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

by Kelly Yang

“You’re just a kid. You wouldn’t understand,” he said. Which hurt. A lot.

“Most places won’t hire you unless you have a letter from your old boss saying how good you were. And I don’t have that,” he said, frowning.

“The biggest problem is that on top of everything else, now I have a criminal conviction.”

“What do they see when they see you?” I asked. He looked at his feet. “A criminal,” Hank said. “No,” I said firmly. “Don’t say that!” “Why do you think I took the plea? I know what the verdict would be if we went to trial. People look at me and see guilty.”

“There are some things, Mia, that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never fully understand.” As Hank looked into my eyes, I realized there were reference letters and mean girls. And then there were other things on a whole other level of “you don’t understand.”

“In my line of work, an arrest is a badge of courage,” he said.

As I was forging Hank’s signature, I felt a teeny tiny bit bad. Was what I was doing wrong? What if I got caught? Would Hank be mad at me?

sometimes, you have to take matters into your own hands. And you have to be creative to get what you want.

This was it! No more ugly floral pants. No more standing out like a sore thumb. I was getting my very first pair of American jeans! They were warm when they came out of the dryer. I held the jeans up to my face, closed my eyes, and smelled. They smelled like hope.

Sometimes, when I wanted something really bad, I’d ask myself what I would be willing to give up for it. For example, when I was waiting in the hospital that day my mom got beat up, I asked myself what I would be willing to give up for my mom to be okay. I decided I would be willing to give up the essay contest. I’d rather be stuck on a bad roller coaster with my mom, than on a good roller coaster all by myself.

“A lawyer will be able to tell his employer what’s what,” he said. “Well, why can’t we tell people what’s what?” I asked him. He chuckled. “We can, sweetheart, but nobody’s going to listen to us,” he said. That’s not true, I thought. Hank’s new employer, he listened.

“Don’t be sorry. Be better,” Hank said. “Next time you accuse a black man, stop and think.”

“Because here people are innocent until proven guilty. For the most part, at least. That’s what you saw tonight.”

The Cultural Revolution was a political movement that took place in China in the 1960s and ’70s. My parents said that during the Cultural Revolution, my grandparents were locked up and shipped away. It didn’t matter whether they actually did anything wrong.

America may not be perfect, but she’s free. And that makes all the difference.” I finally understood what my parents meant by “free.”

You’re not getting it! That’s not what “free” means! Free means innocent until proven guilty, not guilty no matter how innocent.

you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Let’s treet treat all our customers with kindness and respect and not judge anyone by the color of their skin.

“Darn right, you shouldn’t judge a customer by the way they look. I mean, heck, if I judged all my customers by the way they look, I’d be out of business. Half my customers can’t even walk straight,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, kid, I get where you’re coming from. But you and I both know that every time we push that buzzer, we are judging someone based on the way they look. I mean it’s not like we’re judging them based on their personality or how they eat a fig. We are making a quick, ten-second decision based on what they look like,” he said. “But that’s different,” I said. “How’s it different?” “It’s not based on their skin color!” I said. “It’s based on other things, like are they walking funny, which probably means they’re drunk. Are they pounding on the front door, or are they knocking politely?”

“You have no idea what I know!” I yelled back at him. “I’ve been getting fired since before you could read! I could write a book on what it’s like to have no money. You know what else I know? That’s no excuse to treat other people like dirt!”

There’s a saying in Chinese that goes “Never forget how much rice you eat.” It’s a reminder to stay humble, to stay real. Just because you have an important job doesn’t mean you’re better than everybody else. You still eat rice, like the rest of us. Well, that security guard, he definitely forgot. He let the power of his position go straight to his head, and he used it to do horrible things. I wondered if that’s what happened to Uncle Zhang’s boss too when he took away everybody’s passports. At the thought of Uncle Zhang, I felt the stirrings of hope. Did he give the letter to his boss yet?

It was the most incredible feeling ever, knowing that something I wrote actually changed someone’s life.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it, that snowy day in Beijing, how hard it was to step on the plane. How the first thing we did when we arrived was take a shower. I’d never seen a shower before. A private shower, not like those group ones at the bathhouses in China. In China, there was a bathhouse in every neighborhood and everyone went. Sometimes, I’d even see my teacher there. There was awkward, and then there was taking-a-shower-next-to-your-teacher awkward.

If I wanted my life to change, I too needed to get past the itchy, wriggly feeling.

