Faking Reality Read online

  “When you’re finally busy having a life instead of trying to win Favorite Matsuda Child all the time, let me know, I’ll cover for you,” Aurora says to our backs. “Until then, help a sister out, okay?”

  Leo makes a rude hand gesture in the air but never breaks his stride.

  “I’m not trying to be Favorite Matsuda Child, by the way. I just am.” Leo drops his skateboard outside of school. “It’s called putting your family above yourself.”

  “I know. You have a big heart. You always have.” I head down the wheelchair ramp on my skateboard.

  If HGTV were filming us right now, Phil would cut to a montage of all the times Leo has helped me over the years. Like the time he bandaged my scraped arm when our unsanctioned tree-house-building idea went horribly wrong. And when Leo offered me his favorite stuffed animal—a giant cow aptly named Mr. Ushi—when we found out the same arm needed a cast because it was broken, not just scraped. Or the time when I was ten and Leo bawled right alongside me as we buried my beloved calico cat, Lita. And last fall, when he talked me down ten seconds after the SNL sketch about me ran on TV.

  Leo shortens his strides so we can roll beside each other away from school.

  “Aurora’s right,” I say. “You deserve to have a life outside of school and the restaurant.”

  “Just because I’m not making out in the hallway and lying to my parents about it doesn’t mean I don’t have a life,” Leo says, and my brain has to go there. “And I like watching Kitsune Mask with you. It’s the thing I look forward to all week. Okay, that sounds pathetic, I get it, but having a girlfriend requires both the time to go somewhere and the money to do something. Neither of which I have at the moment.”

  “Hey, Leo. This isn’t 1950. Date is a very subjective word. Also, what if the potential girlfriend wants to take you out? You gonna be all macho about it, or you gonna say ‘thank you’ and get over yourself?”

  “Wow, Koty. Did I miss the memo that it’s Dump on Leo Day?”

  “We’re not dumping on you. We’re hitting you with a series of truth bombs. Now whether you listen to us and do something about it is a different story.”

  Leo grumbles because he knows I’m right. So he changes the subject. “How’s the build going?”

  “Good but slow. Dad insists that he has to be there when I’m working with power tools. Phil and the crew hover, waiting for me to lose a finger or at least pound my thumb or something cringey and meme-worthy.”

  “And have you?”

  “Nope. Super boring.”

  “Good.” Leo jumps off his skateboard when we get to the stop sign at the crossroads. He stomps on the end of his board with his Vans, making the board flip up effortlessly into his hand. I try to do the same, except my board flies off at the wrong angle, whacking me in the knee instead.

  Leo stifles his laugh with a cough as I swear and rub my knee.

  “You’re getting better. You’ll be sliding down the school’s handrail soon.”

  Yeah, Phil has already voiced his opinion on me skateboarding. Not only the potential danger of a broken arm or concussion, but that he wouldn’t be around to capture the wipeout on film. And then there’s the whole fight with him about “softening” my look. I am not a Kardashian or Jenner. I wouldn’t wear false eyelashes and three-inch heels to the grocery store or a yoga class, or even if I suddenly had the urge to go to a club. I am a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of girl despite the trendy outfits that brands keep sending me for potential OOTD posts.

  “Listen, I get what you and Aurora mean about the sad plane of existence I seem to live on. What if I insisted that I needed to come by this afternoon to check on how the yakisoba build is going? Just for an hour or so before the dinner rush hopefully kicks in. It’s the truth. And if your dad wants to give me a Power Tools 101 lesson, that would add validity to my story.”

  Date is a subjective term.

  “I would love that. I mean, Dad would love that.”

  “Cool. Ja mata ne.”

  I watch Leo roll away before launching my skateboard in the opposite direction. Except instead of smoothly hopping onto my board like Leo does, I have to retrieve mine from the ditch first. As I roll home, my stomach bubbles at the thought of having more Leo Time than usually allotted this week.

