Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Tommy had called it “The Big Summer.” He never said things like that—things that were corny, optimistic, easy to disprove. They seemed juvenile. In my eyes, he was older than his years. His mind worked so quickly that it aged faster than the rest of him.
But Tommy could sense something coming.
“It’s almost like you’re on a roller coaster, climbing up toward something big at the top, you know?” he murmured one night. I turned to look at him on the other side of the room. He faced me from his bed. Moonlight slipped in through the window, cutting through the aisle that separated my side of the room from his.
“I kind of get it,” I said, yawning. “I just think you’re nervous about tomorrow.”
Tommy didn’t reply.
The next day, he graduated from high school. Ba, Mẹ, and I were stuck sitting on the bleachers in the high school gymnasium. We were trapped somewhere in the middle, crammed on the far edge of a row.
It was sweltering hot. The gym reeked of sweat, tobacco, heavy cologne, cheap perfume. There was body odor, too, some of it heady, some of it sour. And when one scent ended, another took its place, equally as strong. The smells made me nauseous.
I pinched my nose shut with one hand.
“Veronica, stop that,” Mẹ said loudly. “You’ll ruin your nose.”
“It stinks,” I hissed.
“Not that much,” Mẹ said. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I can’t breathe,” I hissed back.
“You don’t have to whisper. You’re fine.”
I rolled my eyes. Mẹ seldom whispered in public. She and Ba could say anything in Vietnamese and get away with it. Most people didn’t understand her. But I always had to watch my English around other people.
“What kind of school sets up a graduation like this?” said Ba. He had already taken off his blazer. It was eighty degrees outside, but Ba had insisted on wearing a suit. He said we needed to dress for the occasion. “This is garbage.”
Mẹ nodded.
“Like a third-world country,” she said. She fanned herself with a paper program that she’d been given.
On the floor, there was a raised platform with a few chairs and a podium. Metal folding chairs flanked both sides of the stage. The high school band played behind it. Even the music seemed weighed down by the heat.
Ba turned to me.
“How much longer?”
“Five minutes,” I said, annoyed.
“It better.”
But people were still filing in. Westbrook High School said only three relatives were allowed at graduation per student, but it seemed like most people had broken the rules. Like the town of Westbrook, the crowd was made up of mostly white families: grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who all added to the heat.
Someone propped open the doors and placed fans next to them. They tried to blow out the hot air, but it didn’t work. The minutes crept along slowly. Then the crowd stood up, and a wave of blue caps and gowns began streaming in, hazy and slow. Tommy was among them, tall and dark, his eyes focused on the stage. I felt feverish in the heat as we sped through the Pledge of Allegiance, the school song, the principal’s speech.
I gave up pinching my nose—I tried breathing through my mouth instead. But my tongue was parched. A bead of sweat had dripped onto my glasses. Ba had taken off his striped tie.
Then it was Tommy’s turn at the podium. He was the year’s valedictorian, and he had a gold honors stole around his shoulders and a gold tassel on his cap. Tommy was tan from his days outside, working for a landscaping company. Under his blue robes, he glowed like the sun.
Ba suddenly stood up. He had a camera in his hand, pointing it at Tommy. There was a flash as the camera snapped a picture.
“Ba,” I hissed, and I thought my cheeks were burning red. “Sit down, you’re being rude.”
The white man behind him glared, but Ba didn’t move.
From the stage, Tommy seemed alarmed for a moment, seeing our father rise from the bleachers. But when he spoke, his voice was clear.
“Greetings, everyone. I don’t plan to make this speech too long, but I just wanted to say a few words for the occasion. After all, this is a tremendous moment in the lives of this year’s graduating class of Westbrook High School.
“These past four years have moved so quickly and so slowly at the same time. We’ve all been busy: learning, playing sports, making art, performing, working, volunteering, hanging out with friends, making memories. Now I guess we’re at the end of it.”
Tommy paused, one hand brushing away the sweat from his forehead.
