Darkroom: A Moo U Hockey Romance, Kate Willoughby [best books to read for young adults .TXT] 📗

this—they’re not the medieval kind of dragons. This Chinese billionaire, Lillian Pei, owns the team, so dragon is like a snake with four legs. Being Chinese yourself, I thought you might appreciate that.”

“Actually, I don’t really consider myself Chinese,” I said.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I swear you said you were originally from China yesterday.”

“I did say that. That’s where I was born, but I grew up here in America, in Brattleboro, a couple hours south of here.”

“So, you don’t speak the language.”

“No. I don’t know much about China at all.”

“Huh.” He removed one leaf from his spinach salad and set it aside. “Don’t let me forget that.”

“What’s it for?”

“My hamster.”

“Shut up. You have a hamster?”

“Yup. His name is Deke and he lives like a king.”

“I wouldn’t in a million years have pegged you as a hamster guy.”

“I love cute animals. Always have, always will. Now tell me why you don’t know much about China. No judging. I’m just curious.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “My parents weren’t really into it and now, neither am I. In fact, most of the time I didn’t want to be Asian, especially when I was little. It was embarrassing. It singled me out as different. When we went out as a family, we didn’t look like other families.”

“In a weird way, I kind of know what that feels like, to want to be like everybody else. My family was kind of a big deal in the NHL.”

“Oh yeah, I remember. What did they say in class? That your whole family was in the NHL?”

“Someone in every generation has played for the league since it started a hundred years ago. There’s no other family that can claim that. My dad’s generation had three players—him and his brothers Rick and Matt. Is it something that I’m proud of? No doubt. But at the same time, people I don’t even know walk around with my last name on their shirts.”

“That must be weird.”

“I’m used to it by now, but sometimes it is creepy.” He shook his head. “I’m sure I sound entitled as shit right now. Poor me. My family’s famous and it’s such a pain.”

“I sound just as entitled,” I said. “My parents took me from a state-run orphanage and brought me to a country where I literally have all the opportunities I could ever ask for, but here I am complaining too. Big whoop. There are a lot worse problems to have than not looking like your mom and dad.”

“Yeah, the grass is always greener.” He ate the last bite of his second French dip and started digging into the potato salad. “Let me ask you something. If you could wave a magic wand and make yourself into the biological daughter of your mom and dad, would you do it?”

“No one’s ever asked me that.”

I thought about it a moment. Ever since I could remember, I’d wished I could be my parents' “real” daughter. I even used to make that wish when blowing out my birthday candles. But here was Hudson shining a light on that—let's face it—misguided, childish desire. With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, I could look at the situation with more knowledge about the world and about myself and see that I couldn’t “fix that problem” and still be the person I was today.

If the wand could get rid of my birthmark, however, I would wave it like I was warding off a horde of Azkaban Dementors. That would have been a life-changing miracle I wouldn’t think twice about.

“If I became the biological daughter of my adoptive parents,” I said, “and my DNA would be a mixture of theirs, I would pretty much be a completely different person. I would have been born with different skills, tendencies and talents than the ones I have now, and I like who I am. So, no, I would not wave that wand.”

“Okay. I get it. It’s just an image thing, then,” Hudson remarked. “You just wish you could look white.”

“Um…no,” I said, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. And bristly. “It’s not about being white at all. Are you…implying that being white is preferred?”

“No, no, not at all!” he said, straightening in his chair. “I’m just trying to—”

I didn’t let him finish. “Because, for the record, what I wished for was to look like my parents. If they’d been black, I’d have wished to be black. If they were Indian, I’d have wished for that. I wanted to match, not just be white, you pretentious racist.”

As he stared at me, shocked into silence, I grabbed my backpack and left.

7

Hudson

I hate doing laundry and will put off doing it until I absolutely have to. I’d tried to get AJ to do my laundry as part of the reduced rent agreement but he’d refused.

“Dude,” AJ had said, “I appreciate the discount but there’s no way in hell I’m touching your laundry.”

“Like your dirty clothes smell any better,” I’d countered.

“Not the point,” he said. “I wouldn’t care if your stuff smelled like lilacs. I will not touch anything that touched your balls.”

And really, I couldn’t blame him.

So, here I was, faced with a giant pile of laundry. Fortunately, the building had four washers and four dryers in the communal laundry room, so if no one was using the machines, I could bang everything out in about an hour.

Before I started the dreaded sorting, I went to Deke’s enclosure and was glad to see he was stirring. Hamsters don’t appreciate being woken up.

I removed the roof of his habitat and carefully scooped him up in my hand.

“Hey, buddy. How’s your day been?” I asked, stroking his silky head. “Probably pretty chill. Are you hungry? I brought you a spinach leaf from my disaster of a lunch. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

I held the leaf close to his face and he snatched it from me and started nibbling.

“What’s your stance on laundry?” I asked him.

Still munching, he looked at me as if to say, Clothing is a construct designed to