Faking Reality Page 7

  “You should go eat some cotton candy, Ojiichan,” I say. “At least go throw some snowballs. You know, have some fun.”

  “You should go to the marching band’s dunk tank. Aurora will only be there for another fifteen minutes or so,” Leo says, and Ojiichan perks up.

  “I was the pitcher on my high school baseball team.” Ojiichan rotates his right shoulder as he walks away from the booth. “Aurora should be worried.”

  “I’m glad he’s getting out,” I say after I insist Tori and Jax leave early to go witness and, more important, video the event. “You and Ojiichan both work too much.”

  When Leo turns around, I slide a twenty-dollar bill out of my back pocket and into Leo’s tip jar.

  “I saw that,” Leo says, his back still to me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Take it back.”

  “Make me.”

  “Later, because otherwise, I have to rewash my hands and we’re getting low on water.”

  “So, how are sales?” I say, though I know the answer based on his expression.

  “Maybe yakisoba and manju are too weird for Cholla Vista High School. Yeah, all the JCC members have come to buy something, but at this rate, I’m going to be lucky to break even.” Leo’s shoulders slump. “Bye-bye, Japan trip.”

  My heart sinks too. “So, we’ll go on the Japan trip next year instead. We’re only sophomores. We have two more chances.”

  “Yeah, but they rotate cities, so in theory, you could go on four different Japan trips during your high school career. This year, they are going to Nagoya as their big city.”

  “I like Nagoya, not that I remember that much from before, but I’m sure Kyoto or Hiroshima or Yokohama would be fun too.”

  “No, I need to go to Nagoya.”

  “Why?”

  Leo looks around to make sure Ojiichan isn’t around. “I want to go to the Matsuda Manju Shop.”

  “That’s cool. Does Ojiichan know the owners?”

  “Ojiichan was supposed to be the owner since he is Number One Son. Instead, he married Obaachan against her family’s wishes, and then moved to Arizona to open a restaurant. So pretty much, the American limb has been completely cut off from the rest of the Matsuda family tree. But they found us, thanks to Sasha’s wagashi posts on Instagram. Mio-san, my second cousin, studies at a pastry school in Japan and reached out to see if we were related. When Sasha asked him, Ojiichan totally shut her down. That’s why they were so weird earlier. But if I go on the Japan trip this year, maybe I can help reconnect our family. I want to go to the Matsuda Manju Shop in person.”

  “We,” I say. “We have to go to the Matsuda Manju shop in person. I have spoken.”

  A group of students passes right by us. One of them looks like she’s going to stop, but her friends pull her back into motion.

  Leo lets out a defeated sigh. “Or maybe we can go to Nagoya after graduation instead. I just worry. It’s not like Ojiichan is getting any younger.”

  “Sorry I’m late.” Nevaeh runs up to the booth, their holographic boots sparkling in the football stadium’s lights. “Your grandpa dunked Aurora three times in a row. I had to post about it. Also, I gave your booth a shout-out.”

  “Thanks. I need all the help I can get.”

  “I know how we can boost traffic,” Nevaeh says.

  “How?” I say, because if anybody knows how to get attention, it’s Nevaeh.

  “Give ’em a little fan service.”

  “HGTV isn’t allowed to film on school grounds, Nev.”

  “Not those fans. Local fans.” Nevaeh pulls out their phone and shakes it. “Start the buzz. Give ’em a little razzle-dazzle.”

  Part of me is desperate enough to agree to whatever Nevaeh suggests. “Only if Leo is cool with it.”

  “Fine.” Leo blows a sweaty lock of hair out of his eyes. “Just don’t be weird.”

  “Yeah, no promises on that.” Nevaeh pulls the scrunchie out of my ponytail and fluffs up my shoulder-length hair. “You need lipstick, Dakota. These lights wash you out.”

  Nevaeh sells two bottles of Ramune to a couple of freshmen and then upsells them two boxes of Pocky before returning to critique my look. “There you go. Next up. We’re having a fire sale. Buy a plate of yakisoba and get a manju for free. Dakota, go grab a big stack of cups from the Band Boosters’ free water table. Tell my step-mom I need them. She’ll be cool with it. Part of the problem here is that people don’t know what you’re selling. So, your lovely assistant, Dakota, is going to give away samples. Leo, what are you standing around for? Get to cooking. We’ve got forty-five minutes to get this night turned around.”

