I went back to work but over the last few months, I’d become constantly alert to where Matt was. When he was on his way to the bathroom this time, I saw Park intercept him and show him the magazine. They flipped through some of the pages together.

An hour or so later, Matt came up to me, dripping with sweat. “Thanks. Where’d you get it? Can I pay you for it?”

“From school. Don’t worry, they gave it to me for free.”

“Wow. They must like you a lot.”

“Mmm.” I stared at the floor, then up at him. “I’m not so sure.”

“Oh?”

“They think I’m sending out the cat.” Cheating.

He raised his thick eyebrows. “You? What’s wrong with them?”

I smiled at his faith in me. “How do you know I’m without crime?”

“No bad-hearted person could be as nice to Park as you are.” Matt looked at me through his lashes.

I flushed. To change the subject, I asked him the question that had been on my mind all day. “Why do you pretend he’s deaf?”

He coughed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kimberly.”

I persisted. “Are you just covering up?”

“What?”

“That he doesn’t talk. Or that he can’t talk.”

There was a pause. “Never heard him talk. Not even when he was little. Only sounds.” His golden eyes were sad. “Should’ve been me. I could have handled it better.”

“Being born like that?”

He nodded. We weren’t just talking about being deaf or dumb. Park’s problems were clearly much bigger. I was touched that Matt let me know this. I also understood why they tried to disguise Park’s limitations. In Chinese culture then, having a disability in the family tainted the entire group, as if it were contagious.

“You could take it better? You don’t seem so tough to me,” I said, ribbing him. I knew this kind of talk would snap Matt out of his melancholy.

He grinned. “And what about you, then?”

From then on, Matt still signed to Park in front of other people but not me. I slowly learned some of Park’s signs, so that I could understand most of what he wanted to say to me. There was something restful about him. Now that I’d made contact with him, he didn’t completely ignore me the way he did most people, and the truth was, I was glad to have someone who liked the same things I did. I could babble away at him about motor sizes and cylinders and he always nodded, as if my talking pleased him, even though he often didn’t meet my eyes. I often brought my car and motorcycle magazines to the factory after that and I showed them to Park, pointing out the ones I wanted the most.

A shipment needed to go out at the factory the night before my big oral exam, so we didn’t get home until past two a.m. I stayed up the rest of the night studying and didn’t sleep at all. Wrapped over many layers of clothing, I wore a robe made of the stuffed animal material, which Ma continued to recycle as I grew. There was only Ma’s sleeping body to give me comfort and the night was damp, filled with the taste of my own fear. Beyond the circle of my lamp was only darkness. I found myself close to despair that night but far from slumber.

“You shouldn’t have come to the factory with me,” Ma’s voice, clogged with sleep, came from the depths of the mattress. Then a pause. “I shouldn’t have let you come. Your exam tomorrow is too important.”

“You couldn’t have finished without me.”

“Let me make you some tea.”

“Ma, I really need to study. Go back to sleep.”

The next morning, my entire body was trembling as I stood in front of the blackboard on a stage. Dr. Copeland and the rest of the science and math faculty sat in the first two rows. The rest of the room was empty. The rounded backs of the vacant chairs formed a field of doubt before me. I felt as if I were a scarecrow in a high wind. At any moment, I could be blown out of balance, all of the pieces that composed me would scatter and I would wake to find nothing left of myself, nothing left of the person I wanted to be. I knew my lack of sleep would affect my concentration. What if I floundered now and led them to think that I’d actually been cheating all along?

A man in a blue shirt stood up. He wasn’t one of my teachers but I recognized him as an upper-grade chemistry teacher. He approached me and silently handed me a copy of the periodic table. He stared intently over his glasses.

Finally, he spoke. “Good morning, Kimberly. Could you please tell us how you would write the formulas of the ionic compounds formed by the following elements: nickel and sulfur, lithium and oxygen, and bismuth and fluorine?”

I took a deep breath. Although I had read about how to predict formulas of ionic compounds, I had never actually done it before. “May I have some paper?”

“The blackboard would be fine.” He gestured toward the chalk.

I picked up a piece in my shaking hand and started writing on the board.

At the end of the long session, there was a silence, and then slowly, the teachers started to clap. Startled, I stood frozen in front of the blackboard, the front of my blazer covered in white chalk dust, until the chairperson of the program stood up and strode over to me. She was flushed with excitement.

“I’m afraid I’ve misjudged you, Kimberly,” she said, extending her hand. We shook and then, smiling broadly, she said, “Thank you for the lesson. I’m delighted we have such a brilliant student at our school.”

Instead of skipping me one year ahead in the accelerated science and math program, they decided to let me skip two.

“I have to give my pa something today. You want to see where he works?” Matt asked. His face had suddenly appeared in front of me at the factory, floating above a maze of cream-colored shirts.

“Sure,” I answered, surprised. Hadn’t Matt told me that his father was dead?

I made an excuse to Ma that I had homework and left early. This wasn’t something I normally would do, but the temptation of being with Matt for a few hours was too much.

“What about you?” I asked.

Leaving early was easier for Matt. Now that he worked the steamers, he was treated as a grown-up. He could come and go as he pleased as long as he fulfilled the tremendous daily quota. That often meant working late, like Ma and me.

“Don’t worry about me, I have it covered,” he said.

I took that to mean he’d have to come back to work late into the evening but I simply shrugged. The fabric dust had accumulated on my jacket and book bag, which I kept inside a plastic bag on the work counter. At the end of every work shift, I had to shake long strands of filth off the bag before I could get my things out.

Matt met me downstairs wearing a light jacket and holding a cargo bike. The large wooden box attached to the back of the bike was painted green. “Antonio’s Pizza,” it said in curly letters that grew out of the glossy mustache of a beaming Italian man.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“My other job. Bet you didn’t know I had so many talents.”

“How do you have time to work as a delivery boy? I mean, with school and all.”

“Aw, school doesn’t take up much time,” he said, staring at his steering wheel. I realized he was cutting school for his other job. I was sure his ma didn’t know.

He swung his leg over the bike and waited for me. “Get on.”

I wasn’t sure exactly where I could do such a thing, but the only choice seemed to be to climb onto the box behind him, which is what I did. Then I scooted around so that my legs dangled from either side of him, almost kicking him in the process, and carefully wrapped my hands around the underside of the bicycle seat. He started pedaling and we were off with a lurch.

The bike swung as he gained momentum. Then he really started to race.

“You sure you don’t want to hold on to me instead?” he asked. “It’d be safer.”

“I’m okay,” I breathed. I did desperately want to put my arms around him but I was already so aware of his body that shyness overwhelmed me at just the thought of it.