Lovely, Dark, and Deep

  Josh clears his throat uncomfortably. I can’t even muster a sideways peek at him. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe the moment.

  “Well, they sure are into each other,” he says.

  “That’s one way to put it,” I tell him.

  “It’s kind of … good.”

  “If you mean, good like a horror movie can be good, then maybe. I suppose.” Then I whack him on the shoulder. “Wait, no! In no universe is this possibly good. You have no idea what it was like to be in preschool when they dropped me off on the first day of school, and then actually made out in the front seat of our car when they thought no one was looking.” I pause for breath, my eyes wide. “We were all looking! All of us, noses pressed up to the windows, looking. Crying for our moms, looking.”

  “Did you all stop crying?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well. Effective, then.”

  Crisis contained. That was one way of looking at it. I preferred to look at him and the way his right cheek (and only his right cheek) dimpled with his smile. But what am I thinking? Josh is obviously the same kind of player as Darren. A guy who goes for impossibly proportioned, sun-kissed blondes glowing with health. A hearty and hale Viking woman to his rugged, he-man Thor. See: Persephone. Not me: Pippi. I barely squeak above five feet tall with curves that would be politely called petite and hair that is a confused brown. My one asset are my eyes, large as Mom’s with a mysterious tilt, courtesy of my genes from Genghis Khan by way of my dad.

  I use that asset now to side-glower at Josh. But my glare is lost on him and his obscenely wide shoulders. He’s studying the empty space where my parents had been standing (kissing) at the registration desk as if he were measuring the residual isotopes of their attraction. Whoever they’ve slipped off to interrogate now, I feel sympathy. Lots of sympathy.

  Josh asks, “They’re your bio parents?”

  “Unbelievably, yes. In a blink of an eye, boom, love.” I can’t contain my blathering now. “Literally: Dad ran public relations for a pharmaceutical making eye drops, Mom was a crisis communications consultant called in when the eye drops blinded people. And then they bonded over the whole Lee and Li last name thing like it was fate. And then both of them wondered what they were doing, wasting their lives, working for big corporations when they wanted to save the world. I mean, who falls in love and creates a business to save the world together during a crisis?”

  “Seriously? They did?” Josh turns a penetrating gaze on me.

  All that concentrated male focus makes me nervous. I fidget, not knowing what to do with my hands.

  “So.” Josh says, “Souper Bowl Sunday, River Tam?”

  I’m about to correct him that while I might be cosplaying River the weapon, I’m one hundred percent Zoë the commander to the core, all contained and one hundred percent controlled. But my chest prickles where my shirt is unbuttoned. I tentatively touch my hot skin. I cannot possibly have sunburned—or worse, broken out in another rash—just by standing here in the lobby, could I?

  “I’m getting your parents,” Josh says, worried.

  “No!” Then I’d be dragged right back to the doctors. I just need to go home.

  Mom’s perpetual crisis echolocation wings her back to my side like she senses my distress. “The doctor warned about this.”

  Not a moment too soon, she and Josh whisk me outside to her trusty Volvo sedan and buckle me in. I wave good-bye to Josh, (mostly) relieved but also (weirdly) regretful. When I lower my hand, it grazes slick paper sticking out of my messenger bag: a copy of Persephone. In thick black permanent marker is a phone number under his message:

  River Tam.

  My brain will, in fact, be missing until I know you’re OK. Text me.

  Josh

  The best offense for any kind of crisis is advance preparation. Where are your vulnerabilities? What is the very worst thing that can happen?

  —Lee & Li Communications

  Inside the War Room: The Crisis Management Playbook

  Name a cause, any cause, and I have mixed, baked, and frosted for it. Forty-nine consecutive bake sales since fifth grade, all of them successful by any measure: money raised, baked goods sold, satisfaction of beneficiaries. All of them themed: bite-size gingerbread houses that perched on mugs of hot chocolate for a group benefiting refugees. 3-D cookie trees for Treehouse, which supports foster kids. Giant gingerbread people iced in gowns and tuxes for the Exchange, which provides free formal wear to anyone who needs it at school. All of them accompanied with a well-researched article complete with interviews with subject-matter experts. I’ve never once bailed on a bake sale, not even when I had back-to-back-to-back finals during junior spring. Not even when Auntie Ruth’s husband, Uncle Amos, died of pancreatic cancer five years ago. Not until this morning, that is. But a few minutes of losing consciousness and a fading rash are not derailing my track record, not when my future as an NYU-educated and Middle East–embedded foreign correspondent might depend on it.

