OKAY, I KNOW the Eiffel Tower is in France. The real one, that is. But here I am in front of an exact replica, and weird things are happening in my chest. Because it’s so big, and I’m so small.
All of Epcot is so big—there’s Japan and China and Italy, Morocco and the United Kingdom. There is indeed a Canada, where Mel’s from. (Poutine is not on the café menu.) There’s Norway and Germany and France. There’s pretty much any country you can think of, each with its own restaurant and place to walk around in and music that’s foreign and strange, with instruments I can’t identify.
“Goodwill Ambassadors” wave and smile from fake street corners, and I know from their name tags that their real homes are thousands of miles away. And they’re, like, my age. They left their homes and families to come work at Epcot, and they don’t even speak English. At least, the girl from Japan didn’t. Her name tag read, HI, MY NAME IS YUKI! and when I asked her where the bathroom was, she said, “Excuse?” So I said, “Bathroom. Toilet. Pee-pee wee-wee?” And she said, “Excuse?”
Thinking about it makes a well of loneliness open inside me, even though here I am at Epcot, a place I’ve wanted to come to since forever. I’m supposed to be having fun, and instead I’m worrying about a girl whose name is the same as “yucky.” Then I wonder what Jesse means in Japanese. Cabbage, maybe. Or bladder. That would totally suck if you went somewhere far, far away, and your name turned out to mean bladder.
Over by the Eiffel Tower, but not right up next to it, is Vicks. She’s positioned her body with one hand balanced in the air and the other planted on her hip. Her expression is animated and false, like, Look at me, I’m a tacky tourist! My job is to capture the moment with Mel’s camera phone, making it look like she’s propped against the tower itself.
“Take the picture!” she calls.
I’m trying, but I’m not sure I’ve found the right button.
She’s leaning too far, losing the pose. “Take the picture, dammit!”
I click, and the screen captures a flailing Vicks, her sideways body blocking the tower. She lands smack on her butt, and I quickly snap that shot too.
“Jesse!” she complains.
I giggle. Then I want to cry. My emotions are nutso, going from one to the next to the next. I’m in Epcot, surrounded by colorful banners commanding us to “Experience the Magic!” and I’m coming unhinged.
Vicks gets to her feet and dusts off her butt. She tries to look mad, but she cracks up instead. Things are better between me and her, but they won’t be totally right until there aren’t any more secrets between us. I do kinda know that. Maybe ’cause of talking about Sunny.
“Let me see,” Vicks says, walking over. She scrolls through the pictures and groans. “Jesse, you are worthless.”
“I know,” I say.
She looks at me oddly, and I get nervous. First she was smiling, and now she’s all solemn, and I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. Or—and this is closer to it—I wish she could just know everything without me having to say it: about me wanting to be a better person, about all the ways I do feel worthless.
Mel and Marco head toward us through the crowd. They’re holding hands. It’s so dang cute. Marco ducks in to give her a kiss—it’s like he can’t get enough of her—and I think to myself that mousy little Mel’s scoring a lot of kissing action all of a sudden. I saw the two of them going at it in the hotel lobby too.
“Any luck?” Vicks asks when they reach us. They’d gone on a mission to find funnel cakes, but there are no funnel cakes in their possession and no telltale powdered sugar smears on their mouths.
Mel shakes her head. “Alas.”
“Alas,” Marco echoes, teasing her. They smile at each other, and this—the two of them—is something right in the world, no matter what else is going on. I’m proud of my girl.
I’m also a little in awe of her, ’cause she’s the one who bought our ridiculously expensive day-passes to Epcot. Seriously, they were like seventy dollars apiece! I was like, “Can’t we get a one-hour pass?” But the ticket lady said no, and she wasn’t even sorry.
Marco bought his own ticket, though. Mel offered, but he wouldn’t let her. I’m warming up to him, the bum.
“Oh, well,” Vicks says about the funnel cakes. She tosses Mel her phone.
Mel looks at the Eiffel Tower shot on her screen, grins, and shoves the phone in her pocket.
“We scored easy passes for Soarin’, though,” Marco says. “It starts in ten minutes—you guys want to come?”
