Trade Me (Cyclone #1)

My parents live on the second floor of a concrete three-story apartment building in the middle of Rosemead. Despite my brave words to Blake earlier, I’m all too aware as we pull into the parking lot how my home must appear to him.

Browning weeds poke up through cracks in the asphalt; a crushed beer can decorates the gravel to the side. The sun is setting, giving color to an otherwise nondescript rusting car from decades past, propped up on cinder blocks in the parking lot. I’ve never seen Blake’s childhood home, but I can imagine. It’s nothing like this.

I shake my head. Screw this. I’m not dating him. We’re just friends—temporary friends at that—and three years from now, when he’s running Cyclone, he won’t remember this trip.

He puts the loaner car we picked up twenty minutes ago into park and pops the trunk.

“Well?” he smiles at me.

I smile back, but my expression feels like a tense, coiled thing, ready to spring out of alignment at the slightest provocation.

Before I can say anything, the door to my parents’ apartment bursts open. My little sister darts out, and she dashes down the concrete stairs.

“Tina, Tina!” She cannons into me; I grab hold of her. We squeeze each other hard. She’s getting so big now—she’s just an inch shorter than I am—and she hugs my breath out.

“Stop,” I croak. “Mayday, mayday!”

“I’m so glad you’re here. Can you tell Mom that I am too old enough to go to a coed sleepover?”

I give her a once over. “Sure,” I say, “as long as the parents kick it off by caponizing all the boys.”

Beside me, Blake chokes.

“What’s caponizing?”

“Removing the testicles,” I say. “It improves the temperament of the male animal. Try it sometime.”

Blake clears his throat.

“Oh,” I say. “Mayday, this is Blake Rivers.”

We’ve agreed—and by we’ve agreed I mean I’ve insisted—that we won’t give his real name. No point opening that door. Mom is bad enough when she thinks he doesn’t have any money. I can’t imagine what it would be like if she knew the truth.

“Blake, this is my little sister. Her name is Mabel, but I call her anything that starts with an M. Mayday, Maple, and Muggle are my favorites.”

She wrinkles her nose at Blake. “You can call me Mabel.” Mabel purses her lips and looks at Blake. Blake looks at her right back. Some people say that Mabel and I look alike, and I guess we do, in the most superficial sense. We’re both Chinese. But Mabel’s hair is short and dyed blue, and she wears it pulled over her eyes. Her eyes are set more narrowly than mine. And—this is really unfair, but I swear I am not bitter about this—she is thirteen and she’s already in B-cups. Which, ahem. Is more than I will ever manage.

Mabel shrugs. “Hi Blake. You’re the guy who is definitely not Tina’s boyfriend.”

Blake shifts the shoulder strap of his bag. “One of many, I presume.”

“Nope.” Mabel twirls away. “You’re the only one. The rest of the boys aren’t dating her.”

“Oh, well,” Blake says vaguely. “That is an important distinction.”

I try to jab my elbow into his side, but he sidles away.

“And you’re the only she talks about like this: ‘Mom, he’s not my boyfriend.’”

Oh, that imitation. It’s just a little too spot on. I raise a finger at her, but she twirls away before I can get her back.

“Come on. Mom is cooking. This is the first time you’ve brought a boyfriend home from college.”

“He’s not my—” I stop, because my sister’s lips are twitching.

“Fine.” I pick up my own bag.

“Lay on, Macduff,” Blake says.

Mabel stops and turns to him. “Hey. Only Tina can call me M-words other than Mabel.”

“Sorry.”

“Tina and her boyfriend,” she corrects. “So you’re okay. I guess.”

“Mabel.”

My sister grins and clambers up the stairs.

14.

TINA

Mabel wasn’t kidding when she said my mother was cooking. Most of the time, my dad cooks. He’s actually pretty good, so that’s not a problem. My mother only cooks on special occasions, and this, apparently, is a special occasion.

Her cooking style can best be described as eclectic. If I were being generous, I’d call her style “Asian fusion.” But that usually evokes the marriage of delicate Asian-inspired flavors with classical French technique. Mom’s food is more like…Asian Frankenstein: Chinese peasant food stitched together into a meal with boxes of random crap from the 99-cent store.

As an example, there’s a dish of lion’s head meatballs, huge round hunks of ground meat bigger than my fist. But instead of serving it in a traditional broth with thinly sliced vegetables, Mom has paired it with Hamburger Helper stroganoff and chopped-up celery. There’s a casserole of canned green beans, oyster sauce, and crisped rice noodles. And there’s a dish of stir-fried vegetables, toasted almonds, and tater tots.

“It only looks horrifying,” I whisper to Blake. “It’s actually really good.”