  The moment I spot Aminta’s denim-blue Prius in our driveway, back from Bumbershoot, I feel the first sense of calm in this whole, long, tiring day. I will make things right. So even before Mom comes to a full and complete stop, I shove the passenger door open. Or at least, I try to. The door feels like a herd of mama elephants are pushing against it. (Elephant Rescue mission, pecan-cinnamon elephant ear cookies, Bake Sale, 2013.)

  “Viola, be careful!” Mom warns me as my boots hit the pavement.

  How can I slow down? Adrenaline, sweet adrenaline, surges, so I pound up the three steps to the front door. My house key slides into the lock at the same time the door opens. It’s not Roz greeting me—all, how’s my big sister?—but Aminta Sarabhai, my big-hearted, big-haired best friend from second grade, who is still in her Firefly costume like she couldn’t be bothered to change until she sees me.

  “I’m sorry about the bake sale!” I tell her.

  “Shut up about the bake sale already,” Aminta says. While she has many (many) superpowers, what tops that list is her ability to give grandma hugs: warm, encompassing, and reassuring. Only today, my body tenses, my skin supersensitive when she embraces me.

  “Careful, Aminta!” Mom cries.

  Immediately, Aminta releases me. “I’m sorry! Did I break you?” Then, looking down at me, her eyes grow round. “Oh, my gosh, you’re red!”

  “Yeah, and I will be for an entire day,” I tell her.

  “Oh, good. First day of school’s on Monday.”

  “I know. Lucky me.”

  “You better get inside,” Mom says, waving us both into the house. She bolts the front door behind us hastily as if she’s blockading an enemy.

  Once inside, I peer into the living room and ask Aminta, “Hey, where’s Roz?”

  “Bedroom.”

  Which is code for: pouting.

  Which is precursor for: getting whatever Roz wants.

  Aminta and I learned the early warning signals the hard way. A few big tears rolling down Roz’s pudgy cheeks, and my little sister got the first choice, the best portion, the biggest serving. Once when we were six, Aminta openly questioned Roz’s right to have the last scoop of chocolate chip ice cream—our fave of the moment—and she split it between our two bowls. Roz’s face went horror-movie enraged. I had to get Aminta out of the kitchen fast before Roz cried and my parents intervened. Even though I heard Roz waddling behind us—“wait for me!”—I ran even faster with our contraband bowls. Then Roz stepped on a nail left out from our remodel, it pierced her foot, and she fell. The blood, I’d never seen so much blood. The wails. The wails!

  We all thought she was dying, and it was my fault.

  A few stitches, one tetanus shot, and a giant cast later, Roz returned home, victorious with not one, but three tubs of ice cream, all Sharpie-markered with her name.

  “Sorry,” Aminta whispers, shaking her head. “I just couldn’t tolerate one more K-pop band at Bumbershoot. I know the tickets were expensive, but I wanted to be back h
ere when you got home. So we left early.”

  I can only imagine the conniption fit Roz threw. “I’m sorry.”

  “You should go rest now,” Mom tells me.

  Irritated, I sigh. “I’m not an invalid, you know.” Fighting is futile, though, especially with Mom casting worried glances at the expansive kitchen windows. Anyway, I want to talk to Aminta about our bake sale and Josh. So I grab her hand and we tiptoe past Roz’s bedroom, blasting chirpy notes of K-pop. Just to be extra safe from eavesdropping, I whisper to Aminta as I close my door, “We’re going to have a makeup bake sale.”

  “What?” Aminta splutters, then whisper-yells at me, “again, who cares about the stupid bake sale?”

  “I do.” I plunk myself down onto my bed and scoot back to rest against the wall. My whole body relaxes. “You know our plan. Donate so much to CARE that we might actually be invited on one of their field visits to Nepal or India and get the real scoop.”

