The panda is alive, I decided. I had been fiddling with the phone camera for the past fifteen minutes and the stuffed bear came out uglier in each photo every time. Only living things embody that kind of delicacy, I thought, whose beauty cannot be justified with a mere click and flash from a camera. I reached for his face. Under the orange lights from the chandelier above, he looked every bit as familiar as the bear I’d gotten when I was seven—large head, large belly, large ears, large everything. Neotenous and cartoonish. An eye was missing from his left eye patch. The opening had been sewn up, leaving a hideous scar on his face. Mom had to do it. It was either that or the endless spilling of his cotton stuffing. I gave him a peck on the cheek and set him back on his little spot atop the couch back.
“Ready?” Qiren said as he came down the stairs. He had already changed into his classic go-out outfit: a white polo t-shirt and black skinny jeans.
I gave the panda a flick. He slid down the couch and landed on a pillow.
“Drop that shit man, what are you, five?” he said.
“I literally just did,” I barked back.
“I’m gonna get a cold. I feel it,” he said.
Watching him as he trailed off to the kitchen and pulled out a box of Chinese brown soupy medicine from the cupboard, I realized just how annoying the guy was. He was like the master of getting sick, having gotten sick so many times that he could probably tell whether a fever was imminent based on the type of sore throat he felt in the morning. Qiren was no small man. He got the non-existent gene in our family, became a giraffe, a solid head taller than Mom, Dad, and me. Yet, he would not stop getting sick. And whenever he did, I would be the one suffering, playing the role of a big brother, feeding him and staying up with him all night, petting wet towels on his forehead.
“Hurry up kiddo, we’re gonna be late,” he said. The microwave beeped. The bitter smell of herbal medicine hovered over the living room like a shroud of dark cloud. I didn’t know why he still clung to that stuff. It was a traditional Beijing remedy that Mom had forced down our throats when we were kids. But the guy was big now. He had choices; Tylenols, for example. I went upstairs and took my panda with me.
I hesitated between a Hawaiian button-up and a white dress shirt. It was day four of Qiren’s spring break, our first reunion this year. He would be graduating college in two months. I pulled the closet door open a little more to see all the clothes I owned—it wasn’t helpful. Hidden inside were mostly my geeky middle school gear.
“Stop wanking off dude, hurry up.” A growl came from downstairs. I could almost taste his words, the bitter brown soup.
After a minute I came down in a pair of basketball shorts and a white hoodie.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The Taiwanese restaurant was about a fifteen-minute drive from our house. They were playing the title track from JJ Lin’s new album when we walked in. Next to the bonsais by the doors, two waitresses who held menus like school binders whispered to each other and giggled. They led us down the aisle into a pair of cushioned seats in the corner where we could see kitchen staff chopping off dough chunks from the top of their caps into a big wok.
“I’d like a beef noodle soup, please,” Qiren said, just as the taller waitress was about to hand us the menus.
“Same,” I added.
When they retreated to the kitchen, I saw Qiren staring at their bottoms. The look in his eyes was both desperate and dreamy, as if he were gazing into a lottery ticket with the first four digits already aligned. I had no idea what he was doing. I was only a junior in high school, and half the freshmen girls in my school already had more ass than that pair.
“Seriously.” Qiren turned to me. “You gotta stop being gay with the panda. Mom and Dad think it’s hella girly.”
Of course he would poke fun at me. To him the panda was just a stuffed animal. Qiren had left the family when he was eighteen to enroll in the Prestigious College on the East Coast. At age thirteen, I had practically become the only child of the house. And that was when I dug into the past and brought out my panda, Baby Matthew, from Mom’s closet.
“How’s school? Ready to graduate?” I said, diverting the topic. I knew he wasn’t. He was majoring in sociology. I could be in school for ten years for that stuff without ever wanting to hear the start of “Pomp and Circumstance.” The way my college buddies put it, he was just in it for the fun.
He sucked in a deep breath and scanned the empty cork board on the wall behind me, as if taking a moment to reflect on the past four years. Just then the music changed to one of Jay Chou’s earlier tracks, giving the ambient a jazzed-up Kung Fu feel. I saw that Qiren’s jawline had mostly faded with new zits lining its edges. His forehead wrinkles were deeper than last year, dotted with fresh acne scars. He got a ducktail cut, the sides all shaved off—the classic complement to an oily Asian face bordering on chubby. He was still handsome though; his height and build made up for everything.
“Isn’t it such bullshit that in America, Chinese pop is like sculptures and paintings, stuff no one gives a shit about,” he said, nodding towards Jay Chou in the speakers.
“But this is America, not China,” I said.
“But in China, everyone listens to American music,” he said.
