My dad had us take the next two days off. I was excited about it until I realized he wasn’t going to talk to me. He didn’t make Mr. Ramirez check in on me, and he didn’t make me breakfast.
I went out with Patrick and Felix, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I’d never gotten the silent treatment from my dad before.
I tried to butter him up with pizza and ESPN Classic, but he ignored me and went straight to bed. Without eating dinner. The only time my dad skipped meals was when he had mad diarrhea. And even that didn’t stop him sometimes.
On day two of silent treatment, I wore clown makeup and an orange wig, then waited for him to come home, sitting on the sofa in the dark. I knew things were serious when he didn’t react and instead walked straight up to his room. My dad did not kid around with clowns.
I called my mom the second night of the deep freeze, needing sympathy from someone who would understand.
I had to FaceTime because my mom refused to do anything else. When she picked up, raucous laughter rang out before she could say hi to me. The video on the phone was wobbly and I winced. “Mãe!”
“Clara, one sec!” I heard her laughing, the camera on her face but also moving wildly. I turned my head away to avoid feeling nauseated.
Finally, she steadied the camera on herself—all tousled hair and perfect brows. “Hey, filha, sorry. We’re in the middle of this shoot for Whimsy.”
“What’s Whimsy, and where are you?” I was already annoyed at not having her full attention.
A flash of sunshine from the window behind her blinded me for a second. “Whimsy’s a new online styling service, and I’m in Brooklyn!”
“You are?” I felt myself cheer up, just knowing she was in the same country as me. “For how long?”
“Leaving in a couple of days, actually. Have this trade show in Italy.”
I flopped down onto my bed and stared at the dusty yellow light streaming through my threadbare curtains. “Oh, this little ol’ thing in Italy.”
She laughed, her teeth white and recently veneered by some fancy dentist who sponsored it when she live-Storied the procedure. “We’ll go together one day and stuff ourselves with pasta.”
My eyes closed, imagining a day when I wasn’t stuck in LA all summer, desiccated as the plants.
“So what’s going on?” she asked, interrupting my brief daydream of eating gelato in a cobblestoned alley.
“Pai’s pissed at me.”
“Uh-oh. What did you do?”
“Why would you assume it was me?”
Her sharp bark of laughter made me cringe. “Give me a break, Clara.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Well, my first day on the truck with Rose didn’t go so great.”
“I can’t help but think that might be an understatement.”
It was hard to fool my mom because we were so similar. Every time I tried to gloss over something or play it cool, she called me out instantly. “We just got into a fight. What else is new? Rose and I have never gotten along.”
“You’re going to have to, though. You’re working with her all summer, right?”
Flo decided this was the perfect time to hop onto my chest, her sturdy paw digging into my boob painfully. I winced but let her stay there because I was always at her mercy. “Yeah. But don’t worry! I’m going to try and make it to Tulum, no matter what.”
A low voice on the other end interrupted before my mom could respond, her gaze drifting somewhere to the left of her phone. Suddenly, Brooklyn seemed light-years away.
“Clara, I have to run. But don’t worry about Adrian; you know he always gives in. Wear him down!” With that, she gave me, or the phone rather, an air-kiss and was gone.
I went to bed that night still feeling unsettled and craving a giant bowl of spaghetti.
* * *
Thursday morning I was woken up by blinding sunshine again. I squinted and saw my dad taking a sip of coffee next to the window.
“You have fifteen minutes to meet me downstairs, Shorty.”
Relief pulled me out of bed at record speed. My dad was waiting for me with an avocado toast and tea in a thermos. Not my favorite breakfast, but I didn’t complain. I was just happy that he was talking to me again.
He pulled on his shoes, a pair of pristine black Nikes with neon green stripes running down the sides. “Okay, today we’re doing two of our regular stops. Rose is meeting us at the first stop. And I swear to God, Clara, if you two don’t figure out a way to work together, I’ll have a bigger punishment in store.”
I bit into my toast. “Yeah, yeah.” I hid my excitement at being back on speaking terms with my dad, the bread covering my smile.
* * *
After prepping the food, my dad and I headed to Pasadena, which was just northeast of us. But to get there, you had to take the Western United States’ first freeway, the 110. Pretty cool, except the lanes were about as narrow as a bicycle and the on- and off-ramps were two feet long and often set at ninety-degree angles to the freeway.
And this time, I was driving.
“This is, like, terrifying,” I said, my sweaty hands clutching the steering wheel.
My dad patted my shoulder. “You’re good. I taught you how to drive this freeway last year.”
“Yeah, in a normal car, not the KoBra!”
“Nah, you got this.” If only his confidence in my driving skills was at all warranted.
We finally got off Murder Freeway and arrived at our destination in one piece: an office park filled with grass, big shady trees, and depressing 1980s architecture. “Oh, so this is where your youth goes to kill itself,” I announced as we pulled in.
As we parked the truck alongside the curb by the lawn, I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye: an Asian guy my age or so standing on the corner, holding one of those arrow-shaped signs that advertise a business. It said JAVA TIME and had a hand-painted illustration of a mug of steaming-hot coffee.
