Page 114 of Something in Between

“It’s why I didn’t want to introduce you to him that first night in D.C. He was a National Scholar too, did I tell you? He’s smart as a whip but lazy as a dog. He got kicked out of Harvard, then Stanford, and so now he’s at USC.”

“Wow, he’s seriously messed up.”

“Yep. The price of privilege. I think someone wrote a book about it,” Royce jokes, as it’s a famous title and he’s trying to make light of the situation.

I shake my head. “Royce Blakely, you surprise me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know that you’re the smartest boy I’ve ever met, right?”

“Nah, unlike Mason I only got into Stanford because of my dad. But that’s okay. I’m smart enough to know a good thing when I see it. Like you.”

I laugh.

“Come on,” he says, leaping into the pool. He enters with barely a splash. “Come on!” he yells after me again.

We swim for a while. While we’re hanging by the edge, I tell him something I’ve been worried about since the trial. “I feel like I’ll be less of a person if I move back to the Philippines,” I confess.

“First of all, you’re not going anywhere. Secondly, you shouldn’t feel that way. Listen to what you’re saying. That Filipinos are lesser? Come on. Being an American makes you feel superior. Talk about privilege.”

“I guess so. When people ask me about what I’ll miss, I usually say you—and then friends of course. But I’ll miss this way of life too.”

“You’re not going to miss me, Jas. Because I’ll be wherever you are.”

I so want it to be true.

“Also, I was going to ask you,” he says, sounding nervous. “I wanted to do this in a more creative way, but things got busy.”

“You’re not going to ask me to prom are you?”

Royce shrugs his shoulders, looking guilty. “How did you know?”

I laugh. “I didn’t! I was joking. Looks like you ruined your own surprise.”

He curses softly, but he’s laughing too. “Well, what do you say? Will you go with me? To prom?”

“Of course, if you’ll go with me to mine,” I say, kissing him so that I taste the saline from the pool on his lips.

Then we’re out of the pool and back on the loungers.

“Royce,” I say, getting his attention so he’s looking at me as he dries off. “You don’t have to stay with me, you know,” I say. I step out and grab a towel, wrapping it around my body. “I mean if I have to leave the country, you need to go on with your life. You can’t keep worrying about me.”

He frowns, then takes me in his arms and wraps his hands around my towel, holding me tight. “Stop saying that,” he says. “You’re staying right here. I’ll think of something. I promise.”

I don’t want to make him mad, but I can’t rely on his family for a solution to our problem. We already tried that once.

39

If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.

—ERMA BOMBECK

DAD GETS OFFthe phone with our lawyer.

“What did he say?” Mom asks. She’s working on some work spreadsheets. I feel bad for her. If we’re really going to be deported, then she’ll have to leave her job, which she loves now that she’s been trained.

“I can’t tell if he’s stalling,” Dad says. “He says he’s working on it but then gives me nothing.”

---