North of Beautiful (23 page)

“Maybe I’ll get us a little something,” Mom said, gazing appraisingly at the Starbucks kiosk. She glanced sideways at me. “Remember how Merc says they never feed you on the airplanes anymore.”

I swiftly calculated the time we had before boarding. Over two hours. “Sure.”

Intent on finding us an empty table, I nearly barreled into a guy who stepped in my path. What the hell? Considering the momentum from the weight I was carrying on my shoulders, both my thirty-two pound backpack (I had weighed it at home) and Mom’s bag, I barely stopped in midstride.

“Excuse me,” I muttered, not bothering to make eye contact with the dolt until he spoke.

The one voice that could make my heart whip in circles like a compass gone awry now said, “I knew you missed me, but I didn’t know how much.”

I looked up, grinning, and then did a double take. Gone was my Goth guy with dark eyes outlined in kohl and lips painted in black. In his place stood a fresh-faced skater dude, wearing a faded T-shirt, long baggy shorts and — no way . . .

“Flip-flops?” I asked, incredulous.

His answering smile was long, lopsided, familiar in that unfamiliar face. “Yeah.”

“Don’t you know those are the worst shoes to wear on an airplane? All the books say you’re supposed to have your feet covered so your toes don’t get smashed during an emergency. . . .”

Without warning, Jacob folded me in his arms. That, too, felt familiar somehow. Into my hair, he whispered, “I’ll tell you what. If our plane goes down, I’ll still let you save me.”

And then he released me.

I breathed out, annoyed by his words, even more annoyed that I wanted to stay in his arms. Just like that, my fear that we might be awkward around each other — or more accurately, that I would be too self-conscious to talk to him — vanished.

“You bet I’d have to save you.” I pointed at his bruised toenail. “I cite evidence A. Cover your feet.”

Just as I lowered my backpack to the empty chair at my side, Jacob hefted it up, testing its weight, and then quirked an eyebrow at me. “So, Control Freak, let me guess. Three guidebooks, a month’s worth of PowerBars, and your own portable medicine cabinet.”

I flushed and decided now was not the time to correct him: that would be four guidebooks. A half dozen granola bars. An entire drugstore’s inventory of hand wipes and antibacterial goop. And a medical supply worthy of a doctor’s respect — Benadryl, Tylenol, Metamucil (you never knew). Really, it was a miracle Mom and I hadn’t been mistaken for drug mules.

“You know, I liked us better on the phone,” I told him, swatting his hand off my backpack.

“I don’t.” Jacob flushed red and busied himself with adjusting the straps on his backpack that had fit him just fine a moment ago.

“I don’t either.”

“So,” he said, his voice gruff, “you walked right past me.”

“I didn’t recognize you.” I waved at his new look, glad that one thing hadn’t changed: his hair. That was still spiked up, but no longer orange-tipped. “Why’d you change?”

“Why did you?”

For the first time, I felt his stare on my cheek, spackled with thick makeup. I flinched, glanced away, unable to answer. Thankfully, Mom approached us, loaded with four coffees and a huge paper bag, no doubt filled with enough provisions to last our entire flight. “Jacob!” she cried. “It’s good to see you again. Where’s your mom?”

“Waiting for you at the gate.” He easily slung my backpack over one shoulder and Mom’s carry-on bag over his other. When I protested — “I can do it” — he said, “Just let me, okay?”

It was hard to let someone help me, though, when I was conditioned to believe that help was for the weak. What was even harder was watching Mom with Norah, their heads bowed together as they chortled over something or another in the waiting area. They couldn’t have looked more different, Mom in her matching pale pink sweatpants and sweatshirt and bright white tennis shoes, and Norah, the picture of the world traveler, poured into brown suede pants. A camel-colored pashmina shawl was draped casually around her thin shoulders. She had lost weight since we last saw her, and I remembered that a week from now, her ex — Jacob’s dad — was getting remarried. Trevor had decided he wanted to wear a tux and be the ring bearer in the wedding.

“You sure you don’t want to be at the wedding, too?” I asked Jacob now.

“I wouldn’t go if he was giving free tickets to . . .” He waved with the last of his cinnamon twist.

“The Galapagos.”

“Exactly.” Again, the grin that I had missed so much. He took the final bite of his donut and still looked voracious. So I gave him the rest of mine. “Thanks. So Mom’s quitting her job.”

