You could set the Big Apple’s New Year’s ball to the countdown taking place the moment the corporate suits spot my parents. Three, two, one! Happy billionaire, everyone!
“Ethan! Betty!” shriek the wives, sounding every bit the middle-aged versions of The Six-Pack, as they cluster around Mama.
Mama is in her element, all “Wonderful outfit” and “Where did you get that?”
Over the hustle of business and bustle of shopping tips, I hear the one voice that makes my brain cells nosedive to the bottom of my heart. A group of snowboarders struts into the lobby, loud, raucous, jostling each other. But I don’t see any of them, not a single one except for Jared Johanson.
Whoever said that time heals all wounds obviously hasn’t experienced fatal injuries. It’s been, what, over half a year since I last saw Jared, and there it is again, that fluttery feeling. I obviously suffer from short-term memory loss. For all my swagger in androgynous snowpants and all my hiding in baggy jeans and enormous sweatshirts, I’m still all girl. A girl who got stuck in whiteout conditions of my own making and ended up with such a bad case of emotional vertigo, I didn’t know which end was up.
God, even now, I know what I see: an up-and-coming snowboard star with eyes the color of silver pine who is currently basking in the attention of adoring girls, otherwise known as pro hos. And I know what my inner ear is hearing,
Bad news, stay away. Stay far away.
So why is my heart strumming fast as a hummingbird’s? Why am I hoping that he’ll turn around and see me? Why do I want him to stride over to me, put his arms around me, and confide that he hasn’t been able to stop thinking of me, either?
“Syrah!” calls Baba.
Wistful thinking is more dangerous than beautiful snow crystals, because Jared turns around. Jared sees me. Jared starts to stride over to me.
Cowardly me, I hide behind my parents’ coattails and slip with them into the VIP boardroom, glad when I’m inside.
But as the door closes behind me, I catch and keep Jared’s gaze. As if Grace is coaching me, I spin my situation into its proper light. Don’t think of this as running away; think of this tactical retreat as my first inspection run, the slow cruise around the course before Race Day, when I’ll talk to him.
With a
click,
the door shuts on Jared. I gather my strength, put my game face on, and smile at the executives gathered to fête Baba.
C
halet Cheng perches on
one of the best vertical rise mountains in North America, above the older million-dollar townhouses and the new multimillion-dollar condos. Even though I’ve been here just once, I can navigate to our chalet blindfolded. On the left is the vast Italianate villa that looks out of place on this street of log mansions, on the right a metastasized bungalow. And secluded at the end of the road is Chalet Cheng, a timber-frame lodge set atop blue-green river rocks. Windows the size of minivans frame the sunrises over Wedge, Armchair, and Mount Currie on clear mornings. At night, Rainbow Mountain glows in the sunsets, earning the peak its name. I breathe out, feeling like I’ve made it home.
Once inside, Mama and Baba head immediately to the library for a glass of wine. The only place I want to go is my bedroom, but I stop by the hand-peeled log of red cedar that runs from the bottom floor clear on up to the third, feeling dwarfed beside it. It’s the same feeling I get standing on top of a mountain: awestruck that I could possibly exist in a world this massive. The contractors spent three months looking for the right log, and were just in time to salvage this thousand-year-old tree from being turned into paper.
I start up the staircase that bends around windows etched with totem figures. As I near the second floor, Baba walks into the entry and looks up at me.
“We have a business dinner tonight,” he says. “A number of snowboarders will be there. You’re more than welcome to attend.”
Visions of Jared dance in my head. I’m not ready to face him yet.
“Thanks, but I’m really tired,” I say, and continue up the stairs, past the second floor, which is reserved for Wayne’s family. For a guy who barely acknowledges my mom, he certainly helps himself to the perks she provides, down to the perfect shade of green she picked because she knew it was his favorite color.
But then again, I think as I drop my backpack in my own bedroom suite on the top floor, I never thanked Mama either after she spent a good two weeks poring over color swatches, fabric samples, and furniture designs to create my room.
From my window seat, I watch as the last of the sun dips below the ridgeline, and Baba’s car pulls out of the driveway and disappears down the dark street.
