Amidst The Stars

New Year's Eve

  "I can't believe it!" Leon exclaimed furiously for possibly the millionth time. "Greg said he never invited me, even though he asked me to come to his house for a playdate a week ago!"

  Though he had absolutely no clue who this Greg boy was, or when he'd invited Leon to a playdate on New Year's Eve, Vicente nodded patiently as he listened. Leon and his friend had had a long, enraged phone call a while ago, and it ended with his usually level-headed brother slamming the phone back on the receiver so hard that everyone in the apartment had heard it. Even their parents, who had been engrossed in their own loud discussion — well, their argument — had popped their heads out of their room to check on Leon.

  He paused for air, and Vicente took the chance to ask, "did your classmate say why you couldn't go to the playdate?"

  "No!" And Leon was back to ranting. "Greg invited every boy in the class to go to his house, and it was going to be awesome. Did you know, he has a WHOLE bookshelf of comic books, and an X-Box, and a Nintendo DS. And now everyone's going to get to play with that stuff, and I won't."

  His frustration was understandable — Leon had always been well-liked, but why would he suddenly get excluded from such a big event without reason? While thinking about that, Vicente grabbed the ratty old comic book that Leon had clutched in his fist before it could crumple up even more. "Well, look on the bright side. Since you can't go to the playdate, at least you can spend time with us."

  "That's not a bright side!"

  "I'll remember that the next time you need help with your homework." He held the comic book high above his head as Leon jumped for it. "And if you want your comic back, you can't try to destroy it."

  "Why do you care, you don't read them!"

  "Because," Vicente continued, standing on his bed and rising on tiptoes, "you only have five of these. If you go on treating all your books like this, they'll turn into waste paper for Yao to wrap cabbage in. Can you imagine your comic books being used to wrap cabbage?" He added at the end, "and since we don't have pocket money, you won't be able to new ones."

  He jumped again for the comic book. "Gimme the book!"

  He jumped, too, keeping the comic away from Leon's hands by a hair. "Only if you'll be nice to it." The whole thing was petty, and, having turned ten just a few days ago, Vicente ought not to act like so, but he couldn't resist being silly.

  "Just gimme the book, you dumb, stupid, heck-ing — "

  The door swung open and Yao stepped inside, looking frazzled. "Jia Lin, Jia Long, can you help — "

  He stared at the brothers, who froze. Vicente let go of the comic. It landed on Leon's head with a soft thwack.

  "Jia Lin, Jia Long," Yao repeated, pretending he didn't see Leon flip Vicente an obscene hand gesture, "I'm making almond cookies. Can you help me?"

  "Of course."

  "No way."

  Leon stared at Vicente as though he'd grown five heads. He stared back. "What, is this the first day you've known me?"

  He jumped off the bed, careful not to accidentally step on Leon's comic, and followed Yao to the kitchen. An enormous bowl of almonds was sitting on the kitchen counter, as were a stick of butter and a bag of flour. Yao bent down to pull a strange contraption out of the drawer. It looked a little like a juicer, but with blades in place of the juicing tip.

  "We don't have an actual food processor, so this will have to do." Yao opened up the top of the contraption and dropped a handful of almonds inside. "Pull the string on top until the almonds inside are all ground up," he instructed.