  * * *

  Stephanie puts her index finger to her lips when I step into the build after depositing my school stuff and changing into my work gear. Mom is in front of the camera today. They’ve talked her into wearing a dress with sensible shoes instead of her usual high-waisted jeans, plaid button-down, and work boots. She still wears her signature bedazzled safety glasses—thanks, nine-year-old me—perched on her French-braided head though. That’s an essential part of the Halloween costume. They even sell HGTV-branded bedazzled safety glasses at Party City. I don’t get a cut for my cheesy but incredibly profitable idea. Not to mention that I stopped wearing bedazzled safety glasses after Season 13, thank you very much.

  “This final season, we’re doing a build close to my heart.” Mom taps her heart with her temporarily manicured hand. “While Doug deals with the contemporary termite problem, which has put us weeks behind schedule, I found a key piece of information recently in my research.” Mom pulls out an old photo. “And as we’ve never shied away from some of the uglier parts of American history, I want to share it with you.”

  Mom flips it over, and the camera op steps in closer to film it. “The good. The bad. The ugly. Next time on If These Walls Could Talk, we uncover how this house”—Mom points at the picture before opening her hands up to the ceiling—“became this house. Until then…” Mom looks directly into the camera and puts her index finger to her lips for two beats before turning her head to cup her ear. She looks back into the camera, “History’s talking.”

  Mom freezes with a smile on her face until Phil yells, “Cut.”

  Mom puts the photo down on the makeshift table next to the giant, period-appropriate chandelier she is restringing. Mom flew all the way to Idaho last weekend to buy the handblown crystals at an auction.

  “Are you sure you want to do that last bit?” Phil says. “It’s a little … heavy.”

  “We’ve been over this, Phil.” There is a fire behind Mom’s eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Very sure. We’re not going to skip over an important part of my family’s history—including the Akagis being sent to a Japanese internment camp during World War II—because it might make a small percentage of viewers uncomfortable. We can’t learn from history if we’re too scared to talk about it.”

  I step over the cables littering the floor and come behind Mom to look more closely at the picture. It’s the same two-room adobe house surrounded by fields of alfalfa that Mom showcased at the beginning of this season. Her mother’s family, the Akagis, came to Phoenix in 1915 to farm vegetables on the land we’re currently standing on. Because of his race, my great-grandfather Kajuio Akagi wasn’t allowed to own the land his family worked. After the Japanese dropped a bomb on Pearl Harbor, he wasn’t allowed to live on this land either. The whole Akagi family, including my then eleven-year-old grandmother, was shipped off to the Poston Japanese internment camp until the war was over.

  Though we studied Japanese American internment camps in school briefly—and I once famously ended up in the principal’s office over it in the sixth grade—we never talked about the Arizona angle, despite our state having two of the camps. Nor did we talk about how much anti-Japanese sentiment the Akagis and others faced here in Phoenix well after the war was over.

  It’s still here, though it stays hidden under a rock most days. Occasionally, it bubbles to the surface. I’ve seen it flung at the Matsudas. Mom somehow gets a pass–or at least a more condescending version of it—because she’s famous. Meanwhile, I look so white that people sometimes forget and let their ugly show.

  “Yeah, you should definitely talk about it,” I tell Mom. “So many people want to sweep it under the rug even though it’s still happening today.”

&nbs
p; Mom throws an arm around me. “That’s my girl. I’m going to make a history major out of you yet.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Dr. Akagi.” That’s my mom’s real name, by the way, since my grandparents weren’t legally married when she was born. Asian people like Obaachan weren’t allowed to marry white people like Grandpa in the 1950s.

  When my parents started the show twenty years ago, somebody talked Mom into dropping her earned title and using dad’s last name. They said Dr. Akagi sounded too “uppity and unrelatable” to their target audience.

  “Maybe that’s what I could do after this season. After Akagi House is ready to open to the public for tours.” Mom wraps her hand around Obaachan’s locket necklace and looks off into the room. “Maybe I could be a guest lecturer and finally put my Ph.D. to use in an academic setting.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. Just not my college because that would be awkward.”

  “Oh, we’ll see.” Mom steeples her fingers together and gives me her best archvillain look.