My cell phone rings, and for a brief, stupid second, I think Jared’s calling me. I dive into my backpack, scrambling for the phone, wondering what, if anything, I should say. By the time I grab the phone, reality sets in before caller ID does. Of course it couldn’t be Jared. Why would he call when he never did after my accident?
“Syrah? It’s Lillian.” Her voice sounds unsure, not knowing whether she’s welcome to step over the decimal point that separates her from me.
“Lillian? What’s up?”
“Hey, I’m sorry I’m calling during your vacation, but I…”
I know what it’s like not to have anyone to talk to. “Stop. What’s going on?” And then I guess, “Is Amanda okay?”
“We had the baby—”
“Oh, my God! Congratulations.”
Lillian’s voice is a mishmash of emotions. “Zoe is absolutely yummy. You’ve got to see her. But… her tissue isn’t a match after all.”
“Oh, no.” I drop back down to the window seat and clutch a pillow to my chest, a feeble shield against what I know this means.
“You know this was a possibility all along and my parents didn’t want to do any in vitro testing and risk Zoe. So now… unless we find a bone marrow donor who matches Amanda, we’ll have to use the stem cells that the doctors harvested from her. It’s not ideal. Even Dr. Martin says so.”
“There still isn’t anybody who matches her?”
“Nope.”
“God, this is so unfair,” I say. “So when’s the procedure?”
“Two weeks, if everything goes as planned.”
“Two weeks,” I repeat faintly. Inside, I’m thinking: no way, no way. There’s no way that I can pull off Ride for Our Lives in fourteen days. Aside from one lame Ask at Boarder Xing with Age, I haven’t done any others.
As if she knows what’s going on in my mind, Lillian says, “You know, I didn’t call because I wanted or expected you to pull a Cheng-style miracle.”
But those are the magic words. The Cheng name creates miracles, whether it’s securing a private premiere of
Attila
from Hollywood or snagging five million dollars in three phone calls the way Mama did for the Evergreen Fund.
“We can do it,” I tell Lillian.
She snorts, a little sound of disbelief that I’ve heard all my life from Wayne, the one that cuts down my dreams with a
You just try, little girl.
You know what? I’m tired of that snort.
“Okay, there’s one thing you have to do,” I tell Lillian, more forcefully than I intend. Call me a hypocrite, but knowing that I’m going to have to talk to my parents about Ride for Our Lives makes me think twice. “Let your parents know what we’re planning, because we’ll need their support.”
“I don’t know, Syrah. Even if we pull this off, it’s no guarantee that we’ll find a match.”
“No,” I agree. “But don’t underestimate The Tao of Cheng.”
When we hang up, I think about how Lillian and her family are confronting something they can’t control or fix, no matter what they do. Or how much money they have. My big angst today was being pulled away from Auntie Marnie and my family when the truth is, I can always return to them. As soon as I turn sixteen, I’ll get my driver’s license. My car is already waiting in the garage, even if I pretend the Mercedes sedan isn’t there because I don’t want anyone, especially The Six-Pack, to know.
And this afternoon, I got all worked up just because I saw Jared, a boy who created a messy mogul field in my past. But here’s the thing: Jared can’t create a single bump in my future if I don’t want him to.
I
n the preface to
The Ethan Cheng Way,
Baba quotes from Sun-Tzu: “One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements.” I figure, considering Sun-Tzu’s
Art of War
has been in print for 2,500 years, there’s got to be a reason why military strategists still study him.
But before I figure out what I want to say to Jared, I’ve got more pressing business to attend to. After I send out a flurry of e-mails to potential sponsors—including RhamiWare and Boarder Xing—I get in touch with Meghan, Mama’s event planner extraordinaire, who volunteers to handle the event logistics, right down to finding contractors to erect the scaffolding for a ramp and install a rail for the event. For a disease that kills indiscriminately, cancer also unifies in the oddest way: Meghan’s best friend in high school died of the same leukemia that Amanda has.
“You sure you can arrange this on such short notice?” I ask her.
“Oh, sweetie, I’ve done much bigger events on much shorter notice,” Meghan says, laughing at my event planning naiveté. “You just figure out when and where, and I’ll have this baby running.”