  The grand plan was for me to write about our on-the-ground experience, and Aminta to turn those facts into infographics, complete with her hand-drawn comics and number-crunching skills. We are the Geeks for Good, after all. Geeks who were censored in our school paper our freshman year because the administration refused to allow us to publish our investigative report: Aminta’s data crunching that proved—proved!—that teachers unconsciously favored boys in STEM classes. The school did not appreciate her accompanying political cartoon any more than they did my article with interviews with the leaders of the local chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, who had choice words and even choicer examples of institutional sexism. So we decided to go rogue: report on causes that mattered and distribute our articles through innocent bake sales both on campus and off. Can a handheld apple pie have an ulterior motive? You bet, when it includes information about our vets, who risk their lives for the sake of our freedom and return home with untreated PTSD.

  “So we’ll have a do-over on Friday.” I nod my head firmly. Never mind that I have no idea what I’ll bake to substitute for the bao failure or that my body feels so achy tired that the thought of making soup in the morning drains what’s left of my energy. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to baking shape, and this health blip will be history. “Everyone’s going to be ready for a sugar high after the first week of school.”

  “True, the teachers always lay it on thick the first couple of weeks to scare us. Don’t they understand it’s senior fall? Don’t they know how many college essays we need to write? Don’t they know—”

  “We’ll sell out then, especially if we sell before the back-to-school dance. We should make an extra-big batch.” I interrupt this monologue because the same one’s been playing in my own head this whole summer with one major variation: My parents have no clue that my Early Decision college choice is NYU Abu Dhabi. Not only that, but if I get in, my first step is to snag an internship with a field producer for any of the major news outlets.

  “Okay, good idea, but only if I help bake this week,” Aminta says. “I know Caresse will, too.”

  “Nah, I got it. She spent so much time making our costumes for today.” My leather vest that I didn’t even get to wear.

  “You never let us help!”

  “I do, too! You guys donate the ingredients. I donate the baking time.”

  There’s a light rap on the door before Mom enters with a tray loaded with popcorn, carrots and hummus, water, and Josh’s comic.

  “You know,” Mom muses as she sets the tray between Aminta and me on the bed, “it’s a little weird that the main character is photosensitive, too.”

  “Persephone? She is?” I ask as Aminta gasps with a loud, “No way! I totally forgot that part of the plot.” She leans forward for a better look when I flip through the pages. “We were in the same comic class.”

  “Remind him about Souper Bowl Sunday,” Mom says.

  “Mom.”

  “Well, good thing I did, then.”

  “Mom! You didn’t!” Even Aminta groans, covering her face with her hands. Crisis managers, my foot. My mom isn’t smoothing over an incident; she’s creating one. “Mom!”

  “We didn’t give him our address. Just living up to our word, honey. Eat up,” Mom says. “You need your strength, sweetie.”

  That “eat up” is a beacon calling all little sisters to stalk into my bedroom and frown, outraged at the injustice of our tray of food. “Hey! What about me?”

  “Rosalind-honey, let’s get you something, too.” Not a moment too soon, Mom leaves with Roz, thankfully closing the door behind them.

  “This is terrible,” I say, rubbing my eyes. There is nothing I can do to fix this situation. So I do the next best thing, which is to barrage Aminta with questions. “What do you know about him? And why, why, why would you tell him he could co-opt our bake sale with this?” I jab my finger at the twin peaks on the cover. “This?”

  Aminta digs a carrot stick into the hummus and takes a thoughtful bite. “I’m kind of shocked Josh finished it, actually.”

  The gavel slams in my head: case closed. “So he’s a slacker! I thought so.”

  “Well …” Aminta shoves a couple of pieces of popcorn in her mouth like she needs serious reinforcement before answering. “It’s just so tragically sad. He and his twin were working on this, and then suddenly, they both stopped coming to camp. And then we heard that Caleb—”

  “His twin?”