  Nevaeh is finishing up their live post by the time I get back with the small plastic cups.

  “You guys know you want a piece of this.” Nevaeh stands behind the griddle with Leo talking into the phone’s camera. “And I’m talking about the noodles here, peeps.”

  Leo looks over, gives the camera one of his boy-next-door smiles and a peace sign.

  “You only have forty minutes left, so put down the cotton candy and get over here.” Nevaeh comes back out from behind the griddle. “If we sell out, Cholla Vista High School’s DIY Princess Dakota McDonald is going to reveal just who she was kissing in that tabloid picture. Live.”

  I’m glad the camera was on Nevaeh because I trip over my own feet at this announcement. I fake a flirty smile to cover up the existential horror I feel inside.

  “Tick-tock, people. Nevaeh out. Peace!”

  Leo scowls from behind the griddle. “That was low, Nevaeh. Seriously.”

  “No, Nevaeh’s right. As Aurora says, sometimes the best defense is a good offense. And we’re desperate here, Leo.”

  “Okay. Fine.” Leo shrugs. “But I’m not taking off my shirt. Understood?”

  “Got it,” Nevaeh says. “Now Koty, here’s your part…”

  * * *

  “How many plates do we have left, Matsuda?” Nevaeh yells over from the small crowd swarming around the portable cash register.

  Leo does a quick count. “Twenty-nine.”

  “Only twenty-nine plates until the truth comes out.” Nevaeh could be the next P. T. Barnum. “Now, who’s first? You want a drink to go with this, right? And dessert. Come on. You gotta have dessert.”

  “Sugoi,” Ojiichan says in surprise when he returns to the booth twenty-five minutes later with a big bag of cotton candy and a dripping Aurora behind him.

  “How many now, Matsuda?” Nevaeh yells over the crowd.

  Leo counts. “Twelve!”

  “Only twelve plates left, people. Better hurry up.” Nevaeh wipes off the 19 written on the Specials board and writes 12 instead.

  I grab a clean towel from the pile and walk behind the griddle.

  “Look this way.” I press the towel against Leo’s sweaty face and then his neck.

  “Hey, hey, hey! Make that five plates left,” Nevaeh yells. “Five more plates until the truth comes out!”

  After a quick sidebar, Aurora steps behind the cash register, and Nevaeh races off. A minute later, they’re back with three tall, tanned guys with closely cropped, dark brown hair. Nevaeh organizes them side by side next to the cash register.

  “Two plates left. Two!” Aurora shivers from behind the cash register until Jayden puts his drumline jacket around her shoulders.

  I’m shaking as bad as Aurora. The yakisoba I ate earlier sloshes around in my stomach, threatening to reappear. I look at Leo, who is cooking as fast as he can. This is for him—both in the short term and the long run. I can do this for my BFF. I can help him get to Japan.

  “One last plate. It’s nine fifty-nine. Is the secret going to be revealed tonight or not?” Nevaeh weaves through the line of guys.

  I’m not going to pretend that everybody understands or accepts Nevaeh at school, but they are known as someone who is always fun. I wouldn’t say Nevaeh is part of the popular crowd, but somehow they move through multiple social cir
cles with ease. Or maybe they truly are the next P. T. Barnum, bending reality to become whatever they want it to be.

  Nevaeh pulls me to the side and gives me a quick once-over. They whisper, “If you want our Cinnamon Roll Prince to go on the Japan trip, then you’re going to have to take one for the team tonight.”

  I gulp.

  “Sold!” Aurora yells. “That’s the last one!”

  Nevaeh pulls their phone out and livestreams. “Theydies and Gentlethems! Welcome. Thanks to your generous support, our friend Leo Matsuda has sold all twenty-nine plates of yakisoba before the end of the Homecoming Carnival, so you know what that means.” The crowd hoots.

  Nevaeh flips the camera around and hands their phone to Aurora to keep livestreaming. “I think you all know the tea. But in case you’ve been living under a rock, let me bring you up to speed. Cholla Vista High School’s favorite—and only—celebrity, Dakota McDonald, was recently, ahem, featured in a tabloid. Tonight, we’re going to unmask the mystery guy.”

