Adjusting the brightness of the room, I look over my French notes and write a sentence or two in Mandarin on a sheet of paper for my father to grade. My glasses slip down my nose, and I push it up after wiping my nose with a tissue. The soft, thin ones litter around my desk and floor. Grabbing a handful, I dump them into my trash can.
My eyes are watering. How do you write using past tenses in French again? How do you read these characters again? Plugging my nose with a tissue, I put straighten out my skirt and hair extensions. I really shouldn’t put these on my bed but whatever. I toss the two girly items into my backpack and resume my work.
Yuck! I’m spreading germs everywhere. I tip back in my chair and groan. I hate being sick, but I’m sick because I spend half of my time pretending to be a girl. I rub my eyes and try to sort my thoughts together while a question flies around in my head.
How do girls manage? One, I will chop my hair off once it reaches past my shoulders, no exceptions. Sweat sticks to your hair and it drags you and your health down, in my honest opinion. How do girls manage that? Two, their pants pockets are non-existent or a sad excuse for a pocket. I don’t understand how a female could carry a phone in their jeans or skirts. I can’t even put my thumbs in the pockets without feeling disappointed. Three, they wear skirts even when it’s cold and raining.
“A-choo!” My sneeze sounds like a rubber toy squeak than anything. Grabbing a tissue, I blow my nose until the trumpet ran out of breath before laying my head down on my desk. Note to self, I have to thank Shina when she comes back from buying groceries. The tissue box is my flashlight in this dark time, and the pot of tea she left me gives me a voice.
Pouring myself a cup, I cough it down as before wrapping myself into a burrito with my blanket. This was a terrible time to be a girl or even a cross-dressing boy, mind you. With nothing but a skirt and thin leggings over my legs during fear-coaching, I’m not surprised my nose is running on me.
“A-A-choo!” I’m pretty sure my notes and homework are covered in germs, filthy germs. I grab a bottle of hand sanitizer and disinfect the war zone on my skin. I hear my door creak open and my father’s voice come aloud.
“Tune down the sneezes, son. I can’t hear myself sigh sometimes.” He chuckled at his little joke. I just stare at him. If only he knew… Folding his arms, my father came across the room and lifted me up. Tucking me into bed, he moved the tissue box onto my nightstand. He sat at the foot of the bed, hand on his chin. “You’re wearing the jacket Shina places out for you, right?” His dark eyes look into mine.
“I am.” His eyebrows furrow and he pushes his bangs aside. I stare at him and vice versa. He moves his glasses a bit and I do the same with mine. He straightens his glasses slowly and then fast, like a Morse code. I do the same for mine. Then, we just stared at each other, awkwardly. So much for Morse code-talk...
“I need to go take care of something at the company,” he finally says. “Will you be okay by yourself?”
I nod. Like a “good little boy”, I close my eyes and my father leans in to kiss my forehead. He brushes my bangs aside and whispers,
“When I get back, we can play some puzzles together or a friendly game of chess if you don’t mind.” I hear his footsteps leave my room after and a few minutes; I hear the front door open and close. I open an eye and rise to my feet before tumbling down. No. I won’t be able to think straight if I’m this sick. No. I won’t be able to plan this week’s fear-coaching and I can’t lie it off either. Who knows when I’ll feel better? Grabbing my notebook and pen, I draw a random picture along the margin as I think about the upcoming week.
The teachers have already started getting us ready for the winter exams, and they were sending out more homework than ever, not that I mind. But, it did interfere with fear-coaching. As “smart” as many thought Jean was, she needed a sufficient amount of time to get the work done. With fear-coaching an hour and a half shorter, I walked her home and we discussed our approaches and plans on the mountain of work for home. We would stop by a coffee shop on the way and order hot chocolate so the walk wouldn’t be that bad.
Even with fear-coaching shorter now, I guess Jean made some progress over the past few weeks. She still stutters around me when I’m a girl, still tries to punch me when I’m a girl, and still tries to run away and hide when I’m a girl. However, I managed to keep her still for fifteen seconds while I was a girl. For just fifteen seconds, she can sit next to me without fidgeting or balling her hands into fists. Such a feat was treated with an extra cup of hot chocolate to-go while I walked her home.
Hot chocolate does sound nice. I wouldn’t mind having a sip or two…
I wake up with fresh drool down my chin, lovely. The house is quiet and the lights in room and out in the hallway are dark. Switching on my nightstand lamp light, I look around my room. A bowl of soup, wrapped under plastic, sits by my Mandarin and French notes and homework while I try to grasp how long I’ve been asleep. My phone says its past midnight and there are seventeen text messages from Jean. She wants to come by and visit tomorrow or later today.
