Chapter 3:
I told the girls to stay outside as I walked in the door.
"I'm home!" I called. For a minute no one answered. Then I heard a faint call from the kitchen, probably Darry. "I brought some friends home with me!"
"Ok! Come on in."
I called out to June and Shing Hwa, and they followed me into the house. As soon as we were all there, Darry came out of the kitchen. I think he was making pasta, because his shirt was stained tomato red. He looked at June for a minute, squinting as if he could see right.
"Is that," he began, then paused. "Is that June?"
"Darry!" June cried. Darry practically picked her up to hug her.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Did I miss something? You know her?"
"Well yeah," Darry answered, releasing my new cousin. "I met her a long time ago. We never told you?"
"She just came up to me and told me she was my cousin," I said. "I knew nothing."
"Oh," Darry said. "Woops. Well, June is a year younger than Soda. She came to visit once before you were born. Soda doesn't know her either."
"Doesn't know who?" Soda stumbled sleepily down the stairs.
"Your cousin," Darry said, real loud. I don't know why, 'cause we were right there.
Soda fell onto the couch. All of us started laughing, even the ever-so-shy Shing Hwa. That was when Darry noticed the Chinese girl.
"Who's this?" he asked, looking at her hard.
"This is my friend Shing Hwa," June said, stepping over next to the girl. "She's here from China by herself, so she sticks with me."
"Well, come on in!" Darry said. He seemed extremely excited.
"What cousin?" Soda asked, still mighty groggy.
"Ya know what?" I said before this could get any more discombobulated. "Why don't we start from the beginning and review what just happened. Please." This last word was directed at Darry, whom I was looking at pretty harshly.
"Ok," Darry started. "Everybody sit down. This might take a while." We all sat on the couch and looked at him expectantly.
"Well," Darry began nervously, "When Soda was 4, June and her parents came to visit for a weekend. Soda was sick that whole weekend, but they stayed anyway. That's why Soda doesn't know her. Anyway, after that they went back to their home and when Mom and Dad died, we kind of lost all contact with them."
"So what are you doing here?" Soda asked. "With a Chinese girl at your side and no parents?"
"Uh…" June looked at Shing Hwa uneasily. "Well, I don't have parents anymore. They died in a car crash last week."
Everyone looked at each other for a good few minutes. Eventually Darry stood up and called Soda and me into the kitchen. We followed, kind of scared of what he was going to say.
"Guys," he said when we got there, "what do you say if we ask them to stay here?"
"Both of them?" I asked.
"Yeah." He looked at me, almost startled. "You can't leave a girl who barely speaks English out on the streets by herself."
"Awesome!" Soda said. "It'll be like we have a sister!"
"I guess," I said. "I mean, there's no harm in it. And she is our cousin."
So Darry went and asked June and Shing Hwa to stay with us, and she hugged him again. I looked at Soda.
"You know what we gotta do now?" he asked me. I shook my head. "We gotta send'em to school." Oh great. That would be an interesting experience. And I'd probably have to do it.