Girl Overboard Read Free Page B

my dad wrote, ‘You cannot fail if you have good people at your side.’ There’s nothing more important in this world than friends. True friends.” As Mama makes her way up the stage to me, I look around the hall in my best confident Cheng impression. “Thanks to all of you, the good people at my father’s side.”
    Applause echoes in the tang. Who cares if people are clapping because I’ve finally said something, or if they agree with what I’ve said? Next to me, Mama snakes her arm around my waist, and I notice that Wayne and Grace are smiling, too, like we’re one big happy Cheng clan. Holding two champagne glasses, Baba takes the stairs nimbly to the stage.
    “Thank you, everyone,” Baba says. “As you may know, the Lunar New Year is the most important holiday in the Chinese year. Families unite to give thanks together. So Syrah is on the right track, but you’re more than friends. You’re family.” Baba contemplates his champagne glass. “The Year of the Dog is supposed to be one of frivolity and leisure, which is how I’m going to be enjoying my retirement.” He grins at the stunned crowd. “Happy New Year!”
    Just like Wayne and Grace, and everyone else at this party, I gape at Baba. The only person who doesn’t look shocked is Mama. When Baba drops one arm around Mama’s shoulders and the other around mine, cold resentment settles on Wayne’s and Grace’s faces. Even as they lift their champagne flutes along with everyone else in the hall, I can feel the anger behind their stiff smiles as they stare at me and Mama, the two interlopers in their family. I could be three or ten or thirteen again, knowing then as I do now that I’ll never be able to break into their inner circle.
    Age, standing in front of the window, gives me the thumbs-up sign. He inclines his head toward the garden before disappearing. Like I always do, I push away the hurt (The Ethan Cheng Way: focus on what you can change; change your focus from what you cannot). My inner circle is waiting outside.

4
    B ill!” says Baba, clasping the hand of the one CEO whose face is in the news more than his own. This only goes to show that while Baba may consider everyone here tonight family, some relatives are more important than others.
    While Mama works the crowd at another table, slimy Dr. Martin oozes over to ours, resting one hand on Grace’s bare shoulder instead of mine. “Grace, Wayne,” he says.
    I take that reprieve as a sign to make my second break for freedom of the evening.
    Once outside, I breathe in the cold, fresh air, and hurry along the garden path to my art studio, where Age and I usually hang out. My heel catches on one of the inlaid pebbles in the path. That awful boneless sensation of falling, the same toppling, out-of-control feeling that ended with me blowing out my knee, pulls me to the ground in an all-too-familiar way until Age darts out of the thick shadows to catch me.
    I stifle a scream. “Geez, Age! I swear, you must have been a ninja in one of your lives.”
    “Call me Zorro-guchi, the only Mexican ninja in the world.” Letting go of my arms, Age strikes a kung fu pose in front of the old pine tree and a small grove of bamboos.
    If my mom were here, she’d scan Age from his perpetually mussed dark brown hair (“That’s what a twelve-dollar haircut does for you”) to his chipped front tooth (“You really ought to consider cosmetic dentistry”) and his oversized army green snowboarding jacket (“That
better
not be how Syrah dressed when she used to snowboard”).
    But Mama’s not here. I grin at my savior in jeans so indigo blue they’re black and say, “You made it.”
    “You think I’d let you enjoy all this fun by yourself?”
    I make a face before glancing cautiously over my shoulder in case an overeager event planner is stalking me again.
    “That good?” Age asks, grinning.
    “That bad. You missed tonight’s entertainment. Me.”
    As I give him the gory details of my toast, we make