The bakery is usually crowded after school.
I push through the doors and let the familiar scent of coconut and butter and sweet milk envelop me. It smells like home. Feels like it too. Our bakery is nestled right in the middle of town, next to the Korean barbecue place everyone goes to in the winter and the Asian grocery with its never- ending supply of Wang Wang gummy candies and fish sauce and braised beef instant noodles. A little farther out is the theater, where you can find the latest wuxia films and Chinese rom- coms and sci-fi films, and the dim sum restaurant that gives out free newspapers to the elderly, and the nail salon that’ll do your manicure for free if you’re suffering through a breakup.
All of it is as intimate to me as the path to my own house.
I drop my bag down by the counter and squeeze past the customers lined up with their trays of bread. Custard swirls, tuna buns, green tea mochi, jam doughnuts. Tiny cakes layered with diced strawberries and kiwi fruit and fresh- whipped cream.
Normally I would wait until everyone was gone to sneak one of the leftover cupcakes from the shelves, but today I feel too sick to even contemplate eating.
“Catch!”
I spin around just in time to see the bright blur of color shooting toward me. By instinct, my hands shoot up and grab the basketball seconds before it can smash my nose.
“A warning would have been nice,” I grumble as Max walks up to me.
“Yeah, that’s why I said catch,” Max says, grabbing the basketball back only to spin it on one finger. His black, bristly hair is so shiny that at first I think he’s just showered but, upon closer inspection, is the result of a disgusting amount of hair gel.
“Aren’t you meant to be on campus right now?” I ask. Max has never shown much interest in our bakery, but he’s been visiting even less ever since he moved into his college dorm. Whenever he does choose to pop in, it’s because he claims to be too lazy to cook for himself. “Surely even you sports students have actual classes to attend.”
He shrugs. “Skipped them. The lectures were boring.”
“You can’t just— you can’t skip your classes.” Not when your tuition costs almost as much as what the bakery makes in a year, I’m tempted to add, but don’t. My brother’s life is a simple, happy one, comprising just four things: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and basketball. It’s the life I want for him, the life I swore to myself I’d let him keep, even with our dad gone.
“Sure, I can,” he says with an easy smile. “Everyone does it.
And it’s enough having one perfect student in the family, yeah?”
My expression threatens to waver, my stomach coiling around itself. Here, in the warmth of the bakery, the email disaster doesn’t even seem totally real. I try to swallow, but it feels like swallowing a hard pill without water.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask him, sidestepping the subject. It’s a miracle my voice holds strong.
“She’s in the back.”
He bounds after me, humming some sort of video game soundtrack as I slip through the kitchen and find her outside.
She’s leaning against the wall by the bins, using a broom to support herself like she doesn’t have the energy to carry her own weight, her complexion pale even beneath the sunlight, the hollows under her eyes dark. My heart pinches. She looks exhausted, but that’s nothing new.
“Here, I can sweep this place up for you,” I tell her in the cheeriest voice I can muster.
She blinks. Shakes her head. “No, no. I’m okay. You focus on your schoolwork.”
“I don’t have much schoolwork,” I lie, even as my mind flips through all my tasks for tonight, my assignments due tomorrow, the articles I still need to write.
Mom hesitates, her bony hands tightening over the broom.
“Give it to me,” I say firmly, yanking the broom away from her. “I’ve got it.”
But Max elbows me. “Hold up. Didn’t you say you were going to help me practice my passes?”
He’s right. I did promise him that.
“I can practice with you while I clean up,” I say. “Just don’t knock anything over.”
“Are you certain you can handle it?” Mom asks, frowning at me. Neither of us even entertains the possibility of Max helping with the cleaning. The last time he did, he’d managed to knock over all the bins and spent hours picking pieces of eggshell off the ground. “Don’t you want to rest first or—”
“Mom, I promise, it’s no problem.” I laugh at her with such ease I almost believe myself, and push her lightly toward the door. I can feel the ridges of her spine underneath my fingertips.
There’s no meat, only bone and muscle, the results of labor.
As soon as she’s out of sight, I start sweeping on autopilot.
Half the blisters on my palms and fingers are from gripping the pen too long. The other half are from this.
Beside me, Max starts dribbling the ball. “Ready?” he asks.
I take my left hand off the broom. “Okay. Go.” The basketball shoots across the space and lands perfectly in my palm. I bounce it a few times before tossing it over to him, which he catches just as easily.
