COVER

DEDICATION

FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WE MEET
IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

CHAPTER ONE

The last thing I want is to make a dramatic entrance at my cousin’s wedding.

Actually, the last thing I want is to attend this wedding. It’s not that I have anything against my cousin Xiyue; she’s seemed like a lovely person from the brief times we’ve spoken, even if most of those conversations consisted of me communicating via elaborate gestures instead of Mandarin while she stared in faint confusion.

But that’s exactly what I’m dreading.

Once she says her vows, the event will become an intensive, three-hour-long version of those awkward exchanges, with all our relatives and family friends and strangers grouped together in one hotel ballroom. There’ll be small talk. Jokes. Questions—none of which I’ll be able to answer without slipping into English. And while I’d been clinging to the possibility that I could keep a low profile and slide in and out without anybody noticing, those hopes have now been left to rot somewhere on the road behind us.

“We’re going to be late,” I warn, leaning as far forward in the back seat as my seat belt will allow.

“Nonsense,” my mom says. She takes one hand off the steering wheel to point at the massive white-domed building ahead of us, rising elegantly above the rows of palm trees and picket fences. “You can already see the hotel.”

“We’ve been able to see it for the past ten minutes,” I say. When she ignores my very valid observation, I catch my dad’s eye in the rearview mirror. Help, I mouth.

He clears his throat and adjusts his glasses, though they immediately slip down his long nose again. “We could afford to go just a little faster,” he says in the gentlest tone possible.

Three cars rush past us as he speaks. Someone honks.

“I’m going very fast already,” my mom snaps. To be fair, for someone who generally seems to be on a mission to prove that walking is more efficient than driving, she is. At least we’re not so far below the speed limit that we’re at risk of being fined, like last time.

“You’ve made a convincing case,” my dad says at once. “There’s no rush. No rush at all.” He shoots me a helpless look over his shoulder, which I return with a sigh. This is about as close as either of us will ever get to arguing with my mom. He adores her too much to ever accuse her of doing anything wrong, and I simply don’t like to invest energy into battles I know I’ll lose.

Besides, I’ve upset her enough in the past week.