“You’re kidding. But it was everything she worked for,” I said, thinking wistfully of the company jet she flew in, the countries she traveled to, the Range Rover she drove . . . all the security money could buy except for stability at home. I leaned toward Norah and Mom, wondering what they were talking about two seats down from us. My efforts to eavesdrop didn’t go unnoticed.

“They’re doing fine,” Jacob assured me both then and again a half hour after take-off when he switched seats with Mom so she and Norah could keep each other company.

For the fifth time since she left our row, I leaned across the empty aisle seat to make sure Mom was okay up in the roomier business class section where Norah, as a frequent flier, had been upgraded. She didn’t return my look, too busy chattering with Norah.

“Do you want to switch seats?” Jacob asked. “Look out the window for a while?”

“No, thanks.” The window seat made me feel trapped, confined. I didn’t like losing my ability to jump up and out if I needed to, whether to help Mom or escape if the plane went down.

“Just so you know, they’re ordering wine.”

“They are?” I craned into the aisle again. Sure enough, the flight attendant was handing them two small bottles of wine. And then came Mom’s unmistakable snort, which meant she was really laughing, a belly laugh that was rare as an endangered species at home.

Jacob stretched his legs out in front of him. “I know it’s a foreign concept to you, but just kick back.”

“I can relax.”

“Yeah.” Again with the teasing grin. “So what’s up with the yoga poses?” He mimicked me maneuvering in my seat to spy on Mom.

I laughed so hard, the balding man in front of us turned around to shush me.

Chagrined, I sobered. But Jacob nudged my shoulder. “So Trouble Magnet, I bet that’s never happened to you at school. You’ve always been the ideal student. The good girl.”

“Well . . . ,” I hedged.

“It’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun corrupting you.”

“I’d be more scared if you were in your Goth getup.”

Now, he started on the scone Mom had bought for him, licked the sugar crystals off his fingers. “It’s all costume.” He plucked at his polo shirt. “This is, that was.”

“So why Goth and not . . . ?”

“Prep? Soccer guy?”

I nodded.

“Because . . .” He rapped his fingers on the tray as if he was uncomfortable. If we were on the phone, distance making intimacy safe, he’d answer me straight up. I thought he’d drop it now, use the flight attendant who was asking us if we wanted water to deflect this conversation. But as soon as she pushed the beverage cart on, he answered, “Because people stared at me whenever I went out with my parents. I mean, you might expect little Chinese girls to be adopted, but not boys.”

I hated to admit it, but I had done the same. I confessed: “I’m one of the lame ones. Sorry.”

He waved aside my apology. “So I figured if people were going to stare at me anyway, then I would choose the terms of their staring. I can dictate what they see.”

“So what’s with the surfer look now?”

“People aren’t going to be staring at me in China; they’ll be staring at Mom.” He smirked. “And you.”

“Oh, right.” I toyed with my cup of water, overly iced, but I had been too polite to protest when the flight attendant handed it to me. I admitted, “I had never thought of dress as costume.” Just makeup as mask. “So what’s next? Geek chic?”

When Jacob spluttered in good-natured offense, I didn’t even mind that the guy ahead of us turned around to scowl at us again. As Jacob and I cackled about that quietly to ourselves, all I have to say is that being corrupted felt oh so good.

Chapter twenty

Large-Scale Maps

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS INTO THE TRIP, I’d pretty much determined that traveling was all about waiting. Waiting for the trip to start. Waiting to load onto the airplane. Waiting to unload. Waiting to have our passports inspected and stamped by grim-faced administrators.

“You doing okay?” asked Jacob.

To tell the truth, I was woozy from waiting around, partly because I had only dozed for a few hours on the plane — Jacob and I had spent most of the time talking — and mostly because of the crowds, waiting with us to have their passports checked. An old man in a modern Mao suit jostled past me and barked something at Jacob. He shrugged, replying defensively, “I don’t speak Chinese.”

It was Norah who answered in Mandarin, surprising me and the old man, who nodded brusquely and moved to another line after casting a final disparaging look at Jacob. He flinched, looked down at his feet. Norah missed that silent exchange, too busy telling Mom, “Jacob stopped speaking Mandarin almost as soon as we brought him home. I even went to Chinese school with him, but he refused to say a word. I have no idea why. So I just stuck with it.”

