Ana's grin fades. Her dad clears his throat. “It's gift time. The Samoan's the youngest, so he goes first.”

  On cue, Sammy pulls a small box wrapped in the Sunday comics page from under the table.

  “Thank you, Sammy.”

  Sammy giggles. “You're welcome.”

  Ana starts to unwrap the box. “Don't tear it,” Nai Nai says. “It's still good paper.”

  “It's newspaper, Ma,” Ana's dad says. Nai Nai doesn't care. Ana's too happy to roll her eyes. She carefully peels back the tape and lets Nai Nai fold the paper up again.

  Ana takes the lid off the box . . .

  “A sock? Socks?” She lays them out on the kitchen table. Nine socks, none of them a matching pair.

  “They're not socks, they're puppets,” Sammy explains. He pulls one onto his arm to demonstrate. Sure enough, the face unfolds, complete with eyes on the heel and a felt nose on the end of the toe.

  “Cute.” Ana slides one onto her own hand. “Hello, everybody,” she says in a dopey puppet voice.

  “He worked all week on those,” Ana's mom explains.

  “One for each of us,” Sammy adds. “That's Nai Nai and Ye Ye, me and Mom, Dad, you and Grandma and Grandpa.”

  Ana can't say there's much resemblance, but she nods. “So who's the ninth sock supposed to be?”

  Sammy shrugs. “It's just a sock. For your foot.”

  Ana laughs. “Thanks, Sammy.” She gives him a hug and puts the sock family back in the box.

  “Next,” Ana's dad says. Her parents look at each other and her mom nods.

  “Since you'll be starting high school in the fall and it's too far to walk, we got you—”

  Ana's eyes widen. Her heart skips a beat. “A car?”

  “No!” her mom says. “You're too young to drive.”

  “A scooter?” Ana asks.

  “No.” Her dad sighs and pulls a small envelope out of his pocket.

  “A bus card?” The disappointment is more than a little obvious and she knows it. “I mean, hey, a bus card.”

  “It's a monthly pass,” her dad adds lamely.

  “I knew that one was a dud,” Ana's mom says. “Your dad thought you wouldn't want us dropping you off at school anymore. Said we'd embarrass you.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Ana nods. “Thanks, Dad. Good idea.” She stands up and gives him a kiss.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” her mother says. “We also got you”—she pulls two cards from her shirt pocket—“gift cards for the mall and the movie theater.”

  Ana's eyes go wide again. “Hey, thanks, Mom! And Dad,” she adds, hugging them both.

  “You'll need your back-to-school wardrobe, after all,” her mom says.

  “Thanks.” Ana sits back down with a satisfied sigh. The day has taken a good turn. “Well, I guess I'll get started on the dumplings.”

  “Young lady, you are in some kind of a hurry,” Grandma White admonishes. “You don't really think your own grandparents forgot about you on your big day?”

  Ana blushes. “I didn't want to be greedy.”

  “Good girl,” Grandpa White says. “You should be grateful every day. Honey, tell her what to be grateful for today.”

  Grandma White breaks into a smile. “Ana, remember those Mississippi steamboats you used to love so much?”

  “Yeah,” Ana says. When I was, like, ten, she thinks.

  “Well, pack your bags, baby. Next month, we're taking you on a cruise! A musical heritage cruise down the Mississippi River, St. Louis to New Orleans. We'll even stop and meet some of your cousins and relations along the way.”

  “Um. Wow,” Ana says. She suddenly feels split in two. Embarrassing as it is, the cruise sounds like fun. Not the uninterrupted summer full of Chelsea and Jamie Tabata she's been dreaming of, but she has to admit a trip to New Orleans is pretty cool. Especially a musical tour—Ana might only be second in her class, but she's the first chair alto saxophone in her school band.

  “Wow.” She says it again, this time with a smile. She looks at her parents. Her mom is grinning from ear to ear, and Ana is too. Her dad suddenly looks worried. Then Ana knows why. Nai Nai is whispering to Ye Ye rapidly in Chinese. Oh dear God, Ana thinks. The bigger the grin now, the bigger it'll have to be for Nai Nai and Ye Ye's gift. Why does life have to be so complicated?

