Nothing But the Truth (26 page)

“Flexicon,” I say.

Jon smiles approvingly. “You got it. Words are flexible and fun. You just have to play with them, put them together to make new words with relevant meanings.”

“Twist them like a Rubik’s Cube.”

“Right. That’s exactly right.”

Smiling at Jon, I know that I’m exactly right, too. I am a living version of a morpheme, made up of two basic building blocks, one Asian, the other white. So color me perfect. I’m done with trying to be just one color.

On my way to
the lobby where Uncle Vic is waiting, I run my hand along the wall, trailing my fingers over the climbing holds, mammoth compared to the slivered edges on sandstone. I figure, bouldering has got to be easier than buildering. So I lift myself onto the wall and I work my way down the hall. Trevor is waiting for me at the other end.

“You look like you’ve done this before,” says Trevor.

“Something like it.” I shrug and ask nonchalantly, “You ever try buildering at Stanford?”

“No kidding.” Trevor is literally gaping at me like I am the Goddess of All Things.

I am not the Goddess of All Things, but just possibly the Goddess of Some Things, which doesn’t include buildering, however sexy that may make me seem to be.

“Climbing really isn’t my thing.” I tell him the truth and step off the wall, back to the ground where my feet belong. “I run.”

“Me, too.”

So there we are, Twin Geeks, grinning at each other when Uncle Vic walks in. A couple of weeks ago, I would have been mortified if Mama, or any adult, for that matter, picked me up like I was some kid without her driver’s license. Which I am. I mean, who am I kidding? There are worse things than having an uncle who looks seriously happy to be schlepping me around town.

“Well,” says Trevor, uncertainly. At loss for words for the first time in hours. “Maybe I’ll see you at Stanford.”

“I hope so,” I say.

And then, three cheers for space-clearing, Trevor hands me a business card with his cell phone number. “Look me up if you ever come down for ProFro weekend or something.”

Or something. Nebulous and loose, just the way I want my future.

“I can’t leave you
alone for three hours,” says Uncle Vic to me in the car, his voice completely somber serious. Dread bubbles in my stomach, wondering if maybe, just maybe, Uncle Vic’s latent paternal side is rearing its ugly head. I’d never been in the audience for a full-on fatherly lecture, and wasn’t so sure I wanted to get one now.

But Uncle Vic starts laughing, a bubbling frothy cham pagney chortle that makes me want to laugh with him.

“You are just like your Auntie Lu. Just wait till I tell her that your ‘educational’”—he makes bunny ear quote signs with his both of his hands—“experience today was nothing but a way for you to meet a guy.”

“A hot guy,” I correct.

“When you get into Stanford,” he says, shaking his head and, thankfully, putting both hands back on the steering wheel, “you’re going to have to live with us so that I can keep you under lock and key.”

You try, Uncle Vic. Just you try.

32
Math Redux

H
ere it is
,
The
Big Day. After a month of working with our TAs on The Research Project, slumming in the math library and leafing through the books that the profs brought to us in Synergy, we’re ready to present What We’ve Learned This Summer. So like wannabe professors, we troop group by group to the front of the classroom. It’s actually interesting to see how passionate, not to mention proficient, we’ve all gotten about our subjects. Naturally, Anne kicks butt on her cryptography project, and I even notice Professor Drake jotting down notes like she’s given him some new insights.

It could be my imagination, but I think one of the visiting professors sits straighter when Jasmine starts her group’s presentation on error-correcting codes. When computers process all the information we demand them to, there’s bound to be a mistake at the rate of one in 10 billion. That’s where these two guys, Irving Reed and Gustave Sol o mon, come in. They figured out a speedy quick way to detect problems over mind-boggling amounts of data and correct them before the mistakes happen.

“Imagine error-correcting your choices,” says Jasmine, grinning at me.

Yeah, just imagine.

Here’s the thing: I can’t even count all the moments where error-correcting could have saved me a world of grief… like calling Mama right after she phoned. Or giving Anne a chance instead of writing her off. Without SUMaC, I may never have realized that she’s actually a loyal romantic trapped in a whiz kid’s brain. Come to think of it, was I any different from Steve Kosanko in insta-judging someone based on her looks? Now, that’s an epiphany I wasn’t prepared for: Steve Kosanko, my evil twin.

Just as I’m about to spiral down that twisted path, it’s my group’s turn to present. Our team has been decimated with both Stu and Katie kicked out of camp. I’m happy to report that everyone laughs at our jokes about Group Theory and how it relates to the Rubik’s Cube. But I get a tiny lump in my throat when David presents Stu’s part of the project. My feelings are still a little mixed up about Stu, apparently. As Mama says, though, history is lo-ooong. So who knows if our paths will cross again, maybe even back here at Stanford? (But he’ll have to wait in line after Trevor and who knows what other boys I’ll meet in my future dorm.)

As I look out into the lecture hall and at the SUMaCers and the teaching assistants and our professors, I wonder if we all aren’t missing the point. The most important thing I’ve learned this summer isn’t about how the toy I’m holding is actually a real-world application of a mathematical group.

What I’ve learned is this: no matter how many combinations of problems and crises life throws you, you can always
twist yourself around. Sometimes, you end up in a worse place than you were before. But you can always move somewhere else. I mean, if the twenty-six plastic “cubies” on a Rubik’s Cube can have 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (that’s forty-three quintillion!) different positions to choose from, surely an infinitely complex Kung Fu Queen slash Hapa Girl like me has lots of maneuvering room.