“Nothing’s certain in life,” he continued. “Some of us plan to go to college, others to work, others to the army. Some of us don’t know what we’re doing. All of us are still trying to find ourselves. There is no guarantee of how things will turn out—that’s the scary yet hopeful truth. But what is certain is today, our graduation, the here and now. And the fact that summer is... well, it’s here in this room.” He paused as a few people politely laughed. “So let’s all make the most of it, as we celebrate The Big Summer before the rest of our lives.”
The crowd broke into applause. Mẹ was clapping her hands so hard that her palms turned pink. Ba was nodding, beaming. Tommy only smiled as his hands gripped the sides of the podium.
We had Tommy’s graduation party at the house. Like most parties, it doubled as a family event. The usual people came over: aunts, uncles, cousins, the children of cousins, and the other aunts and uncles who we weren’t sure were family or friends or family of friends. The men sat in the garage and on the patio. They smoked and drank cheap beer and ate whatever the women brought over—bowls of mì Quảng, trays of crispy pork belly and roast duck, eggrolls, and shrimp chips with mango salad. That was how they liked to nhậu in the summer.
The women stayed in the kitchen. Most of them sat around the kitchen table, nursing a few beers, eating, and gossiping. Their favorite subjects: their children, other people, and things that happened back home.
Meanwhile, Mẹ was on the move. She cooked, cleaned, and organized the food that people had brought us. Hair spilled out of her bun, her apron unspooling behind her back. Even at other people’s homes, Mẹ could rarely stay seated. She liked to stay busy. And while the conversations grew animated around her, Mẹ smiled politely, always too busy to talk.
I was stuck outside with the kids. None of my teenage cousins had come—they’d been lucky. The younger kids chased each other around: the oldest among them was about nine, and I’d never seen him before in my life. The two of us kicked a soccer ball in the grass, but it wasn’t much of a game. I kept blasting the ball right past him.
It would have been more fun to play with Tommy, but he was on the move with Ba. Tommy was supposed to greet each adult who came by. Those greetings usually became full conversations, where Ba was talking and Tommy was stuck standing there. I knew he hated it.
“Veronica!” Mẹ called. She waved from the patio. The men sitting outside turned to watch. “Where’s your brother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go get him. He hasn’t eaten yet.”
“Can’t you do it?” I replied.
“Find him,” she said. Her voice was pleasant, but her expression said otherwise.
I sighed. I left the kid and followed Mẹ through the patio door. The men outside watched with interest. In the kitchen, the same thing happened: the conversation went quiet, and the women stared at me. It always happened at family gatherings. The adults gawked like children at a zoo. They were just as loud.
“You know, she’s bigger than they usually are at that age.”
“It’s the milk. The extra hormones in there make them huge.”
“Is that safe?”
“Why is she slouching?” asked one of the aunties. “God makes the girl strong and tall, so why does she ruin her posture? She walks like a water buffalo.”
There was laughter. Then Mẹ suddenly stopped.
“Veronica doesn’t walk like this normally,” she said to the women. Mẹ was both apologetic and embarrassed. “I don’t know why my daughter’s doing this now.”
Before Mẹ could lecture me, I rushed downstairs to the basement. The eyes were gone, the voices quiet. I knew Mẹ wouldn’t follow me. The basement was unfinished, but our parents had furnished it with the laundry machines and a secondhand sofa. An uncle was passed out on the sofa, his face bright red.
I circled the basement, preparing myself. Then I dashed back upstairs. I shot straight through the kitchen, past the women.
Outside, the garage doors were open. The air was cloudy with cigarette smoke. A few of the men glanced up as I walked by, but they were focused on Ba, who was talking at the end of a table. Ba had a cigarette in his mouth, burned halfway through. He’d quit smoking years ago, but he made an exception for nhậu. He said he liked to smoke with friends—that was
tradition.
An uncle spoke, his voice low and gravelly:
“Hien’s son is ugly as sin. He’s stupid, too, so that’s even sadder,” said the uncle. He raised his cigarette at Ba. “I don’t know what you did, but you won the lottery. Your boy has the brains and the looks. And he’s tall.”