The moment I handed Mrs. Douglas my story on coming to America was also the moment I decided I had to enter the essay competition. I was ready. I could do this.

Our luck was going to change soon—I could feel it in my bones.

Because sometimes terrible things happen, but there’s nothing more terrible than not having anybody to tell it to.

Sometimes, problems seem humongous in your head, but if you tell someone, you’d be surprised what can happen.

Life’s short and it’s important to celebrate the good stuff when it happens.

If I win your motel, I promise to always treat it with love, kindness, and respect. Your motel won’t just be a business to me. It will be home.

“You don’t have to be your father,” I said.

I glared at him. I resented the way he looked at me, like he knew me so well, when in fact he knew nothing about me.

I didn’t apologize, nor did I cry. I refused to give Mr. Yao the satisfaction.

My grandmother used to say that people don’t change. Our heart is like a rubber band. It might stretch a little, but eventually it snaps right back.

in China, girls are kind of like spare tires. It’s nice if you have one, but they’re not important.

Girls were just not as useful as boys.

Then one day I looked down and the line was gone. My grandmother had forgotten to draw it. I waited for Shen to take the first piece of chicken, and he waited for me. Neither of us grabbed. Neither of us hoarded. Somehow, we’d gone from food enemies to friends. Neither of us knew when it had happened. We just knew we no longer needed the line. I thought about that and how maybe people do change, as I thought about Jason.

“Depends on what the new owner wants to do with you.” He said it like we were inventory—freely disposable, along with the washer and dryer.

I didn’t know what it was about me and secrets. Once I had one, I just couldn’t let it go. I would feed it and snuggle it, and it would grow and grow inside me until it took on a life all its own! So no, I hadn’t told my parents. I’d been too busy imagining the look of surprise on their face to actually surprise them.

That was the problem with keeping a secret—you are all alone, on your own little island.

They didn’t say a word at first. I thought perhaps they were too shocked. Sometimes when I’m too shocked, I can’t speak either. That’s why I write things down, and even then, sometimes I can’t bring myself to deliver them. Like my thank-you letter to Jason, which was just sitting there at the bottom of my backpack. I thought maybe my parents were just taking their time too. Taking their time to find the right words. But then I looked up and saw my mother’s disappointment.

“But just think about it. Why would they just give away a motel like that?” my mother asked. “Because they’re old,” I said. “They don’t care about the money. They’re doing it out of the goodness of their heart!” “Have you ever seen anybody in this country do something out of the goodness of their heart?” “The doctor who fixed you up—remember him?” My mother’s face softened. She didn’t talk about the contest being rigged after that. Still, the doubt lingered with me. What if she was right?

“Sooner or later, they all leave,” Mr. Yao answered with a sigh, as if he had read my thoughts. Maybe if he was nicer to them, they wouldn’t leave, I thought. As I gazed at Mr. Yao, his face hardened by all the years and managers who had come and gone, I wondered what young Mr. Yao was like when he first started out. Was he less of a jerk, or the same? I wished I could ask him.

I looked around the room, the corners of my eyes wet with gratitude. Love welled inside me as I smiled back at the weeklies. Here we were, strangers from all corners of the world, blown to the Calivista by the winds of life, only to find each other and reemerge as a new family.

We sat in silence, the hot tears pooling in my eyes, Billy Bob’s hands balling into fists, and Mrs. Q shaking her head, blinking hard, blowing her nose into a tissue like someone had died. Because in a way, that’s what it felt like. Our dream had died.

They slithered in like eels—You’re a bike. The other kids are cars. You’ll never be as good as the white kids in their language. I tried to stop it, but it was no use. Doubt came in through every pore.

He looked away immediately, but there was a second. A second in which I saw into him crystal clear. I saw his hope fade away.

“Hey, no, it’s okay. You win some and you lose some,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “But I always lose some.” My dad looked down at me and wiped a tear away too. “That’s not true,” he said. “Because of you, Uncle Zhang’s now free. Hank has a new job. I’d call that a win.” “But I really wanted to win for us this time,” I muttered. My dad rocked me in his arms. “I know you did, sweetheart,” he said, his voice shaking. “I know you did.”

It occurred to me at that moment what it would have been like for Lupe if I had left. I always thought I was the one who needed her, that I was the barnacle to her whale. But it wasn’t one way. We needed each other, me and Lupe. She had been trying to tell me this all along, but it never really hit me until now.