Read Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet for Free Online Page B

that?” Grandma White says. “Isn't that nice? She's excited already.”
    “I told you she would be, Mama,” Ana's mother says, and pats Grandma White on the shoulder.
    Ana can't help feeling happy. “Thanks, everybody. This is really cool.” She looks around the room, smiling. Everybody smiles back, even Nai Nai, although her smile is a little crooked. Ana shrugs inwardly. At least nobody's shouting.
    “So, um, shouldn't we get cooking?” she asks, glancing at the clock. Three hours and counting. Her heart skips a beat.
    Everybody moves at once.
    “Do you want a sandwich, Ana?” her dad asks. “We had some PB&Js earlier.”
    “I don't think I can eat just yet,” Ana says. Maybe it's butterflies left over from this morning's speech, or maybe it's Jamie's fault, but the thought of wasting one more precious peaceful family minute to have a sandwich kills any idea of eating before dinner.
    “I'll start the dough for the pot stickers.” Ana goes to the sink and washes her hands.
    Her mother grips her shoulder. “You want to shower and change first?”
    Ana kisses her mom on the cheek. “Right. Thanks, Mom. I'll hurry.”
    She runs for the stairs, cap in hand, brushing past the paintings and family photos her mother has hanging on the staircase wall.
    “Stop running!” Nai Nai shouts after her. “Always rushing around like a horse, tromp tromp tromp. You are not a horse!”

7
    A na collapses on her bed. After a second, she gets up and locks her door. Swapping her dress for an oversized T-shirt, she lies back down, gazing up at the white popcorn ceiling. Sometimes at night, when the light from the street comes in just right, the ceiling twinkles like a galaxy of tiny stars.
    Right now, it's just white with tacky flecks of silver here and there.
    Ana's cell phone rings. She lets it ring twice before she realizes it's Chelsea's ring tone. “Hello?”
    “Hey, need to escape yet?”
    Ana smiles and relaxes again. “Nope. Surprisingly quiet down there so far, but I'm hiding in my room. I've got to shower. My gown totally speckled me.”
    “I told you it would stain.”
    “But you didn't take out your little sewing scissors and cut it off me like my grandmother did.”
    “What? That's crazy.”
    “It was like her pocket version of the Jaws of Life. But hey, everything's cool with my folks as far as dinner goes. So it might even be under control. Still, come early if you can. I totally need help picking out what to wear.”
    “Alrighty. See you at six-ish.”
    “Bye.”
    Ana hangs up and rummages through her closet. Chelsea's the one with fashion sense. Ana gives up on choosing a dress. Work clothes now, adorable dress later.
    Ana's room is the same shade of white it was when her parents bought the house after Sammy was born, but the walls are covered in music posters and pictures of places where Ana's been, or wants to go. There's a photo of a jazz quartet under the wrought-iron balconies of the French Quarter in New Orleans, a postcard of the New York skyline, a Chinese watercolor of strangely humped mountains over a river. Her mother claims it came from the village where Ye Ye was born, but Ana can't picture that. It's the only one in a proper frame, hung up with an actual nail. Beneath it, Ana's saxophone lies in the corner, nestled in its case, waiting for her to join her new high school's band.
    “Enough lollygagging,” she tells herself. She lays a pair of shorts and a polo shirt out on the powder blue bedspread and pulls out the box of hair dye. She tucks it into the towel she keeps on the back of the door for her hair, and slips down the hall to the shower.

    Ana sits on the edge of the tub, reading the label. Downstairs, she can hear her dad dragging the extra chairs from the dining room into the backyard. No fighting or screaming yet. She relaxes a little and reads the directions again.
    “ ‘Apply to damp hair.’ Well, I've certainly got that. ‘Do not shampoo hair first. Leave in for ten