Two bowls of noodle soup arrived on our table. From the way the noodles were round and shiny in the oil, I knew they were handmade—chewy goodness, second to tapioca. I followed Qiren and stirred the soup, spoon in one hand, chopsticks in the other, revealing chunks of beef and bok choy from the bottom of the bowl.
“Anything else?” the taller waitress asked.
“Some sour cabbages please,” Qiren said.
When she walked away, I saw Qiren’s eyes on her ass again. I thought about telling him that she really wasn’t that hot, but suddenly, as if shot by a paintball, he jerked his head down and buried it in his arms. His bowl skidded forward like an ironclad warship and clashed into mine, the spicy brown soup soaking up the napkins. A girl had walked in and taken the seat next to our table.
“What’s going on?” I leaned in and whispered.
“Just shut up,” he breathed into my ear.
“I don’t understand, Qiren,” I said, this time loud enough for the girl to hear. She was just another average-looking Asian. But from the way she dressed, giggled as she scrolled through her newsfeed, moved her feet in and out of her sandals and wiggled her toes, and spoke in a sassy white girl tone, I could tell she was the popular girl wherever she was studying or working. One of those girls that you would have to see in person to get the impression that she was hip. Photos and still portrayals would not do her justice.
“Shh, I told you to shut up,” a weak voice came out from Qiren’s den.
The girl did not bother looking in our direction. She continued sliding and hearting stuff on her Instagram. It’s like the restaurant and us were on a different plane from her physical existence, her only reality being whatever that was happening on her phone screen. Qiren’s hand slid onto mine, and the next second we were strolling up the counter, paying for the meal we did not eat. When we exited, Qiren made me stay on the girl’s side and pulled up his collar all the way in an attempt to block his face.
“Who was that?” I said, as I hopped in the front passenger seat.
“Some chick from my college,” he said.
“Shouldn’t you’ve said hello then? Not that common to see another soul from your college in our part of SoCal,” I said.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said. We pulled out from the plaza and headed for a different Taiwanese beef noodle soup place in the neighboring city. The rating was a star lower. They did not play Jay Chou nor JJ Lin, instead played some 80s love songs that were cheesy enough to stuff ten pizzas.
When we got home that night, Mom told Qiren to come to her room immediately. From the calmness in her speech and the poetry book in her hands, I knew Qiren would be in for a ride. Mother never read. I went off to my room and sat on the edge of my bed, waiting for the two to warm up. After two minutes of thinking about nothing, I tip-toed over and glued my ear to Mom’s door.
“Can you believe it? You got high cholesterol,” Mom said. I knew immediately that she was referring to the health check-up she’d prodded us to a few days ago. Maybe it had to do with aging, but Mom became very health-conscious recently.
“Dad has high cholesterol too,” Qiren said in his nonchalant voice.
“Your dad is almost fifty, Qiren,” Mom said.
“Okay, it’s not my fault I eat at nine-thirty every damn day,” Qiren retorted.
“Nine-thirty for dinner? That’s crazy, what, why? Have you been doing that in the past four years?” Mom demanded.
The room went silent for a few seconds. I thought of journeying back to my room. I could be next. I had been sneaking in tons of chocolate bars recently. Who knows what categories I would be high on?
“That’s the only time when the cafeteria’s not crowded, Mom. If I go in any earlier, it’ll be jam packed and people will wonder, ‘Why’s that loser eating alone every meal?’ Is that what you want, Mother? For me to be humiliated to death?”
The door popped open and Qiren dashed out. He was breathing hard, shoulders titillating. I retreated to my room and closed the door before he could take it out on me.
As I lay in bed with Baby Matthew in my arms, I wondered if Qiren had indeed gone out on those camping trips with his buddies like he had said for the past winter and spring breaks. I knew in the summers he interned. Now thinking about it, I never once saw him post or get tagged in any photos affiliated with his college friends. The only photos on his Facebook wall where he was with other people were from his internships. And those were like souvenir photos, what you take with your boss and team leaders on the last day of internships. The type of photos that’s likely to end up on your social media, along with a huge paragraph of reflections so that your peers can hit the like button and then curse you under their breaths, wishing their summers had been as fruitful. But there wasn’t a single photo where he was having fun—having fun volunteering, camping, partying, being crazy with people at college, doing whatever it was that college kids did.
One afternoon five years ago, Mom came rushing into my homeroom an hour after school had been dismissed. When I hopped in the SUV, I saw Qiren sitting beside me. He had the Bieber cut back then, so when he put his fingers on his chin and stared out the window, he looked like one of those artsy manga guys contemplating the vast possibilities of life. It was unusual for us to ride together at that hour. His high school and my middle school were a good fifteen minutes apart. Usually Mom dropped him off at home first before coming to pick me up. I poked his stomach, but he ignored me.