“Damn, not bad. Not bad at all,” he says. “You should join the team.”
I roll my eyes. “No need to flatter me.”
The basketball comes flying back. “For real,” he insists, then pauses. “Well, you might need to build some muscle —”
This time, I aim the basketball at his face. “I’m stronger than you are.”
“No, I’m clearly the strongest in the family,” he protests.
“Remember, even Dad said—”
We both falter. The ball thuds to the floor and rolls off toward the shelves as we both do our best to act like nothing’s happened, like he doesn’t exist. But it’s impossible, like attempting to cover up a murder scene with napkins. It’s easier to remember how things used to be, those hazy, long- gone afternoons when my dad and Max and I would hang around in our small backyard and race one another and play basketball until dinnertime—
No. I stop myself before the nostalgia can sneak up on me. I refuse to miss him, to want him back in our lives.
“You do need more practice,” I say mildly.
Max scrambles to retrieve the ball, and when we start passing it back and forth again, we’re both careful not to bring him up.
Still, the topic nags at my mind. Not for the first time I wonder if he blames me for what happened too. If that’s the reason for the faint but always noticeable friction between us, why he only comes back once every week or so, why half our conversations seem to lapse into silence.
By the time we finish, the sun has already disappeared. I save all the leftover bread in a massive container for our neighbors: the Duongs, who both work two jobs to feed their five children; the old nainai who’s been living alone since her partner passed away three winters ago, and only speaks a few sentences of English; the Henan- born divorcée who always brings us fresh lemons plucked from the tree in her own yard. I make sure to add a few extra slices of strawberries to the cakes before we close the store.
Then the three of us squeeze into the late bus home, the bread balanced on my lap, my bulky schoolbag crammed under my arm, Max’s basketball cradled in his. The air inside smells like plastic and perfume, and there’s a kid sitting behind me who has decided to play kickball with the back of my seat.
Thud.
Thud. Thud.
Irritation flares up in my throat.
Ignore it, I tell myself. It’s not worth making a fuss over, and it’ll be your stop soon anyway. I turn my attention to the scenery as it unfolds outside the window. The streetlights are slowly replaced by old oaks, gray turning to green, the space between houses growing wider and wider until we’re fully in the suburbs—
Thud. Thud. Thud.
I take a deep breath. Squeeze my fists again, try to relax each muscle in my fingers one by one. But my fists stay clenched, and without anything better to distract me, the images I’ve been trying to keep at bay all evening flash through my head.
Julius greeting the aunties with his fake smile and false charm.
Georgina backing away from our group project. Julius laughing with the girl next to him. Rosie storming up to me, her eyes narrowed in accusation. Julius leaning forward in the gardens, the scratch of his voice against my ear: I think you’re obsessed with me, Sadie Wen. His twisted smirk, his cold, cutting gaze.
Thud. Thud—
“Can you stop that?” I snap, whipping my head around.
The kid freezes. My mother freezes too; she looks stunned.
I’m shocked myself. The words don’t feel like they could have come out of my own mouth. It’s like somebody has removed every filter I’ve fixed in place, cleared out a direct path from my brain to my lips.
Then, to my absolute horror, the kid bursts into noisy tears.
Oh god.
Oh my god. I just made a teeny- tiny human cry. What is wrong with me today?
“S-sorry,” I mumble, heat rushing up my neck. The passen-gers around us are all staring at me, probably wondering what kind of monster I am. I couldn’t be more relieved when the bus rolls to a stop on our street. I grab my container of bread and hop off with record speed. The child is still wailing as the automatic doors fold shut.
In the following quiet, Max makes a low whistling sound.
“Damn, I really thought you were going to punch the kid for a second there. Kind of scary, not going to lie.”
Mom peers over at me. “Is everything okay, Sadie?”
I push down the lump in my throat. “Yeah, of course,” I say brightly. “I’m sorry. I was just . . . annoyed. And I wasn’t going to punch anyone,” I add, shooting Max a look.
She studies me a moment longer, then sniffs. I wait for her to tell me off. “Well, I know I’m not supposed to admit this because I’m an adult, but I wanted to yell at that young boy too. Come on,” she adds, lifting the container from my arms and turning toward our house. It’s recognizable even in the darkness, with its jade- green roof and the fairy lights strung up over the front porch. “You should shower and sleep early. You still have school tomorrow.”
School tomorrow.
The reminder hits me like a mallet to the stomach. I don’t know how I’m going to survive it.
