Key player, p.9
Key Player, page 9
Lupe nudged me and pointed at the clock. It was nearly 5:00; Mom and Dad would be getting home soon.
“You think one of you girls can come and help me?” Mr. Yao asked, still on the phone. “These sheets are so hard to tuck all by myself!”
“Be right there!”
I found Mr. Yao hunched over the bureau, gasping for breath. He had two big armpit stains on his blue jumper and was fanning himself with a pillowcase. “These ridiculous corners!” He pointed at the fitted sheet. “I can’t for the life of me get them to go in! It’s like they’re trying to kill me!”
“You have the wrong size,” I said, showing him the label. He was trying to slap a twin sheet onto a queen bed. “You’d have better luck getting a hot dog into a toothbrush holder.”
Mr. Yao kneeled down to look, then collapsed on the floor.
“You know, if you want, I can do the rest,” I offered sweetly.
“Thank God,” he wheezed, throwing the crumpled sheet in his hand at me.
“But … in exchange, you’re gonna have to let my mom use her room to teach Lupe and her friends math.”
Mr. Yao sat up. He looked around the room, obviously torn between breaking his own no-math rule and resigning himself to more hours of torturous sheet tucking.
“Fine,” he hissed through his teeth.
“And let us play soccer!” Lupe added, poking her head in the open door.
“Whatever. Just help me up!”
I reached out a hand to Mr. Yao just as Hank’s car pulled in. Right on time! I ran out to wave. My mom was sitting in the passenger side—Hank must have given her a lift home from the high school.
“Hank! Mom! Up here!”
“What’s going on?” he called.
Mr. Yao came out in his cleaning jumpsuit. Hank pointed at the feather duster in Mr. Yao’s hand as Mom took off her sunglasses.
Hank grinned. “Now there’s a sight I never thought I’d see!”
Mr. Yao climbed back into his car and left, and Dad finished up cleaning the rest of the rooms. Then, finally, we left to meet our new real estate agent.
“So where is this house?” I asked, running my hands through the air. I was pretending I was petting Comma in the back of the car. I couldn’t wait to get him, especially now that I knew I could run around and maybe kick a ball to him.
Mia Hamm had been right. Something about playing with your friends, in a relaxed place, took some of the anxiety out of it. I was still not great at it, but at least I didn’t turn into stone when the ball touched me.
“It’s a sweet little place, over on Chapman, by the river,” Mom said. “You’re gonna love it!”
“You guys have already seen it? Without me?” I asked, a little hurt. I wanted us to all be together the first time we stepped into our dream house.
But my parents’ enthusiasm made me soften.
“It ticks all the boxes. It has a fireplace! And a kitchen island,” Dad said, smiling at Mom. “And a perfect little nook for you to write, in the loft upstairs.”
“It has a loft?! Can Comma go up there?” I asked. My mind was already teeming with ideas for this nook. I could put a dog bed up there and maybe a little framed corkboard for my story ideas.
“Of course. It’s our house! We can do whatever we want!” Mom said.
I squealed with excitement as Dad turned onto Chapman.
Josie, our new agent, was waiting for us at the front door. She was a nice, older white woman with long blond hair that Mom said probably cost a hundred dollars just to wash and blow-dry. It was that shiny.
“You guys are gonna want to make an offer on this place right away,” Josie said, turning her key in the lock. “We can’t wait a second with this one.”
She sounded like one of those pushy mall people, trying to get us to buy a heated remote control. But when we stepped inside, I could see why. The place was beautiful!
The walls were freshly painted. There was no hole in the roof! As the fire crackled from the fireplace, Mom spun around the living room.
I raced up the stairs two at a time and found the loft, next to the bedrooms. It was just like my parents said—perfect for writing! It even had a beautiful wooden desk built into the wall. I took my place in the chair.
“This is amazing!” I called out to Mom. The desk was big enough to hold all my binders with my columns, and I still would have room to put up a corkboard.