“Is it one of those rides where you get jerked all around?” Vicks asks.
“It’s like you’re hang gliding in California,” Marco says. “It looks awesome.” He looks at Vicks when he talks to her, but his manner’s not the slightest bit flirty. It’s not mean, either. It’s more like he’s putting all the party stuff behind them, for Mel’s sake.
Vicks is doing her part too. She’s been acting as normal around him as she can, even slugging his shoulder when he made some boy-sports comment about the Marlins.
“I’ll pass,” she says. “Rides like that make me sick to my stomach.”
“Really?” Mel says. She, like me, probably figured Vicks had an abdomen of steel.
“I am a delicate flower,” Vicks informs us huffily, which makes Mel laugh.
“What about you, Jess?” Marco says.
I start to correct him—it’s Jesse, not Jess—then stop myself.
“Nah,” I say. “I want to watch the Chinese dancers.” There’s a sign on a wooden post that announces a six-o’clock performance of YEAR OF THE ROOSTER, PERFORMED BY THE ROYAL CHINESE DANCE TROUPE.
“Cool,” Marco says. “Enjoy.”
We make plans to meet up later in Morocco, and then Marco leads Mel toward the space ride. She smiles and gives us a backward wave.
Vicks and I stand there after they’re gone. There’s noise all around—a guy hawking glow sticks, a woman talking in a too-loud voice about fireworks, a toddler squealing, “Mommy! Where’s Ariel?”—but Vicks and I are mute.
Finally I say, “Want to watch the dancers with me?”
“No, thanks,” she says. But she doesn’t leave.
“You sure?”
She stares at nothing in particular. I want to talk to her about Brady, in a way that counts and isn’t just words. But I can’t, not till I’ve cleaned my own plate.
“Vicks,” I begin. “Listen.” She turns toward me, and my heart thumps. “I’m sorry, for being such a…”
“Tightass?” she supplies.
It stings. She reads it on my face and says, “Sorry. Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Is it Brady?”
She doesn’t respond.
“What happened that made you break up with him?” I press. “You catch him with someone else?”
“And how would I do that?” she says. “He’s in Miami, remember?”
“Then what did happen?”
She sighs. “He felt tied down.”
“Why?”
“’Cause he just did. I don’t know.”
“Did he tell you he felt tied down?”
“Indirectly,” she says.
Yeah, I’m not buying it.
“Well, when you broke things off,” I say, “did he just let you? Or did he say, ‘No way, I’m not letting you go’?”
Vicks won’t meet my gaze. “He doesn’t care about me anymore. Otherwise we’d still be together, wouldn’t we?”
“That’s stupid,” I say.
“Tell that to Brady.”
“No, I mean you’re being stupid.”
Her cheeks color, and I’m immediately mad at myself, ’cause that didn’t come out the way I meant it to and here we go again. Sheesh. If Mel hadn’t come with us on this trip, Vicks and I would have killed each other by now for sure.
I touch Vicks’ arm. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Let’s stop.”
Her lip trembles, and she gives me a great big bear hug that throws me off balance. When she releases me, I stumble.
“What was that for?” I ask.
“’Cause I love you, even though you are a tightass.”
She is shocking me on purpose.
“I am not—what you said I am,” I say.
“Oh, you so are. But are you ever going to tell me why? I mean, seriously. This whole trip, you’ve been even worse than normal.”
“Ha-ha,” I say.
“Is it because I told Mel about Brady not calling me? Before I told you?” she says. “Because that’s kind of pathetic, you know. Kind of fourth grade.”
I swallow.
“Kidding,” she says. “Kidding! Because I probably…I wouldn’t have liked it if you did that to me.” She puffs out a breath. “So…sorry.”
“Nah, it’s not that,” I say. “I mean, it was, a little—” A lot, I think.
“So what is it? What’s going on?”
My lungs tighten up, which is ridiculous, ’cause in my heart of hearts I know I should tell Vicks about Mama, that I want to tell Vicks about Mama. I should get it off my chest, open up, reach out to others—isn’t that what Faith Waters would say?
