BooksBarbecue
Back This Time Will Be Different Save as PDF
Chapters (77)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. 1
  4. 2
  5. A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part I
  6. 3
  7. The History of My Beef with Brynn Foer-Preston
  8. 4
  9. 5
  10. 6
  11. 7
  12. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part I
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part I
  16. 10
  17. 11
  18. 12
  19. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part II
  20. 13
  21. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part II
  22. 14
  23. 15
  24. 16
  25. 17
  26. 18
  27. 19
  28. The Complicated History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Imaginary Relationship with Her Nonexistent Dad
  29. 20
  30. 21
  31. 22
  32. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part III
  33. 23
  34. 24
  35. 25
  36. A Brief, Backward History of the McAllister Family, as Paraphrased from the San Jose Mercury News
  37. 26
  38. 27
  39. 28
  40. A Quick and Eerily Relevant History of Asians in America
  41. 29
  42. 30
  43. 31
  44. 32
  45. 33
  46. 34
  47. 35
  48. 36
  49. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part IV
  50. 37
  51. 38
  52. 39
  53. 40
  54. 41
  55. 42
  56. 43
  57. 44
  58. A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part II (Or Maybe It’s a Prequel)
  59. 45
  60. 46
  61. 47
  62. 48
  63. 49
  64. 50
  65. 51
  66. 52
  67. 53
  68. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part III
  69. 54
  70. A Note from the Author
  71. Index of Flowers and their Meanings
  72. Acknowledgments
  73. About the Author
  74. Praise for This Time Will Be Different
  75. Books by Misa Sugiura
  76. Back Ad
  77. About the Publisher

When Mom found out she was pregnant with me, Hannah was ecstatic. She had always loved babies and children and wanted to be a mother, but had just undergone a hysterectomy after being diagnosed with uterine cancer at twenty-two years old. Mom was thirty-four. My grandfather, who had always longed for a grandchild, had died of a heart attack a few weeks earlier. How much clearer could it be? “It was fate,” she likes to say.

“You know how much Dad wanted grandkids,” she’d told Mom. “You could make him happy by having this baby. Imagine what her life could be like with you as her mother! Imagine how far she could go!” Hannah would hire a temporary extra assistant at Heart’s Desire and take care of me there, and Mom could keep working. I would have two strong working women as my role models, and I would have the best of everything that each of them could offer. I would fulfill Hannah’s dream of having a child to raise, and—I wonder now—maybe Mom’s desire to make up for disappointing her father, and maybe even to atone for his death.

So I guess depending on your perspective, Mom either saw the light, or she fell for it like a sucker.

45

IT’S PROMPOSAL SEASON, AND IN A CRUEL TWIST of fate, I’ve become the go-to person for promposal flowers. The combination of the Motohara story and my flyers around school seems to have worked; also a couple of kids have told me that Sabrina referred them, and I can only guess that it’s because she and Owen are hitting it off.

If there’s one thing I’m learning from promposal orders, it’s how boring people are. Everyone wants a dozen roses to whip out at the moment the target understands they’re being promposed to. And then there’s the promposal ideas themselves: it’s like everyone’s read the same “Nine Groan-Inducing Promposal Ideas She’ll Love!” article online. There are the themed promposals: pizza (this is cheesy but . . .), doughnut (please doughnut say no), and sports (let’s kick it/make a racquet/have a ball at prom!). There are the ones that spell out PROM?: seashells on the beach, cupcakes on the lunch table, Post-its on a bank of lockers.

But by far the most popular request is a dozen roses and a bunch of violets to go with a variation of Roses are red, Violets (which I’ve had to substitute with irises because violets are an expensive pain in the ass) are blue; kids tell me what to write on the card or the poster (which it was my idea to offer, thank you very much), all excited by the rhyme, like they think they’re Shakespeare or something:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I sure would like

To go to prom with you!