The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong by L. Tam Holland

Author:L. Tam Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

20

Monday was our first day back to school. We were all driving to school together this morning, the happy Crawford-Wong family, because Fannie was in the shop again.

I tried acting normal in the car, but the more normal I tried to act, the more I wanted to hyperventilate. I hated school. I hated sitting still and stupid, pointless rules and classes that made my brain go mushy and numb. I couldn’t cut class anymore; I’d somehow gotten away with it once, but I knew my luck wouldn’t hold.

Mom and Dad listened to the news on the radio, and then Mom glanced back at me from the passenger seat. “Are you worried about something?” she asked.

“Um,” I said. “No.”

“You’ve always loved school,” she said. “Just work hard and enjoy your friends. You’re so smart, honey; I know you’ll do fine.”

Did she know me at all? She was just an old lady who had a dead relationship with her own parents. Then I instantly felt bad for thinking that. It was Mae and Wayne’s fault. There was something wrong with them, I just didn’t know what. Yet.

I rolled the window down to let in the drizzle, and I leaned as far out the window as I could. I felt my hair, which had been gelled into spiky bangs off my forehead, begin to droop and drip.

“I enjoyed talking with Mr. Chen at our party,” Dad said. “Roll up the window.”

“What did you talk about?” I asked.

“Secret Chinese things,” he said.

“Everything Chinese is a secret to me,” I said.

“Do you know that his family came from Hebei Province?”

Why was Dad always happy to talk about other people’s families in China? Why was everything a safe topic except for the one that mattered? I had to push and push for every little piece of information about our families and our own lives.

“Is that near Yangzhou?” Dad’s invented home and the invented home of world-famous fried rice.

He glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t know!” I protested. “I don’t know anything.”

“Not Yangzhou,” he said. “Nowhere even near there.”

• • •

I sat around the library during my free first period, and then I met up with Madison and Emily and sauntered to history like I didn’t have a care in the world. Pretend, pretend, pretend. That’s all I was good at. Pretending that my life wasn’t all up in the air, my family all invented or dead or mysteriously silent.

Adele was absent—probably sleeping in or actually going to her own classes. Riley had on a new bruise-colored shirt, no doubt a Christmas present, and he sat on a stool at the front of the room and asked a few kids how their break was. He didn’t ask me. He knew what I’d been doing.

“So I’d like to start this semester with an overview of history as a concept,” he said.

Were we pretending that last semester never happened? I’d rather someone shoot me than have to go through Mesopotamia, Greece, and medieval Europe again.

He wrote:

History, a distillation of Rumour.

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