Licking my lips, I fish for my flashlight and turn off the lamp light before making my way to the opened door. I hear vacuuming off in the distance—Shina off to work on late night cleaning, perhaps. An idea pops into my mind. Tiptoeing down the hall, I pull on my father’s office door. The door creaks and I hear a body shift around. I aim the beam at the floor. I see an outline of my father’s body on the desk, his back slowly rising and falling with every breath and snore. I tiptoe over to his little office library.
“What’s this?” I freeze. I hear my father shift around in his sleeping position. Mumbling softly to himself, father whispers into the dark, “I found the last puzzle…” His voice trails off with a snore.
I really should record him while he sleeps. When I was little, late at night, I used to be scared of his snores because they sounded like a hungry monster. Older and hopefully matured out of that fear, I give him a sigh and move on with my idea. Shining the flashlight on the shelves, I looked around for a journal of business records, a little hobby my father was in to.
Old fashioned spines and covers and titles blush in color when the light passed by them, but they weren’t the journal I was looking for. On my tippy toes, I scan the higher shelves but don’t see it. I paced around, looking for a thin journal that had recently used written all over it.
In the corner, lodged between two dictionaries, the journal sticks out like a red rose in a field of yellow. Pulling it out with my index finger, the journal moved an inch at a time. Like a spy, I paused every now and then to make sure my father was still asleep and to listen to where Shina was cleaning. Eventually, the little journal fell into my hand. Journal hugged tightly at my chest, I tiptoe back to my room, close the office door, and began my research.
I know I should be planning for the week’s fear-coaching. My exams are coming soon, and I have to keep my mind and grades up to par when the day comes. I have Mandarin homework that’s waiting for me to finish it and French work I have to complete by Thursday. My brain and body are at their top shape at the moment, but I know within a few hours, they’re going to be begging for sleep. So why? Why am I spending the late hours of night looking through my father’s journal?
I already knew the answer before the question even came to me. It was the idea that popped into my head after I woke up. Let’s just say, my mind was dissecting everything I knew about Jean while I dozed off into La-la Land and over the rainbow. It was kind of creepy of how much I knew about her past and how little she knew of mine, personally. Jean isn’t the kind of person to ask questions, just going with the flow instead.
But, if I really wanted to help her, I needed to dig up things she never had told me. Stalker-ish, I know but it’s vital that I know. To be honest, I don’t really remember or know what when Jean started to develop her specific fear of girls. I know it happened a little after her family’s company went south and when her mother died shortly after the initial fall.
Cuddled in my bed and flashlight in hand, I search through my father’s journal entries of companies—a little hobby he developed to keep track of the comings and goings of other companies. Finally, I found the entry, the day it all went downhill for the Soho family—Jean’s family.
744Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSwk57hrZ50
Every company and business has its own secrets; per se. Sarah was no exception with hers and I too was no exception for mine. Even Jean, young as she is, knows better than to blab about her mother’s work at school or in the public’s eyes. Whatever happened to the perfect world created, everything that Sarah worked so hard on to maintain crumbled down under fire and lies. I received a call earlier this morning from Sarah that someone had hacked into the company’s computers and stole everything, posting all the dedication and files for the entire world to see and steal.
I
744Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSrcroQ60wN
The entry cuts off there. No. I turn to the next page and see a new entry for a different company. No. I look closely at the pages to see if father may’ve possibly torn the page out. He didn’t. He stopped his entry there.
“Young Master Yu,” Shina whispers. My pulse quickened at the sound of her voice and the sound of the hallway light switches getting turned on. I hear her footsteps making their way to my room, but she’s still far away. Throwing my blanket over me and switching the flashlight off, I slow my breathing and hope that Shina doesn’t hear how loud my heart’s running. Quiet footsteps make their way to my bed. I hear Shina sigh and hear something from my desk being picked up. “I guess you’re not hungry for dinner, Young Master.” Her footsteps leave my room, and the door creaks while be shut.
After a good two minutes, I pulled the covers off and took my glasses off. Placing them on my nightstand, I hug father’s journal and my flashlight like I was some scared, little kid. So many new questions pop into my head, never leaving me alone to rest.
Why is it so hard to learn about Jean’s past before she started to fear girls? What connection is there between the fear and her family’s company failing? Oh, don’t get me started on when Jean went into foster care. Did any of her foster families contributed or caused her fear? There are too many records and files that I would have to steal or ask for. Too many families to visit and way too many stories to sort out from truth or lie.
Sometimes, I really hate it when unanswered questions swim around in my mind. Part of me wants to know the truth, but the other part of me wants to hear it from one person alone. That’s Jean. It’s the only way I can settle the thoughts in my head and become an efficient fear-coach. I’m her friend and I need to help her get through this. A pushy friend I may be…
I picture Jean’s toothy smile in my head. Through thick or thin, Jean was always a good actor when it came to hiding what she really felt. What if this fear isn’t true and she’s hiding something else inside her heart? My head stings with so many questions inside my head. It took some time before I was able to sleep but my mind moved a mile a minute, trying to dig out the truth of what I knew about Jean. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
