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Author’s Note: I almost always revise my novel openings after I finish the entire novel. These are my original opening scenes to Loveboat Reunion through draft eight (the final published was draft 15). Readers will note Sophie and Xavier start in a different place, apart rather than together. There’s more telling than showing as I figured out the storyline and which aspects to spotlight. Enjoy!
PIEDMONT, NEW JERSEY
—
AUGUST 28
The day I leave home for Dartmouth, I have all four burners flaming on the stove.
That’s how to make dinner at four times the speed of ordinary big sisters. Which is necessary when you have four brothers who eat more than their fair share of global resources. I kill the burner under the clam chowder and pour from pot to crockery. Broccoli fries in garlic on the second burner and I throw cheese onto my giant omelet over the third and peak at the xiao long bao steaming over the fourth.
Once, one of my brothers’ friends stood in the doorway watching me cook. His eyes got bigger and bigger, until he blurted out, “Your sister is like a robot with eight arms.” I still haven’t figured out if that was a compliment or an insult.
Wiping my hands on my apron, I call the warning, “Two minutes! Wash your hands and remember, after this, you’re on your own!” No answer. My brothers. Oblivious to the fact that these are my last few minutes at home, too.
Slipping the omelet onto a plate, I say, “Steve, give me a hand?”
He’s engrossed in a video game on my iPhone and ignores me.
“Hey, roach, make yourself useful! Grab the mooncakes, will you?”
“Mooncakes?” Nothing else could have pulled him so quickly from his game.
“Surprise.” I drop the broccoli into a bowl. “Lotus, with yolks. Although no mooncakes here compare to the ones in Taipei.”
“Yeah, but you had to wait in lines for an hour, right?”
He breaks off a mooncake’s crumbly corner and I smack his hand. “After dinner!” That’s Steve. Always pushing. “And they were worth it. Scoot.”
I follow him to the table, set with a lonely five plates instead of the usual six. We’re waiting on my youngest brother, Kai, to get back from camp, then I’m leaving for the train station. Steve races off as I set the dishes down. A breeze through the window flutters the leaves of the hardy mint, basil and chive plants we’ve grown for as long as I can remember. Will they remember to water them, or will they all shrivel up and die when I leave?
My throat aches… but I should be rejoicing. I’M DONE WITH CHORES! The big sister of four stinky monsters does not cry simply because she’s leaving them behind. Especially a robot sister. Could short out the circuit boards.
“Hi-ya! Hi-ya!” yell Dave and Steve. From the living room comes the clang of plastic.
I grab the omelet platter and head towards them. Between the couch and television, they’re decked out with plastic armor and swords, pillowcase capes tucked into the backs of their shirts, in all-out bloody war.
Hello! I’m leaving. Maybe forever! Don’t you care?
“Hi-ya!”
And that’s my answer. I take in the apartment I’ve lived in for eleven years: the hallway I decorated with pink throw rugs and two gilded mirrors that hang across from each another, endlessly reflecting my black hair that hangs to mid-back over my purple comfy-chic travel dress. I’m surprised to see how calm, almost placid, I look on the outside. When on the inside, a tornado is raging.
Ma rolls forward in her hospital-issued wheelchair, leaving the stack of bills on the coffee table by a scattered chess set that will never get put away. The light catches the webs of gray in her black hair and her faded floral dress balloons over her slight frame — she stopped caring about her clothing years ago, and I always feel guilty I haven’t done more to help her.
She rises, booted foot thumping, and wraps her arms around me. “We miss you already.”
“I shouldn’t be leaving you alone in this condition.” I hang on an extra few seconds with my arms around her thin back. It’s temporary — a biking accident involving a tree. But even before she broke her leg, the honest truth is, I’ve held my family together. I took over for Ba when I was thirteen, Kevin’s age.
“We’ll be fine,” Ma says. “I’m taking office work at the hotel—better work than what I was doing before. Kevin can start helping more.”
