Excerpt from The Silence that Binds Us by Joanna Ho, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Auntie Wu practically exploded out of her skin she was so dang proud. My mom clasped her hands, a speechless smile spread across her face. She never looked at me that way, a lantern glowing with pride. That look was always saved for Celeste.

"May, What will you be doing this summer?" asked Auntie Wu.

The smell of jasmine wafted beneath my nose as Celeste looked down and refilled teacups around the table before pouring her own. I looked at Auntie Wu and said lamely, "Oh, uh, I don't really know."

Obviously, not the right answer.

"May is an amazing writer," Danny chimed in, always there to step in for me. Then he grinned. "She's also a pretty dope break-dancer."

I choked on a chunk of beef but let Danny keep talking. He continued, "Back in the day, she thought she was going to become a member of the Jabbawockeez, and she spent all her time working on her moves."

He glanced at me quickly and gave me a lightning-fast wink. I smiled back, grateful for his deflection. He knew I hated the sensation of other people's eyeballs resting on my face, watching me. Sizing me up. When people look at me, I feel like their eyes highlight all my deficiencies. I hate that feeling so much I almost failed seventh-grade English because I refused to give the final presentation in front of my class. I only passed because Ms. Johnson let me redo the presentation alone after school. I've gotten a little braver since then, but not much.

"Danny used to practice with May in her room," said my dad, bobbing his head in a terrible mimicry of our dance moves.

"Whoa, please stop, Bà. She clearly didn't get her dance genes from you," said Danny. My dad socked him in the shoulder. Everyone laughed as the conversation skipped right over me.

My mom collected bowls and chopsticks as she cleared the table. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. The hippo at her side shaking its head at me said it all.

2

After dinner, my dad perched atop a ladder, changing the lightbulbs in the entryway. My dad has a thing with lightbulbs. If he sees them on sale, he buys a box, or two, or twelve. We have a small closet in the upstairs hallway filled with bulbs of all shapes and sizes. LED, fluorescent, halogen, neon, CFL, incandescent—he has them all. He changes lightbulbs around the house the way people watch their favorite shows: regularly scheduled, with an occasional bingefest. I swear, his dream is to make a wall full of lightbulbs in our living room.

I squeezed his big toe and called up, "There is a terrible stink in the house, Bà. Didn't you wash your feet before people came over?"

"Foot washing is for the weak. Real men have stinky feet," he said. I pinched my nose and scrunched my face. I had a sneaking suspicion he posted up by the door to catch me heading to my room. He knew I was bugged because of dinner, and lightbulbs tended to get changed near me when I wanted privacy.

"You almost done?" I asked.

"Just your room left," he answered cheerily as he climbed carefully down the ladder. His lean frame was softening at the edges.

I poked the soft roll near his belly button.

"That's called dad-bod," he said. "Your brother started it, and you made it grow."

"It's the best pillow." I grinned.

"Ai-yah. It's not that big yet." He walked off in a huff. My dad had a little swagger in his step, even when he was stalking up the stairs in his socks. Signs of his childhood on the streets of Chinatown clung to him like cigarette smoke. He loved siu yeh, a midnight meal. He only ate egg tarts from Golden Gate Bakery on Grant.

He always sat with his back to a wall where he could see all the entryways to a room. I asked him about this once, and he changed the subject.

He was already messing with my lights when I got upstairs.

"Yam, pass me that bulb," my dad said, balanced precariously in the air, one foot on my bed and another on the bookshelf. Yam is May spelled backward. My dad thinks he is a comedian.

Excerpted from The Silence that Binds Us by Joanna Ho. Copyright © 2022 by Joanna Ho. Excerpted by permission of HarperTeen. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.