“Qiren, you should tell your brother the good news at school today,” Mom said as she pulled out of the parking lot.
“It’s fine,” Qiren said, eyes fixated on the scenery outside.
“He auditioned and became first-chair cellist in his or—”
“Say Ma, have you ever played video games?” he interjected.
“No, when I was your age, I was in China, and there were no videos or games.”
He flipped on his hood and raised his palm in front of his eyes as if looking into a mirror. “So you’re the main character in a video game, and every character you encounter on your way to the finale is kinda like a tree, a brick, something in the background that serves to make you, the main character, entertained, and stand out among the trifles of the day’s monotonous—” He bit hard into his lips, temporarily stanching his word flow. His hand fell on his lap like a vertical roller coaster, making a muffled snap.
But then he said that life was different. It was something about how in life the characters you pass by are also in a game of their own. And in their game, they’re playing the protagonist, and you, pressing the joystick to your own little adventure in this precise moment, are the brick, tree, and entertainment on their paths.
“How can you reconcile such differences in a video game played by billions with billions of trees and bricks? Can you tell me, Ma?” he sighed into her headrest. His legs trembled lightly, making scratchy noises against the car door.
Mom turned off the Chinese news blasting from the radio and turned around to shoot Qiren a glance. She then looked at me from the rearview mirror. “Is everything okay, Qiren?” she said.
Qiren said nothing. He went back to studying nature outside, fingers on his chin.
Later that night, he opened the door to my room when I was in the middle of a Mario Kart race. I thought he came in to steal my game, so I pretended not to notice him. Then, I felt his hand on my shoulder as he sat on the bed end next to me. I shut my DS.
“Congrats,” I said.
He stared at the window in front of us. I followed his gaze. Outside was only darkness and the blurry frame of the house next door. Not a star or an edge of the moon was visible.
“So there was a football game after school today. It’s like Mom’s reward for me,” he began. “That’s why she was late picking you up.”
“The first chair,” he snickered. “It took me ten years, and I was so proud. But you know when I saw all those girls cheering their lungs out for those jocks on the field, I realized how much the stuff I do doesn’t matter. I mean really, nobody gives a shit whether I’m first chair cellist or the president of some Renaissance jigsaw puzzle club.”
There were tears in the corners of his eyes, but he wiped them away before I could hand him a tissue. He turned around and picked up my Nintendo DS. I thought he was here after all to steal my game, but he restarted the level and won the race for me.
A year later, Qiren graduated from high school, and we were at the airport to send him off to the Prestigious College on the East Coast. It was the first time he had on his white polo t-shirt and black skinny jeans—the debut of his go-out outfit. The night before, he told me that the white shirt symbolized the “tabula rasa” that awaited him. And the black jeans, it just made his legs look longer. He was a twig back then—tall, but still within the margin of error of our genes. His Bieber hair had grown a little longer and was down to his eyebrows. Under the bright white light in the check-in lobby, his face appeared extra pale and clean; free of pimples and wrinkles. We watched him get in line for security, two big suitcases trailing behind him. I had tied a butterfly to the handle of his Bartlett Spinner, hoping the red strings would make his luggage easier to recognize on the carousel. Mom had loaded them with new clothes and new everything. She even shoved a bottle of champagne in there as his Zhuang Xing Jiu—good luck send-off alcohol—though I was almost certain it got confiscated by security. Mom’s eyes were watery and so were mine. But what she didn’t know was that Qiren had been dying to go to the East Coast for some time, ever since the night he came into my room. When the decision letters came, he didn’t even open a single envelope from the Cali schools. He believed the East was where the heart of the country resided. Surely, people there would notice his intellect and talents. Surely, they would give a shit about the stuff he was passionate about. Surely, he would find his group.
*
I thought about the previous years when he came home to visit. He was always “chill” and “easygoing” like those model American college students in the movies that spoke with confidence about everything. I imagined him dashing into an empty dining hall late at night and eating the burnt, leftover patties and chicken breasts like a scavenger. I pictured him shoving chunks of fat and sugar into his mouth like a hungry wolf, leaving his hood on so the student staff wouldn’t recognize him. I thought of the girl in the Taiwanese restaurant. Maybe I was wrong thinking he had slept with her and never called. Maybe it was even beyond his own imagination to ever sleep with someone so ordinarily popular—so ordinary—like that.
“What you doing alone in there? Still wanking to your panda?” Qiren opened the door. He looked more cheerful than earlier in the night when he dashed out of Mom’s room. “Come on, let’s play some games.”
We went downstairs to the living room. He turned on the TV and whipped out two controls from the dusty cardboard box below—Mario Kart like the good old days.
“Here, use this since you’re a noob.” He shoved me the control that had a driving wheel attached to it. It made turning and changing directions a tad easier. We sat cross-legged on the couch, my knee touching his, and started punching buttons like mad men.
