Page 9

RANDALL

I’m the first to arrive so I wait in the parking lot for Julie. Five minutes ago, London texted to say he couldn’t make it because it was too early for him on a Sunday morning, and he was going back to sleep. Which means it’s just Julie and I meeting. And now it’s too late to back out because she’s on her way, and, well, I’m hungry.

The line outside of Huge Tree Café bends around the restaurant to the blacktop pavement. It’s a motley crew of people—Asian couples holding hands, kids gripping Totoro stuffies, and foodies.

This used to be a Wu and Hur family regular outing. We’d buy a huge order of tea eggs, fan tuan, and warm soy milk, then huddle up at a nearby clearing in Monterey Park. The kids would run and squeal on the playground while the adults gossiped and ate at the picnic tables.

My stomach lets out its first growl just as Julie hops out of her mom’s car. She’s wearing a light pink jumpsuit with thick sneaker wedges.

I tap the time on my phone.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You’ve been waiting,” says Julie, rolling her eyes.

We join the rest of the line. I look through my wallet to make sure I have enough since it’s cash only here.

“I don’t want them to sell out—”

“Of the salty fan tuan with the purple jasmine rice,” says Julie. “Some things never change.”

“I stick with what I like.”

Julie checks her phone. “Did you see London’s message?”

I nod. She laughs. “Too early?”

“He says he wakes up at noon on the weekends.”

“I wish,” sighs Julie. “Ahma has us up at six A.M. , prepping all the ingredients.”

“Six A.M. on a Sunday is sleeping in at our house,” I retort.

“Are you getting competitive about who sleeps less?” She shoves my shoulder lightly.

I feel like a cat when my shoulders hitch up. “Says the girl who dragged out a dim sum cart at the farmers market.”

“Anyway!” she says loudly, flipping her hair. “What did you want to talk about with the project?”

“Enrique is on board to sponsor Garden of Eating.”

Julie’s thick black eyebrows shoot up. “How did you manage that?”

“I have to put together a proposal first, but I’m sure he’ll go for it. He loves gardens and who could say no to a bunch of kids?”

Julie shakes her head as we inch forward in the line. The smells alone make my stomach rumble in anticipation. The aroma of freshly cooked rice makes me salivate.

“Enrique has like a million proposals like that. We have to stand out from the crowd,” Julie says.

“How would you know?”

“I interned for him last summer. I had to go through all the sponsorship proposals and write up summaries on each,” says Julie. “We’ve got to add something that makes it more than just a community garden.”

“Maybe we just ask London’s family for the sponsorship?”

“No way. You can’t exactly have an alcohol sponsor for a third grade elementary school garden,” says Julie.

She’s right. I hate when she’s right. I shift on my feet.

“My mom wants me to bring home at least a dozen tea eggs.”

Julie digs through her wallet to pull out some cash. I glance at the display case that’s lined with dark brown eggs, shells still intact, nestled in plastic containers. A memory makes me laugh. The four of us—Mercy, Tyler, Julie, and me—in the kitchen of Julie’s house, egging on Tyler to devour a whole container.

“Just don’t let Tyler eat any.”

“Oh my god. I forgot about that. My mom was so pissed at him. He couldn’t eat eggs for like a year after that.”

“He was shell shocked,” I joke.

“You’re stupid,” says Julie, but she’s smiling.

I suddenly notice how straight her teeth are.

“Wait. Your teeth,” I say.

“I finally used my retainer,” says Julie.

“Still doesn’t make the stench of digging through the lunchroom trash to find your old retainers worth it,” I say.

Julie smacks my arm. For a second, it feels strangely good. I don’t move until an Asian auntie scolds me from behind with a “tut tut” to move up in the line.

“It only happened three times!” exclaims Julie.

“Three times is more than I ever want to look through a middle school cafeteria trash can.”

I order my usual: the salty fan tuan with purple jasmine rice, eggs, and pickles; a red bean bun; and hot sweet soybean milk. Julie loads up on brown tea eggs, a single sweet fan tuan roll, and a dozen fish and chive dumplings.

We take our plastic bags, brimming with warm food, to the back of my car. I pop open the trunk lid and spread out a black-and-white blanket.

“I haven’t car picnicked in a while,” I admit.

“Best way to eat,” says Julie.

She hops in the trunk and unwraps her goodies while I take out my food.

“I see you came prepared,” jokes Julie, pointing at the travel Scrabble case sitting in the trunk.

She unzips the case to start setting up the tiles and the tiny plastic letter holders.

I unwrap the plastic wrap on my fan tuan and take a huge bite. There’s nothing like that first delicious bite of an omelet wrapped around a fried doughnut, covered in pickles, then covered in sweet purple jasmine rice.

I look over as she bites into her sweet fan tuan roll.

“You know you are basically eating sugar wrapped in sugar,” I say.

“Don’t judge my doughnut stuffed with white cane sugar inside white sticky rice,” says Julie.

She takes a big bite. A bit of sugar sticks to her cheek.

“You’ve got—,” I say.

I reach out to point to the sugar, but instead I dust it off her cheek. Julie blushes and hands me a napkin.

“Thanks.”

For a few minutes, we eat in silence, devouring our food.

“I had a thought about the proposal. I think there’s a way we can link it back to the farmers market,” says Julie.

I gesture for her to continue since I’m mid-bite.

“Instead of the Garden of Eating kids giving the veggies for free at the farmers market, we could sell the seedlings with cute recipe cards to raise funds for the kids’ garden,” says Julie.

I nod vigorously. The idea forms in my head while I finish chewing.

“Actually,” I add, “we could go a step further and offer food samples featuring the vegetables so people can taste them.”

“That could work,” says Julie, her eyes shining. “We’ve totally got this.” She turns her attention to the travel Scrabble. “Game on?” she asks.

I nod, already planning my first word. She draws the letter U out of the black bag. I pick out a C. After we each draw out seven letter tiles, I go first.

“I can already tell you have a good word prepared,” teases Julie.

I say nothing as I place my tiles down. CORDIAL.

Julie groans. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“A ten-point word. Fifty points for using all seven of my tiles. Plus, the double word score for the first word on the board, so seventy in total.”

“Thanks for rubbing it in!”

“Any time.”

I grin at her, then scribble down my seventy-point score on the points notepad.

She grits her teeth, staring at her letters like she’s finding the cure for Covid-19. I bite my lip to keep myself from gloating too much. It’s like old times, when we used to play for hours, stopping only for bathroom breaks and snacks. Mercy and Tyler would complain loudly that we were supreme nerds. We’d share a smile over our letters. It felt like no one else understood us but each other.

She looks up and we share that tender smile again, like we’re the only ones in the world who exist.

Despite the nagging feeling in my chest that what we’re doing isn’t right, I’ve missed this. A lot.