Chapter 95: The Two Great Powder Kegs

Rumors had soured Daniel’s mood, and he had vanished as well.

At noon, Su Mu had planned to press ahead, settle the price in one stroke, and take the goods directly from the supplier so they could be delivered to the school tomorrow or the day after. But now things had changed. Since the donation came from Daniel’s father, the chance of the other side breaking the agreement was small, yet Su Mu still intended to clear things up in front of Daniel before doing anything else.

Li Pingan knew Su Mu was in a foul mood, so he dragged him to a Chinese restaurant in an alley not far from Stanford University. Having just biked with Su Mu, he was panting as he said, “So? Yesterday you said there wasn’t a Chinese restaurant around here, and today I found one. Which city in California could possibly have no Chinese restaurants? You’re looking down on us Chinese way too much. Who would pass up a chance to make money?”

“I’ll ride back. I’m sweaty all over,” Su Mu said. He had worried earlier that through high school, maybe even through college, he would have to live on pizza, hot dogs, and sandwiches; hearing that there was a Chinese restaurant nearby improved his mood at once.

The food was only passable, a meal just good enough to get by on. Three dishes and a soup came to a little over twenty dollars. It was not the sort of strange, altered Chinese food that had lost its flavor altogether. The owner even prepared the dishes specially for the two of them, though the taste was a little heavy and so spicy that Su Mu’s mouth swelled up. The owner was quite warmhearted, and they would probably come again next time, but they would definitely have to ask him to go easy on the chilies.

On the way home, Su Mu dropped coins into a phone booth and dialed Daniel’s number. Daniel had a mobile phone of his own, and Su Mu knew the number. All he heard was a steady ringing tone, but no one answered. When he tried again a little later, the phone was already switched off.

That made Su Mu’s heart sink. He guessed Daniel had probably been provoked by what the classmates had said, and was deliberately avoiding him.

Su Mu could endure the whispers at school, but that did not mean Daniel could. The guy had grown up without friends and had always been a little odd; it was hard to guess what he might do.

Li Pingan stood outside the phone booth and asked, “What now? Why don’t we go to his house? It’s almost dark, and it might rain. If we’re going, we’d better hurry.”

After a brief thought, Su Mu shook his head. “No need. Maybe I’ll see him tomorrow.”

“What kind of friend disappears at the first sign of trouble? He was fine just last night, and now he turns his face away the moment something happens. Don’t be angry. You’ve only known him for a little over a month; if you stop hanging out with him, that’s fine too.”

The night before, when they had gone to Daniel’s house, Li Pingan had spoken very little. He did not get along with Daniel’s temperament and had nothing to talk about.

In truth, Su Mu was not the same kind of person as Daniel either. It was only that Daniel came looking for him to play so often that, over time, they had become half-friends. Su Mu nodded and sighed. “If we’re being honest, I dragged him into this. We’ll see later. Come on, let’s go back first...”

“No, first come with me and ask about something. Get the price settled. If the business can still go on, then let’s finish this one deal. I’m not making money off his father’s pocket anyway. Think of it as gaining some experience.”

Li Pingan did not mind. Coming to Menlo Park was like going on a trip for him, and everything depended on Su Mu’s arrangements.

*****

On Tuesday, Daniel did not appear all day. When Su Mu passed by the classroom where Daniel was supposed to be, there was an empty seat.

Yesterday the rumor had spread only in a small circle; today, almost the entire school knew. News that Su Mu was "gay" had spread everywhere. Many people did not even know who Su Mu was, and when they talked about him, they referred to him as “that Chinese kid who just got a full scholarship.” Wherever he went, people looked at him strangely.

It was unrealistic to explain himself to each and every one of them. As the old saying went, a single rumor repeated by three people could make a tiger out of nothing.

Su Mu could not be bothered wasting words on these people. Even if he explained, it would be useless. Unless he staged something in front of the whole school with some girl to prove he was a real man, people would still talk. And even if he really did that, some might probably say he was “into both men and women.”