As his Mario led the pack, a string of banana peels behind the tail lights, I saw a smile on his face. It wasn’t a smile of victory. It was the smile of youth. A smile he’d worn when we were both kids on the playground, when he helped me build sand castles with his long fingers.
I paused the game.
“You feeling better now?”
“About what?” he said brusquely, not looking at me.
“The cold.”
“Oh, I forgot about it already. It’s just a false alarm, I guess. Beep.” He held a finger up to his head, stuck his tongue out, and made a playful siren sound.
“So how’s everything at the Prestigious College?” I said.
“I already told you dude, it’s great.” He unpaused the game impatiently and pointed at a wooded path to the left with his head. “Take the shortcut, man.”
“Okay,” I said quietly and focused back on the screen. I gathered speed from a string of rainbow ramps and plunged into the woods, temporarily moving up to fifth in the race.
“Yo, nice dude,” he cheered, slamming me on the back. And I saw the smile again.
“Thanks bro,” I offered my first. We bumped.
“All right now, watch where you’re going.”
I jerked my Princess Peach off the waterfall right before she fell over.
“You sure you got this?” Qiren said.
“Yes,” I said.
My driver’s license had come at a good time last month. Though I only had experiences driving to school and the local markets, I was confident in taking him to the airport in Mom’s SUV. It was past midnight, the last day of his spring break. The roads were relatively lax. I felt safe with him beside me.
“Now, talking is okay, but make sure you keep your eyes on the road. Remember, when switching lanes, only look out once. Hesitation is dangerous.”
“Yes sir,” I saluted. Truth was whenever I switched lanes, I could not help but cast a glance at his Bartlett Spinner in the backseat. Two red strings gripped the handle like loosened kite strings and gave the luggage a Chinese touch. But the butterfly was gone.
We sat in silence and listened to whatever came on the FM—EDM all the way until train stations and cable wires started popping up between the highways, a telltale sign that we were approaching LAX.
“So you still play the cello?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I’m active,” he said. He really wasn’t. I had paid attention to his fingers in the past week. They were smooth as hell, without a single callus.
We went back to silence and let the music take over. We bobbed our heads along every once in a while, sometimes in sync, sometimes off-beat. The weather was especially generous for an April in SoCal, the breeze just warm enough to make us comfortable in our t-shirts. I drove with one hand, the other on the window ledge, as we passed by the major offices of LA Times, Boeing, Raytheon, and Preferred Bank—box-looking buildings with rows of windows, all the lights still on at this hour. Then, we got in the departing lane right next to LAX’s signature kinetic light pylons—eleven luminescent towers that changed colors like chameleons. The traffic was surprisingly light. We made it to the quick route that led directly to terminal 7 where United was, without much honking.
I put the car in park and stepped on the clutch. Some tourists hung out by the entrance with their carts of paper boxes and LV suitcases. Qiren seemed a bit distracted. He looked out the windshield, blinked a few times as if trying to read something in the distance. I saw his fingers interweave, the nail of one thumb hastily scraping a flap of skin on the knuckle of the other.
“Guess I should go. I’ll be late,” he said after a minute and reached for the door handle.
I opened the glove compartment and took out Baby Matthew. He smelled like rubber, his face all distorted from camping down there for an hour.
“Here,” I said.
“The hell, I don’t need your stupid panda,” he said.
“No, no, it’s not my idea. Mom wants you to take him. She’s worried about my manliness and said it’s best that you take him,” I said.
“Seriously?”
I nodded.
He studied Baby Matthew, scanning him from head to toe. I gave his neck a good squeeze to get his face back in shape.
“Don’t you just want me,” I said in a cute voice, pursing my lips, pushing Baby Matthew’s soft head against his.
“All right, all right, no bamboos in my dorm though,” he said. He snatched my boy and shoved him in his book bag like a bag of chips. I helped him fetch a baggage cart, and together we headed inside the terminal.
When we got to security, we hugged one last time.
“Can you believe it? Just two months till your big day?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said perfunctorily and turned to peruse the security line.
“Well then,” I said, patting his shoulder. “See you soon, bro.”
“See you soon,” he nodded and punched me back on the shoulder.
I stood there like Mom would have and watched him go in line. Once he reached the other side of the belt, he waved at me and smiled. I shot him a text to remind him to grab all his stuff out of the bins. Then we waved at each other until he paused atop the escalator, and then the white polo shirt and black skinny jeans disappeared into the vast alley of departing gates. I imagined he would buy a bottle of champagne from a duty-free store somewhere. He was old enough to get his own Zhuang Xing Jiu now. I imagined once the plane had taken off and sailed into the horizon, the sun would once again dawn on its wings, though its blinds would likely be shut.