Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Read Online Free

there was a new face, though because it was turned toward a stack of beet-stained serving trays, he couldn't see much of it. But it was clearly a girl, probably in his grade, about his height; she was hidden behind long bangs and the black strands of hair that framed her face. She sprayed the trays with hot, steaming water and put them in the dish rack, one by one. As she slowly turned toward Henry, he noticed her slender cheekbones, her perfect skin, smooth and lacking in the freckles that mottled the faces of the other girls at the school.
    But most of all, he noticed her soft chestnut-brown eyes. For a brief moment Henry swore he smelled something, like jasmine, sweet and mysterious, lost in the greasy odors of the kitchen.

    "Henry, this is Keiko--she just transferred to Rainier, but she's from your part of town." Mrs. Beatty, the lunch lady, seemed to regard this new girl as another piece of kitchen machinery, tossing her an apron, shoving her next to Henry behind the serving counter. "Heck, I bet you two are related, aren't you?" How many times had he heard that one?

    Mrs. Beatty wasted no time and fished out a Zippo lighter, lit a cigarette one-handed, and wandered off with her lunch. "Call me when you're all done," she said.

    Like most boys his age, Henry liked girls a lot more than he could bring himself to admit--or actually show to anyone, especially around other boys, who all tried to act cool, as if girls were some strange new species. So, while he did what came naturally, trying his best to show indifference, he was secretly elated to have a friendly face in the kitchen. "I'm Henry Lee. From South King Street."

    The peculiar girl whispered, "I'm Keiko."

    Henry wondered why he hadn't seen her around the neighborhood before; maybe her family had just come over. "What kind of name is Kay-Ko?"

    There was a pause. Then the lunch bell rang. Doors were slamming down the hall.

    She took her long black hair in equal handfuls and tied it with a ribbon. "Keiko Okabe," she said, tying on her apron and waiting for a reaction.

    Henry was dumbfounded. She was Japanese. With her hair pulled back, he could see it clearly. And she looked embarrassed. What was she doing here?

    The sum total of Henry's Japanese friends happened to be a number that rhymed with hero. His father wouldn't allow it. He was a Chinese nationalist and had been quite a firebrand in his day, according to Henry's mother. In his early teens, his father had played host to the famed revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat-sen when he visited Seattle to raise money to help the fledgling Kuomintang army fight the Manchus. First through war bonds, then he'd helped them open up an actual office. Imagine that, an office for the Chinese army,

    right down the street. It was there that Henry's father kept busy raising thousands of dollars to fight the Japanese back home. His home, not mine, Henry thought. The attack on Pearl Harbor had been terrible and unexpected, sure, but it paled when compared with the bombings of Shanghai or the sacking of Nanjing-- according to his father anyway.
    Henry, on the other hand, couldn't even find Nanjing on a map.

    But he still didn't have a single Japanese friend, even though there were twice as many Japanese as Chinese kids his age, and they lived just a few streets over. Henry caught himself staring at Keiko, whose nervous eyes seemed to recognize his reaction.

    "I'm American," she offered in defense.

    He didn't know what to say, so he focused on the hordes of hungry kids who were coming. "We'd better get busy."

    They took the lids off their steamer trays, recoiling at the smell, looking at each other in disgust. Inside was a brown, spaghetti-like mess. Keiko looked like she wanted to throw up. Henry, who was used to the putrid stench, didn't even flinch. He simply showed her how to dish it up with an old ice-cream scoop as freckled boys in crew cuts, even the younger ones, said, "Look, the Chink brought his girlfriend" and "More chop