Free Fresh Off the Boat by Melissa de La Cruz Page B

into a huge plastic basin of ground meat. It was so punishingly hard to mix that only Dad was strong enough to do it. Mom and I took turns mixing at first, but we didn’t have the strength. Afterward, Mom pushed the combination into a meat grinder and stuffed it into sausage casings. Dad had done a day’s worth of market research by visiting all the Filipino supermarkets to come up with the right price: $5 a tray. Which worked out to a profit of about fifty-five cents for each package.
    I gave Mom a quick squeeze on her shoulder and picked up the phone dangling from the hook. “Hello?”
    “Bonsoir!” rang the cheery voice of Isobel.
    “Hey, what’s up?” I said, trying to sound casual as I ran back to the living room with the extralong cord. Isobel and I always hung out at school, but she spent every weekend with her French friends sneaking out to swanky North Beach bars and martini lounges because they all had fake IDs. Veronique Delay and Leslie Foucault, who Isobel knew in Paris, were enrolled at the Lycée Français. Isobel didn’t go there because her parents thought the French school was too insular, plus, it didn’t have as extensive a math program as Gros.
    “ Rien . Leslie and Veronique didn’t want to go clubbing,” she explained.
    “Too bad,” I sympathized. But I was happy to merit her attention on a Saturday night for once.
    “I’m ennui. What are you doing?”
    “Taping reality shows.” I explained about Dad’s business. I wasn’t shy about telling Isobel the truth about my life. She told me her family lived in ritzy St. Francis Woods, but she said their house was the smallest one there and filled with old, dusty, overstuffed furniture.
    “Are you taping Trading Spaces ?” she asked. Isobel once told me she thought reality shows were bunk and, quoting her dad, “the death of the culture Americaine” but even she was addicted to home-makeover programs.
    “Yeah, isn’t it awful? Those raffia headboards have got to go.”
    “Yuck, what is that color are they putting on the walls? Fuchsia?”
    “Check out the seashell headboard!”
    “Ooh, Wonder Boys on HBO!”
    I flipped to it during a commercial. We swooned over Tobey’s white ribbed tank top. Isobel wanted to get “Mrs. Maguire” inked above her derriere, but I talked her out of it for now.
    “There’s a bonfire at Baker Beach tonight,” Isobel mentioned casually.
    “I know,” I said. (Claude’s fan site had even provided a map to the exact location.)
    “Is that boy going?”
    “Most likely.”
    “You know, he and Whitney are bangin’,” Isobel said. She had just watched 8 Mile and had started to insert hip-hop phrases into her speech.
    “No way! I thought she had a boyfriend in Carmel.” (Jeez, you really couldn’t believe everything you read. The site reported Claude was “happily single.”)
    “They broke up. I heard Georgia talking about it in English,” Isobel said.
    “So he’s really dating her?”
    “ J’écoute he’s taking her to the Soirée.” A small knot formed in my stomach. So it was true. He really was dating Whitney. Hewas taken. I mourned our five-second conversation in geometry. And I thought we had really connected!
    “Are you going?” I asked.
    “Me? No! I told you. It’s moronic. What about vous ?”
    “Me neither.”
    “Should we make a pact that we both won’t go to the stupid Soirée?” she asked.
    “Okay. I promise.”
    “Moi aussi.”
    We were on the phone for the next two hours, watching as different sets of neighbors discovered what atrocities or wonderments their friends had inflicted on their homes, until I finally fell asleep on the phone to the sound of agitated complaints and ecstatic commotion.
    FROM: [email protected]
    TO: [email protected]
    SENT: Sunday, October 25, 8:01 PM
    SUBJECT: sat night fever
Hi, Peaches—
Your sister’s debut sounded so fun! I wish I was there. I can’t believe your parents wouldn’t allow you to bring a date though! Was