My Most Excellent Year Read online

  After he finished telling me, his eyes stayed glued to the highway underneath us like he was memorizing it. By then there were only two rules in my mind: (a) don’t cry, and (b) don’t let him stay sad. So I said the first thing I could think of to break the silence.

  “Best Christmas present.” Tick looked up suddenly and there was the usual Tick smile again.

  “Blue Rollerblades,” he said. “Best blizzard.”

  “The one that started while we were watching Peter Pan. You even clapped for Tinker Bell, you gink.”

  “Oh. Like you didn’t.”

  Adolescence isn’t just about growing hair, it’s about growing up. I hope I’m ready for it.

  Love,

  Augie

  INSTANT MESSENGER

  AugieHwong: Alé, I had a great idea. I see a finale in front of a curtain with stars on it. Everybody in the show gets to be in it. If we have time on Saturday, I’ll need you to help me block it out.

  AlePerez: What song?

  AugieHwong: Something that made me think of you. From West Side Story. “America.”

  AlePerez: Thanks, but my castanets are in the laundry. (Did you ever hear of ethnic stereotyping?) I assume you want me to stand in for Anita.

  AugieHwong: No, I’m Anita. I want you to play Bernardo.

  ***SORRY! USER ALEPEREZ HAS LOGGED OFF***

  Dear Liza,

  I don’t know why Andy Wexler thinks he needs help. He kicks a soccer ball better than David Beckham does. A couple of times during workouts this afternoon I could swear he fell on his ass on purpose. This is what happens when you’re a famous director. Everybody wants a piece of you, even if they have to fake a reason. What price glory?

  Tick was working on his diary again, so after practice Andy and I went to Dad’s store and took over a booth in the café for two hours of hot chocolate and all the cookies we could sneak. What a remarkable guy he is. All 5-feet-5 of him. He started off by apologizing for calling me a gink in second grade (I got the last grape Jell-O in the cafeteria line so he was stuck with orange), but he said I was the one who raised his consciousness by making him figure out that Asians have feelings too (!). If he hadn’t been so serious about it, with his forehead crinkled and his eyes looking so sad, I’d have dumped my hot chocolate all over his curly light brown hair. Instead, all I wanted to do was hug him and tell him it was okay—because if he really thinks that “gink” is the worst kind of name-calling that a Chinese American kid has to hear all his life, his consciousness never needed raising in the first place.

  Other things:

  His father is a pilot for American Airlines, and on 9/11 he’d just taken off from Logan Airport for San Francisco when the World Trade Center was hit. For two hours nobody knew which planes had done it and his family didn’t even know if he was alive. I tried to put myself in his shoes while he was remembering, but I just couldn’t go there. What if it had been Dad or Pop??

  He loves football and the Pats the same way that Tick loves baseball and the Sox. So there’s another whole language I’m going to have to learn. First and ten. Hang time. Flower Bowl.

  He wasn’t crazy about doing “Casey at the Bat” in the talent show, but he changed his mind when he found out I’d be directing him. My reputation precedes me.

  He has a great smile—but I mean a great smile. It’s like getting a present you didn’t expect. When he flashes one of those things you know he means every word he’s saying.

  Neither one of us could figure out why we didn’t become friends until now. It was always just “Hey”/“Hey” in the hallway and “See ya”/“See ya” after scrimmages.

  Before we left the store, Phyllis let him have Day By Day in New England Patriots History as long as he promised to keep it their secret.

  “I don’t do this for everybody,” she warned him, hiding it in a bag. Which is actually bullshit. She does it for every one of my friends when she meets them for the first time. And since it looked like we were on a roll there, I handed her the new Audrey Hepburn bio and tried to get away with the same thing. But all she did was slap my fingers and say, “Augie, do not make me put on my heels.” (Slipping one over on Phyllis is like tossing a pair of dice and waiting for a seven. You get lucky maybe one out of fourteen tries.)

  “Holy crap, Spidey!” blurted Andy, pointing to page eighteen while we were crossing Harvard Street. “There’s even a Jim Cheyunski autograph in here!”

  “Holy crap, Andy!” I blurted back. “Who the heck is Jim Cheyunski??” Andy groaned and put an arm around my shoulder when we hopped the curb.

  “Boy, have we got a lot of work to do on you.”

  We sat on a bench in Emerson Garden until we ran out of talk. By then it was getting dark and I really wanted to ask him to come over for dinner, but I couldn’t figure out how. So after a couple of more seconds of looking at each other, it was back to “See ya”/”See ya” again. Then we went home in opposite directions.

