34

The Split

IT DIDN’T MATTER that Garrett said it gently. With regret. I’m sure even Mom had some grief when ripping apart our family. All that mattered was that he was willing to do it.

“Even if I continue?” I was too raw to hide it. The vulnerability. “You would still quit?”

“You could support the Lee Corporation? When they’re going to wreck Old Taipei?”

The ground was cracking between us, jagged then endless deep. A chasm.

“A lot of other companies are sponsoring the arena. They’re not the only one.” I knew I was tumbling, desperately grasping for a branch to hold on to. “And even if we drop out, it’s not going to change anything.” Even I couldn’t quite believe that.

“But if we stay, it’s like saying what they are doing is okay.”

Two separate doors, each leading to a different universe. A different existence.

“What about your scholarship?” I asked.

“I’ll work more jobs.” He said it lightly, but I knew what it meant for him—juggling multiple work schedules, being exhausted all the time without any hope for a break. “I’m not going to tell you what to do. But you know why I need to quit.”

I did. And that was the worst part.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to stay.”

He could have said, Then that’s it. That’s what’s important to you so goodbye. But Garrett was always going past the surface to the heart of things.

“Why?” he asked. There was no sharpness to the question, no challenge. Only this one word, gently floating between us. “Why do you want this internship so badly? I don’t think it’s because you love the Lee Corporation.”

Echoes of James Lee at the networking event: Why do you want to go to business school? Specifically?

I specifically didn’t want to fail in front of the uncles and aunties. In front of my mother. They had picked the height of the bar for the high jump—they had picked the sport—and I kept running and hurling myself in the air to try and clear it. But I had never asked why. I had never even asked myself if I liked track and field or sports, even. I had just done it.

But underneath every jump was this: a girl who had lost her father.

Garrett was waiting, patiently.

“It’s my dad’s competition.”

I saw everything come together for him, finally, the fragments of me connecting to each other. I had never talked about this with anyone. Even now I couldn’t quite look at him directly. I focused instead on the light hitting his face, the shadow next to the small beauty mark by his right eye. “It was the last thing he did, even when he was the sickest. It was his legacy.”

I knew Garrett was running through the loops: the competition, my mom, the Linevine, tracing the path of my decisions, how I had gotten here.

“Juliana.” The tenderness laced through the syllables made the tears come. “What happens if you don’t make it?”

“I have to.”

“What if you don’t?”

I had been spinning plates for so long. Spin and run and spin, watching the whole system with my heart in my throat.

“Then . . .” I fail him. My mother falls apart again. Our family cracks, irreparably.

“What I mean is,” he said, “why does it have to be you? Keeping his memory alive?”

Why did it have to be me? Because it was what was expected. Because I was the last one left when everyone else had a chair and the music stopped. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. I think my mom had been doing the same, in her own way, trying to make sure we didn’t have a hard life. For him.

“You know why,” I said in Taiwanese.

He did. Both of our parents had come here with nothing. They had left everything behind—their families, their language, their dreams. My father spent all his time at his company. Before he had died, I remembered I would sometimes see him on the couch at parties helplessly dozing. My mom had once yearned to become an illustrator, but I had only seen her draw a few times.

What had my parents wanted? They had pushed their own desires so far underneath their sacrifices that they essentially did not exist. I don’t think my parents ever had the luxury to ask if they were happy. They asked only if they—and we—were surviving.

There were times when Hattie and I were talking in English or laughing at some pop culture reference my mom didn’t understand. She would always get this intensely sad look on her face, like she had given us up, too. She had sacrificed being able to communicate with her own children so we could live well.

After all that, how could I embarrass her in front of the community? Destroy Dad’s good name? We carried our parents’ hopes and expectations. We carried everything.

That was my answer. Wasn’t it? To everything. I had let myself become distracted with Garrett and Old Taipei and the people there, but I couldn’t any longer. Like our time together in New Hampshire, all things had to end. We had to get back to the real world. And the reality was that I couldn’t have both. I couldn’t continue hanging out with Garrett and still keep my mom happy. I couldn’t keep our family together like I was supposed to.

“I have to do this competition,” I said. “I need to win.”

Garrett said, “But what about Old Taipei? What about all the people we were helping there? Chef Auntie and her restaurant? Uncle Jing and his fortune cookie store?”

If I kept talking to Garrett, he would try and change my mind. He would change my mind. Because I could already picture them, the little kids scattered all over town instead of gathering at the center. Auntie Cindy alone in her apartment. Kevin’s parents in financial trouble because his mom lost her tutoring location.

And equally as powerful: Garrett. How he had been looking at me lately, with an expression of hopeless surrender. The way his gaze had been hitched to me. He made me want a different life. One I couldn’t have. These past few weeks had been magical, but they had also been built on a lie. It wasn’t fair to him.

Here was the problem with a highly disciplined brain: it will keep calculating things even if you don’t want it to. It will seek solutions.

There was one obvious answer that would solve all these things. It would free Garrett to help Old Taipei and would guarantee that he wouldn’t try to change my mind anymore. It would help me honor my dad and keep my family together. It would finally reveal the truth that he deserved to know. And it would end something early before it could hurt us even more.

The only cost would be me.

I looked him in the eye. “I didn’t tell my mom I was partners with you.”

Garrett staggered as if I had struck him. “What?”

“For the competition. I told her I was doing this with someone from my school.” Think of Dad. Think of the family. Think of anything else but the fact that you feel like you are dying, like you are taking a hot blade and carving out your heart. “I did it because she would not have approved of us being partners. You were right about me all along.”

I hung up but not before I saw his face, the decimation in it.

Then I sobbed.