I wanted to look away from the secondhand embarrassment of it, except I couldn’t. This guy was good. He was tossing the thing up in the air and catching it behind his back. Then when he got sick of that, he did a backflip and held the sign up with his feet while doing a handstand.
“What in the world is that guy putting in his ‘java’?” I asked with a snort of laughter.
My dad followed my gaze, then grinned. He jumped out of the truck and hollered, “Yo!”
The guy caught the sign in the middle of spinning it around the top of his head like a helicopter propeller. “Hey, Adrian!” he called out. He trotted over to us—his step light, his body agile and bouncy. Like a Labrador. He and Pai exchanged an elaborate fist bump involving fingers wiggling, slapping, and some weird elbow tapping. Okay, bros, we get it.
Then he glanced over at the truck, and I almost choked.
Upon closer inspection, the Labrador was very good-looking. Not my type at all—I usually fell for guys who looked a little malnourished and tortured. This guy was the picture of health and vigor: broad-shouldered with the lean yet muscular build of a runner, thick hair cut short with a few wavy locks flopping into his eyes, high cheekbones, and the nicest skin you ever saw on a male—he was practically glowing. He was like the photo you would find when looking for a stock image of “happy handsome Asian teenager.”
“Hey, you must be Clara!” he exclaimed, walking over to the truck with a giant, toothy grin. His very sharp canines seemed to glint against the sunshine. I blinked.
Smile still firmly in place, the Labrador deftly placed the sign against his hip and held his hand out. “I’m Hamlet Wong.”
I stared at his hand then looked up at him. Who in the world our age shook hands? I held up my hand in greeting instead. “Hi. Your name’s Hamlet?”
“Yeah,” he answered, unfazed.
“Why would your parents do that to you?”
My dad, who was standing behind Hamlet, shook his head. “Clara.”
I feigned innocence. “What! It’s an honest question!”
Hamlet shrugged. “Oh yeah, I understand. My parents, uh, liked the idea of naming me after a prince.” He laughed loudly, startling me.
My incredulity was genuine. “A Danish prince who no one else in the entire world is named after?”
Before he could reply, Rose popped up next to me, magically. She must have gotten here before us. “Hi, I’m Rose Carver,” she said as she held out her hand. Her smile was dazzling. Why was I not surprised when they shook hands.
Hamlet’s eyes lit up even more than the lit-upness they already were. “Oh wow! I didn’t know there was a new employee!”
My dad leaned in the doorway to the truck. “Well, these two are working the KoBra this summer as punishment.”
“Really?” Hamlet’s eyebrows practically rose into that amazing hair of his. “What’d you guys do?”
I looked at Rose. “Let her tell the story. She’s really unbiased, like Fox News.”
She did this little head flip—if her hair had been longer, it would have whipped my face. “We got into an argument and almost … well…”
“You attacked me. And we almost burned the school down,” I said flatly.
Hamlet did a little surprised hop, raising a fist up to his mouth. “No way!”
Rose made a face at me. “Don’t exaggerate.” Then her eyes flitted over to Hamlet—a split second of self-consciousness. “We didn’t burn it down! And anyway, we only fought because she pulled this prank at junior prom—”
“What kind of prank?” Hamlet’s head swiveled toward me and his eyes sparkled. “I really love prank stories.”
I frowned. It was like the time a lady pointed at my bloody-bunny T-shirt and said, “I love creative shirts.” The truly earnest made me so uncomfortable. I muttered, “I reenacted the end of Carrie.”
Confusion clouded his features. This guy’s emotions were closed-captioned on his face. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” I asked, almost just as confused.
“What’s Carrie?”
My jaw dropped. “What! You don’t know what Carrie is? Jesus, do you live under a rock?”
He shrugged. “I grew up in Beijing.”
Rose shoved me, getting closer to him. “Wow! When did you move here? Your English is flawless.”
I tsked. “That’s so racist.”
She bit her lip, mortified. “Oh! No, I didn’t mean…”
Hamlet laughed and held up his hands. Two nice, strong-looking hands, with elegant fingers. “No, no, it’s fine! I moved here in sixth grade. I’ve had time to get pretty good.”
Rose tilted her head and smiled. “Cool! I’d love to talk to you about that experience one day!”
For Pete’s sake.
“Oh, for sure! But I actually have to run—starting my second shift,” he said regretfully, picking up his sign. “It was great meeting you guys. I’m sure I’ll see you around this summer then?” Was it my imagination or did he hold my gaze a bit longer than necessary?
He ran off, leaving us with a clear view of my dad. Pai was grinning. “Oh, you girls.”
“What!” Rose blurted, spending an inordinate amount of time tucking her hair into her cap. She glanced at me. “Do you think he was offended when I made that comment about his English?”
But I wasn’t paying attention. Instead I watched Hamlet run toward a coffee kiosk under a big shady tree. He whipped off his shirt, tugging it from the back of his collar. My mouth went dry. He was bare chested and glorious for a full two seconds before pulling on a white polo shirt, a navy apron, and a matching cap. Then he served someone coffee.
“What in the world?” I asked out loud, pointing at Hamlet.
Both my dad and Rose looked to where I was pointing. Noticing us, Hamlet waved and yelled, “Jack-of-all-trades!”
Before I could stop myself, I laughed. My dad smirked at me, and I threw a towel at him.