  “Dakota, you’re up next,” Phil interrupts us. “We need to film some wild lines for the HGTV Gives Back spot. With sincerity, not snark this time because we’re tweaking it to reference the Hurricane Darius relief campaign. Also, I want to get more footage of you today painting the yaki-whatty stand.”

  “Yakisoba,” I correct him.

  “Yes, that. Where’s Doug?”

  “I can do this part without him. I’m not going to lose a limb spray painting.”

  Phil walks away chuckling like I’m kidding. What the actual Phil?

  * * *

  “Turn it a little more to the left, Doug,” Phil says. “Wagner is one of our sponsors this season.”

  Only I can see Dad’s eyes roll as he adjusts the spray paint gun in his hand to show the sponsor’s logo.

  “Okay, we’re set,” Phil says and motions at the camera op.

  “When you are using this type of sprayer,” Dad says like there are only the two of us in the room, “having a steady hand is the hardest part. You want a light, even coat. Too much and it will cause drips down your project.”

  Something moves in my peripheral vision. Leo, in his favorite Kitsune Mask T-shirt, leans in the doorway. Phil nods his head. I realize that I’m smiling. Like genuinely smiling.

  “Hey, Dad, you know what inspired me to build this for my art class?” I say, and Phil looks ready to fall over from my sudden candidness.

  “What’s that, Koty-Kat?” Dad says, and the fans watching at home get another bingo square for Dad calling me by my nickname.

  “Remember the summer we went to Japan when I was nine? We went to the Tanabata Matsuri—the Star Festival—outside Nagoya. There were all of those cool food vendors. Our hosts insisted on dressing Mom and me up in yukata.”

  “That was a fun trip, wasn’t it?” Dad says wistfully. “I remember a squid on a stick in the equation somewhere.”

  Phil points at his PA, who scribbles something in her notebook. Probably, Find that picture of Dakota to plug in here.

  “Yeah. But right beside the squid-on-the-stick vendor was a guy selling these saucy, brown noodles. They smelled so good, but I never got to try them. For some reason, that has always stuck with me, but now I get to bring that memory to life. I guess it’s true what Mom says about keeping your eyes open and finding inspiration everywhere.”

  “I think this is going to be your best project yet, Koty.”

  I pull up my respirator, and Dad does too. He watches as I add several smooth layers of red paint to my giant box. If Phil is waiting for some other words of wisdom from me, that was it. Probably for the rest of the season. Finally, he gets bored.

  “And cut,” Phil says, though I keep painting.

  “Dad, you don’t have to keep standing here. I know it’s hurting your back.”

  “True.” Dad stands up straight and kneads his back. “You can come in now, Leo. I think we’re finished shooting for today.”

  I stop spraying and remove my respirator.

  “I wanna learn how to use the sprayer.” Leo claps his hands together like he’s five.

  “Okay.” Dad chuckles at Leo’s enthusiasm. “Those shoes got a steel toe?”

  Leo’s face falls. “No.”

  “Dad, we’re not going to touch anything but the sprayer, I promise.”

  “You stand in this area, and this area only, understand, bud?” Dad makes an invisible rectangle with his index fingers. Leo nods. “And don’t touch anything else. I’ll be back in a minute to give you a tutorial.”

  I put my free hand on my hip. “Dad, how many hours have I spent painting everything but the box in the last two days? I could do a whole show about it.”

  Leo perks up at this spark of an idea. “I think it would be cool if you had your own DIY show. Maybe not a full show like this. Something simpler.”

  “HGTV has been trying to talk me into a scripted spin-off digital series. But what if I did unscripted short episodes on things that teens and college students would want to know for real life? Like how to hang a shelf or retrieve a ring that went down the drain or fix a hole in the wall because you were horsing around with your BFF and his elbow went through the drywall. Ahem.”

  “It was an accident.” Leo shrugs, but I’m sure he’s remembering how we got grounded after our indoor game of Spider-Man and Spider-Gwen—leaping off the Matsudas’ living room furniture—went horribly wrong. Leo raises his hand. “I’ll be your guinea pig. I mean, if you can’t teach me how to do something, then other teens won’t be able to do it either. You should do a webisode about welding. That’d be cool.”