  “Don't look so worried, honey. You won't get seasick on those big old boats, I promise,” Grandma White says. Ana smiles again but tries not to grin, and gives them each a hug. Grandpa White chuckles and pats her back.

  “We know how much you like playing saxophone and all,” he explains.

  “Yeah. That does sound really cool,” Ana admits.

  “Our turn?” Ye Ye asks Ana's dad. He nods, the look of worry on his face poorly concealed.

  Ye Ye smiles broadly and pulls a small red envelope from his pocket.

  Ana smiles back. It is a huen bao, or red packet. Her father's parents have been slipping these to her on holidays ever since she was old enough to hold an envelope. When she was little, just the act of tearing it open made her smile. Now Ana blushes even thinking about it. Huen bao are gifts of money, the red envelope signifying good luck and prosperity.

  Ana accepts the envelope with a little bow. “She she,” she says, thanking them in Mandarin. The envelope is stamped with a gold foil dragon wrapped around the name of her grandparents' bank. Some of the branches give the envelopes out during the Chinese New Year. Nai Nai probably hordes them by the handful each year.

  “It is nothing great,” Ye Ye says in his careful voice. “But we are very, very proud of you, Ana Mei.”

  Ana smiles and slips the envelope into her pocket. She learned long ago that it's rude to open the little packet in front of the giver. She also learned that her grandparents always call it a small gift when it's usually very generous. Ana gets up and gives them each a hug and a kiss. Nai Nai still seems unhappy, but Ye Ye is unfazed.

  “Perhaps you will use it on your trip down the Mississippi,” he says amicably.

  Ana smiles. “That'd be great. Maybe I can even put it toward a real New Orleans saxophone or something.”

  “Would you listen to that?” Grandma White says. “Isn't that nice? She's excited already.”

  “I told you she would be, Mama,” Ana's mother says, and pats Grandma White on the shoulder.

  Ana can't help feeling happy. “Thanks, everybody. This is really cool.” She looks around the room, smiling. Everybody smiles back, even Nai Nai, although her smile is a little crooked. Ana shrugs inwardly. At least nobody's shouting.

  “So, um, shouldn't we get cooking?” she asks, glancing at the clock. Three hours and counting. Her heart skips a beat.

  Everybody moves at once.

  “Do you want a sandwich, Ana?” her dad asks. “We had some PB&Js earlier.”

  “I don't think I can eat just yet,” Ana says. Maybe it's butterflies left over from this morning's speech, or maybe it's Jamie's fault, but the thought of wasting one more precious peaceful family minute to have a sandwich kills any idea of eating before dinner.

  “I'll start the dough for the pot stickers.” Ana goes to the sink and washes her hands.

  Her mother grips her shoulder. “You want to shower and change first?”

  Ana kisses her mom on the cheek. “Right. Thanks, Mom. I'll hurry.”

  She runs for the stairs, cap in hand, brushing past the paintings and family photos her mother has hanging on the staircase wall.

  “Stop running!” Nai Nai shouts after her. “Always rushing around like a horse, tromp tromp tromp. You are not a horse!”

  7

  Ana collapses on her bed. After a second, she gets up and locks her door. Swapping her dress for an oversized T-shirt, she lies back down, gazing up at the white popcorn ceiling. Sometimes at night, when the light from the street comes in just right, the ceiling twinkles like a galaxy of tiny stars.

  Right now, it's just white with tacky flecks of silver here and there.

  Ana's cell phone rings. She lets it ring twice before she realizes it's Chelsea's ring tone. “Hello?”

  “Hey, need to escape yet?”

  Ana smiles and relaxes again. “Nope. Surprisingly quiet down there so far, but I'm hiding in my room. I've got to shower. My gown totally speckled me.”

  “I told you it would stain.”

  “But you didn't take out your little sewing scissors and cut it off me like my grandmother did.”

  “What? That's crazy.”

  “It was like her pocket version of the Jaws of Life. But hey, everything's cool with my folks as far as dinner goes. So it might even be under control. Still, come early if you can. I totally need help picking out what to wear.”

  “Alrighty. See you at six-ish.”

  “Bye.”

  Ana hangs up and rummages through her closet. Chelsea's the one with fashion sense. Ana gives up on choosing a dress. Work clothes now, adorable dress later.

