Catboy - Eric Walters [7]
“So Hindi is for Rupinder and Raj and Emal.”
“Not Emal. He’s from Pakistan, not India, so his family speaks Urdu.”
“Would Mr. Singh from the junkyard speak Hindi?” I asked.
“Hindi and at least one other language, but maybe a couple, besides English. Most people speak two or three languages.”
“I speak a little French,” I said, feeling defensive.
“From what I can tell from French class, you speak very little French,” he said.
I would have argued with him if it wasn’t true.
“Okay, so let me say this in English,” I said. “Thanks for standing up to those guys with me.”
“What choice did I have?”
“You could have taken off when he offered to let you go,” I said.
“Friends stick together.”
“And you’re saying you didn’t at least think about taking him up on his offer and walking away?” I asked.
“Not a chance. There was no way I was going to walk away.” He paused. “I was giving serious thought to running away, fast, like a Korean rocket, leaving behind a trail of flames like in the roadrunner cartoons.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t.”
“There was no way I was going anywhere after that rickshaw comment. There’s nothing wrong with being Chinese, or anybody else, but I hate it when people assume we’re all the same. Or worse, they assume I’m not Canadian because of the way I look. I’m just as Canadian as you,” he exclaimed.
I held up my hands. “No argument from me. You speak Canadian better than I do.”
He laughed and gave me a slap on the back.
“That guy wasn’t the brightest,” I said. What I didn’t say was that the first time I saw Simon, I thought he was Chinese and I was surprised by his perfect English.
“You know, you shouldn’t talk about anybody not being too bright,” Simon said. “You were ready to get beaten up for a bunch of stupid cats. How smart is that?”
“They needed our help,” I said.
“And we almost needed the help of a team of trained doctors. Try not to do that again, at least until I become a doctor.”
“You want to be a doctor?”
“I’m Korean,” he said and shrugged. “I’m expected to become a doctor or a lawyer, or something with a lot of education where I can make a lot of money and make my parents proud.”
“You’d be a pretty good doctor,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“Not that I’d ever let you take care of me, unless of course I got hit in the head with a rock or something,” I said.
“Let’s hope only the doctor part of that comes true.”
Five
The elevator shuddered to a stop, and the door slid open. The floor of the hallway was slightly lower than the floor of the elevator.
“See you in twenty,” Simon said as he stepped off.
“Make it thirty,” I said.
He put a hand against the door to stop it from closing. “How about twenty-five minutes?”
“How about thirty-five? I’m really hungry.”
“Okay, make it thirty. I’ll meet you on the court. Bring your ball,” Simon said.
“Deal.”
The door skidded closed, leaving me alone. My stomach lurched as the elevator rose. I pushed the button for the eleventh floor again. The number didn’t light up, just one more thing in the elevator that didn’t work right. I looked over at the panel with the alarm button. If the elevator got stuck and I was trapped in here, that’s what I was supposed to push.
The elevator came to a stop, and the door opened. The elevator was an inch lower than the floor of the hallway. I jumped out. I hated these elevators. They made me nervous. Simon had told me stories about people being stuck in them, sometimes for hours. That would be awful. What if you had to go to the washroom? Maybe that explained the smell in there.
This building was so different from the little house we had lived in back in our old town. There were more people in this apartment complex than there had been in our whole town. I knew my mother didn’t like this building any more than I did, but it was all we could afford for now. The city was expensive. We had moved to the city so my mom could have more career opportunities. In the future she hoped to make more money, but right now things were tight.
We were really moving back to the city. This was where