“Make him wash dishes,” I say. “It’s long overdue.” Kevin is too cool for things like dishes and taking off his shoes. Ma’s spoiled him as the oldest son. So have I, I guess. Now who’s going to keep them from going out wearing blue plaid over tweed, or some other hideous clash of prints?
A soft honk outside tells me my fourth brother, Kai, has arrived.
I spring out the door and open the back door of the car. My five-year-old baby brother is in angelic white — shirt and shorts — seatbelted into the Whitman’s carseat. I reach in to unbuckle his harness. He’s usually jubilant after skating lessons, but today his tiny face is pinched.
In the seat beside him, Kian is singing at the top of his lungs, “Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum be doobe, dum. Wah wah wah wah ah!”
What the hell? We’ve run into this before. Kian sounds innocent, but he’s called Kai dumb before. If I don’t say something now, no one will.
I lift Kai out into my arms, give his soft head a kiss, and say, “Go on inside and I’ll be right there.” I set him down. “Mrs. Whitman, can I talk to you a second?”
“Sure, I need to get home and get dinner going, but I can chat a minute.” She steps from the car, slipping her sunglasses from her eyes onto her head.
Out of earshot of the car, I say, low, “You’re still letting Kian sing that at Kai?”
“It’s the lyrics to the Del Vikings,” she says. “Come and Go With Me — my father listens to it and Kian picked it up. He doesn’t mean what you’re thinking.”
“Kian knows what he’s saying,” I say.
She frowns. “Look, I’m happy to do your family a favor and drive Kai, but I don’t need you picking on my son. Here.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a Polaroid of Kai skating on the ice.
It’s a kind gesture, but I’d rather have some age-appropriate censorship. I want to give Kian a good shake, but she’s nailed the truth: we need her help and on her own terms.
“Thank you for this,” I force myself to say. “Just please — see if he can sing a different song.”
No answer. She frowns and climbs back into her car, Kian still singing, and as soon as they drive off, Kai hurtles himself into my arms and buries his face in my stomach. I squeeze his silently shaking shoulders, then I kneel to eye level.
“I’m so sorry, Kai.”
“Coach Dan said today is the last day!” he cries.
On top of dum, dum, it’s the last day of ice skating camp. It turns out he’s got a talent on the ice. We discovered it at the end of the summer. He’d been turning spins at the rink to make us laugh and an Olympic coach, there with one of Ma’s friends, flagged his potential.
“You love it, don’t you?” He nods and I rub his back, smoothing away the sobs, then pull away to look at him. Kai’s not a sword fighter or video gamer. He’s a dreamer. With a lollipop stuck to his sleeve, which I tug free.
“Eye contact,” I prod gently. Who will remind him now that I’m leaving? I hadn’t expected it would be this hard to go. Everyone has an Achilles heel, I suppose, and my baby brother is mine.
Kai holds my gaze for a millisecond, then his eyes drop to the buttons on my shirt. He’s starting kindergarten next week — hopefully his teacher will be able to do more for him. He thrusts a framed photo into my hands, of white lanterns launching into the sky. I bought it in Taipei when I was seven, during one of the visits my Aunty Claire has generously arranged for us over the years. I loved it — still do — for the elegance and exuberance of it, the feeling of feet lifting right off the ground.
“You’ve been carrying it around again?”
He twists a button on my shirt. Something about the white circles of the lanterns, or maybe just its association with me, has always called to him. It’s spent more time in his hands than on the nightstand in my room. I kiss his forehead. Some people are born onto harder roads of life. Kai’s one of them. He’s on the spectrum for something, but not severely enough to be formally diagnosed. It’s why I called a dozen local skating coaches for him. But it turns out real lessons — not the teaser camp he was in — cost as much as our rent. It doesn’t matter. I want them for him. Skating lessons will give him something of his own.
“You can take it to college,” he says. It’s a sacrifice.
“No, you should move it to your room to remind you of me.”
“No, you take it.” He’s insistent.
