“What competition?” My dad glanced over at me.
Rose looked at me apologetically. “Sorry, I know you wanted to keep it a secret, but it could solve everything, right?”
A tiny flare of hope shot up into my chest. Maybe Rose was right. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise, but…”
“Clara.” My dad’s voice was short with impatience. “What’s this about?”
I looked at Rose and she nodded, her eyes supportive. I took a deep breath. “Well, there’s this food truck competition on August eleventh—”
“I know what competition you’re talking about,” my dad interrupted, his voice clipped. “And no, I don’t want to enter that.”
“Why not?” both Rose and I yelped.
He tossed the bell pepper scraps into a compost bowl. “Because. It’s a circus. I don’t have time for it.”
Since when did my dad have this attitude? I frowned at him. “What? What do you mean? What could possibly be therisk? If you win, you win ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!”
“So what, Clara? Do you know how many trucks enter that thing? It’s nuts, the chances of winning are so slim, and I don’t want to go through that headache. Plus, the deadline to enter probably passed.”
I felt Rose’s eyeballs digging into my skull. “I already entered us,” I whispered.
“What!” Pai yelled, making me startle and drop the spoon I was using onto the floor.
Rose immediately tried to de-escalate the situation. Something she probably learned in the Young UN Club or something. “Clara wanted it to be a nice surprise if we won, Adrian! It was—”
“I don’t care! You did thiswithout my permission! Are you two out of your minds?”
The silence that followed was like a vacuum—the air sucked out of the truck, my ears ringing with the absolute voidness of it all. Betrayal and disappointment were so heavy in my chest that I could barely breathe. It was unfamiliar, and I didn’t like it.
“You okay, Clara?” Rose asked quietly, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. No, I wasn’t okay. And I wasn’t okay with not being okay. My emotional investment in this truck came crashing down on me, as if to say, “Ha-ha, this is what happens when you care.” I felt suffocated. By my dad’s reaction tome trying to do something nice. By Rose’s concern. By this stupid truck.
I tossed my cap onto the counter. “See you guys later.” My voice shook, and it took all my willpower to not burst into tears as I stepped out of the truck.
“Clara!”
I ignored my dad’s voice and walked rapidly toward the craft fair exit, and kept walking until the fair was far behind me, my face hot with tears.
***
Feeling disoriented, I looked around and noticed that I was headed west on Wilshire. My feet kept moving—past traffic and the big office buildings.
Before I knew it, I was at the La Brea Tar Pits. I hadn’t been here since I was a kid. There had been more than one field trip to this ancient, bubbling mass of tar sitting smack in the middle of the city. I entered the museum grounds, the scent of sulfur hitting me as I walked by the lake of tar and the expansive lawns. When I stepped inside the museum itself, the cool, circulated air hit me. Air-conditioning in LA was almost healing; it made every place feel the same, a guarantee of something familiar.
I didn’t move for a few minutes, letting the air cool off the fine layer of sweat on my face. Letting time slow everything down—my thoughts, my pulse, my anger.
After a few seconds, I paid for a ticket and entered the main exhibit hall. There were big informational displays about the lastIce Age, showing dire-wolf skulls and animatronic woolly mammoths roaming the earth. Reading about long-extinct animals made me feel insignificant, which calmed me down.
My phone vibrated. I’d been getting texts since I started walking, but this time it was a phone call.
Hamlet. I picked it up.
“Hi.”
“Clara? Are you okay?”
“Sure.”