But my thoughts are glue inside my brain. I want to say it—My mom has cancer—but I can’t. And it isn’t ’cause saying it out loud will make it true, because it already is true. Which is the problem. At best, Mama will have part of her body chopped off. (And where will they go, those lumps of flesh? Into an incinerator? Into the hospital Dumpster? And it won’t be “lumps of flesh.” It will be lumps of Mama.)
And at worst? She’ll die. Mama. Could. Die. People do, every day.
Vicks is waiting.
“Um…,” I say.
“Yeah?”
I make a deal with myself. If the next person who passes us is wearing Goofy ears, then I will tell her. There are a lot of Goofy ears in this place. Whole families have strolled by wearing Goofy ears.
“Jesse,” Vicks says. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
An old man slow-steps by. He’s got a tube attached to his nose, and he’s lugging a canister of oxygen. He’s also smoking, which I’m sure is against Epcot policy. But he isn’t wearing Goofy ears.
“What an idiot,” Vicks says, taking him in. She pitches her voice louder. “Want a stick of butter with that? How about a nice blow to the head? It would be quicker!”
“You smoke too,” I say to Vicks.
“I’m not on oxygen,” she retorts. “And I’m not smoking at Epcot.” She harangues the man some more. “I’m gonna call the Epcot police on you! I’m gonna do a citizen’s arrest!”
“Stick it, girlie,” the man rasps. He shoots her an arthritic bird, and Vicks gasps. Then she covers her mouth and does a giggle-snicker combo. She loves it that the old geezer shot her the bird. She loves it.
As for me, I blow out my breath in a slow exhalation. I am stuck in this body, just like Mama’s stuck in hers and that old man is stuck in his. There is nothing I can do.
The dancers are going to be performing outside, that’s what one of the Chinese Goodwill Ambassadors tells me. Her name tag says NUYING, which in my head I say as “New Ying.” Vicks and me have parted ways, and now here I am struggling to understand Nuying’s English.
“Sit,” she says, gesturing at the pavilion. To my right is a domed temple, and in front of the temple is a reflecting pool. Except for the tourists slurping frozen lemonades, I could honestly be in China—at least as far as I know. Nuying is nodding and smiling and saying some more things that seem to mean she truly wants me to sit down, so I plop my butt on the concrete. As I wait, I watch the people going by. I notice all the different body types. I read their T-shirts.
A guy with stringy hair wears a red one that says, “Fat People Are Harder to Kidnap,” and it makes me think of Vicks, who would laugh.
A burly dad-type wears one that says, “My Horse Would Buck Your Honor Student,” and this one makes me think of Mel, who I’m sure gets straight As. I scowl at the man ’cause that isn’t nice, making fun of Mel like that. The man’s wearing a cowboy hat, and he swaggers.
Next comes a rash of expensive Mickey Mouse shirts, followed by a sparkly Tinkerbell on an army green pre-faded tank. I like that Tink shirt. If one just like it fell out of the sky and into my lap, I’d wear it in a jiffy. Then I change my mind, ’cause I see one I like better. The girl wearing this new one is maybe twelve. Her skin is pale, and her shirt is black. In glittery pink letters, it reads, “Gone to My Happy Place. Back Soon.”
A series of silvery chimes ring through the air, and the dancers come parading out. Except it turns out they’re not exactly dancers. They’re more, well, jump ropers. There are five of them: all guys, all lean, all Chinese. The youngest looks to be ten; the oldest, seventeen or eighteen. He’s my age, and a guy, and he spends his days jumping rope. Ha.
On the edge of the pavilion, a stern Chinese lady controls the music. It blares from a boom box, its melody calling to mind dragons and a whole drawer of silverware dropped on the floor. The two oldest dancers turn the rope while the three younger ones jump together, all in a line. Then the three form a pyramid. They keep jumping, with the littlest guy perched on the shoulders of the other two. He grins. Everyone applauds.
I marvel as they pull off more and more complicated formations, like twists and throws and backbends, while all along the rope goes thwap thwap thwap to the beat of the music. If any one of them messed up, it’d be ugly. There’d be falling, very possibly broken bones. They’re performing on concrete, after all.