“A compromise?” I snap a photo and hand the frame back to him. “A photo of a photo and here, I’ll make it my phone’s background. See? Now we can both look at it together and it won’t seem like we’re so far apart. I’ll keep this with me,” I promise. He smiles, showing off the single gap in his lower teeth. On my phone screen, a post on the Loveboat channel pops up with a chime:
@BigRick: anyone want to join a machine learning group ping me.
@Marc: I’m starting a group to figure out summer internships.
@BigRick: $8000 a month for a google internship
Study groups and internships?
@Sophie: I haven’t even finalized my classes yet ?
The thread is a pants-kicking reminder of my plans. I tuck the phone and Polaroid photo into my purse and kneel again to Kai’s eye-level. The most important thing is getting him into a better situation as soon as I can. “When I get to Dartmouth, I’m going after a campus job. Eventually a summer job. I’ll make enough money to get you skating lessons forever, you’d like that, right?”
A smile turns up his lips. I ruffle Kai’s hair and rise, taking his hand.
Back inside, Mom is struggling to hang Dave’s jacket on one of the wooden pegs on the wall. I take it from her.
“I hate leaving you alone like this,” I say, hanging it. “Ba should be helping you and the boys.”
“Well, you’ll find yourself a better man at Dartmouth.”
My toes curl into the worn carpet. It’s what she’s wanted for me my whole life. Even now, those old expectations and hopes — when will I meet him, who is he, where we will live, how many children will we have — are still in the wings, clawing for my heart.
“I’m not going to Dartmouth to find a guy.” My voice is harsher than I intend. She opens her mouth but I can’t let her weaken my resolve. “I’m there to focus on learning computer science.” And getting a job to make money to get Kai skating lessons.
“Sophie?”
To my surprise, my other three brothers have drawn closer. Solid-colored shirts over khaki shorts I picked out for them. They stand in an unusually somber row watching me, swords lowered.
“Be careful,” ten-year-old Dave says. “Justin’s brother failed out of college because his heart got wrecked by a girl.”
Dave doesn’t know how close to home he’s striking. Losing Xavier this summer was the most heart-shredding breakup of my existence. Exactly the kind of heartbreak that would make me fail out of Dartmouth. Exactly the kind of heartache I need to avoid.
Fortunately, after a long road, I’m over him.
“That’s why I’m sworn off guys. I need to protect them from me.” I pinch Dave’s nose playfully. “As for you four monsters, you better FaceTime me every morning so I can check you’re not dressed like barbarians.”
Then I open my arms and they rush into them — even too-cool Kevin — an armful of sweaty brothers. A plastic sword bops my head and I bury my nose in damp hair.
“Love you monsters.” I fight a battle with a tear but it drops onto Kai’s hair. I grab one of their swords and lift it high in the air and they all four grin. “I’m off to conquer Dartmouth!” I joke. “Wish me luck!” Inside, though, that swirling tornado is rising. Excitement, but also fear.
What if I let them all down?
PIEDMONT, NEW JERSEY
—
AUGUST 28
Ba goes months without remembering I exist. Then he gets a warning from one of my minders: your son bombed the SATs. His college applications are sucking. He slept through finals.
May Day. May Day. May Day!
For the next week, he’ll call relentlessly from eight thousand miles away, bark orders until he’s convinced I’m fixed. Then he’s back to his purple-plush chair at Dragon Rock headquarters, dictating to the rest of his Empire.
That’s Ba.
My phone buzzes insistently. Third time today. Seventh this week. For the seventh time, I let it go to voicemail. Just with the ringing alone, I can feel the crappiness he wants to dump on me closing in. So no point answering.
There will be a reckoning eventually, when the tally of my sins grows too big and his travels happen to intersect with where I am on the map, but that day is not today. That’s good enough for me.
I push open the door into the lobby of my apartment building. All warm, bright lights, a shiny row of bronze mailboxes and a gently curving bellhop’s desk, where Paul the bellman lifts his butterscotch-ice cream face towards me.
“Xiang-Ping, um, hello,” he greets me, using my Chinese name. His expression is nervous, which makes me nervous. Ba has a very long arm.
“Hey, Paul,” I answer warily.