  “That’s a hard no to the welding, but if you want to practice painting with Dakota today”—Dad hands Leo his safety glasses and respirator—“knock yourself out.”

  “I feel like an extra in a Star Wars movie.” Leo mimics Darth Vader’s breathing and voice in his respirator. “Luke, I am your father.”

  “Dork,” I say as Dad follows the last of the camera crew out of the room that transformed from a laundry room to Dad’s workshop and will eventually become Akagi House’s parlor.

  “Wait.” Leo digs his phone out of his back pocket. “I get to post this on my Instagram page, yes? ’Cause, c’mon, I look cool.”

  “Here.” I take the phone and hand him the spray gun instead. I back up to frame the shot while Leo holds the spray gun like it’s a weapon.

  “We have to do one together. I won’t post it. It’s just for me.”

  My heart flips. I step in close to Leo and put my arm around his muscular shoulders. I angle the camera to get my best side.

  “Pull the respirator up,” Leo says. “It’s funnier that way.”

  That’s right. I’m the least annoying sister in Leo’s world.

  After a couple of shots, Leo slides his phone into his back pocket, and we get to work. I put my hand over Leo’s.

  “Hold it at a perpendicular angle, like this, about ten to twelve inches away from your project. Sweep from left to right to stay with my original painting pattern. Pull the trigger to start the spray before you hit the object and keep it going until you are past it. Gentle. Even. Strokes. Too close. See, it’s beginning to drip. Don’t worry. Before I add the next coat, I’ll sand the drip down a little.” I leave my hand on top of Leo’s as we finish the first layer of bright orangey-red lacquer to the back.

  “Can we keep going?” Even with his respirator on, I can tell from his eyes that Leo is smiling. The Full Dimple.

  We’re halfway through the next side when the paint starts to spit.

  “It’s probably a loose connection letting air in.” I double-check all the pieces, but the paint gun continues to sputter.

  “Want me to go get Mr. Doug?”

  “No, I got it. We’re probably out of paint.” I take a peek. “Yep, all we need is a quick top-up.”

  I put the top part of the sprayer on the newspaper. Leo cranes his neck to watch as I take the paint cup over to the workbench
to refill. I pour the rich red paint into the cup and wipe off the extra on the lip. A moment later, I have it hooked back up and ready to go.

  “This looks amazing.” Leo nods his head. “I know we were just joking about your DIY show idea earlier, but what if you did it for real? It’d be cool. I’d subscribe.”

  “You’d be my only subscriber.”

  “Not true. America loves its DIY Princess. Some of them a little too much.”

  A chill travels up my spine. I know we aren’t the only TV family who has hired an IT expert in the vain attempt to block some of the creepy to downright scary things grown men think are acceptable to send to girls. It’s like whack-a-mole with these idiots. At the same time, I’m required to have a digital life. And that’s not even HGTV talking. That’s my classmates asking me why I’m not on the latest social media app to keep up with all that’s hot and trendy.

  “Koty?” Leo has a crease between his eyebrows. “You getting weird stuff again?”

  “Yeah. On the daily. Low-level ‘Hey, beautiful, just wanna talk’ stuff but still. Block and delete.”

  “On behalf of the guys who don’t do this, I’m sorry.” Leo puts his arm across my shoulders. “I would punch them in the face for you if I could.”

  I slide out from under his arm. “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.”

  “I know. Can I at least hold them while you go all kitsunebiiiiii on them?”

  “Yes.” I bump Leo’s hip with mine. “But not today. Today, I want to paint.”

  “Me too.” Leo makes grabby hands at the sprayer. “I want to fly solo on this side.”

  Leo hums Rayne Lee’s “One Last Kiss” as he paints.

  “Looks great,” Leo says when he’s done.

  “Don’t jinx us.” I take the spray gun from Leo. “We still have to get the fuel line changed over. I wonder if Dad would let me skip school tomorrow. Maybe we could film a touching father-daughter moment in the middle of Lowe’s.”

  “I wanna come.” Leo takes off his safety gear and puts it on the workbench next to mine.