“With Ian.”
“And the Warriors, maybe; yeah, you bet.” Cara drew a little closer. “And look at the bright side.”
“What?”
“You know.”
“Again telling me what I know?”
“Yeah, that you’d like Alex to ask you out. And once I tell him we’re done, he’ll be able to.”
Sam looked down. “He doesn’t look at me that way. I’m just his tutor.”
“How do you know how he looks at you?”
“Because I keep him looking down at his books, that’s how.”
* * *
Sam could tell Cara knew she was lying, at least not telling all of the truth. She’d had crushes since she’d been around eight and had never acted on a single one of them. Preferred instead to stare wantonly and longingly at her chosen object of desire, secure in the notion that the relationship would stretch no further.
And here she was a senior in high school and she’d never had a boyfriend, not even close.
Unless you counted Phillip Steeg and you couldn’t really count Phillip Steeg because their date had consisted of eating cookies in his tree house when they were both twelve years old. He’d leaned over to kiss her and ended up slicing her lip with his braces. Sam kissed him back anyway, following the taut look in his eyes as he pulled away.
“Whoa,” he said, “that was nice.”
Sam nodded; it had been nice for her too. Because she’d been thinking of Alex as she kissed him.
* * *
Cara’s iPhone started buzzing and she checked the text that had just come in. “Huh?” she asked, having forgotten what Sam had just said.
“Never mind.”
“Okay.”
“So you’re not worried?”
“Oh, about Alex? Of course I am. But he’ll be fine.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can. I’m psychic. I can tell the future. Like the whole CatPack acing the AP bio exam next week. Right, Sam?”
9
DIAGNOSIS
ALEX SAW HIS PARENTS slip into the curtained-off cubicle in the midst of his initial examination, their heels clacking against the floor ahead of them. He smelled the light, sweet familiar scent of his mother’s perfume, making him feel better immediately.
“The preliminary news is promising,” a doctor with a shock of ash gray hair reported, as he continued his poking and prodding. “He has full use of his limbs, no sign whatsoever of paralysis, and no evident spinal compression or swelling.”
He heard his mother sigh, his father mumble something in Chinese under his breath, sounding like anything but a now tenured professor at San Francisco City College.
“I’ve scheduled a CT scan just to confirm the initial diagnosis,” the doctor continued, “and we’re going to keep Alex overnight for observation. But if everything checks out, he should be able to go home tomorrow.”
Alex’s father was nodding up a storm, the way he always did when stressed. His mother was steadying herself with short, shallow breaths, the picture of calm and repose.
“Will I be able to play next week?” Alex asked, finding his voice.
The doctor seemed reluctant to meet his gaze. “Let’s just take one step at a time, shall we?”
“Yeah, but could you just tell me what you think?”
“I think we should take one step at a time, starting with that CT scan.”
“So you’re not sure.”
“Alex,” his father began, but his mother silenced him with a tight squeeze of his arm.
“That you’ll be able to play football next week?” the doctor resumed. “No, I’m not. Not yet, not until we’ve had an opportunity to do a full work-up and see how you respond in the next twenty-four hours.”
Alex turned away, looking back at his parents. They seemed smaller to him today. And how was it he’d never noticed how tired his father looked or the patches of gray beginning to dot his mother’s hair at the temples? Could have been the hospital’s harsh fluorescent lighting. Could have been. Or …
Or what?
Or his parents were getting old, worn down by life in large part because of all the sacrifices they had made on his behalf. He’d never been much of a student, having gotten through St. Ignatius’s top-flight, demanding curriculum the past year thanks to the tutoring administered relentlessly by Sam Dixon to keep him from failing out. Alex had always figured his parents forked over the money to her out of guilt, blaming the mismatched household for his problem with keeping hold of lessons in his mind. Indeed, while American families were wiping Chinese hospital infant wards clean, it was almost unheard of for a Chinese family to adopt a Caucasian boy. His parents had always been vague on the specific circumstances of the adoption and Alex never pressed them, accepting their droll tale to spare them the toil of sharing any further truths. It was what it was and that was good enough for him.
Because the truth of the matter was, Alex Chin was positive he loved his parents more than other kids loved theirs. Other kids, after all, didn’t have to contend with what he did, like the time an old-fashioned traveling carnival set up shop in Golden Gate Park.
10
THE BIG TOP
AS A LITTLE BOY, Alex recalled the carnival as an annual attraction, but it hadn’t returned to the sprawling grounds, larger than New York City’s Central Park, in years. Those lavish grounds included a flower conservatory, a botanical garden, and a Japanese tea garden along with several museums, stadium facilities, and various venues for cultural events of all sorts. Alex wondered why the carnival had stopped coming and couldn’t recall where on the site it had actually been situated, as if what had transpired the last day his parents had taken him there had stricken the setting from memory.