Paul removes his purple bellman’s cap and squeezes it like a wet rag, distorting the golden threads forming the family crest: the bristly tree-like character that is my last name 葉, surrounded by a golden, long-bodied dragon.
“Xiang-Ping, ah, something’s happened. We had, ah, a visitor — ” The phone shrills and Paul snatches it up, as relieved as I am when I dodge a rare visit from Ba. He holds up a finger to me, wait a second, “Dragon Rock Villa, may I help you?”
I slip by towards the stairs. Not that I mind Paul. Mostly he watches Netflix films on his phone, gives me my packages and minds his own business.
But tonight, I just want to sit in my room with my sketch pad and figure out my life. Tonight was my last night on the stage set for Emerald City, a modernized retelling of the Wizard of Oz. I helped to edit a video backdrop, splicing together footage of evergreen trees and a brick walkway and flowing waters. The play season is over and leaving the crew was surprisingly hard. I think it counts as my first real job. I didn’t make much money. My cousin, the DoucheLord, made his first thousand dollars when he was twelve. In one day.
But at least the money was mine.
Now I don’t know what comes next. A long empty road stretches ahead of me. And either the light is too bright or it’s too dark, because I can’t see very far down it at all. There is one stop I can see, though. An oasis. Or at least a 24-hour gas station gleaming in the night. Next week, on my eighteenth birthday, I get control of my trust fund. My mom set it up before she passed away. I haven’t touched a penny of it, and once it’s mine, I won’t have to take another shitty call from Ba again.
In fact, I’ll be able to drop my cell phone on the road, and watch it get run over.
It’s like he can read my mind.
My phone buzzes against my thigh as I reach the third floor.
Ba again.
I scowl and reach into my pocket and shut it off. I know why he’s calling. Ever since I failed to graduate from high school, Ba’s been on my case to apply to a community college. He wants me productive. This summer, he sent me to a Mandarin immersion camp in Taipei. It turned out to be a lot more than school. Ba showed up on the first day and smacked me down as usual. I hurt a few girls pretty badly, and then my own heart got pulverized. Looking back, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Pretty much everything I touch turns to dust.
But one good thing happened. I spent the summer with my sketchpad, pastels and paints. Bright pastels turned into pictures all over my thick-paged sketchbook, everything from incense sticks to sketches of my classmates. I made a mural with a big-ass green dragon that stretched across the stage of the National Palace Theater. I kept it anonymous. And it sold in an auction for a freaking $7,000.
The best part? The winning bidder was my dad.
On the drive home that night, with the dragon mural rolled up inside a giant cardboard tube box in the front seat by our driver, I almost told him.
It’s mine.
Part of me wishes I could see his face if he ever does find out. That I painted something so freaking good, even he thought it was worth real money.
Maybe one day I’ll tell him. One day, when I really need to knock him out.
My phone buzzes with a text message. Jesus, I can’t get rid of him. I grope for the phone to shut off the whole goddamn thing but instead, the robotic tones of my e-reader flood the hallway. They bounce off the fleur-de-lys wallpaper, invading my world like someone’s set off a bomb in my pocket.
“Xiang-Ping, call me back. We need to discuss your future. I—”
I shut it off, fighting down familiar spasms of dread. Even through the robotic reader’s voice, which I use to read texts, emails and webpages, I can hear him: crisp, clipped. The billionaire emperor glowing like the sun god on his throne, who is used to everyone revolving around him. People spend days preparing for fifteen-minute meetings with him.
But not me.
Not me.
My door is at the end of the hallway, beside a window overlooking the pool. It’s one of my favorite things about this apartment: the splash of sky color in a gray day.
As I near the door, the bronze doorknob winks at me. But someone’s bolted an L-shaped latch directly over it, where no latch has been before. From the clasp hangs a combination lock, its black dial like a smug pug nose in its silver face.
Am I at the wrong door? The wrong floor? But I’m the right height from the pool. The number on the door is worn in its center. This is my apartment.
