Cover

Dedication

For 外公and 外婆, grandparents extraordinaire

Chapter 1

From the diary of Monica Tsai, backed up on five servers spanning three continents

August 11, 2018 (2018-08-11T22:54:30.218542)

Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. United States of America (39.9058546,75.3562615)

I met a girl today who gave me a pencil.

It was a real journey to get to her too. Not only because she lived across the river in New Jersey and I had to borrow Prof. Logan’s stupidly nice car, or because she made me nervous, in a heart-racing kind of way. But because I had already been looking for a year. My goal wasn’t her or the pencil, exactly. Really, I was trying to help my grandmother reconnect with her cousin, the one she rarely talks about, who she grew up with at the family pencil company, back in Shanghai.

It all started a year ago, when me, grandmother, and grandfather were celebrating grandmother’s ninetieth birthday at her favorite restaurant, Arby’s. I was feeling bummed for a couple reasons—the first being that I was leaving for college in a few days and every sort of panic was setting in: that I’d still have trouble making friends, that grandmother and grandfather would struggle without me at home, and I hadn’t been able to think of a single suitable gift for her birthday. We go to Arby’s every year. They have her favorite coupon—five roast beef sandwiches for the price of two, and you can use the coupon twice. But I was really hoping to do something different, something special for this one.

Grandmother can’t stand the thought that I’d willingly hand over money for her sake, so purchasing anything was out of the question, and our walls were already littered with the drawings I’d given her every other year. My coupon book of chores also went unused. Then there was the time I tried to cook for her. She watched so nervously as I wielded the knife that my real gift was giving up so she could finally relax.

I knew she could tell I was feeling down that day. She’s always been able to see right through me. Maybe that’s why, as she brushed the sesame seeds that had fallen from her bun onto her napkin, she mentioned Meng.

“Meng used to flick sesame seeds at me all the time back in the pencil company.” It was the most specific detail I had ever heard about her cousin or the old family business.