He was eight at the time, already taller than An and fast catching up with Li, the family renting the bottom floor of a two-family tenement at the time. They were hustling through a fairgrounds called the Big Top that proclaimed itself to be the world’s largest traveling amusement park. Rushing to get in line just after sunset for the carousel, which Alex desperately wanted to ride. His parents pulling him along and Alex fighting to keep up.
It must have appeared differently to some other carnival patrons, who thought they were witnessing a kidnapping. The police were called. Black-and-white police cars descended on the carnival, an army of San Francisco cops rushing toward the perceived criminals. Back then, and now, to an extent, his parents reverted to Chinese when anxious and nervous, and the sight of the police converging did something to them Alex had never witnessed before.
“Hurry!” he heard his mother blurt to his father. “They must know! We must run!”
So the Chins panicked. Grabbed hold of Alex and tried to run toward a darkened gap between the tilt-a-whirl and a stretch of rigged games. Ran right into a cop with a hand on his pistol. The cop grabbed Li Chin and jerked him aside. Next thing Alex knew his mother was pleading, practically begging the cop with hands clasped in a position of prayer before her, all in Chinese; and blaring only a single phrase to his father Alex could make sense of:
Wǒmen de mìmì …
“Our secret.”
Another cop dragged her away, forcing her to stumble and lose her balance; she fell to the concrete, now layered with stray candy wrappers, peanut shells, and popcorn shed by the wind.
It was at that moment that Alex became a football player, launching himself headlong into the cop with a throaty scream. He hit the man square in the knees, all eight years and seventy pounds of him, toppling him upon an oil-stained patch on the makeshift midway and pummeling him in the chest with his small fists.
Alex didn’t remember much after that. Other cops pulled him off and held him while he cried and screamed. Things got settled, apologies were made, and the Chins left with free passes to all the rides for the remainder of the carnival’s stay in town. They never used them, not that year or the next or ever. The Big Top carnival returned to Golden Gate Park for years after
ward, but Alex had never returned, even at the urging of his friends. The mere thought of it always brought a lump to his throat, reminding him how much he loved his parents then and how much he loved them now.
Wǒmen de mìmì, Alex remembered his mother saying for the first time in a very long time. Our secret …
Which was what, exactly?
11
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
“EVERYTHING WILL BE ALL right,” his mother said, comfortingly, squeezing his hand. “You must have faith.”
Alex pulled his hand away, his mind veering to a different secret his parents had been keeping. His head had begun to throb, but he pushed his thoughts through it.
“Like you have in me?” he said, words seeming to echo in his head.
His mother and father exchanged a befuddled glance, Alex suddenly able to think of nothing else but opening his mother’s drop desk drawer in search of a pencil a few days before. Feeling it balk at his initial tries before he jerked it toward him to reveal a clutter of brochures jamming up the slide. He grabbed the pencil he’d come for, just then noticing the brochures were all for prep schools featuring fifth-year post-high-school programs.
“I saw what you were hiding in your desk,” Alex heard himself say to his mother from the emergency room bed, as if it were someone else’s voice.
“Alex, this isn’t the place or time to talk about this—” his mother said, about to go on when his father squeezed her arm and she went quiet again, embarrassed by the presence of the doctor inside the cubicle.
He wanted to stop himself but couldn’t. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going to college. I’m going to play football. Next year.”
“Alex,” his mother continued, pulling free of his father’s grasp. “Your grades…”
Leaving it hanging out there, like she didn’t need to say anything more.
“They suck.” His head began to really pound, a pain that radiated all the way down his spine, almost as if it were bouncing off his bones. “But the colleges offering me scholarships don’t care, so why should I? Why should you?”
Now it was his mother taking his father’s arm in both of her hands. He seemed to stiffen under the grasp, never taking his gaze from Alex.
“Because,” his mother started, her voice ringing with conviction, “you should go to a better college, not just one that wants to give you money. The Ivy League, even.”
The doctor cleared his throat, as if to remind them he was still there, but Alex responded anyway.
“The Ivy League? You call that football?” He stopped, the pounding in his head intensifying.
His mother whispered something that made his father stiffen even more.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
“No, we won’t. We don’t need to talk about it. And I’m playing football next week. Do you hear me? I’m playing football next week.”
Alex’s head felt ready to explode, as if someone were taking a brick to it from the inside, trying to crash their way out through his skull.
“My head,” Alex said suddenly, the doctor looking up from a check of the nerve endings on his feet. “Oh man, my head…”
The doctor returned to his side, checking his pulse. “Try to breathe normally.”
“Hitse marwa vesu luvi,” a voice in the room said.
“Alex?” asked his father.
“Hitse marwa vesu luvi.”
Alex heard the voice as if it were someone else’s, the words making no sense to him. Just jibberish, not unlike when his parents spoke Chinese late at night when they were afraid he might overhear whatever they were discussing.
“Hitse marwa vesu luvi!”
The voice louder now, more demanding and demonstrative.
“Son?” came the doctor’s voice. “Can you hear me, son?”
