Pairiss.
“Oh, is that what it is?” I say. “I thought it smelled nice.”
“She’s a stinkweed,” Jessie says. “You know, right after my mom died, it was training-bra time. Dear old Dad was cool enough to take me to Shrafft’s, where we ran into Marsha and her mom. I said hi to Marsha, and Dad tipped his fishing hat to both of them. And you know what? Marsha just looked at both of us like we were twin wads of gum she’d just discovered on her shoe—and she knew my mom had just died.”
I swirl my mud-colored coffee round and round.
“I guess beautiful doesn’t always mean great,” I say, partly to myself and partly to Jessie.
“No way,” Jessie says. “And you know what? I don’t give two cents about what people think anymore. When you think about it, why should you care about an opinion from a jerk?”
“You’re right,” I say. But then I think of Marsha and her platinum tresses and her letter jacket with the gymnast on it. She can have all that and Tomper, too, and she can shine and shine. No one knows she’s nasty except Jessie and me and some other people at Arkin High who are too insignificant for her to bother with anyway.
“So don’t let the turkeys get you down,” Jessie says to me as she clears the coffee cups. They’ve left rings all over the table, like crazy Olympic logos.