By the time I get off the phone with Meghan, it’s ten at night, and I’m feeling like Ride for Our Lives may actually happen. Chalk up one more lesson from The Ethan Cheng Way that is completely right: surround yourself with only the best people. Which means that it’s finally time to do some housecleaning in my personal life. Only then do I begin sketching out how I want my conversation—the one and only skirmish I want with Jared—to unfold. You could call this my manga version of Grace’s Rude Q and A.
Figuring out his questions is the easy part. After all, I’ve been listening to them for the past half-year. So you over me yet? Can I meet your dad now? Did you honestly think that I liked you? The problem is, I don’t have answers to the harder questions, the ones I should have asked myself all along:
Question: What was I looking for that I thought I’d found with Jared?
Answer:
Question: Why didn’t I say No?
Answer:
Question: What do I need from him now?
Answer:
Mother Nature calls; procrastination beckons. I go to the bathroom, realize I’ve forgotten to eat dinner, and head downstairs.
The light from the open refrigerator door illuminates Mama, standing with her back to me, foraging furtively, her silhouette barely there. Watching her lift the top off a plastic container and slip out a single cold
shu mai
makes me want to cry. No, I decide, it makes me want to sit her down at the table and force-feed her and ask her how the hell can she go to a four-hour dinner, prepared by the best chef in Whistler, yet allow no more than two or three morsels to pass through her lips? A few scant pounds separate her from being that prospective student at my school, the Skeletal Girl who broke off the edge of the muffin, nibbled on those few crumbs, and called that her big meal of the day.
In the dark hall, I collect myself. Breathing in, I close my eyes and exhale loudly, partly to announce myself and partly because I’m as nervous as I would be going into the no-mistake section of a mountain.
When I round the corner, Mama is taking a glass out of the cupboard, the refrigerator now closed.
“I was thirsty,” she says, as if she has to explain why she’s in the close vicinity of food. She pushes the glass into the water dispenser in the refrigerator door. “What are you doing up so late?”
“I didn’t eat dinner,” I say.
Like you.
Mama frowns. “This is the worst time to eat. Food just sticks inside your stomach.”
“My body will survive.” The refrigerator is stocked, thanks to the house manager, with a half dozen bottles of wine, cheese, cold cuts, and Chinese take-out containers. I grab the largest one and sniff. Baba’s favorite peanutty noodles.
Mama recoils. “Don’t eat that!”
“Why not?”
The only voluptuous part of Mama’s body that she actually likes is her pouty mouth. Now, those lips are thin with displeasure when I place the container on the island, not in the refrigerator where it’s safe from temptation. “First Marnie, then Yvonne, and now you.”
“Mama, do you know how much they want to know you?”
“So you’re taking their side.”
“No, I’m just trying to understand.” I shake my head, thinking of all those scrapbooks Po-Po made, the ones I wish I had right now to prove to her how much she was loved. “They talked about you during the funeral. Your sisters are so proud of you.”
Mama looks away from me, her perfect face cold.
“So was your mother. Po-Po had pictures of you all over her bedroom.”
“You shouldn’t have gone there,” she says quietly.
“Why not? I don’t understand.”
“Because they gave me up when I was inconvenient. Lo and behold, now that I have all this”—her diamond-covered hand flings out to take in the length of the kitchen, this entire lodge, all the way down south to The House of Cheng in Seattle—“suddenly they want me. People will use you if you let them.”
“Not all people, Mama. And not if you don’t let them.”
“You’re too young to understand.”
I know I’m venturing into the fracture zone of Mama’s heart, where a single misstep can release a slab of hurt. But I can’t stop now. “This all happened during the Cultural Revolution, right? What would have happened if you stayed in China instead of going to Hong Kong?”
“I would have rather stayed in China, dirt poor, reviled, motherless,” says Mama, her eyes hot. “My uncle—”
“Weigong?”
Mama nods. “Your… adopted grandfather, he was a nice man, but he had no control, no power. My aunt, your weipou, hated that I lived with them.”
“Oh, Mama. What happened?”
Mama takes a sip of water, which turns into a gulp, like she’s trying to fill herself up. Wiping a drop of water off her upper lip with the back of her hand, she says, “When I was five, she told me every bite I took was one out of her own children’s mouths. So I had to eat after they finished their meals. In the kitchen with the servants. It was never enough. Every night she locked up all the cupboards. Not even one crumb would be left on the tables or counters. I got used to hunger.”