A blue pictorial diagram is taped on the door, with three images of the lock, and a circular arrow surrounding each one, with a number dancing beneath.
“What the hell?”
I tear it free. All in a moment, I understand.
Only one person would have arranged to bolt my door like this.
And all I can do is what I do next: slam my knuckles into the wood.
“I want back into my place.”
Paul removes his purple cap and scratches at his balding head with three fingers, then replaces it, the Yeh character like a fucking brand on his forehead. He’s owned by the Yeh family. The entire fucking building with the fucking combination lock on my door is owned by the Yeh family. Two girls from the second floor are pulling mail from their mailbox. They put their golden heads together and whisper.
Staying in a Yeh building, clearly, was my first mistake.
“You’re bleeding,” Paul says, dismayed.
For a moment, Ma’s face flashes in my memory. Her soft hair, the color of charcoal pencil, bent over my scraped knee. The peacock blues and greens of her dress, how she kissed my knee just over the mess, and the comfort her warmth and colors brought. I can’t remember the last time I felt that comfort, and Paul’s concern makes me unexpectedly grateful.
But then I notice my green leather suitcase standing upright behind Paul.
“What the fuck?”
I brush past him and open a large packing box next to the suitcase. Inside is a four-square grid of my shirts, which this morning had been stacked in my drawer upstairs. All my stuff is here.
I lift up a shredded nest of paper lying on top. White paper and bits of color. The oil of green-blue-purple pastels come off on my fingertips. My sketch pad — all my drawings in Taipei and the past few weeks in LA, my version of a journal when I don’t have the words to journal.
Shredded into confetti.
“You need ointment.” Paul pulls out a first aid kit and roll of gauze. Dropping the nest, I grab the gauze and wrap my knuckles.
“I need my stuff left alone!”
“Your father emailed.” Paul apologetically pushes a brown envelope at me. “He asked me to tell you to open the lock, or you could read his letter.”
I swear in three languages, but none of them are strong enough.
“Read me the letter,” I grate. Ba would have known I’d have to ask. It’s part of his plan. Remind me what I can’t do. Better yet, have an audience — the girls are still watching. Paul’s brow wrinkles with confusion but he doesn’t need into my business any more than he already is. “Read it. Just read it.”
Paul motions the girls away, and they scamper off. So this letter is that bad. I bow my head and clench my fists, as he reads.
Xiang-Ping,
This apartment stay is terminated. Paul has the key to your new apartment a block from Harvard-Westlake, the best private school in Los Angeles.
I have spent the past three weeks securing your spot. Your cousin Lulu is a senior there. She is very studious and you should learn from her example.
Mike has taken care of the special ed paperwork. You must graduate from high school or every door will be locked against you for the rest of your life, including doors to your little art shows.
I will make sure of it.
Ba
Lulu. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but she’s always been an overachiever like the rest of my cousins. From the envelope, I spill out a blue keycard and glossy brochure featuring a three-story stone building and sparkling pool. A second brochure features Harvard-Westlake School: fake-happy teens raising their hands, a green football field and a Spanish-style chapel.
“What the fuck. He wants me to repeat my senior year?”
“You’re his only son,” says Paul the traitor. “He wants the best for you.”
“Hasn’t school already started? He wants me to do senior year again? Late? At a new place?” I pick up a business card from Mike, my new education consultant, who set me up with a tutor for the last weeks of summer. Ba has hands everywhere, even here around my throat.
“He’s been trying to reach you.” Paul buries himself in his laptop. “I have instructions, right here…”
“Fuck his instructions.” Dropping the packet, I reshoulder my backpack and walk towards the exit.
“Wait, Xavier!” Paul catches my sleeve as I press open the door into a gust of chill wind. “Where will you sleep?”
I yank free. “Anywhere but where he wants.” I step out, then turn back. Paul’s eyes, wrinkled like a nest themselves, are terrified. He wrings his cap until the gold threads fray. He doesn’t deserve to be punished for not controlling me. “Tell him I broke your nose when you tried to stop me. I’ll back you up.”