Read Online Nothing But the Truth by Justina Chen - Free Book Online

practiced violin harder, you could be like Emily. You practice two hours tomorrow.”
    There are four families and nine kids in The Potluck Group. One lucky one, Emily the Virtuoso, has already escaped to college. Sitting across the living room from me are her little sisters, the China Dolls. They’re identical twins a year olderthan me whose claim to potluck fame is their glossy, jet black hair and porcelain skin. My whitened skin gets no such looks of envy. I’ve cheated by adding white to my gene pool whereas the China Dolls are pure-breeds, superior for producing such light skin on their own.
    They are doing an extreme makeover on The Baby, the three-year-old who just started Saturday morning Chinese school, poor
bo-po-mo-fo
thing. They’ve already painted her fingernails, and have moved on to her toes. I tuck my long, bare feet under my legs. My feet are at least twice the size of the China Dolls’ tiny ones. Before anyone arrived tonight, I stashed my size ten sandals in the closet so I wouldn’t hear their “
Wow!
Patty, your shoes are so big!” when they placed their child-sized ones next to my dragon boats the way they usually do.
    With a few deft twists of The Baby’s wispy hair, the China Dolls convert
Mei-Mei
into Bebe, complete with a sophisticated up-do. In less than five minutes, The Baby accomplishes what I haven’t been able to do in six years: be inducted into the China Doll private sorority, an exclusive club only for the petite, beautiful and all-Asian.
    “This would have been cute for the last school dance,” says China Doll One, taking The Baby’s hand and twirling her around.
    China Doll Two looks at me curiously. “What did you wear to yours?”
    They are so lucky, those China Dolls. Their dad is a second-generationer, meaning he was born in America. The fallout of that good luck is that the China Dolls can wear makeup, dress in the latest fashions and even hear acompliment or two straight from his mouth, if not their mom’s. It’s why the China Dolls have such, shall we say, healthy self-esteems.
    While I try to figure out a way to be honest yet save face, I look away to where Anne is studying a math book, not paying attention to what the China Dolls are doing to her baby sister. What a geek-and-a-half. School’s over, summer’s begun. But even Anne somehow convinced her first-generation parents to let her go to a school dance with some hunk from another school. So that makes me a double geek. I’ve never even been asked.
    “I didn’t go,” I mumble, reaching new lows on the Social Scale.
    “Really?” shrieks China Doll Two so loud, she could have gone vocal cord to vocal cord with her mom, The Gossip Lady. “But Mama told us that you can go to dances now.”
    “Yeah, but only with Taiwanese guys.”
    “But you’re white!” says China Doll One.
    My cheeks flame. Whatever whiteness there is on my skin burns to a crisp. I am too white to be one of the China Dolls, not white enough for Steve Kosanko.
    China Doll One giggles. “Well, we can only date Taiwanese guys, too, right, Grace?”
    “Right,” says China Doll Two, grinning secretively at her twin.
    Anne, the other outcast shunned from the China Dolls Club for her flat seaweed hair and stumpy legs, looks up from her math book. “I think Asian guys are cute.”
    At this, China Doll One snorts. “Like, when have you ever dated an Asian guy?”
    “Like, when have you?” asks Anne.
    Panic wrinkles the China Dolls’ foreheads, making them look like overgrown Shar-Pei puppies. Had they known lines pleated their precious skin, the China Dolls would have sprinted home in their tiny sandals to slather on a mud mask. China Doll Two demands, “How do you know?”
    “Know what?” I ask.
    “Duh! They date white guys,” says Anne.
    “White guys?” I blurt out. Instantly, my heart shrinks a couple of sizes as I remember my white guy who betrayed me.
    “Shhh!” The China Dolls cast anxious looks at the living room, where