And here’s the earth-shattering, awesome part. Sometimes, you end up in the best place of all: exactly where you want to be.

Like me, right here, right now.

As Jasmine and I walk into the Quad, I feel a hand holding me back. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I almost think it’s Stu asking for a second chance. (I suppose this really means that I’m not quite over him yet.) But it’s Brian. He grins at me and says, “Nice presentation. I knew you had it in you.” And then he hands me a piece of graph paper, folded neatly in half. “You dropped this.”

“No, I didn’t,” I say, even as I open the paper. My jaw nearly dislocates because this is what it says:

Given:
Patty Ho is a hapa.

Prove:
Patty Ho is like no hapa woman on earth.

So what is Patty going to do for the next couple of years, aside from apply to Stanford?

“How did you know about my theorems?” I ask, embarrassed.

“The Big Kahuna surfs all waves—sound and air,” says Brian, pretending like he’s scanning the horizon for the perfect curl. He drops his arm around my shoulder and knocks me gently under the chin. “I’ll see you back here for your freshman year, kiddo.”

And when Brian takes his arm away, I notice he’s draped his Stanford sweatshirt around my shoulders.

“It’s a deal,” I say, throwing my arms around my blond-surfer-dude-math-genius of a TA.

On my last night
with Auntie Lu, I’m trying to teach her how to make
batsang,
sticky rice wrapped inside two-foot-long bamboo leaves. The rice packages are supposed to be
shaped like pyramids. Auntie Lu is hopeless. She keeps forming envelopes.

“Like this.” I show her again, twisting the bamboo leaf into a cone before filling it a third of the way with sweet glutinous rice. Auntie Lu tries to copy me, but rice squishes out the top. So I give her mine and fix hers. “See?”

“Uh-huh,” she says, but I see she doesn’t. That’s OK. We all have our strengths.

“You know, I’m going to have a talk with Mama about Uncle Vic,” I tell my aunt.

“She’s coming around.” Auntie Lu doesn’t sound too hopeful. “Slowly.”

“Then it’s time to speed things up. But Auntie Lu?” I bite my lip uncertainly and rush on before I lose my courage. “Why aren’t you and Uncle Vic married?”

Auntie Lu’s eyebrows lift, blindsided by my question. Without a doubt, Miss Manners would tut-tut at such a rude and forward question, but I really want to know the answer, not just because I’m curious (which I am). Or because it’d take away one more objection that Mama has with Auntie Lu and Uncle Vic (which it would). But mostly because I love how Auntie Lu and Uncle Vic act when they’re together.

“Well,” she says slowly, “after what happened between my parents and your mother, I suppose I just didn’t think any man was worth getting disowned over. Especially if it might not work out anyway.”

I look up from my perfectly formed
batsang
and hand it to Auntie Lu to tie with string to keep its shape. “You couldn’t create a man who’s more perfect for you. Or more in love with you.” Rice sticks to my fingers and I turn on the faucet,
rinsing the grains off into the sink. “Someone told me that my story starts with my parents. But it doesn’t have to end with them.”

“A pretty smart someone.” Uncle Vic, with his usual impeccable timing, saunters into the kitchen and winks at me before hugging Auntie Lu close. He sniffs the air. “No offense, Lu, but I’m going to miss my niece, and not just for her cooking.”

A moment later, Auntie Lu shoots me a sideways glance. “Me, too.”

I can tell by the way she’s studying Uncle Vic as he picks up her flat, rectangular
batsang
and whistles admiringly at it, that she’s rethinking her own Truth Statement. What was true eight years ago may not be true now.

I inhale deeply, and smell the soaking bamboo leaves, stewing meat and boiling peanuts. An unfamiliar wave of homesickness knocks me over. I want to go home to Mama and make sure she’s OK. The place I was running from at the beginning of summer is the only place I want to run to now. I just didn’t know how to translate Mama’s love. It’s been there in every
batsang,
every spoonful of Tonic Soup, every lecture, every minute of her overtime at work and every mile she drove from a man she didn’t trust with Abe. And me.

33
Homeward Bound

M
y first day of
sophomore year starts with Bowl Fifty-Two of Tonic Soup. After I got home from camp, I decided that since the soup wasn’t hurting me, just my taste buds, I could live with it. Especially since it means so much to Mama. Besides, Mama finally told me that the Tonic Soup is supposed to make my eyes glitter. Who am I to snub bright eyes?

But if you want to get all technical, my morning actually started with a phone call from Mr. Harvard himself. From way out in Boston, he tells me, “Look, if Steve Kosanko bugs you, tell the
new
se niors on the baseball team about it. They know what to do.”

“Thanks,” I say. But I don’t need new bodyguards this year. I’ve got Laura and Janie and Anne. And myself.

Mama drops me off in front of the high school. She’s wearing the brand-new sweater I bought for her after we space-cleared her closet and there were only about ten decent shirts and pants, combined, left. I told Mama it was time to start working on her life now that me and Abe are older. So
guess who is sitting in the knowledge seat these days? That would be me. Mama insisted that I take Abe’s spot so that I’ll be open to learning every thing before college.