Trade Me (Cyclone #1)

Embarrassing, I think. Difficult. But I refuse to be ashamed of them.

“They come from a different culture,” I finally say. “There are things Chinese people think are private that Americans don’t. And there are things that Americans think are taboo that Chinese people talk about freely. It can be a little jarring.”

He’s only listened to them on the phone. He has no real idea what’s coming. He’s driving—a smooth eighty miles an hour, I note with jealousy—but he still glances in my direction.

“Okay,” he says. That’s it.

“I mean it.” I watch the road slip past. “My mom is going to say something that will strike you as off. Don’t look at me. Don’t act like I should join you in making fun of them later. I’m not going to be embarrassed by my parents. I’m proud of them.”

“Of course you are,” he says.

I try—very hard—not to think of the fact that my mom still refers to Bethany from high school as my fat friend. Even when Bethany is around. No matter what I say to her, I cannot convince her that this is not appropriate. My mom is embarrassing.

But she’s my mom.

And I know that when Blake tells me afterward that she’s a little too much… I will be able to hold on to that memory. I’ll use it to remind myself.

See? We would never have worked.

“Just so we’re clear on that.” I give him a tight smile.

“Hey.” He smiles. “I am one hundred percent onboard for a no-parent-shaming compact. Do you know how embarrassing my dad is?”

“Nice try. I’m sure your parent who features regularly on the news is completely comparable to my outspoken activist Chinese mother.”

“Ha. You didn’t see him when I was a kid. When I was twelve, my teacher asked my dad to come and talk about what it was like to run a major corporation.”

“Just to set the stage, I’m guessing this wasn’t a public school?”

“Nope. But my dad being my dad, it took him about thirty seconds to drop an f-bomb. The teacher, of course, interrupted him. And explained that she didn’t allow those words in her classroom.”

“I can imagine that went over really well.”

“Your imagination is precisely on point. Dad said, ‘Why the fuck not?’ And when she tried to explain that the kids had to learn professionalism for their future careers, he came back with, ‘Why are you lying to them? Businessmen swear all the fucking time.’”

I can’t help but smile at this.

“Of course she got mad. And she told him that swearing was indicative of a lack of creativity. She said that anyone could swear, but it took real imagination to come up with a good insult.”

I don’t know Adam Reynolds well. But I understand him well enough to know that he’s deeply competitive. I wince.

“Naturally,” Blake continues, “Dad took this as a personal challenge. And so he asked her for a demonstration. So my poor hapless teacher said, quite primly, ‘Well, you could call someone a spitting goat, or say they have a mouth filled with putrescent filth.’ Dad nodded along like he was agreeing with her. And he said, ‘You mean I could refer to someone who told me not to swear as a wizened fruit or as having the intellectual capacity of a desiccated rabbit corpse.’ And of course everyone knew he was talking about her and she got even madder.”

“What did she do?”

“Oh, nothing. Because then Dad turned to the class and said, ‘Here’s the thing. If spitting goat is a good insult, isn’t spitting goat fucker better? And if you’re going refer to putrescent filth, shouldn’t you take the time to call it putrescent ass-filth?”

I can just see Blake’s dad doing that—looking over the class and growling profanities at twelve-year-old kids with no compunction. I bite back laughter.

Blake sighs. “So imagine how that went over with the other parents. Their kids came home calling each other ‘wizened cock-fruit suckers’ and ‘bastard sons of a desiccated rabbit corpse.’”

I can’t help myself. I’m laughing.

“And that is how you came to be looking at the only kid who ever got expelled from Middle Prep because of his dad.”

“Seriously? He didn’t just pay them off or something?”

“No! That was the worst part. He refused to even try.” Blake drops his voice in a gravelly imitation of his dad. “‘If those dipshits are so fucking moronic that they’re afraid of a few, short Anglo-Saxon words, why should I give them good fucking money to teach you?’”

“Okay,” I admit. “That is pretty embarrassing.”

“He used to do this thing, too, where if he got mad about something I was being taught in school, he’d just show up in class and argue with the teacher. In front of everyone. And they never knew what to do or how to get him to leave them alone, because he was Adam Reynolds.”