“Lucky bastard,” added another.
“But it’s only the mind that counts,” Ba said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. He leaned back in his chair, pleased. “He’s smart. That’s how he got into the Harvard of Missouri.”
“Harvard,” someone said, impressed.
“Not Harvard, but a school just as good in this state. That’s what the kids told me. Right, Veronica?”
Instantly, the eyes turned to me. I nodded slowly. When Tommy got into his private university, our parents were pleased, but they didn’t understand the prestige that came with it. They acted as if he were going to community college. So Tommy compared it to the one school that everyone knew. Only then were our parents impressed.
“Where’s Tommy?” I asked.
Without turning, Ba jabbed his thumb toward the driveway. I wandered outside as the conversation started up again.
“It’s sad that they don’t speak Vietnamese,” muttered an uncle.
“They’re busy with school,” Ba replied. “They only need English in America.”
“It paid off, if one’s going to Harvard.”
“Maybe that’s the trick,” someone said.
The men chuckled.
I walked past the cars crammed into the driveway. A few others were parked on the street.
Across the road, there was a steep hill of grass. A chain-link fence sat on top of it, separating our neighborhood from the highway. Cars thundered above us. Tommy and I were used to the constant hum.
We were forbidden to go near the fence. Our parents said it was dangerous to stand behind it, only mere feet away from the speeding cars. They made it sound as though a car would smash into us the second we got up there.
But that only tempted us as kids. We snuck up the hill anyway. I think we were let down the first time—there was nothing special about a chain-link fence by the highway.
And then one day, on the drive home from church, we saw a three-car collision. The cars had been smashed together, front to back. There was an ambulance and a police car and a crew of first responders. The collision was on our part of the highway, right next to our house.
“You see that?” asked Ba. “That’s why you don’t drive like a crazy person. Insurance won’t pay for that.”
As soon as we got home, Tommy and I ran across the road. We ignored our parents’ shouts as we climbed the grassy hill. Then we stood behind the chain-link fence, our fingers looped in the wire.
Tommy and I saw the wreck right in front of us. We saw the bits of metal and glass that sprinkled the road. The flashing blue and red lights. The cars crumpled together like origami paper. And the stretcher that squeaked by. Then Tommy flinched as I grabbed his arm.
The two of us had seen it: the blood. It stained the white sheets of the stretcher, red like church wine. There was a live body under those sheets, its chest rising up and down as it struggled to breathe.
Later, Tommy and I could recall nothing about the victim—not even the color of their skin. We’d been fixated on the blood, though we didn’t know why. Blood looked different when it wasn’t ours. It was thicker, more alien. More alive.
We never returned to the chain-link fence after that. We’d seen more than enough.
But at his graduation party, Tommy was looking at it. He sat on the edge of our lawn, his neck craned upward as he looked across the street, up at the fence on the hill. To his left, there was the clear line where the neighbors’ yard began—their grass was dark green. Ours was tinged with yellow.
I sat down next to Tommy. His cheeks were rosy. He had a bottle of Heineken in one hand.
“How’d you get that?” I asked.
“They gave it to me,” he said, shrugging. “They said I earned it.”
“Can I have a sip?”
Tommy gave me the bottle. I’d had church wine before, but not real beer. We sat in broad daylight in front of the house, though Tommy seemed unbothered. No cars were down the street. The men in the garage were preoccupied.
I took a quick swig.
The beer tasted of bitter metal and acid. It burned down my throat. But after a moment, I took another long sip. Then I gave it back.
“You like it?” Tommy asked.
I shook my head.
Tommy smiled and polished off the rest. Then he sat there, staring out at the street. I could tell he was thinking about something. Tommy was often quiet, but when he was thinking deeply, you could feel it around him. The air would grow viscous and heavy. And there was a slight hum to it, a faint current of energy. When he got like that, Ba said he looked like a French philosopher. But it worried our mother. She said if Tommy was thinking too hard, he’d hurt his head, perhaps ruin his eyes. The latter scared her—Tommy’s eyes were healthy. Unlike the rest of our family, he didn’t need glasses. Mẹ said he didn’t need to think so hard in everyday life—things weren’t that serious.
