Girl Overboard Read Free Page A

could have chapter in Baba’s best-selling book,
The Ethan Cheng Way: From Rags to Richest.
I
should
have practiced my toast more. I
would
have if I hadn’t been dueling this dress. I
could
have been more prepared if I were a Cheng cookie cutter kid. But I’m not.
    Brevity is not Wayne’s problem. His history lecture takes us back to the sixties, when Baba did research for Bell Labs, then moved to Hong Kong against the advice of his colleagues—“No one’s going to want to use a mobile phone”—to start his own wireless company. “Naturally,
my
mom’s family bankrolled that endeavor,” Wayne says, shooting a look at
my
mom, the beneficiary of that endeavor. “We should all be so lucky to look and act half his age. I suppose we all could if we had a beautiful Betty at our side, too.”
    On the face of it, Wayne’s comment sounds innocent enough, but when he says,
“Mei-Mei”
—little sister—and hands the microphone to Grace, I see the look they exchange. The one that says,
Oooh, nice dig.
    Grace’s speech is all “we” this and “we” that, making it clear with laughing glances at Wayne that the “we” she’s talking about is her and her big brother. “We” were the original beta testers for The Ethan Cheng Way. “We” were forced to be nothing less than excellent. “We” are such wonderful, accomplished, envy-worthy offspring.
    I don’t know about the rest of the crowd, but I’m feeling a wee bit exhausted. Once upon a time, I thought being the offspring of Ethan Cheng guaranteed my place in paradise, too. Who knew that when I rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange five years ago to start the trading of DiaComm, my life would change so much I’d give anything for a redo?
    I’m not proud of it, but at first I gorged on everybody’s attention: “Who wants to see my new house, new yacht, new plane?” Age was the only friend from the pre-Initial Public Offering days who had the nerve to tell me I was bragging.
    I should have listened.
    My perfect starshine luster lasted three months. After Christmas break, everyone in fifth grade was comparing and contrasting their holiday haul, and I blurted out about my gift, a recording studio—just what every girl of ten wants, right? That’s when I overheard the derisive laughter and saw Age’s pitying told-you-so gaze and belatedly understood his warnings: my classmates didn’t like me; they liked my parents’ toys. So when Mama transferred me to Viewridge Prep, the best private school in Seattle, I vanished happily, not knowing that however much old and new money surrounded me, Age would be the one person who accepted me, no matter which side of the decimal point I was on.
    Too soon, the audience applauds, and Baba nods approvingly at the Original Cheng Children. I stay seated until Mama’s meaningful look pierces me from across the table:
Don’t shame me.
    On my approach to the dais, I realize that—oh, God—the crowd of two hundred people might as well have supersized into an audience of two thousand. Even though I want to cry now, even though my cheeks ache from grinning at these people, most of whom I don’t know, I smile like a good daughter, a good hostess, a good sport. After all, in my family, “face” is everything—how people perceive you, how you act in public. Who would have known that “saving face” would mean sacrificing the girl behind it?
    Back at our table, the way Grace rolls her eyes at Wayne, she might as well gloat out loud, And she calls herself a Cheng? I knew Syrah couldn’t do it.
    All around the tang, gazes drop faster than stock prices on a bad-news day. I clear my throat, the sound amplifying horribly in the hall, and spot a familiar army green jacket outside the far window. A red beanie waves at me from above everyone’s heads. Age.
    Just like that, I remember how Age, my toasting muse, quoted Baba to me the other day. With more fervor than any true Ethan Cheng devotee, I cite that quote now: “As