  Nevaeh puts a bottle of Ramune in my hand and gently pushes me toward the line of tan guys. I don’t know what in the world Nevaeh bribed them with for this humiliation.

  “Is it Taylor Dixon?” Nevaeh gestures at Taylor like he’s a new car, not a guy wondering how he got himself into this hot mess. “Or is it Kyrese Montgomery? A bunch of you seem to think it is Dante Soto. Which one will Dakota give her heart—and this commemorative bottle of Japanese soda—to?”

  Taking a page from Nevaeh, I weave in and out around the guys. When I get to the end of the line, I pause. Cameras come out. I look at Leo, giving him one last chance at an out. Instead, he nods.

  “Wait. Hold up.” Nevaeh puts their hand up in the air. “Plot twist. We are missing a candidate. Red rover, red rover, send one Leo Matsuda right over.”

  Leo hands the last plate of yakisoba to Aurora and turns off the griddle. He wipes his hands off on his apron and comes to the line. Phone cameras follow me back down the line until I am standing in front of Leo. A redness creeps up his neck. I hold out the Ramune out to him, but the crowd remains silent. They expect more. They want fan service.

  I rise up on my toes and kiss Leo on the nose. The crowd is mixed. Leo grabs me in a sweaty bear hug and swings me around. After my feet hit the solid ground again, Leo leans in and plants a kiss on my forehead. That gets the crowd going.

  “I knew it!” Jax’s voice cuts through the crowd. “Pay up, Tori.”

  Nevaeh takes their phone back. “There you go, Cholla Vista High School. The secret is officially out. It’s Cinnamon Roll Prince Leo Matsuda with our DIY Princess Dakota McDonald in the picture. I think it’s a match made in heaven. Don’t you? Thanks for playing along. Nevaeh out. Peace!”

  Leo opens the bottle of Ramune, pops the marble, and chugs. He leans forward and whispers in my ear, “Can I die now?”

  “Not until after the Japan trip,” I whisper back.

  Ojiichan munches on his cotton candy with a confused look on his face, but doesn’t say a word. Neither does Leo. When our dads return to load up the delivery truck, Aurora announces that she has to “help with the marching band’s dunk tank” and is unnecessarily vague about her plans on getting home.

  Finally, Leo falls into the minivan with an exhausted sigh. Ojiichan looks over his shoulder and asks what’s probably been on his mind for the last thirty minutes.

  “What is this?” Ojiichan opens his hand at me, and then Leo.

  A nervous chuckle sneaks out of my mouth. “Acting.”

  “Honto ka?” Ojiichan raises a bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrow at us in disbelief.

  I don’t understand 99 percent of the Japanese words that come out of Leo’s mouth, but I can read his body language. He denies everything, including why we did the stunt. My heart squeezes. As much as I want to protect him from the paparazzi, part of me also desperately wants Leo to know how I feel about him. This was not the way to do it though. HGTV can’t film on school property, but that doesn’t stop other students from filming me. We may have hit the short-term goal—all the plates sold, plus Leo’s full tip jar—but I wonder if I’ve completely ruined the long-term goal.

  “Hmmm,” is all Ojiichan says when Leo finishes.

  “Can we go home now? I’m hot. I’m tired.” Leo sniffs at his shirt and winces. “I’m gross.”

  Ojiichan gives Dad and Mr. Matsuda a wave out the window, but he also leaves the windows down all the way back to the restaurant to help ventilate the sweaty, porky smell circulating around the van.

  * * *

  “Do your accounting while we get the truck unloaded,” Mr. Matsuda tells Leo when we arrive back at the restaurant. “School is going to come early tomorrow.”

  “I’ll put the little bit of leftover stuff in the refrigerator.” I want to go home, but not yet. I tug at the light, but bulky, cooler.

  “Here. Switch with me.” Leo’s voice is flat as he hands the portable cash register and tip jar to me. “You don’t know where the stuff goes anyway.”

  Leo and I have had dips in our friendship before. Like when we were seven, and Trevor, his next-door neighbor, razzed him about having a girl as a best friend. For three whole days, Leo and Trevor refused to let me play soccer with them and the other boys on the playground during recess. My mom got involved when she caught me drawing a picture of Leo with a large pile of poo for his head. The next day, any girl who wanted to play soccer at recess could play on any team she wanted. Trevor had to let me be on his team, but I still never got to play.

