Bubble trouble, p.1
Bubble Trouble, page 1
To my boba lovers—
Matthew, Jason, and Kate
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1: Drama
Chapter 2: Home Is Where the Robots Are
Chapter 3: You! Again!
Chapter 4: Phineas
Chapter 5: Going, Going …
Chapter 6: The Dog Rearranged My Homework
Chapter 7: Mary Poppins Never Had to Deal with Legos
Chapter 8: This Is a Drill
Chapter 9: Confrontation at the Tea Palace
Chapter 10: Auntie Sue
Chapter 11: Aunts, Uncles, and Other Disasters
Chapter 12: Running Away
Chapter 13: No, You’re Immature
Chapter 14: Big Boba
Chapter 15: Messy Methods to Make Money
Chapter 16: Getting Taped
Chapter 17: Sticky Hands
Acknowledgments
Sneak peek at The Great Wall Of Lucy Wu
About the Author
Also by Wendy Wan-Long Shang
Copyright
Is it possible to fail drama, even when you’re trying your hardest not to? I could definitely be the first person at Roosevelt Middle School to fail because I can’t improvise. I like planning, knowing what to expect. But in drama, you’re supposed to improvise and live in the moment. I don’t see the point. I thought the whole point was that in drama you put on a play, which means following a script. Shakespeare didn’t get famous because he was good at improvising.
Mrs. Alamantia was making us play a game where she handed us an object, and we had to see how many things we could make up about it. Pretend, like we’re little kids. My partner, Isabel Zhang, and I had been given an orange pool noodle.
Isabel pretended to write with it, struggling with how large it was. “Mom did say I was never gonna lose this pencil.” She sighed. The whole class burst out laughing. Isabel is one of those people who can do anything—get good grades, look perfect, be funny. Isabel handed me the noodle and gestured for me to go.
I looked at the pool noodle and tried to be creative, although having to be creative under pressure is pretty terrible. If I’d had time to plan, I would have made a list of things it could be. The silence in the classroom seemed to stretch out for hours. “Just do something!” hissed Isabel. I did the first thing that came to me. I pretended to take a big bite. “So this is the big spaghetti, huh?”
I got a couple of claps, mostly from the really nice people in the class who will clap for anything. It wasn’t imaginative, though. It’s literally called a noodle, Chloe, announced the little voice in my head. I handed the noodle back to Isabel and hoped that the exercise would be over soon.
Isabel put the noodle straight up on her head. “I said I need a haircut! Just the one hair!” she shouted, pretending to be an irritated customer. The whole class, including Mrs. Alamantia, laughed even louder than before. Isabel pretended to look around at the class, the noodle quivering upright with indignation. “What’s so funny about wanting a haircut?”
Isabel gave the noodle back to me, her face flushed with happiness. Mrs. Alamantia said that improvisation is about being in the moment, about responding, rather than trying to create a planned moment. My problem was that I liked planning. Organizing and neatly ordering activities and things was how I relaxed.
I took a deep breath and tried to let my mind go blank. Just respond. The whole class seemed to lean forward and watch. I held the noodle up to my nose.
“I’m an elephant,” I said, swaying the noodle back and forth. “Honk, honk, honk.”
“Elephants don’t go honk, honk, honk,” said someone in the class. I was looking at the ground, so I couldn’t see who was talking.
“You can’t say that to Chloe,” someone whispered. “Be nice.”
Ugh—I hated being that kid, the one other kids felt sorry for. I looked for a way to recover. “I’m a rare honking elephant,” I said. “Honkus elephantus.”
“No criticism in the improvisation space,” said Mrs. Alamantia. “We are trying to let one another flourish.” Then she said that we were done, making me a very relieved elephant.
Improvisation exercises aside, I did like drama, mostly because of Mrs. Alamantia. She acted like she would rather be with us than do anything else in the world. Sometimes, she clapped her hands together and said, “Let me tell you something!” and then dropped some tidbit like trivia about a famous actor or something that happened during a performance.