  Ana's room is the same shade of white it was when her parents bought the house after Sammy was born, but the walls are covered in music posters and pictures of places where Ana's been, or wants to go. There's a photo of a jazz quartet under the wrought-iron balconies of the French Quarter in New Orleans, a postcard of the New York skyline, a Chinese watercolor of strangely humped mountains over a river. Her mother claims it came from the village where Ye Ye was born, but Ana can't picture that. It's the only one in a proper frame, hung up with an actual nail. Beneath it, Ana's saxophone lies in the corner, nestled in its case, waiting for her to join her new high school's band.

  “Enough lollygagging,” she tells herself. She lays a pair of shorts and a polo shirt out on the powder blue bedspread and pulls out the box of hair dye. She tucks it into the towel she keeps on the back of the door for her hair, and slips down the hall to the shower.

  Ana sits on the edge of the tub, reading the label. Downstairs, she can hear her dad dragging the extra chairs from the dining room into the backyard. No fighting or screaming yet. She relaxes a little and reads the directions again.

  “ ‘Apply to damp hair.’ Well, I've certainly got that. ‘Do not shampoo hair first. Leave in for ten minutes.’ ” Ana looks at her watch, then at the model on the package. From brown to blond in less than twenty minutes. Ana can just imagine it, descending the staircase, her brown curls transformed into a halo of Sunset GoldTM.

  “Nai Nai won't say anything embarrassing, at least,” Ana tells herself. “She'll be dead from the shock.”

  She remembers Nai Nai's hints about taking her to Taiwan, and her stomach clenches. She puts the bottle down. It'll be hard enough walking around without her parents there to justify her existence. It's happened before, the “Aha, that explains it” look that flickers across some people's faces when they see Ana with her family. Add blond hair to the mix, and Ana'll be likely to end up in a zoo.

  She'll probably see that same look on Jamie's dad's face tonight. She can't imagine him fawning over her the way he did with Amanda. “Well, if all your friends are as charming and blond as this one! . . .” Ana smirks.

  On the front of the package, the pale Asian girl looks blankly off into the distance, a shiny cap of bone-straight, honey-colored hair making her look like an exotic mannequin. Ana stands up and looks at herself in the mirror. Her toffee-brown-skinned reflection stares back at her with its almond eyes and frazzled brown curls. Not exactly starting out with the same equipment. It goes beyond skin color and hair type. The model has single-lidded eyes, like Ana's dad's, with one smooth lid that ends at the eyelash line. Ana is double-lidded, like her mother's family. Chelsea freaked out when Ana pointed it out one day.

  “You know, this crease here”—Ana opened and closed her eyes a few times so Chelsea would see the fold she was talking about—“where beauty magazines tell you to put the second shade of eye shadow.” She ran her finger across the crease. “Some Asian girls will actually have plastic surgery to fold the skin there and make their eyes look rounder and more European. It's called blepharoplasty.”

  “More like barf-a-row-plasty. That's gross,” Chelsea said. Then again, Chelsea never wanted to look like anything other than a slightly taller version of herself.

  What would Chelsea think about this? Or Ana's mom, for that matter? After years of straightening her hair, Ana's mom went all natural right before Sammy was born. “Black women have been trying to change who they are from the outside for far too long,” she explained. “But it turns out, all hair is good hair. And being bald's fine too.”

  Ana laughed at the time. She was eight and the image of her mother with a shaved head was a weird one. Ana's mom went for twists instead, and occasionally braids. Ana's hair was straighter than her mom's, and she liked the curls it made. Sometimes. When her head wasn't damp and frizzy.

  Ana hesitates. She promised her mom she'd be down soon. Besides which, Sunset GoldTM is an awful lot like “Mandy” Conrad's natural color. Does she really want to look like Amanda Conrad?

  “She's such a cow,” Ana reminds herself. With a sigh, she shoves the hair dye to the back of the cabinet under the sink. There's a really good chance she'd just end up looking like a clown anyway.

  “So much for that.” She fluffs her hair in the mirror and then pulls the ends tight, trying to smooth it down. “Yep. So much for that.”

  Instead, she steps into the shower and transforms into a nonblond but much cleaner Ana Mei Shen.

  She pulls on her shorts and shirt and runs back downstairs to start Jamie's perfect dumplings.