I ran to the stair railing and looked down at my parents. Mom and Dad were dancing in the living room—they looked so happy. I smiled. I bet Dad missed Mom while she slept in the guest room all these months.
“And look, there’s finally enough space for a real Christmas tree,” Dad said, pointing to the bright area right beside the fireplace, bathed with sunlight.
Though we always got a small plastic tree to put on the front desk, we’d never had a real tree before. My eyes lit up.
“And a small orange tree at Lunar New Year!” Mom added.
I walked back downstairs to join my parents in the living room. I imagined Comma running back and forth from the Christmas tree and the orange tree. Lunar New Year was usually a month or two after Christmas. Still, I decided that in our family, we’d leave them both up until at least March.
Mom walked into the kitchen and leaned against the beautiful kitchen island. “What’s the next step? We put in an offer?” she asked.
“Yes,” Josie said. “I can start the paperwork.”
Mom looked to Dad. “Can we really afford this?”
Josie cut in. “It’s an older unit, built in the sixties. So it’s not as pricey. But it’ll go quick. We have to move on it!”
Eagerly, my parents nodded. It was decided. We were making an offer!
I put my hand over my thundering heart. I could hardly keep it from leaping out. We’re doing this! We’re buying our first American house!
I could hardly sleep a wink that night. I wanted to start moving my stuff already!
About the tenth time I woke up, I slipped out of bed and went to get some water. Through the window, I spotted Hank out by the vending machines. I snuck out back to talk to him.
“What are you doing up so late?” he asked.
“I couldn’t sleep. I’m too excited about the house!”
Hank laughed as he reached for his soda. “I remember that feeling! There’s nothing quite like it.”
Hank got an extra soda out and handed it to me. I opened my can, and we bumped our two cream sodas together.
“How’d it go with the lawyers today?” I asked as I took a sip.
“Well, the good news is, it’s not completely like what Wamble said. I may have some sort of claim under trade secrets.”
“That’s great! It was totally a secret! That’s why it’s called your secret recipe!” I said.
“We’d have to prove it, and that might take months.”
“But there’s a chance, right?” I asked. With a grin, I added, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way!”
Hank tapped on his soda can. “An expensive way.”
In the moonlight, I asked quietly, “How expensive?”
“Going up against a big competitor like the Grill?” Hank whistled. “It’ll take hundreds of hours of lawyer time, at three hundred dollars an hour.”
I nearly dropped my can.
“I’d probably have to sell my condo.”
“What??” I shook my head vigorously. “No way.” Now that I knew how hard it was to buy a house, I couldn’t let Hank give up his condo. “What about Ms. Patel, the pro bono lawyer?” I asked.
“I called her; she only does immigration cases for free. She actually urged me to drop it.… Said the big guys usually win. Even if I manage to convince the judge, the process will bleed me dry.”
My fingers turned as ice cold as the sodas. We should have never gone into the Grill.
“There has to be another way,” I said. “What about if I write an article? Expose them?”
Hank shook his head. It was the first time his eyes did not light up at the idea of me writing something. “If you write about it, they could sue me for defamation. Claim I’m making it up.”
“Not if it’s true!”
“We’d have to prove that in court,” he said. “And again, that’s expensive.”
I kicked the vending machine. It was so unfair. “So what are you going to do?”
“I could just let it go, but I keep thinking, what about the next guy? And the person after that? What if he’s in an even weaker position than me? They’ll never stop unless somebody stands up to them!”
I understood then that it was a matter of principle for Hank. Win or lose, he wanted to tell them it was not okay to steal from the little guy. That was what he’d be selling his condo for.
Hank sank his face into his hands. “I just want to compete, fair and square. Earn my slice of the American dream, without worrying the pieces I’ve built are gonna get pinched.”
I wanted that so desperately for him too. For all of us.
“I know it’s just a recipe … but it’s my recipe.”
“Oh, Hank.” I hugged him tight. It wasn’t just a recipe, it was what the recipe symbolized: the fact that anyone anywhere in America could come up with a good idea and make it. That was what the Grill had stolen.