Today, Mrs. Alamantia clapped her hands and said, “Class! This is so exciting! You have an opportunity to go on a field trip to see not one but two Broadway musicals! The drama department and the music department have worked together to organize this trip so you can see the many amazing professionals who make up the Broadway scene. We’ll see one matinee and then one evening show.”
All my terrible feelings about improv melted away. I love musicals. It started with the movies, like The Little Mermaid and The Lion King. Then I saw a high school production of Annie, which is about an orphan during the Depression, with its showstopper number “Tomorrow.” Then Mom took me to see Come from Away for my birthday a few years ago. Lately I’ve been watching the oldie movie musicals: West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and Oliver! I love the way the songs make you feel, like you share all the emotions with the characters.
Based on the noises around me, everyone else was pretty excited, too. Isabel and her group of friends put their heads together, and I could hear snippets of their conversation. It sounded like they were already planning what to wear.
“I’m not going,” said a voice. “Those Broadway shows are so fake.” I turned to see who was talking. It was a boy in a blue hoodie. I didn’t know the boys in the class as well as the girls, but I thought his name was Harry.
“You don’t have to go, Henry,” said Mrs. Alamantia calmly. Ah, right. Henry. I was pretty close. Henry, in spite of his outrageous comment, smiled and shrugged. “In fact,” said Mrs. A, “this is probably a good time to mention that not everyone will be going. There are a limited number of spaces, and there is, of course, the expense of the tickets, the bus, and any extras.”
“How much is the trip?” someone asked.
“It’s actually a really good deal for getting to see two Broadway shows,” said Mrs. Alamantia. “It’s three hundred and seventy-five dollars for two shows, meals, and transportation. We’re going up and back in one day, to save on the expense of a hotel.”
The rest of the class started chatting again. For a lot of kids, this was nothing. I lived in a pretty wealthy area outside of Washington, DC. Most parents would send in the money and think nothing of it.
Henry hooted. “I can think of so many things I’d rather do with that money! Musicals are so phony! Like, who gets up and just starts dancing with a group of people?”
I tended to ignore the boys in my class. They’re kind of annoying, and giving them any kind of attention just made them misbehave more. But that kind of talk about musicals was not something I was going to stand for.
“You’re right,” I said. “So fake, unlike, I don’t know—video games? Berets for cats? Flamin’ Hot Cheetos?”
“Oh, come on,” said Henry. “You’re not going to go after the Cheetos!” He pretended to grab his hair in shock. Henry had thick black hair that he wore short on the sides and longer on top.
“Why not? They’re fake.”
“They’re good fake,” said Henry.
“If your point is that something is bad because it’s fake, then all things that are fake should be bad,” I said. Yeah, take that, Henry Broadway-Hater! agreed the little voice in my head.
Henry put his hands up. “Whoa, I didn’t realize this was a debate class, Chloe!”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that he knew my name—most kids had heard of me at school, for all the wrong reasons. Still, it was weird to hear him say my name out loud.
“Stick to things you know about,” I said. “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, not musicals.”
Henry looked at me and nodded. Then he drew his fingers across his lips, zippering them shut, like we were in cahoots, which we definitely were not.
As soon as I walked through the front door, I heard Dad. Specifically, I heard Dad yell, “DUCK!”
I dropped my backpack and squatted, just in time to feel the breeze of something flying over my head, accompanied by a mechanical whir. I looked up. A drone hovered over me for a second and then flew back down the hall.
“What was that?” I said while taking off my shoes.
“I had this idea,” said Dad. Then he stopped talking. My dad does that sometimes, especially when he gets caught up in something.
“And that idea was …” I said, hoping he’d pick up the rest of the sentence. I walked into the living room and found Dad fiddling with a controller.
“That a drone could help find my phone,” said Dad.