Alex could hear him just fine. But he wasn’t in the exam room. He was somewhere else, somewhere different and dark. Running, bouncing. At least it felt as if he were running, and it was the world that was bouncing around him. He watched it shift and shake, gazing upward toward the sky. Except the sky was a ceiling, and he heard rattling sounds and the desperate wheezing of someone struggling for breath.
Not him. He was breathing just fine, thank you. All that conditioning, all that roadwork. He could run five miles on a cool day while barely breaking a sweat.
How could he be looking straight up? Why did he feel so small, so weak?
“Hitse marwa vesu luvi…”
“Alex?”
A hand squeezed his arm.
“Alex?”
Someone calling his name.
“Open your eyes, Alex. Look at me.”
“Hitse marwa vesu luvi!”
His voice again, the words having no meaning to him.
“Alex!”
His arm was hurting now; someone was squeezing it so tight. Alex opened his eyes.
And saw the sallow-faced man at his bedside. Ridiculously tall, his head almost even with the ceiling, as if he were made of rubber and someone had stretched him out. His thin, knobby, skeletal fingers dug into Alex’s arm until the nails cut through his skin and the fingers sank inward, disappearing.
Alex gasped, a bright flash erupting before his eyes, the monitoring machines hooked up starting to beep and screech.
“Alex!”
When his vision cleared, the tall man had turned to wisps of black air wafting upward, the doctor standing where he’d been, clutching Alex’s arm with all of his fingers still showing. His parents jabbered away in Chinese, their words making no more sense than the strange language he’d heard himself speak.
“Let’s get you that CT scan,” the doctor was saying, his gelled gray hair looking chiseled onto his scalp. “Stat,” he added to a nurse standing nearby.
TWO
VISITORS
There is nothing permanent except change.
—HERACLITUS
12
A SPARK
SAM STEPPED OUT OF the California Pacific Medical Center elevator early Saturday afternoon and nearly collided with Cara, who was in the midst of a text.
“Oh, hey,” she said, barely slowing her thumbs.
“How’s Alex?”
“Great. Fine.” She hit SEND and spoke over the whoosh that followed. “How’s the test coming?”
“About that—”
“Don’t disappoint me, Sam,” Cara said, a sharp edge creeping into her voice. “Don’t disappoint us. I told everyone in the CatPack not to bother studying because I knew you wouldn’t let us down. You’re not going to let us down, are you?”
Sam felt her convictions turn to Jell-O as she stepped out of the elevator. “No.”
Cara hugged Sam lightly. “E-mail me later and tell Alex I said hi.”
“You just saw him yourself.”
The cab doors started to close. “You know what I mean,” Cara said, looking down at her phone again.
Sam turned and walked away, shaking her head. She found Alex’s single room all the way down the hall on the right and entered through the open door after knocking.
“You’re kidding, right?” Alex asked, propped up in the hospital bed with a disbelieving glare fastened Sam’s way.
“How do you know I didn’t just stop by to see how you were doing?”
“Because I recognize the textbooks through your backpack. How do you squeeze so much in that thing?”
“Practice, just like you.”
“Speaking of which…”
“What?” Sam asked him.
“My parents told me they saw you here last night.”
“I didn’t want Cara to be alone.”
“I heard she left after a few minutes, which would be more than she just spent with me.”
“It was after we heard you were doing okay, that you could move your limbs and everything.”
“I’m sure that was a great comfort to her.”
“Trouble in paradise?” Sam asked, playing dumb as she unslung the backpack from h
er shoulder.
“Maybe that hit last night knocked some sense into me. Was she always like this?”
“Only since first grade.”
“You think I’d be used to it by now.”
“Resigned, at least.” Sam eased the physics textbook from her backpack and laid it down on Alex’s bed. “Ready to get some work done?”
“I got wrecked last night, in case you didn’t know. I can’t work today. I’ve got a headache.”
“You felt well enough to visit with Cara.”
“That’s what gave me the headache. And I’m doped up.” Alex rolled his eyes, made himself look woozy. “See?”
She regarded the pouch feeding liquid into his arm. “Normal saline solution to keep you hydrated. Sorry.”
“Like you know everything.”
“More than you,” Samantha said. “That’s why I’m the tutor. Do you remember where we left off?”
“My head hurts. I can’t do this today. I had a CT scan.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“They shot me up with something.”
“It’s called contrast medium dye,” Samantha told him, brushing the wavy brown hair from her face. “It makes the scan clearer.”
“Know what it showed?”
“Something bad?”
“Nothing.” Alex smiled. “Turns out my head’s empty. No brain at all.”
“Good thing you have me then,” Samantha said, taking off her glasses.
Alex looked at her closer. Since they’d gone to separate elementary and middle schools, he’d only known Sam since their freshman year at St. Ignatius but never really spoke much to her until she was assigned as his tutor. Now she looked different to him, as if he were seeing her for the first time. Just as his parents had looked smaller in the hospital lighting the night before, Sam looked … Well … Better. She looked better. Prettier.
Samantha started to put her glasses back on.
“Leave them off,” Alex told her.
“Then I won’t be able to see.”