49
Because Jess was away at camp and they couldn’t have movie night, Vân Ước was officially home alone after school and homework club on Friday, so she finally agreed that Billy could come and visit her. He figured he could get away with a “run” while he was grounded.
Her parents went downstairs at quarter past six to be collected by Bác Bảo for their regular Friday dinner.
At six thirty the buzzer sounded.
She looked around while she waited for Billy to come up.
The old dudes did a quick inventory for her: Vinyl-covered sofa and chairs with a split in the arm of one chair mended with insulation tape/Plastic “lace” cloth on the table, large-screen TV disproportionate to the living space/Small kitchen, upright cooker with electric coil cooktop/He’s going to be so impressed/At least she’s hidden those horrible photos of herself as a child.
She couldn’t help thinking of the scene in Pretty in Pink where Andie said to Blane that she didn’t want him to see where she lived. And she lived in a house!
She tried to make herself feel okay by remembering that she seemed to be in the bubble with Billy. Nothing she did or said or was could be wrong. She felt the familiar excitement battling it out with sickness at the whole idea of the wish, more so now that she had the small glass vial, well hidden under papers in the top drawer of her desk.
Billy knocked. She led him in; they went straight into her room. Her pretty room. She’d decorated it over the years with thrift-shop treasures and it was a space that pleased her every time she walked in. Billy was drawn straight to her window.
“That’s so cool,” he said. The late-afternoon light was shining through the sixty-seven crystal decanter stoppers she had suspended at different heights with fishing line from the underside top of the window frame, forming a sparkling “curtain” over the entire window. She had rigged up a frame of wood inside the aluminum frame, allowing her to arrange the installation.
“People drop decanters, so lots of lonely stoppers find their way into junk baskets at thrift shops. Or they used to.”
As they stood, color-washed in the flickering rainbows, Billy leaned down to kiss her, with an mmm sigh that sounded as though he’d settled somewhere extremely comfortable, and she responded for a dazzling, drowning minute before breaking away.
“Sorry, I meant to say when you came in, I can’t do this, can’t do anything—not here.”
“Are you sure?” Billy kissed her once more.
She was tempted, but resolved. “It’s too thin—the space between the front door and here. I don’t feel safe.”
Billy flopped down on her bed with a joke-groan of anguish. “You’re killing me.”
“I know. But we can’t.”
Billy sat up. “I can’t stay for long anyway. I’m supposed to be running. So, what do you want to do on Sunday?”
“I don’t know.” Vân Ước sat next to him on the bed. “I’ve never been on a date before, so I’m expecting you to do most of the work here.”
“We’ll have about three and a half hours. It’s one of the longest films in existence. And I know one thing I want to do,” he said, smiling. “I’m taking you somewhere secret.”
“Where?”
“Duh. It’s a secret.”
“I’ve got somewhere I’d like to take you, too.”
“Where?”
“Seeing as we’re playing it like this: also secret. But it involves food,” she said.
“Does that sound like a couple of hours?”
“Yeah, so maybe we can do one more thing—I’m happy to just be together, alone.”
“We can walk.”
“I can hold your hand. And I’ve got another food thing. We can do that last; it’s right near the Nova. Are we picking Jess up there after the movie?”
“Yeah. How are things going at your place, poor you?”
“Arctic. My parents hate my guts. The hatred will culminate in our family ‘conference’ with Dryden, when my shitty attitude will be dissected and spread out on a table for all to see and despise. Hatred should diminish with time, with a likely thaw coinciding with footy season.” He stopped making light of it. “What freaks them out is the possibility that I’ve really stopped playing along with their whole dumb plan. Will it snowball? Will I remember to be a famous doctor, or has that also dropped off my list?” He gave her an apologetic look. “And for some reason, they associate it with you.”
“I’m a bad influence?”
“I tried to make it clear you are the opposite of a bad influence, but I guess you were the only thing my mother could pinpoint that had changed in my life.”
That stung; she hadn’t really registered that she wanted the approval of Billy’s family until she felt the unfairness of having earned their disapproval, and knew that it attached to her being socially unacceptable in their eyes. “If only they knew—I would have to be the most study-hard girlfriend you could find.”
“I told them all that.” Billy flopped backward on the bed and pulled Vân Ước down beside him. She started to sit up, but he said, “Just lie here with me.” He resettled his arm around her more comfortably, kissing her chastely on the earlobe before closing his eyes. “Tell me something to make me feel better.”
Make him feel better.
Make him feel better?
She thought about what it meant to be considered a bad influence, just because she was born outside a tiny social circle.
She looked up at the ceiling and thought about what her own family had survived, still so new and raw to her.
She thought about Debi’s family during the Second World War, what they’d been through in the Warsaw Ghetto, then in hiding; how all had been persecuted, and most had died.
She thought about families in Gaza during 2014, when nowhere in the city was safe from Israeli airstrikes, not even schools, not even hospitals.
She thought about the schoolgirls kidnapped in Chibok, Nigeria, still not rescued.
She thought about the family from South Sudan who just moved in down the hallway, and the slash scars all over the father’s face and neck.
She thought about the millions of dispossessed people jammed into refugee camps all over the world.
The relentless relativity she applied to her own life bowed her down. Studying hard? Practicing hard? Not as bad as living under the oppression of the communists. Tired after school? Not as bad as risking your life on a leaky boat. Feeling lonely? Try saying good-bye to your family, expecting never to see them again.
It wasn’t as though her parents had ever said those things explicitly—it was enough to know it. She was nearly seventeen; she was perfectly capable of punishing herself. Inherited oppression and deprivation and fear was a gut-clench she never got to release.
Make him feel better?
She calmed herself down.
His problem was real, to him, right now.
She glanced sideways, ready to relent and kiss him, but his breathing was regular and deep; he was asleep. She watched his beautiful face in repose and tried not to feel jealous of this boy who’d never had cause to compare his daily woes with anything worse than other privileged people’s daily woes.
It would take guts to hold the line and really step away from rowing. It was clear that neither his parents nor the school had accepted his decision as final. They still expected him to grovel, toe the line, and get back in the eight.
He’d be in free fall after so much scheduling, and planning, and control. Saying good-bye to so many desirable, known outcomes. His ancestors with their own ideas of duty and respect and obedience would frown on him; outnumbering him, they’d hurl their degrees and their trophies at him through time and space.
But he’d made up his mind. He was turning his back on this particular chapter of public “winning.” Saying good-bye to the security of consensus status. That was pretty brave.
She kissed him awake.
Walking Billy to the elevator, she saw the stained concrete floor, the low ceiling, and the exposed pipes of the hallway with fresh eyes. She glanced at him; was he judging her surroundings as harshly as she was? Didn’t look that way. All he seemed to notice was her. He blew her a kiss as the elevator door closed.
She had left a clear half hour between him leaving and her parents’ return to be sure that they would not cross paths. Even so, she went out into the hallway and reentered the apartment sniffing (twice) to see if she could detect any telltale Billy smell. She went into her room, smelled her pillow—she was happy to detect a tiny hint of him there—and found a single strand of his hair, which she removed, screwed up into a piece of paper, and disposed of with forensic care.