“That would be nice,” I said. My dad was kind of a technical genius, but that did not extend to normal life stuff. He spends about a third of his life looking for his phone, keys, or wallet. My dad used to develop medical devices. He’d travel all over the country and demonstrate medical equipment to hospitals and doctor’s offices. But after my mom died, he decided he needed to be home with me, so he’s been working on different inventions instead, hoping that he can get someone to invest in them.
“It’s like a Roomba,” he said as if that made perfect sense.
“Dad, a Roomba does not f ly or find things,” I said. “It sucks things up. It’s practically the opposite of what you’re doing.”
“Ah! But a Roomba does know how to find its way around a house. It has to, to make sure it cleans all the surfaces. That’s how it’s like a Roomba,” said Dad triumphantly. “I’m teaching the drone how to look around the house.”
“Ohhh. I guess that makes sense,” I admitted. “How’s it going?”
“We’ve had some false positives,” said Dad. “A lot of things look like a phone to the drone right now. And it needs to charge.”
“Well, we can start prepping dinner while that happens,” I said. “It’s Thursday.”
“Is it? Already?” said Dad. “Okay. I just need a minute. I, uh, oh dear.” Dad looked around the living room for a moment, his hand on his cheek.
“What is it?”
Dad let out a long noisy sigh. “Well, I hid the phone so the drone could work on finding it.”
“And?”
“Now I don’t remember where I put it,” said Dad. “I thought I had put it on the side table, next to the chair.” Dad didn’t have to say which chair it was. He meant the oversized, dark brown chair that had been Mom’s favorite place to sit and read.
“You look for the phone,” I said. “I’ll start cutting up the chicken.”
On Thursdays, we make Three Cup Chicken, which was one of the dishes my mom used to make. It gets its name from the story that it takes one cup each of soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil, though if you actually make it like that, it probably would not be good. Mom never wrote down how she made it, so Dad and I keep experimenting to see if we can make it like hers. So far, we have made it eighty-three different ways.
My mom was an emergency room doctor—she died from COVID during the pandemic. It was in the really bad days in the beginning, when there were shortages of protective equipment like masks and gowns for the medical personnel. Mom tried to be careful. When they ran low on masks, she kept hers in a paper bag with her name on it so they could keep sterilizing it. She didn’t bring any clothes she wore at the hospital into the house. She stayed in the guest room, and I wasn’t allowed to touch her, just talk to her from the hallway. Six feet away.
Even though she was cautious, she still got sick. Now it’s just me and Dad. For a long time, it felt like we were trying to live with a big hole in the middle of the floor, a hole of grief and confusion that we could fall into at any moment. Now it feels like we have more good days than bad days, though we still have to be careful. The traditions we have, like Three Cup Chicken on Thursdays, seem to help keep us steady. We have a notebook where we write down what we’ve tried, like scientists.
“So, this week we decided we were going to try Thai basil leaves to see if they had a better flavor,” said Dad, reading over our notes as we ate dinner.
“I think the basil tastes more like Mom’s,” I said. “But her sauce was thicker, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” agreed Dad.
“We cooked it for fifteen minutes,” I said.
“But maybe we need to pay attention to the heat,” said Dad. “Maybe it was too low and the sauce couldn’t thicken properly.”
There was another way we could find out about the recipe. We could ask Auntie Sue, my mom’s older sister. I could call her yí mā, which would be the proper Chinese name, but “Auntie Sue” kind of stuck when I was little.
When my mom was alive, Auntie Sue would come over and we would talk for hours while we made dumplings or had hot pot. I remember so much laughing and teasing; Auntie Sue and Mom would remember being kids and getting into trouble. But Auntie Sue and Dad haven’t gotten along since Mom died.
I supposed I could ask Auntie Sue myself about Three Cup Chicken, but then that felt disloyal to Dad. Dad and I were figuring this out together, and asking Auntie Sue for help if Dad wouldn’t ask her would be cheating in a way. I loved Auntie Sue—but it seemed I couldn’t love Auntie Sue and Dad together.
So, for the eighty-fourth time, I said, “We can make that a note for next time.”
