American Panda: Chapters 12–19

It seems like it should’ve been a small issue—maybe even something many parents would have laughed at and given the child a pat on the head for being cute—but to my parents who grew up with nothing and scrimped and saved every grain of rice, wasting food was punishable.

We hadn’t actually spoken yet—it was salvageable.

Esther’s reproductive challenges had been the sole reason for Xing’s disownment. Her congenital endometriosis was caught late, and doctors informed her she may have trouble conceiving.

As the professor droned on and on about G proteins, my head lolled back and forth in half sleep—fishing, my mother called it.

What a far cry from multivariable calc, which kept me awake and attentive, grand jeté-ing across the floor in my head while taking copious notes.

In my head I pictured tapping him on the shoulder with a coy, Fancy seeing you here.

The hubbub silenced, and all eyes, including mine, homed in on the window at the other end of the corridor.

I told him I was dying to get a taste of medical school, and when he had grabbed the bait and ran, talking about how medicine was so exciting and I was going to love the adrenaline of it, the science, the satisfaction of helping people, I hadn’t said a word. So not a blatant lie, but a lie by omission.

I told him I was dying to get a taste of medical school, and when he had grabbed the bait and ran, talking about how medicine was so exciting and I was going to love the adrenaline of it, the science, the satisfaction of helping people, I hadn’t said a word. So not a blatant lie, but a lie by omission.

Xing introduced me to my tour guide for the day—a short East Asian girl dressed in wrinkled, cerulean scrubs and beat-up sneakers.

Another excised neck fat in the same manner one would hack apart a fatty rib-eye.

“Who can locate the cervical sympathetic ganglion?”

“Don’t worry. She can’t hurt you,” Dr. Wilson said, his voice dead serious, as if he were imparting new wisdom.

“Consequently, what a perfect opportunity for more learning. If Anna had indeed injured Ms. Ruth’s cervical sympathetic trunk, what would the medical ramifications be?”

“We’re different,” I said, the blue ribbon of understatements.

I was trying to be smooth and segue into asking you to coffee.

Because I like you a latte (as friends, of course, as previously stipulated).

I liked to personify the Porter Room because he had become such an integral part of my life, and when I danced, it was like I was conversing with Mr. Porter about my thoughts and emotions.

He leaned a tiny bit closer—almost imperceptibly so, but I was hyperaware of him.

After sweeping snow off the seat, Darren motioned for me to sit. While I balanced precariously on the edge, not wanting to bathe in a pool of melted snow (and worrying what germs were on there), he sat like a normal person, favoring a comfortable butt to a clean one.

I committed the new word to my vernacular.

“But then you fell in love with Esther,” I stated even though it should’ve been obvious. But I said it anyway, just in case, because in the back of my head, there it was, still niggling—had Xing chosen Esther just to piss my parents off, the way he had told them he was going to try to be the next Wang Leehom even though he couldn’t sing?

He gave me a wistful smile. “You can’t pick who you fall for.”

My crimson costume dripped with gold embellishments that caught the light, especially when I turned.

The gŭzhēng notes sang from the speakers, and the familiar trills of the Chinese zither transported me to another place.

Floundering, I started to respond to one person only to stop short and turn to the next. I sounded like a robot with a dying battery.

His eyes were still alight with mirth when he pushed the starting-to-melt bàobīng toward me.

Within five minutes, only a few errant ice chips remained both in the bowl and around our mouths.

The car door clicked open, the soundtrack to the devolving of my lies.

The wedding invitation was red and gold (the Chinese celebratory colors) with half the text in English, half in Mandarin. I ran my fingertips over the embossed characters.

My mother’s usually poised face turned down, revealing the wrinkles she normally worked so hard to hide from the world.

I grabbed the edge of the table as a wave of vertigo hit. My vision obscured and I swayed side to side.

I had forgotten my location (an abandoned alley) and my immediate surroundings (graffitied walls, decrepit furniture, and piles of rotting trash).

I was going to feign sleep, maybe even fake snore, but then she said, “Stop pretending already. I know you’re up. You’re not doing that weird half-snore, half-gasp thing you do.”

I rolled back, and we faced each other across the room from our recumbent positions in bed.

I was hanging over the precipice of a downslope, just one rolly wheel contacting the floor.

I pictured someone beaming a dumpling into the sky to ask for my help and had to stifle a laugh.

He placed a hand over mine, and my palm immediately turned sticky, but propriety be damned—who said sweaty girls couldn’t get the guy?

The chemistry between us was so strong I could practically see the forces—ionic, covalent, even van der Waals.

I had spent countless hours worrying about how to act in a boy’s presence, reading illicit romance books to try to learn what my parents wouldn’t teach me...but now that it was happening, it felt so natural.