  8

  The kitchen is a madhouse. Ana's mom has the hand mixer going on her cake, and her dad is halfway inside the refrigerator digging through the groceries. Grandma White is banging around in the cupboard under the stove where the pots are kept, and at the counter, Nai Nai is throwing handfuls of pork into a bowl while Sammy watches. All the noise together sounds like a bad elementary school marching band.

  “Hey, honey,” her mom says above the high whir of the mixer.

  “Hey. Where's my pork?” Ana asks as she enters.

  “Don't worry, Miss Impatient. It's right here.” Nai Nai points to a butcher's parcel on the counter. “Now, pay attention, Sammy. There is a rhythm to this,” she goes on. “If you do it right, the lion's head will be tender. Wrong . . . and you make a mess.” She chuckles and scoops a handful of ground pork and tosses it against the bottom of the bowl with a light underhand maneuver that blends in the diced water chestnuts and soy sauce perfectly. Ana stands in the doorway and braces herself. Nai Nai's skill is just another reminder of how perfect her own dumplings will have to be. She takes two bowls from a cupboard.

  Sammy stands on tiptoe to watch Nai Nai work. “Can I try it?”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “No.” Nai Nai looks over her shoulder at Ana. “An-ah, your father will make the filling. Danny!”

  Ana's dad pulls his head out of the refrigerator. “I'm still looking for the Chinese cabbage.”

  “Later. You help Ana. You start the dumpling filling. Ana will make the dough,” Nai Nai announces.

  “Nai Nai, I'm making the dumplings,” Ana protests.

  “No, you are too slow. You can stuff them. We will help now.”

  Ana gives in and puts an apron on. Aprons are kind of silly, but the last time she made dumplings, she was so covered in flour by the end that she looked like a snowman.

  “Okay, this is going into the oven for half an hour,” Ana's mom says, pouring her batter into a large sheet pan. “Watch it for me, and try to keep it down so it doesn't fall.”

  “What, baby?” Grandma White hollers, voice echoing in the cabinet she's rummaging through. “Where is my gumbo pot?”

  “Up here, Grandma.” Ana drags a chair over to a higher set of cabinets and wrestles down the cast-iron Dutch oven.

  “Mama, do you have to do that now?” Ana's mom asks. She looks from the cake to Grandma White and Sammy. “Why don't we take the Samoan outside to run some laps? Come on, Sammy. Let's leave the kitchen to the pros for now.”

  “I am a pro,” Grandma White says indignantly. Sammy is instantly swinging on her arm like a monkey.

  “If he was a battery, we'd never run out of energy,” she says. “I guess the gumbo can wait half an hour or so. Let us know when you-all are done.”

  “Will do,” Ana says. The door swings shut and the kitchen is suddenly quieter.

  Ana sifts a few cups of flour into one of her bowls and stands at the kitchen table, slowly mixing in a thin stream of water, while her father and Nai Nai work in unison, chopping vegetables for the dumpling filling and cabbage for the lion's head. With the kitchen reduced to only three cooks, a sense of calm prevails. She begins to work the dough with her hands. The kneading and the rhythm of the knives are soothing, and the whirlwind in Ana's head slows down just a bit.

  Ana's dad and Nai Nai are like pianists playing a duet, small cleavers flying up and down like the velvet-covered hammers of piano keys, striking at water chestnuts, bok choy, gingerroot and garlic cloves, reducing each to a fragrant, uniformly diced pile.

  “When do I get that superpower?” Ana asks.

  Her father laughs. “When you practice it as much as I have with Nai Nai standing over you.”

  “I told you we were faster,” Nai Nai says. “And your father is a slow learner. You'll do much better. Make the dough, then I will show you.”

  Ana finishes her dough and leaves the bowl under a damp cloth to rest.

  Nai Nai stands beside her and holds up her cleaver, the sharp edge wet with juice from the gingerroot she's slicing. “Hold your knife at an angle and cut away from your fingers.” She chops once, slowly, and then moves into a blur too fast for Ana to follow.

  “Do that again?” Ana asks.

  Nai Nai sighs and turns the blade, cutting the coins of ginger into matchsticks.

  “Now, you mince it.” She hands the cleaver to Ana. Ana looks at her dad. Right, that looks easy. He shrugs and steps away from the counter.