Dad made a note. “Still, this is pretty darn good sān bēi jī,” he said, using the Chinese word for it. He made a little poem, riffing on the word three. “Sān yuè, sān yĩ hˇao, sān bēi jī, gèng shì hăo.”
Third month, thirty-first day, Three Cup Chicken is even better. I checked the calendar. It was, in fact, March 31. “Have you paid the bills?” Bills were due at the end of the month.
“It’s on my list of things to do tonight,” said Dad calmly, spooning some more chicken into my bowl. “And it’s not something you need to worry about. You’re just a kid.”
“Dad, you didn’t know it was Thursday. And remember the time you forgot to pay the electric bill and we got a notice?”
“But I did know the date. Everyone makes mistakes, Chloe. That’s just a fact of life,” said Dad.
“I prefer mistakes that don’t make the Wi-Fi go out!” I said, joking.
“The Wi-Fi never went out,” said Dad. “And even if it did, we’d be okay. I’d just go pay the bill and it would come back on. Now, you worry about kid things.” The problem was that when someone said things like Don’t worry about it, I actually ended up worrying more. Like maybe the truth was worse. Or maybe I’d be surprised by something bad because I didn’t worry enough.
“Is there anything going on at school I should know about?” asked Dad. “Any tests? Projects you need help with?”
I thought about the Broadway show, the $375. Dad’s inventions cost money. The drone, for instance.
“Do we have enough money to pay the bills?” I asked.
“Chloe!” said Dad. “What kind of question is that?”
I noticed that Dad didn’t answer my question. “Well, do we?”
“You’re twelve,” said Dad. “Stop worrying about bills and money. Tell me about school. Is anything happening?”
A grim pit settled into my stomach. We didn’t have enough money, and Dad wasn’t going to tell me. “No,” I said. “Nothing big.” I didn’t need to go to Broadway, I told myself.
On Friday, Sabrina said we should walk over to the shopping center and check out a new tea place she’d heard about. We were standing by our lockers, trying not to get swept away by the intense energy of a Friday afternoon in middle school.
“Tea?” I said. My parents had taken me to a tea shop once, when I was little, in Chinatown in New York. It was in the basement of a Chinese grocery store. It didn’t seem that exciting to me, but then again, I was a lot shorter back then and could barely see over the counter crowded with jars and canisters and boxes.
“Yeah,” said Sabrina. She nudged me. “You’re Chinese. Didn’t you guys, like, invent tea?” Five years of friendship allowed her to make jokes like that.
“The Chinese also invented the toothbrush. Are we going to a toothbrush shop, too?” I asked. I sent my dad a quick text to make sure it was okay to go. Dad texted back, Have fun! Don’t hurry home!
“That’s next week,” joked Sabrina. Suddenly, she shot her hand into the air and waved at someone, dropping a bunch of papers on the ground. “Topher, what’d you think of that science test?”
“Did you get the bonus question?” asked Topher.
“Nah,” said Sabrina. She didn’t seem worried about her papers. She was too busy looking at Topher. I knelt down and began picking up the papers, automatically arranging them by date, most recent on top. Sabrina had some papers from two months ago mixed in with a worksheet from today—what was she thinking?
“Me neither,” said Topher. “It was like it was in code. Oh, hey, Chloe. I didn’t see you down there.”
Sabrina giggled. A little too hard, I thought. “Martian code,” she said. They were still standing over me while I tried to keep Sabrina’s papers from getting stepped on.
“Definitely,” said Topher. “Well, see ya.” I stood up and handed Sabrina her science homework, now in chronological order.
“These papers should be in your notebook, not loose,” I scolded her. “That’s how you lose stuff.”
“I know,” said Sabrina good-naturedly. She stuck the papers in her backpack without looking. She was too busy staring at Topher walking away.
“Whoa,” I said. “Do you like him?”
“He’s in my science class,” said Sabrina. She was, like my dad, not answering my question. “He also plays soccer. He’s the goalie.”
