I Swear I'll Make It Up to You Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    I ran into the house and changed into my swim trunks as fast as I could. I had no idea where we were going, but I didn’t want them to leave without me. I grabbed two towels and ran back out.
    â€œChuong, where’s your bikini?” Lon said when I hopped in the back.
    â€œUnder my pants, man,” Chuong said, blowing smoke at him and grinning. “White bikini. No top.”
    Lon backed out of the driveway, then peeled out, the bald rear tires of the little truck smoking. That day he led us to the lone good thing I ever found in New Hampshire: the rope swing.
    The rest of that summer, Chuong and I went to the rope swing almost every day. We’d beg a ride from my mom, ride our bikes, or even walk the couple of miles to it. The highway wound through the woods, past a swampy finger of Powwow Pond and several houses set back from the road, to an old arched bridge spanning some railroad tracks. Walking down the railroad tracks, hopping from railroad tie to railroad tie that oozed tar and stank of creosote because the sharp rocks were hard on bare feet, you came to a tiny concrete culvert spanning a deep, brisk current connecting the two halves of Powwow Pond. To the left was the rope swing—a long cotton rope descending from the top of one scraggly pine leaning out over the water with tiny wooden steps built onto it.
    The first kid had the unenviable task of entering the water with no fanfare and swinging the rope up to the second kid, waiting at the top of the tree. For maximum swing, you jumped out to the right and the rope whipped you in a delicious arc down and around and then up, up, up, and that was where you let go, at the apogee of your trajectory. Chuong was smaller than me, but he was muscled like an acrobat. He was fearless: cannonballing headfirst, executing perfect, unlikely swan dives, doing spins and flips and backflips that terminated in tidy, poetic dives. Lon was daring and athletic, and I got better with practice, but neither of us could rival Chuong for hang time. Each of us jumped, each of us swung, each of us splashed into the water. But only Chuong had a fourth phase between the arc and the impact when time slowed to a crawl, when his wet, black hair spun off his head like spikes and the setting sun sparkled off his tightly muscled limbs, when no one was misunderstanding his broken English or making fun of his accent or kickinghim out or telling him to go back to China. For a long, honeyed moment, he was flying.

    One night at the end of the summer, after my mom picked Chuong up from his dishwashing job, we crawled out his window onto the roof to smoke cigarettes. We had often stayed up late together in New Mexico, talking. Chuong told me about his mother, his brother, Chin, and his father, a convicted murderer who had abandoned them when Chuong was just eight. Occasionally, he cried. His voice didn’t quaver and his face didn’t move, but tears fell from his eyes, his only concession to sadness as he sucked on his cigarette.
    Chuong didn’t cry that night on the roof or even talk much, just stared grimly off into the night. We sat and smoked in silence. I didn’t push him. I knew he missed his family, missed his friends in Albuquerque. He hated his job. He hated New Hampshire. I knew he was getting sick of me.

    My dad found a couple of lukewarm beers in Chuong’s room. When he tried to take them, Chuong pushed him or maybe took a halfhearted swing at him. It was a big deal.
    That night, there was a serious discussion on the back deck. My father hectored Chuong. My mother defended him. Tatyana, Tashina, and I were even asked to weigh in. I was annoyed at Chuong, but only because he’d outgrown me and because we now had to sit through this whole ordeal.
    Everyone took a turn speaking except the accused. He kept his head down, never looked up, only spoke when addressed directly, and then just uttered a barely audible yes or no. Finally, my father