I put my hand on Hank’s shoulder, wishing I knew what to do. But for once, I didn’t have the words.
Da-Shawn caught up with me, carrying a folder of papers, as I was coming out of the library on my way to PE the next day. I had been researching, and Hank was right—it was going to be hard to prove that the recipe was indeed a trade secret.
I told Da-Shawn about it as we walked.
“Are you sure we can’t just write an article and expose them?” I asked Da-Shawn.
“A big restaurant like the Grill? It’s too risky. It’ll be their word against ours, and if they come after us, we could get in trouble with the school. Maybe even lose our News Room.”
I sighed. I could already hear Bethany’s off-tune gloating in my head.
Da-Shawn put a finger to his chin. “But maybe we can run a student review of their new burger.”
“A review? That’ll just give them more publicity!” I protested. “Unless … you mean we give them a really bad review,” I said, a wicked smile forming. But Da-Shawn shook his head.
“Sorry, Mia, you can’t be the one to write it.”
I crossed my arms. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a conflict of interest. Since you’re an owner of the Calivista restaurant, you can’t give an unbiased opinion of the Grill. They’re your competition.”
“Can too!” I protested.
Da-Shawn gave me a look, and I hushed up. Okay, maybe I can’t.
“It wouldn’t be fair, just like it wouldn’t be fair not to include Bethany’s ‘Dear Future Me’ letter,” Da-Shawn reminded me.
“Which was totally phony, by the way.”
“Totally.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“We can try contacting a reporter at a bigger paper,” he suggested. “See if they can help?”
I shook my head. I was used to picking up my pen and solving my own problems, not finding someone “bigger.”
“Chop-chop, Mia!” Mr. Antwell called. “Stop dawdling!”
“I’m not dawdling,” I called back. “We’re discussing how to take down a major Los Angeles restaurant!”
“Exactly,” Da-Shawn said as he handed me that week’s student submissions to copyedit. “The Grill is an institution! We can’t just take them down with a student article. That’ll be like going to war with a water gun! We need a cannon!”
As I stuffed the papers into my backpack and hustled over to the field, I pictured the soccer balls on the field as cannons. I frowned, sick and tired of having the Grill win just by virtue of their size, before anyone had even heard our side of the argument. When Mr. Antwell blew on his whistle, I threw down my backpack and kicked the soccer ball with all my rage.
“That’s it, Mia! Now you’re getting it!” Mr. Antwell said. “Keep going!”
I turned to him, surprised.
Jason grinned at me and kicked the ball back. “Do it again!” he encouraged.
I closed my eyes and pictured Mr. Wamble’s head on the ball. When I looked up, the ball was all the way on the other side of the field. Maybe the key to doing sports was tricking yourself into thinking you’re kicking a hamburger crook!
“Mia! Shoot it!” my teammates cried.
I pointed to my chest. Who, me? But my legs were already moving, running across the field to try for a goal. Unfortunately, just as I was about to kick the ball again, I slipped on a wet patch of grass and fell. Bethany dived in and stole my ball, shooting it in the opposite direction.
I jumped back to my feet and threw my arms in the air. I hadn’t scored, but I also wasn’t scared anymore. Bethany’s long legs came right at me, and I ran right back at her!
Even Mr. Antwell was impressed. “That was great, Mia,” he said after the game. “You got in there! You didn’t chicken out!”
“Thanks, Mr. A!”
Jason ran up and gave me a high five. “You were on fire!” he said. “We still on for after school? My garage?”
“Absolutely!”
As Jason and I walked back from PE and he updated me on the leak progress at his house, Bethany strutted by us, rolling her eyes.
“MOVE,” she harrumphed.
“We are,” Jason said.
Bethany turned around. She looked at me and added, “You’re still the slowest person out there.”
My face turned beet red.