The best way was to solve the problem at its source. As long as those few girls with the worst reputations were made to prove they had lied, Su Mu and Daniel could clear their names completely.

No matter how mature he seemed, Su Mu was still only a teenage boy. Being looked at through colored glasses made him furious and miserable.

He found those girls when he had time, and as he had expected, they knew full well that they were framing him, yet they had absolutely no intention of helping explain anything. Because once they admitted it, that would prove they had lied before, which would be like slapping their own faces. No one wanted to do that.

This was a form of silent bullying on campus, and in America it was especially severe. Whether at good schools or bad ones, it happened at almost every school, from first grade all the way to college. Many students experienced it, and some were so changed by it that it directly altered the course of their lives.

The shooting at Castellar Middle School a few years earlier had also begun with a student who suffered bullying at school, lost his mind, stole his father’s handgun, and brought it to campus to take revenge. The result was a tragedy with three dead and five injured.

Films often showed students having their heads shoved into toilets, or being locked in bathrooms, along with scenes of discrimination and mockery. Those were not just movie scenes; they were a true reflection of American schools, happening right beside everyone.

For the sake of its reputation, the school often helped suppress such incidents, and in the end most of them quietly disappeared. People always talked about how excellent American education was, but they never mentioned this side of it. For people of color especially, America was by no means the ideal place to give a child a proper education.

If Su Mu had been as weak as Daniel, he would probably have kept quiet and continued enduring it, letting classmates treat him with cold eyes and ridicule.

Was he weak? Of course not.

As the holiday drew to a close, in order to help Old Lady Lin get her relief money, he had even handed out flyers and joined others in protest, planning to make a scene right in front of Los Angeles City Hall.

This time as well, before the first class even began, he went to his Black math teacher and explained what he was facing. He successfully got permission to miss two periods, then strolled over to the principal’s office.

In the early nineteen-eighties, an ordinary stockbroker in New York could earn fifty thousand dollars a year, while a mechanic who repaired airplanes might make forty thousand. The Su family had four mouths to feed. If things went well, they might earn around twenty thousand dollars; if things went badly, their income would be only a little over ten thousand. With three working adults, that was all they could bring in.

Su Mu had grown up in Chinatown’s slums, and his way of thinking was different from everyone else’s. Put crudely, he was a poor kid raised in the mud of Chinatown; put kindly, he was a poor kid with ideals and ambitions.

After these recent insults, he had calmly decided to throw caution to the wind. If he wanted a name for himself, he would earn it himself. He planned to drag those girls and the school into the matter. Drawing on what he had learned from past incidents, Su Mu understood that the more one tried to hide and explain, the uglier it became. Better to break the window open and let everyone see the truth clearly.

He knocked on the wooden door of the old principal’s office. When he heard Principal Batistuta say, “Come in,” he turned the handle and entered. Before the other man could speak, he said directly, “Principal, Daniel and I have run into trouble. It’s not about business. Someone is actually saying the two of us are homosexuals. We are clearly just friends, and both of us are perfectly normal in that regard.”

Under Principal Batistuta’s stunned gaze, he continued, “I already know who is spreading the rumor. I feel that I have suffered serious mental harm, so I plan to sue them in court.”

“Do you know about the corruption case at the Los Angeles Social Welfare Bureau last time? I was the one who helped those poor old people get their relief money back. I do not need your lawyer’s help, and I know reporters at the Los Angeles Times as well. In the end, I hope to get a statement printed in the paper to clear up the insult I’ve suffered. Just because I’m Asian does not mean I can be bullied with impunity.”

At once, the words homosexual and racial discrimination flashed through Principal Batistuta’s mind. They were two of the biggest powder kegs in America in the nineteen-eighties, and no company or institution wanted to be tainted by scandals connected to them.

And now, with the Los Angeles Times, the largest newspaper on the West Coast, involved, the old principal’s vision suddenly went dark. He could already imagine just how enormous this trouble was—enormous enough to ruin the reputation of Menlo Park Private High School.