But that was Tommy. His mind was restless.
“You’re not very excited today,” I said.
“I’m not. I feel like I’m being gawked at by every Viet person in the state.”
“But they’re giving you money,” I said, punching him in the arm. Tommy didn’t flinch. “You’re loaded now. Think of all the booze you can buy.”
“That’s uplifting, Ronny, thank you,” he said drily. But a smile had crept onto his face.
“You can spend your money on other things. Like me. We can go to the mall and you can pay.”
Tommy laughed.
“Yeah, that sounds fun.”
“I can even help you pick out furniture for school,” I said, but my voice faltered.
It was a mistake.
“Aw, are you gonna miss me?” he mocked.
I shook my head and launched a middle finger at his face, but Tommy leaned back, laughing.
“Aw, is Ronny gonna be lonely without her big brother?”
I launched a second middle finger at him, but Tommy dodged it. Immediately, he shot back his middle fingers at me. The two of us were trying to flick off the other’s face. Tommy was bigger, stronger, but I was faster. I put him on the defensive as he tried to block my arms. Unlike in those childhood fights over the remote, I actually had a shot at winning.
Laughter roared from the garage. The two of us stopped, turned, but none of the adults were outside. They weren’t looking at us. They were laughing about something else.
Instantly, I took my chance:
I struck Tommy’s left cheek with my middle finger.
“Got you,” I said loudly.
“Fuck,” Tommy blurted, a hand flying to his face. He looked perturbed for a moment, his eyes wide with shock. I thought I’d hurt him.
Suddenly, his other middle finger flew out and struck my right cheek.
“Dammit,” I blurted.
“Don’t throw shit if you can’t take it,” said Tommy with a laugh.
I readied myself, my hand about to strike back, but then I stopped. Tommy froze as we both stared at the house to our left. The neighbor’s front door had just opened, and the neighbor’s wife had stepped outside. I called her Gigi, a name of glamour and mystery. She was a white lady who often wore sunglasses and long dark clothes. We’d lived next to Gigi and her husband for years, but we had never spoken to them. They never said anything to us. And we’d reached a point where it was too late—a simple wave would have been too intimate.
Gigi stopped in the driveway. Even with her sunglasses on, I knew that she’d glanced at the street and all the strange cars that now lined the block. She’d seen our garage, observing the cigarette smoke and the men’s laughter that poured out of it. And then she’d seen me and Tommy.
Immediately I felt guilty. I put my hands back in my lap. I realized how bad it looked: an empty Heineken bottle at our feet, the two of us fighting outside of the house, swearing.
Our parents were firm about behaving in public.
If you make a scene, they’ll call the police, and what’ll you do then? Do you want to deal with that? Do you want to pay a fine, go to juvie? The answer was no, always.
Tommy and I stayed quiet, our hands to ourselves. We waited for Gigi to get in her car and drive away. Her window was open. I caught a whiff of her perfume, a heavy dose of citrus.
By the time her car had disappeared, Tommy and I had reached a stalemate. His shoulders had relaxed, and I’d leaned back into the grass.
More laughter exploded from the garage. Someone guffawed in quick bursts, nearly half screaming. It was followed by more laughter. I closed my eyes, the sun on my face, and inhaled the fresh scent of grass and the faint burn of cigarettes. I caught a whiff of the heavy salt-shrimp smell of mắm ruốc. It was the most potent sauce in the house, something that our parents used once in a while. The odor was so bad it made me cry as a toddler.
But I realized I didn’t hate it anymore. It smelled distinctly of home.
In that one moment, everything was right. I was warm, and I was full, and the world smelled nice. It was a good day.
“We’ll do a lot of stuff, okay?” I said out loud. “Before you go.”
“We will,” Tommy replied.
Though, when I opened my eyes, I saw him staring up at the highway.