From Jacob’s reticent expression, I had an inkling why he had clung exclusively and stubbornly to English. As obvious as my birthmark was, at least I could cover it up. How could Jacob hide that he was adopted whenever he stepped out with his blond mom? And it wasn’t as if Norah wasn’t forthright about his adoption herself. I mean, she openly explained to us — veritable strangers — in Leavenworth that little boys were abandoned in China, too, not just unwanted girls. Maybe using English was one way Jacob blended in.

Ahead of us, Norah was confiding to Mom, “Being a foreigner now is no big deal, but two decades ago when I first started coming to China, I’d never been that stared at before.”

In this airport thronging with almost entirely Asian people, I was acutely aware that I was the minority, and not just because of my birthmark, but because of my entire appearance — my hair, my skin color, even my height. I couldn’t have felt more different, more obvious, than if I were dressed as a Goth in Colville. I leaned over to tell Jacob that, but caught him peering warily, almost disdainfully, at these people whose ethnicity he shared.

I let out my breath fast, a gasp of recognition. For as long as I could remember, I scanned crowds, too, looking for anyone with a port-wine stain, not to befriend them, but to keep my distance. I wasn’t one of Them and I didn’t want to be mistaken as one of Them. If I had more guts, I would take Jacob’s hand, hold it in solidarity, a declaration that he was With Me. That he wasn’t one of Them. All I could think to do was touch Jacob’s arm to get his attention and whisper, “I didn’t know your mom even spoke Chinese.”

He smiled faintly at me. “Like I told you, she’s more Chinese than the Chinese.”

I had to leave Jacob’s side to approach the passport check with Mom. The official at the desk scowled at her passport, then mine. Even though we hadn’t done anything wrong, I was worried. Dad had warned us about people who had been detained and then deported. At last, the official waved us through so curtly, I felt like I really was guilty of something. And then, that’s right, we waited for our luggage at the carousel along with half of Shanghai. Mom sighed wearily.

“Go sit, Mom,” I told her. “I’ll take care of this.”

Mom tottered to a bench, slumped down, not noticing — or pretending not to notice — the people staring at her, laughing. She was easily three times the size of the other women milling in the baggage claim area. Offended, I wanted to tell them to shut up, to throw a blanket around Mom so she wouldn’t be so noticeable. This was a mistake, bringing Mom here.

“Your mom’s ignoring them. You should, too,” Norah murmured to me, but she collected Mom and stood next to her as we went through customs. One last line. One more set of doors. A waiting crowd, held back by ropes, stood outside the doors. The medley of their conversations sounded harsh to my ears, words I couldn’t make sense of. A few people held signs, some in Chinese, others lettered with Anglo names — Bodmer, Anderson, Knight. None had ours.

“Didn’t Merc say he was going to meet us here?” Mom asked as if I hadn’t prepared a ten-page itinerary for her, complete with logistics and important numbers in case we ever got separated.

“He’ll be here,” I said more confidently than I felt. Like Mom said, Merc inhabited his own time zone — an hour later than everyone else’s — and he perpetually underestimated how long it would take to get ready. I had hoped today would be different. That he would suspect we’d be anxious; that he’d be early, eager to make us feel at home.

Mom worried her lip. “How are we going to get to his apartment? Do you know how to get there?”

“Mom —”

“Why don’t we wait over there?” interrupted Norah, already herding us to an empty spot away from the main fray of reuniting families and couples. “Terra, why don’t you check to see if he’s waiting outside?”

While I headed for the doors with a last backward glance at Mom, checking compulsively to make sure she was still with Norah, I found Jacob at my side. He grimaced apologetically. “God, my mom can be the ultimate delegater. You just have to ignore her.”

“At least she knows what she’s doing. You don’t have to come outside with me.”

“I want to.”

The night air was cool enough that I wished I had grabbed my jacket out of my backpack. I wrapped my arms around myself, smelled the exhaust from the idling cars. I inspected the sidewalk, every passing car. No Merc, just Jacob. He was still with me.

According to our plans, Merc was supposed to pick all of us up, drop the Fremonts off at the Jinmao Tower, where they were staying in one of the best hotels in the city with the added benefit of being in the same building as his office, and then drive Mom and me to his apartment. I checked my watch. Merc was forty minutes late. Sighing, I told Jacob, “Maybe you guys should go on to your hotel. You don’t have to wait with us.”