“I’m not a private eye and we’re not stalking anyone.”
“Waiting outside someone’s work and then following them around is stalking.” He has a point. I look out the window and say nothing. I don’t want to tell him the truth. But what I can say that won’t make me sound like an actual stalker? “Is this guy a criminal?”
“No.”
“An undercover secret agent?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Some older dude you’re into?”
“No! God, Caleb, yuck!”
“Okay, okay!” He pauses. “An older chick?”
“Omigod. No.”
“Well, who is it? I’m driving, and I have a right to know.” I stare out the window some more, as if the discount furniture stores and Vietnamese ph? restaurants we’re passing will have a good answer posted in their windows. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll just drive you right home.”
“No, no. Okay. I just. Just, it’s stupid and crazy and I don’t want you to like, think . . . I don’t know. Think badly of me, or like I’m some kind of freak, or—plus it’s kind of private. I don’t want people to know.”
“Okay.” We wait through three cycles at an intersection at Winchester Avenue and I-280 and Caleb swears under his breath at the traffic. I begin to feel bad that I’m making him do this.
“I’ll probably tell you at some point. Just not yet,” I offer.
“You know, I would never think badly of you,” he replies. “That’s one of my best qualities—I don’t judge people.”
“Hah!” Now this I can talk about. “That’s all you do—judge people! Student government kids are tools. Animé Club kids are hopeless nerds. Everyone but you and your friends are mindless robots. The heck you don’t judge people.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Yeah, whatever.” I give him the hand. “You so judge people.”
We’ve finally made it onto the freeway, and Caleb sets his jaw a little and lapses into silence.
“Well, they judge me,” he says finally.
“I don’t think they do.”
“Oh, they do. When you have a single mom who’s only seventeen years older than you, and you live in a shitty little apartment and you have to go to school with holes in your shoes and eat the crappy free lunch that the state gives you, and in seventh grade you wear a T-shirt that your mom got for you at Salvation Army and it turns out it used to belong to Andy Chin’s brother and he tells everyone at school? Trust me, Sana. They judge you.”
My heart drops. Nice one, Sana. Now I feel like a jerk. “Oh,” I say, “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head and drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry I laid all my shit on you like that. That wasn’t cool.”
“’S’alright.”
He’s quiet for a while, and then says, “Anyway, it’s not so bad now. My mom graduated from nursing school the same year I graduated eighth grade, so she has a decent job, plus she’s not paying for school anymore.”
“That’s good.”
“I just get pissed at all the kids who, like, think they’re cooler than everybody else because of shit they own, or sports they play, you know? And it’s always the rich kids and the jocks.”
“Not cross-country runners.”
“Well, duh. No one gives a shit about cross-country.” His face is serious, but after a moment I can see his mouth twitch.
“Omigod. Whatever.” We fall back into silence for a minute, then I say, “It’s my dad.”
“What? Where?”
“No, dummy. My dad is the guy we’re going to follow.”
He digests this for a moment. “Okay. Um, why?” I tell him the story of Dad’s late nights at work and the suspicious texts, and how it sounds like he’s supposed to meet this woman this evening. “Does your mom know?”
“No. I told her I’m working on a Spanish project, remember?”
“I mean, does she know about your dad? Like, don’t you think she’d have seen some of these texts herself?”
“I don’t see why. I mean, if she knew, why would she stay married to him?” But even as I ask the question, I know the answer: because she’s Japanese, and she wouldn’t want the shame of having to divorce her husband because he was cheating on her. Forget changing her life for the better, or taking a stand. Because she’s all about gaman. You can’t change things. Just do your best. I’ve heard her grouse about American women and their high divorce rate: “Americans say, ‘I am unhappy, so I get divorce.’ Getting divorce to be happy is so selfish thing to do. Marriage is not about one person’s happiness; it’s about doing right thing for your family.”
But Caleb, who doesn’t know my mom and her Japanese countryside ways, nods. “Good point,” he says.
But really. Maybe Mom does know. Caleb is right—it seems like she’d have had plenty of opportunities to find out, the way Emoji Woman keeps texting Dad. On the other hand, I’ve only seen three texts in the last four years. I’ve never seen Mom with Dad’s phone—she’s got her own. And they don’t fight or anything. She never complains about him staying out late, or about anything except how he doesn’t brush his teeth properly or take his blood pressure meds when he’s supposed to. You’d think that if she knew, she’d be at least a little bit grumpy about it.
I turn these thoughts over and over in my mind until we reach the exit and turn right onto Stevens Creek Boulevard. We grab a couple of slices of pizza and some soda at a place called Gumba’s, and five minutes later we’re parked on the street across from GoBotX, eating dinner.
“This is sick,” says Caleb through a mouthful of pepperoni pizza. “We shoulda got, like, donuts and chips and Red Bull, like in the movies.”
“We don’t need caffeine. It’s not like it’s the middle of the night.”
“Why you gotta be such a wet blanket? I was just saying. It would make this even cooler.”
“There’s nothing cool about waiting around to find out who my dad is cheating on my mom with.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.” He looks abashed.
“Actually, maybe it’s a little bit cool.” In fact, it is kind of exciting, sitting in a car waiting to track someone. I’m not sure what we’ll do when we see where he goes. I figure I can decide later—I don’t want to think about it now, and luckily, Caleb hasn’t asked.
The next two hours pass quietly, with Caleb and me taking turns doing homework and keeping watch. They also pass very . . . very . . . slowly. Especially when it’s my turn to be lookout. I keep checking my phone to see how many minutes have passed, and it’s always only seven or eight. At eight thirty I call Mom from Caleb’s phone and tell her we’re hard at work, but the editing process is taking longer than we expected.
“When will you be finished?” she asks.
“Um, it’s hard to say.”
“No later than nine thirty. Even if it’s not finished,” she says in Japanese. “I will come and pick you up. What is the address?”