  I stood on the sidelines watching my best friend play for a good solid week before the teacher finally noticed and insisted “all our friends are allowed to play, or nobody will play.”

  So Trevor put me in the goal. When the teacher wasn’t looking, he slammed me with ball after ball. Day after day. Trying to make me quit. But I wouldn’t. Not even when the ball Leo kicked knocked out my front tooth. Granted my tooth was loose to begin with, but the collision of Leo’s soccer ball with my face sped up the process.

  Leo felt so bad afterward that he offered to go play Spider-Man and Spider-Gwen with me on the jungle gym instead as an apology. We did end up doing that about a month later, but not until after I caught or deflected three of Trevor’s zingers in a row. I have to give props to Stephanie—former star goalie of the Lincoln Valley High School varsity girls soccer team—for some intense coaching to make that happen. My point made, I did a mic drop and ended my playground soccer career to go play Spider-Gwen with Leo, which was what I wanted to do in the first place anyway.

  I put the money on the table in the kitchen and join Leo in the walk-in refrigerator.

  I squat down next to him. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No.”

  When he doesn’t look at me, I put my hand on his arm. “Leo.”

  Black clouds swirl behind Leo’s brown eyes. I have screwed this up so bad.

  “You’re allowed to be mad. Even at me. I know you don’t like to be in the spotlight, and Nevaeh did it in the most embarrassing and personal of ways.”

  Leo stands up. He has a death grip on the small plastic baggie of chopped onions.

  “Yeah, it was embarrassing. Especially because now people think we’re a couple, and we’re not.” Leo’s assessment stabs a dagger straight into my heart. “You and Aurora rag on me all the time about not having a social life or a girlfriend, but it’s crap like this that keeps setting me back. Did you see Lindsay’s face? She probably thinks I was playing her.”

  It’s like the soccer ball hits me in the face all over again. Only this time, it’s my heart that falls out instead of my left front tooth.

  “I’m sorry.” I blink back the tears in my eyes. “I’ll get out of your way. Figuratively and literally.”

  “C’mon, Koty, don’t be like that. I just need some breathing room. You suffocate me sometimes.”

  “Got it. And don’t worry about the buzz. I’ll tell everybody tomorrow that we aren’t a couple. That it was all a publicit
y stunt. No, even better, I’ll tell them that it was completely one-sided and that I am insanely jealous of Lindsay, who you actually have a crush on. You took pity on me tonight and played along.”

  I turn on my heel to make a hasty retreat. Leo grabs my wrist to keep me from leaving.

  “Dakota.” Leo does a double take when he turns me around. “Okay, wow, you’re gonna have to break this down for me.”

  I wipe a tear from my cheek and command the other ones to stay put. At least until I get home. I stare at him. No words forming.

  “So, there was some truth to the stunt tonight?” Leo says. My silence answers the question. Leo’s eyes open wide. “Oh, wow. This is … wow. Can I think about this a bit?”

  “No. Because if you have to talk yourself into liking me back, then you…” My voice cracks as the truth flows out. “Don’t.”

  “You know I love you, Dakota.” Leo drops my wrist. “But not the way you want me to. I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart. You’re my best friend. I don’t ever want to lose that.”

  “I know. Me too.” I wipe at another tear that refused to obey orders. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. But we don’t lie to each other. We never lie to each other.”

  “I feel like such a jerk.”

  “Why? It’s not your fault. Or mine.”

  Leo shakes his head, still stunned at my declaration. “We can still be friends though, right?”

  “Yeah.” It’s not a lie. I want to be Leo’s friend, though I may need some distance for a while until my shattered heart pieces itself back together.

  “Good.” Leo pulls me into a hug. “And thank you. Between sales and the tip jar, I know I made the Japan trip deposit tonight, plus some. Yep, one more in the long line of your awesome ideas.”

  “You’re welcome.” I give Leo a tight hug and then push him away. “Since we don’t lie to each other—you stink. And I mean literally.”

  Leo laughs and takes another step backward. “Oyasumi.”

  “Yeah. Good night to you too.” I leave my heart and my dignity behind in the Matsudas’ walk-in refrigerator.