I wonder what it would be like to be one of them, to have to trust folks with your life like that. On the plus side, there’d be someone to catch me when I backflipped over a swishing rope. On the minus side, I’d have to wear a unitard. White spandex in this case, with green sparkles at the wrists and ankles. I can see their underwear lines beneath the fabric. I’d have thought the manager lady would have found a way to avoid underwear lines, but obviously not. Maybe underwear lines aren’t a big deal in China?
I can also see the shape of their…you know. It’s spandex, after all.
People cheer. Music swirls. The oldest guy takes his turn in the middle, jumping the rope while doing a handstand. A handstand! He makes it look easy, but my brain is flabbergasted. He’s jumping rope on his hands.
I wonder if he’s happy.
I wonder what it would be like to have biceps like that.
Penn has biceps like that. Vicks says he does a lot of lifting at his restaurant job. I have a moment where I imagine Penn unloading boxes of canned goods from the back of some truck, and then I blink and look around, embarrassed. Where did that come from?
When the performance ends, I stand up with the rest of the people who’ve been watching. It’s odd. Everyone claps, and I think they mean it, and then blam, straightaway they’re dusting off their behinds and adjusting their Goofy ears and checking their watches.
“I am absolutely craving a Ding Dong,” a red-haired lady says to her husband. “You think any of these places sell Ding Dongs?”
I feel like there should be more, somehow. More clapping, more appreciation. Or maybe I just feel bad for zoning out when that guy was jumping rope on his hands.
I bite my lip, then straighten my spine and stride over to him. The hand-jumping guy. His hair is spiky from sweat, and I’m struck by how black it is. Jet-black. True black. Blacker than Vicks’s. Way blacker than Penn’s, which isn’t black at all, but a nice, soft-looking brown.
“Y’all were great,” I tell him.
He looks up, surprised. His eyes are so dark, I can’t find the pupils.
“Shay-shay,” he says. At least, that’s what it sounds like. “Thank you.”
“You from China?” I ask.
“Hong Kong,” he replies.
“Oh.”
He regards me quizzically. I like the way he holds himself, as if he’s capable of things.
“Have you been to Hong Kong?” he asks.
“Me? Nah.” What a question! Me, in Hong Kong! I blush.
“Hong Kong very pretty,” he says. “Very…big. You should visit.”
“Um, okay.”
He smiles politely, and I know that the conversation has run its course. But I’m not ready to say sayonara. Or maybe…I don’t know.
I think about Mel and Marco. I think about Vicks and Brady. I think I don’t know what I’m thinking.
I put my hand on the Chinese guy’s shoulder, and his eyebrows shoot up. I’m fluttery inside, veering on light-headed, but what the heck? We’re all gonna die anyway. I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him. He pulls back. I follow. Then there’s a shift in direction, and his mouth opens against mine. His lips are soft. Warm. Salty. Out of nowhere I think of trains.
“Ninmen!” the boss lady shrieks, followed by a flurry of furious Chinese syllables. They pelt us like stones. We jerk apart.
“Ni bie! Dongshen!” Boss Lady’s barreling toward us, and I don’t need to speak Chinese to know she’s saying to leave crazy American girl alone, or else.
My Chinese guy shoots a glance in her direction, then clasps my hand and pumps it up and down. “Sigh jee-ahn,” he says earnestly.
My shoulders hunch. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Good-bye,” he says. “It means good-bye.”
Boss Lady is upon us, scolding and scolding. She yanks him away and smacks his arms, back, and head. It’s a slap fight, only he’s not slapping back. He’s cowering and looking pleased with himself while his friends crack up.
Well. People are staring, and my face is flaming. I quickly walk away, wondering what in heaven’s name I was hoping to accomplish with that little display.
When I’m a good twenty yards from the pavilion, I allow myself to peek back. The temple still stands, but the Chinese dancers have been herded into their dorm. I hope my guy doesn’t get whipped or nothing.
The temple’s reflection shimmers in the pond, like something from another world.
“Sigh jee-ahn,” I whisper.