  I thought about him a lot last night. He’s the kind of friend I can see getting into capers with, like Butch and Sundance. Scratch that. Like Thelma and Louise. He’ll be wearing mauve and beige at the same time, the fashion police’ll be closing in behind us in squad cars, and just before we take off down the highway he’ll turn to me with his brown hair and blue eyes and shoot me one of those grins that could easily last me the rest of my

  SCREEEEECH.

  Oh, no.

  Oh, please God, no.

  “Zing! went the strings of my heart.”

  Too late. When he calls me Spidey I turn into grape Jell-O. His favorite kind.

  I’m doomed.

  Love,

  Augie

  The Word Shop

  BROOKLINE’S FAVORITE BOOKSTORE

  E-Memo From the Desk of

  Craig Hwong

  Heya, Teddy.

  This comes under the heading “Father-to-Father Communication: Insecurity,” so keep it under your hat because I have my kung fu image to maintain.

  Augie’s almost fifteen and about three steps away from Adolescent Hell—but he still hasn’t told us he’s gay yet. He couldn’t possibly think it would make any difference to us. Wei and I have been encouraging him to be himself ever since he memorized Annie Get Your Gun at the age of two and told his grandma Lily, “Got no diamond, got no pearl, still I think I’m a lucky girl.” I mean, it’s not like we needed a road map.

  Should I bring it up to him or leave it alone? He’s at the age where kids discover puppy love, and I’ve always looked forward to commiserating with him about my first crush. (Her name was Wendy and she smelled like aluminum foil. Remind me to tell you the whole story when Wei and the kids are in another state.)

  Craig

  KELLER CONSTRUCTION

  BOSTON • GLOUCESTER • WALTHAM

  ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION

  Craig, Augie’s afraid of nothing. He taught Tony C how to be dauntless when they were six, and that’s the only thing that got him back on his feet after he lost his mother.

  He’s not hiding anything from you or Wei. Two poss-ibilities: (a) he doesn’t know it himself yet or (b) he’s straight. Think about it for a minute. Just because you were a t’ai chi champ when you were ten didn’t automatically mean you were going to like girls. It’s a whole separate deal that works the same way in reverse. I mean, there must be some straight guys who know the lines from All About Eve.

  By the way, I finally got Lori to admit that if she weren’t my son’s adviser, she’d consider going out with me. I think I’m winning.

  Ted

  P.S. And you’re going to have to explain how a human being can smell like aluminum foil. You can’t just say something like that and then leave it hanging out there in the Universe.

  The Word Shop

  BROOKLINE’S FAVORITE BOOKSTORE

  E-Memo From the Desk of

  Craig Hwong

  Ted:

  This week my son thinks he’s the Supremes. All of them. So we can scratch “straight” of
f the list. At least I hope we can. As a gay kid he’ll be a natural leader. Put him in a macho bullshit environment and he’s going to have a hard time. I don’t want that to happen. (Let’s also not forget Wei’s immortal words to him nine minutes after he was born, when she first stared into those big brown eyes: “Oh, honey. Promise me you’ll grow up to like boys. Because I don’t want any other woman in your life except me.”)

  Girls smell like aluminum foil when they’re sixteen, sweating, and dancing with you only because a camp counselor told them they have to. It’s a scent they put out when they despise the fact that you’re alive. (By the way, we need to schedule a guys’ night at Mulligan’s before you screw up anything with Lori. You’ve been out of practice way too long not to need some brush-up work.)

  We’re thinking about taking the kids skiing between Christmas and New Year’s. You game?

  Outta here. I’ve got to pick up Diana Ross at soccer practice.

  Craig

  Diary

  Alejandra Perez, 9th Grade

  Mrs. Norwood’s Class

  Dear Jacqueline,

  Of all the Kennedy men you could have had, I think you picked the right one. Teddy was too cute to trust, and Bratty Bobby must have gotten on your nerves from day one, the way he was always chasing after Jack like a dog that’s looking for a rear end to sniff—and it doesn’t matter whose. Actually, you’d probably have done best with Joe Jr. if he hadn’t gotten himself killed in the war. He was handsome, and he may even have had some morals.

  But at least you were given a choice. After one month of public school, these are my only options:

  BARRY

  Brown nose; cuts out newspaper clippings for current events even on days when we don’t have current events

  ANDY

  Gay (doesn’t know it)

  JONATHAN

  Says “would of” instead of “would have”

  STU

  Thinks farting is a riot

  DRAKE

  Gay (doesn’t know it)

  GRAYSON

  Rumored to have eaten a salamander on a dare; won 35¢

  DONALD

  Hasn’t met Mr. Hygiene yet and doesn’t appear to want to

  TYLER

  Gay (knows it, in denial, reads Hustler)

  I left Anthony off the list because he was never in the running. Even for a boy, he’s reckless, over-confident, and obvious. In the middle of an already disquieting “pop quiz,” I just know he’s going to clear his throat, sneeze, or cough—all to get me to turn around and look at him. (As if I would ever look at him.) Then he “just happened” to join the Young Democrats Club when he found out I’d been accepted, though all he does for sixty minutes is search for opportunities to challenge me on the subject of your parasitic brother-in-law, intentionally forgetting that it was President Kennedy who saved us from nuclear extinction in 1962. All Bobby did was whine. Am I right?