“Whoa!” Jason protested. “That was totally uncalled—”
I shook my head and walked up to Bethany. “Maybe. But you know what? I’m just getting started. I have a long way to go. And if you’re nervous now, just wait …”
With that, I strolled calmly toward the changing rooms, slowly but surely, while Bethany stared. Nothing scares people more than fear.
I should know.
The leak in the Yaos’ garage was next to the water heater, and Mrs. Yao managed to section it off and put a giant bucket there. Still, the boxes that Jason and I wanted to look through were all soaking wet on the bottom. Maybe Mr. Yao was right that home ownership wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.
Jason set the boxes down on a fluffy towel, and we started digging.
“Dad says there’s no recipes or anything in there. And he wants all this stuff gone by the end of the week,” Jason said. “But I already found a couple.”
“A couple more diary entries?” I asked, perking up.
Jason shook his head. “No. Recipes from my grandparents. I have them in my room! Be right back!”
I found old ledgers and receipts and even unused napkins—leave it to Mr. Yao to save everything! I picked up the napkins delicately, trying to save them from the musty wet box. They read Yao’s Kitchen. I held one up to my nose, trying to see if I could smell highlighter chicken on it. But it had been too many years.
Then my eye caught the shiny gleam of metal. A spiral notebook! I dug it out. On the cover were the words DO NOT READ.
“Jackpot!” I shouted.
I looked around for Jason, but he was still up in his room. I couldn’t wait. I turned to the first page and started reading.
Dear diary,
Dad’s back is a little better, so he’s at the wok again. Thank God, because my highlighter chicken was turning into eraser chicken.
Today a really embarrassing thing happened. One of my classmates, Jimmy Vanderbean, came in with his family. Jimmy Vanderbean, if you remember, is the guy who called me “Brass Gas” in band. (For the record, I farted ONCE while playing my trumpet.) But the Brass Gas name stuck, and he walks around saying I should just quit—whoever heard of a good Chinese trumpet player anyway?
So Jimmy came in on Sunday with his family. I hid underneath a table, but my mom yelled, “Michael!!! Get them some tea!!!”
She’s always on my case about bringing out the tea before the customer can say “Just some ice water, please.” We can charge for tea, but not for water. So there I was, pouring tea for Jimmy and his twin sisters, trying hard to avoid his gaze, when Jimmy registers me. He spills his tea ALL OVER THE TABLE.
He starts dabbing up the mess with napkins, but his mom yells at him to stop.
“Jimmy. Let them do it! That’s what we pay ’em for!”
Can you believe that? That’s what she said to him! So I kneeled and started wiping, because of course Jimmy had to spill it all over the floor. And I’m two inches from his feet, smelling his horrendous socks.
That’s when Jimmy’s mom shrieks, “Hey, aren’t you in Jimmy’s class?”
At first, I tried to pretend I don’t speak English. But then she said, “Yeah! You’re the boy in his marching band. With the crooked plume!”
For the record, yes, I have a crooked plume. That’s because Dad refused to get the box for it. It cost five whole extra dollars!
Anyway, my cheeks grew hotter than Dad’s wok. I stayed wiping the floor underneath Jimmy’s table long after the tea dried up.
In the end, they didn’t even leave a tip. And GET THIS. At school on Monday, he lied and told everyone he went to Denny’s after church for lunch, not to our restaurant! Which I suppose is a good thing. But still. It hurt because the food we make is so good.
Hopefully one day I’ll look back, when I’m traveling through Europe as a world-renowned trumpet player, and this will all seem funny. Until then, it sure sucks lychees.
Michael Yao
I jumped when Jason came back in and announced, “Here are the recipes!”
“Jason! Come look at this!” I cried. “You didn’t tell me your dad plays the trumpet!”
“He does??” Jason asked, running over.
I showed him the diary entry.
“That’s so weird! He’s never played for us before!” Jason walked around the garage, moving old rugs and looking under moldy hats. “And I don’t see one here anywhere!”
“Maybe he quit?” I asked, feeling a pang of sadness. I wished young Michael had gone on his European tour, but I was pretty sure that never happened.
