Chapter 2 - Laughing At Destiny

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Chapter 2

Last April, I wanted to practice my Square Dancing (the only type of dancing I know how to perform) with Calvin at the Junior Prom, but he said he would rather be on the roof watching the stars. Later, I found out that meant he wanted to go smoke blunts with the other kids overlooking the Hudson River.

I get ready for the party tonight by dabbing smokey eyeshadow all over my flat eyelids. Yes, now my eyes looked bigger, and I feel like one of those popular kids that knew that the prom isn't for dancing but for making out on the roof of The Standard.

I turn the television on as background music while I dig through the contents of my luggage for the skimpiest skirt I can find. A slow love song comes on about buying someone 999 roses. Oh, great, now he's singing about how those roses are all dead. This song is not getting me into the mood for a night grinding against Calvin's rock-hard abs while he pretends to slap my booty! Why can't I find any Britney or Taylor to dance to? I hum "Womanizer" to myself as I slide my legs into fishnet stockings with little bows on the ankles. Then as I start blow-drying my hair, the sorrowful violin strings fade, and I hear a more playful tune come on over my television.

"I won't be your true love," the boy sings while smirking at the camera. "Who cares about the red strings of fate? Who laughs at destiny like it's a practical joke?"

I have to chuckle at the boy's lyrics. Wait, is that the Yao guy I saw on the airport bathroom television? I must say I'm impressed, he's a teen idol, and he has a sense of humor? This guy is nothing like the singers of my parents' generation. My mom was a nurse in the China army, so she's always listening to songs with about people going blind and getting their limbs blown off while singing about whether their sweethearts at home will still love them if they died for the glory of China.

Today, it looks like my mom is too busy at work back at home, at her hospital, to text me to see if I met up with my relatives after landing in Shanghai.

That's just as well; if she actually looked into this acupuncture program, she would see it's not a premed class with a fast track to Harvard at all.

Once again, I realize that I spoke too soon.

As my phone finally connects to the hotel wi-fi, a flurry of texts from my mom comes through. In typical Chinese fashion, I have to go out to dinner with all my extended family and meet up with my mom's old college friends to bring them bags of gifts/contraband that my mom sneaked in my luggage. Of the weird things she had me bring into this country like a drug mule included a jar of pickled crabs, a Costco size bag of Lindt chocolate, and as much Similac, baby formula, as I could carry without herniating a disk in my spine.

"Ting ai-ya wants to take you out for hot pot this Sunday. If she tries to pay, you offer to pay with the cash I gave you. She'll probably end up paying, but you have to offer."

There are more details in my mom's text about giving her friend the Lindt chocolates. I sigh as my mom rambles on about how important it is that I offer to pay even though her friend is taking me out to dinner. Auntie Ting is my mother's best friend, and the two of them served together in the war. My mom always muses about what movie-star looks Auntie Ting had and how famous she could have been. Auntie Ting was going to make it in film, but she fell in love with a hideous man. My mom felt so bad for her friend that she gave Auntie Ting our old apartment on Huaihai Lu when we moved to American to be with my father.

I was only six at the time, but I don't remember that apartment as being special enough that Auntie Ting would want to take me to dinner before my own relatives even came by to see how I was doing.

My mom is nervous that if I don't offer to pay enough times that Auntie Ting will think I was brought up like an huaqiao savage. Yeah, if only my mom were here, the restaurant will need to bring out the mud-wrestling pit for all the Chinese elders to decide who gets the privilege of paying.

"Lan Lan will be there too," my mom closes the conversation informing me that Auntie Ting's daughter, who is my age, will be there. "She speaks great English. You two will be best friends just like the two of us!"

"Okay, mom," I text back. "Gotta go. I'm meeting up with my friends. We're going to start studying in advance for our class on Monday!"

I grab my leather jacket and rush out the door. As I run past the Quik convenience store on Fuzhou Rd, I wonder if I should stop for some condoms. 



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