  Aminta nods. “Well, we heard he died.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Horrible.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” Aminta studies the cover of the comic. “We didn’t keep in touch, not like some of the other kids and I did, but then Josh texted a couple of us late last night and said that he had published Persephone. Not just finished it, but actually published it with a short-run press.” She shrugs. “I just wanted to support him, and we were having the bake sale, and it was the Firefly crowd, and it seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “Yeah, of course, it was. I’m glad you did.” On the wall across from us I’ve pinned all fifty of our rebel articles. “It’s hard to get published.”

  “As we know.”

  I pick out my favorite pieces of popcorn, the ones that are shy of burnt, the ones that slipped through the Siobhan Lee carcinogen filtration system. “He waited for me at the hospital.”

  “Josh?”

  I nod. “Isn’t that nice?”

  Aminta shakes a carrot stick at me. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

  “What?”

  “That’s code for, ‘Isn’t he nice?’ ”

  I blush. Because. Pretty much, yes.

  “Well, all I know is,” Aminta says, crunching down hard on the carrot, before waving the remaining stub at me, “he was always ‘nice’ to a different girl in class, before class, and after class.”

  “Darren 2.0.”

  Just what I didn’t need in my life ever again: a guy who’d toy with me when it was convenient for him, texting to get his ego fix, angling to get his physical fix. I set Persephone facedown on my bed. “Don’t worry. Not doing that again.” Then I groan. “Wait. Souper Bowl Sunday. My mom texted him!”

  “He won’t show.”

  “You’re right. He won’t.” Of course not. Showing up meant following through, which players do not do. Following through is the Lee & Li way, no matter how grueling the assignment. Following through is why I’m insisting on Friday’s bake sale. Only now, my body betrays me when I should be charting all the details, researching cookies to make, outlining the signs to create, composing social media announcements to blast. I curl up on my side, a little ball of tiredness.

  “Should I go?” Aminta says, concerned. “Get your mom?”

  “No.” My eyes close, but the sunlight is bright behind my lids. I turn my face to the wall. “I’m just going to nap for a few minutes.”

  Aminta slips to the ground with the comic. “I’ll read. You sleep. Go on. Stretch out.”

  Instead, I
stay where I am, according to my plan.

  That night, I dream of the Serengeti: endless plains that stretch brittle green and yellow-gold to the horizon and beyond, air steeped in sun-dried heat. There is no drizzling rain, no soft mist, no persistent ceiling of low, gray clouds that is the Pacific Northwest, yet I feel more at home here in the restless savanna than I ever have in Seattle. The roof of the touring jeep is popped up, and Auntie Ruth and I stand in our seats, leaning out and breathing in sunlight and red dirt.

  “Ready?” Auntie Ruth asks me, grinning with wild delight, just as she has since she invited me on this trip of a lifetime.

  I lift the camera in my hands. “Ready.”

  After a day on safari, I’d learned fast to be prepared for my shot. You never know what the Serengeti will unveil to you, moment by moment. As it is, the hum of life is ever present: a leopard growling deep in its throat from a faraway tree, hyenas cackling through the tall grass, elephants trumpeting somewhere in the thicket.

  “A lioness is hunting!” our guide tells us excitedly. She spins around in the driver’s seat. It’s Roz in a khaki safari shirt, instead of her usual yoga pants and T-shirt.

  I know that I’m dreaming.

  As much as I command myself to wake up, the jeep heaves into gear, and we race down the hard-packed dirt road. Roz doesn’t warn us about the stream ahead. So the hard jolt as we bump over the lip of the road knocks Auntie Ruth off-balance. I fling my right hand out to grab her, but I lose my grip on the camera. It sails into the long grass fringing the side of the road.

  I cannot lose the Nikon, Roz’s combo-Christmas-birthday-Valentine’s present.

  “Stop!” I yell. “Roz! Stop!”

  Instead, she speeds down the parched streambed. The next jarring lurch throws me out of the jeep. My shoulder hits the ground first, then my head, my hands. Throbbing, everything throbs. I’ve watched the drama of the Great Migration, the largest movement of mammals on the entire planet. If I stay sprawled in the hot sun and open wilderness, I am fodder, fresh meat, easy pickings. I’ve seen what happens to injured wildebeest, the hobbled ones.