Front Desk (Front Desk #1) (Scholastic Gold)

by Kelly Yang

“That’s the thing about moving kids from one country to another. They’re not good at either language.”

“It means a mistake isn’t always a mistake,” he said. “Sometimes a mistake is actually an opportunity, but we just can’t see it right then and there. Do you know what I mean?”

“Being rich doesn’t mean you’re generous.

According to her dad, there were two roller coasters in America—one for rich people and one for poor people. On the rich roller coaster, people have money, so their kids get to go to great schools. Then they grow up and make a lot of money, so their kids get to go to great schools. “And ’round and ’round they go,” Lupe said. “And poor people?” I asked. “We’re on a different roller coaster. On our roller coaster, our parents don’t have money, so we can’t go to good schools, and then we can’t get good jobs. So then our kids can’t go to good schools, they can’t get good jobs, and so on and so forth,” Lupe said.

I was curious what Lupe thought of as “successful.” Everybody seemed to have different criteria. I used to think being successful meant having enough to eat, but now that I was getting free lunch at school, I wondered if I should set my standards higher.

It was really nice of Lupe to say that, but I knew it wasn’t the truth. The living room was the living room and there was clearly a bed in ours, which meant we weren’t successful in this country. Not yet anyway. We had to get off the bad roller coaster and onto the good one.

Lupe and I became inseparable. Whereas before, we were best friends bound by lies, now we shared a secret truth.

Well, that did it. There’s no way we could ever buy a roller coaster.

Mr. Yao? Since when was he an expert on anything other than meanness?

I thought about picking up the phone to call Lupe, but instead, I flipped on the TV. A rerun of The Simpsons was playing. I stared at Marge Simpson, with her big hair and easygoing smile. Marge, to me, was like the perfect American mom. So warm and forgiving that even if Bart was setting the house on fire, she’d continue chatting with her sisters on the phone. “Maybe he just needs more love,” she’d say.

“Sir, we can’t judge someone based on their skin color. It isn’t right. This is America.”

“See? The police know I’m right,” Mr. Yao said, taking their interrogation of Hank as evidence that his theory about black people was valid. He was wrong. The only thing it proved was that the police were just like him.

“Why are you not more upset?” I asked him. He shrugged. “Guess I’m just used to it,” he said. “This kind of thing happens to me all the time.” “It does?” He nodded. “To all black people in this country. In some way or the other.”

How can it be business as usual when this was happening to people like Hank?

“You don’t get it, kid,” he said. “I’ve been fighting my whole life. I’m done. It’s no use fighting—people are gonna be the way they’re gonna be.”

“The thing about prejudice is you can’t tell people not to be prejudiced. You’ve got to show them. It’s like writing.” I thought back to what Mrs. Douglas was always saying—you gotta show, not tell.

The good thing about this case is nobody got hurt,” said Officer Phillips. And with that, he hung up the phone. Yeah, nobody. Except Hank.

ma fan in Chinese meant “trouble.”

You can’t win if you don’t play.

When you’ve moved schools as many times as I have, you start to think of everyone as temporary. Friends come and go. You might have a best friend, but you know in the back of your mind, she’s not always going to be there. You’ll change schools or she’ll change schools, and that’ll be that. For years, I told myself that was okay. That was just the way it was, kind of like replacing a toothbrush. Sure, you might like your toothbrush a lot. But sooner or later, you’d have to replace it. You’d get a new toothbrush, and it might feel strange and uncomfortable at first, but then you’d get used to it. I guess I never thought about how the toothbrush might feel. I never thought the toothbrush would miss me.

Chinese people believe that if you receive eight dollars, it’s good luck.

But then I thought about Lupe, and how she said you can’t win if you don’t play.

And even though I didn’t like the smell of the tofu, I still liked it more than hearing my parents fighting.

if I looked more like the other kids in my class—if I had blond hair and blue eyes—then would it be okay that I sucked at math?

“You know what you are in English? You’re a bicycle, and the other kids are cars.”

That night, I sat at the stairwell in the back thinking of something my uncle once said. He said that if you break a bowl, you can put all the pieces back together, but it will never be the same. Water will seep through the cracks. That’s what it felt like when my mom called me a bike—like our bowl shattered and we’d never be whole again.

I didn’t know how to tell her the worries swirling in my head: My mom was horrible and mean. She hated me. What she said was true.

“Sometimes adults say stupid things they don’t mean.”

“Then why is she always saying such mean things?” I asked. Mrs. Q thought about this for a while. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “Your mom’s been working a lot lately. She’s probably tired. Stressed out. Heck, maybe this isn’t even about you. Maybe this is about her. Maybe people have told her her English isn’t good.…”

“Still doesn’t make it okay what she said,” I said, sniffling.

“You are not a bicycle,” he said. My eyes searched his. “Do you understand?” he asked.

“Use this to write down everything that happens,” he said. “Who knows, maybe someday, it’ll all seem funny to you.”

“What’s wrong with ‘Hey, baby’? Americans are always saying ‘Hey, baby.’ It’s what you say when you greet somebody—everybody knows that.” He shrugged. “It’s what you say when you greet a girlfriend or boyfriend,” my mom told him.

Though I was still mad at my mom for calling me a bike, I thought it was very cool that she had called Lupe.

“You know what you guys are?” I asked the weeklies and Lupe. “What?” “Top Tier friends,” I said.

I thought about the day my mom found those bags, how she ran her hands over them and couldn’t stop smiling all day. How sometimes, in the late afternoons, after she’d spent the entire day on her knees, scrubbing floor after floor after floor, she’d get the shopping bags out and just look at them. She didn’t think I saw her. But I did. Things must be really bad for my mom to want to give all that up.

She told us that at some maquiladoras, workers made as little as fifty cents an hour. This struck me as hugely unfair, and I immediately raised my hand. “How can they pay their workers so little?” I asked Mrs. Douglas. “It’s supply and demand. Anytime a lot of people want a job and there aren’t that many jobs, the salary goes down,” Mrs. Douglas said.

“But they don’t have a choice. They have to feed their family,” I said.

“You need them just as much as they need you,” I said. “Without them, you wouldn’t have a factory.”

I felt the sting of rejection. What was up with her? I wondered if it had anything to do with what I said earlier, when I chewed her out for lumping me and Jason in the same category. Had I gone too far?

In China, people do not split the bill. It’s considered very rude to do so or to not pay for a friend. As a result, people routinely got into fistfights in restaurants as customers pushed and shoved one another for the bill.

I guess that’s because in America, it’s to each his own. Maybe that was why Lupe didn’t stand up for me. Maybe it had nothing to do with what I said about me and Jason.

“I can’t go with you to Mr. Yao’s house,” she said. “My dad still needs Mr. Yao.” Lupe squeezed her eyes shut. “Unlike you, we don’t have another plan.”

The nurses stared long and hard at us, these alien, insuranceless creatures. They told us to wait while they got their supervisor.

As we explained our insuranceless situation to him, he looked like he had about as much empathy as a LEGO.

I’ve never seen her cry like that before, not even when she was lying on the side of the street.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt, handing over my ziplock bag. All those nights I stayed up secretly counting the money with a flashlight, the adrenaline and excitement coursing through me. In a flash it was all gone. But another part of me felt tremendously proud, to be able to pay for our first visit to the doctor in this country with money I’d earned all by myself.

“I promised when I married you that I’d take care of you,” he said in a small voice. “And I’ve failed you.”

“Mia’s right,” my dad said. “We have to do something.”

though. The problem wasn’t finding an open position; it was that he didn’t have a reference letter from his old employer.