  He also follows me around after school on days when he’s not playing baseball with some of the neighborhood children in Amory Park (second base, prone to make errors on infield hits, not a bad swing but not exactly all-star either, and I can’t help it if Amory Park is on my way home). So I copied a page from the Cambridge Dictionary of American English and left it on his desk.

  stalker, noun, someone who pursues another person, usually intending harm

  Two hours later, he left me a page of his own.

  bodyguard, noun, a person or group of persons, usually armed, responsible for the safety of another

  “Usually armed.” His only weapons are a Red Sox keychain and an insidious persistence that would have made your professionally irritating brother-in-law look like a novice.

  NAME: Alejandra Perez CLASS: Ms. Reed

  HISTORY QUIZ

  QUESTION: Define the purpose of the Bill of Rights.

  ANSWER: The Bill of Rights is a piece of paper that says we’re all entitled to the same freedoms, unless (to use one of many examples) your grandparents are Japanese. In that case, the Bill of Rights guarantees you the freedom to be locked up in a “Relocation Center” like Manzanar until the rest of the country decides it doesn’t detest you anymore. Then they sweep it under the rug so that the next generation doesn’t even know what Manzanar is.

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  We need to call a truce for about 10 minutes.

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  How did you get my e-mail address?

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  I have my sources. Alé, I’m really worried about Augie. He was walking into walls all day, he hasn’t IM’d me since last night, and Mom says he’s been sitting in his room watching the end of Funny Girl for 3 hours.

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  Oh, that’s not good.

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  Why? What happens at the end of Funny Girl?

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  She sings “My Man” and cries. I hope he hasn’t fallen in love with Omar Sharif.

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  By the way, just because Ms. Reed read your quiz answers to the whole class doesn’t mean you were right. Manzanar had over 30 baseball teams. Some of them were made up in camp like the Gophers and the Pioneers and the Señors, and some of them were already teams in their real lives before they got sent away (like the San Fernando Aces), so they kept on playing the way they always did, even with the guards and guns. Their field was on Block 25 near the fire break.

  What generation doesn’t know what Manzanar is?

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  Who told you that?

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  Baseball Behind Barbed Wire. Years ago. If you gave me a chance, you’d find out that I’m more than just messy hair and dirty sneakers.

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  Is the truce over?

  ------------------------------------------------------

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  Yeah. You can hate me again.

  I don’t see why he can’t take a hint. Surely he’d be happier with one of the other girls in our class. Kathy Fine, for instance. Although she hasn’t stopped talking since Labor Day, she seems to have a genuine flair for attracting boys. I’m certain she’d appreciate how Anthony blushes so vulnerably when his voice cracks and how his hair overlaps the neck of his cotton sweatshirt in a way that makes you wonder which is softer. Why does he think I would care?

  Fondly,

  Alejandra

  UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  CLINT LOCKHART

  AGENT

  Hey, Princess.

  No, I don’t think you’ll start an international incident if your father finds out what you’re really studying at your Bastille there. Kids are allowed to switch their majors whenever they want. But do not lie to him. Tell him that you love the Lycée and make sure he know
s that you’re also pulling straight A’s in French. The implication is that you’re pulling straight A’s in French at the Lycée, but you never said that. (This is how we’ve been playing it in the federal government since 1789, and if Bill Clinton hadn’t gotten careless we’d still be batting a thousand.)

  xoxo,

  Clint

  Dear Jacqueline,

  I’m not cut out for Covert Operations. Were you? I leave the house on Saturday mornings with a French book in my hand, a craving for all things Gallic written across my face—and tights, a leotard, and a towel hidden in a $750 Gucci backpack that I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing otherwise. (There’s a darling little retro bag made out of brown and tan canvas that’s on sale for $12.99 at the Downtown Crossing Gap—but when I suggested it to Papa, he acted as though I’d just asked him if I could walk to school naked.) By the time I reach the Lycée, I feel like an advertisement for a youth reformatory. There was a police car parked in front of the building this morning, and until I realized it belonged to the crossing guard, I was all ready to turn myself in. I don’t do guilt well.

  But oh, my God, what difference could it possibly make when you’re standing in front of a mirror and barre with eleven other kids and Benny Goodman coming through the speakers, and you don’t even recognize yourself anymore?