How Andy’s Secret Changed His Life Forever

Fiction tells the truth we often can't hear in any other way.

At just six foot, Andy Wei stood eye-to-eye with most of his college freshman classmates, and when he and three friends gathered at a local lakeside on a cool September evening, his charming personality combined with his natural good looks set the stage for a prosperous start to the next stage of his academic career.

Bringing to bear all the confidence of a guy with an indulgent mother and a proud, successful father, he happily paid for enough beer to keep him and his companions well-lubricated into the wee hours of the night. As he set the heavy cooler on the wooden picnic table, he looked around at the other guys, all with empty hands, and snorted. Somebody had better have brought snacks.

Josh, a heavy-set, copper-skinned, nineteen-year-old who struggled to get to his classes on time, swished a beer out of the cooler’s icy depths, plunked down, and crossed his thick legs on the grassy embankment facing the lake. He grinned as Andy returned to his car, dragged a green and blue striped blanket from the trunk, and tossed it haphazardly on the ground. Josh raised one eyebrow. “What do you carry an old blanket around for? Got a girl to cuddle with on date nights?”

Andy grabbed a beer from the cooler, twisted it open, and took a healthy swig. Then he kicked part of the blanket straight and stretched out on it. “Habit. My mom put it in there, saying I might need it if the car ever broke down on a winter night.”

Leif, a tall man even by Scandinavian standards, with a thin, uncertain voice, snatched a beer, kicked off his shoes, and found a spot on the blanket with plenty of distance to respect personal space. A beer dangled between his fingers though he didn’t seem inclined to pop the top just yet. “Cool mom. Though overprotective like most of them.”

Roy, the shortest guy among them with the whitest blond hair Andy had ever seen, returned to his car, rummaged around the back seat and finally pulled out a bulging plastic sack. He tossed it onto the picnic table where it spilled its guts beside the cooler. Bags of chips, pretzels, and beef sticks in red and orange wrapping sprawled across the worn surface in helpless acceptance of their material fate.

Andy had no desire to comment on the “coolness” or “overprotective” nature of his mother. He knew perfectly well that his mom, Nia, spent the majority of the day obsessed with clothing, body lotions, hair care products, and what her nail designer thought of recent social media drama. She probably only tossed the blanket into the trunk of his car because his aunt Rhona had suggested it, and she wanted him to think she came up with the idea herself. He shrugged through a mental head shake. There were a lot of things he didn’t want to think about, and his parents were near the top of the list – but not at the tip-top.

A few moments of silence as the sun melted into the edge of the lake, creating a golden shimmering glow, and allowing a memory to surface. Andy’s English class wasn’t supposed to be hard. He had signed up for it with the express purpose of blowing off as many classes as he could while still keeping an acceptable GPA. But this literature teacher – fool woman – actually wanted to cover Old English to “set the linguistic stage” for the transitional stages to modern English.

He had taken one look at the gibberish she had displayed on the screen and felt his stomach tighten into sickening knots. His dad, Zhang, being full-blooded Chinese, took pride in being smarter than average, though Andy knew that it wasn’t so much mental acuity as a cultural demand. His dad’s parents had come over from mainland China, worked immensely hard, gave Zhang the best available education, and pushed him into a business career, where he flourished and became one of the highest-paid district managers of automotive sales, covering four states. Zhang was smart, but it was his savvy salesmanship that won him clients and built his business.

A hot flush worked over Andy as older memories surfaced: an autumn day in grade school when he was asked to read in front of the class. He had tried to pronounce the words on the page, but they were a jumble of strange letters, some he could swear he had never seen before.

His grandma had helped to match the letter shape with the sounds on flashcards, but when it came to standing up in front of people, the letters seemed to have shifted and reformed in unrecognizable ways. He blurted out what he thought the words might be, but his classmates had laughed, the teacher had frowned, and he found himself in the principal’s room by the end of the week.

It took years for the diagnosis of dyslexia to be confirmed, but his dad refused to believe it. No one in his family had brain trouble!

His mom shielded him as much as she could. She kept their secret well-guarded and hired tutors to coach him so he could get through school. With patience and enough practice, he managed to get excellent scores and keep the pride in his father’s eyes shining bright.

Andy rolled the beer in his hands and stared at where the sun had been.

Josh climbed to his feet, snatched up a bag of chips, ripped it open, and then started munching.

Leif stretched out his arm. “Toss me something.”

Josh threw him the pretzel bag.

Playing the bratty kid, Roy’s voice rose in a whinny falsetto. “Gimme my spicy sticks!”

Josh three him three, smacking him on the arm and legs.

They all laughed.

Once they were all comfortable again, chewing, sipping, and munching, passing around the bags occasionally, Josh pointed a meaty finger at Andy. “What’s with the Old English stuff?” He scratched his face absently. “Might as well have been Greek the way it sounded.”

Andy glanced around, trying to read their faces in the falling light.

Leif shrugged. “It’s not too difficult really. You just have to accept that it is a different language but comes from the same roots—the same way Romance languages come from Latin. If you know the basics of Latin, you can kind of see the pattern.”

Josh shook his head. “Heck, man, I already know Spanish, Quechua, and English! Why does she have to throw another language at me?”

Fear sizzled through Andy. Three languages? The guy knows three! He studied Josh’s faint outline, his fear turning to disgust. It’s so not fair. How come that specimen of humanity gets to speak three languages and I just barely mastered one? He could hear his dad’s voice in his head. “You’ve got my bloodline, boy! We are the smartest people on the planet. Don’t forget that. You represent the best of the best.”

It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask his dad why he had married his mom, the woman his grandparents had described as a “stupid egg” behind her back, but he knew the kind of fury that would unleash, so he had refrained.

His grandparents had tried to teach him Chinese, but he never caught on. Not when American television, schools, and friends kept getting in the way. Besides, they prattled so fast, he couldn’t make head or tail of what they were saying. His ignorance of Chinese didn’t bother him in the least. Not until his little sister, Syn started to pick up words and actually began conversing with his grandparents.

He put a stop to that pretty quick. Called her Chinese Brain to show her that he knew she was just trying to show off. Since the fifteen-year-old girl was naturally shy and self-effacing, his teasing had the desired effect.

The problem was, when he went home last week and happened to leave his Old English assignment on the kitchen table, Syn looked through it and started sounding it out. Worse yet, she seemed to understand it!

He’d never wanted to kill anyone before that moment, but right then, he knew that if pushed hard enough, he could. Without looking up or picking out a face to engage, Andy let his question rise in the brooding darkness. “You ever want to kill someone, see them dead at your feet?”

An owl hooted from the tree line on the far side of the lake. Another answered it.

Their heads up, eyes glinting, the other boys remained silent, staring at him.

Finally, Andy cleared his throat and tried to reclaim his regular-guy personality. “You know, like Hamlet or one of the anti-hero guys from the movies?” He tried to shrug away the shadows. “I just wondered if a normal person could be pushed into it, because, well, circumstances made him do something he wouldn’t ordinarily.”

Lief’s voice wavered as he sat up and wrapped his arms around his legs. “We all have free will. But circumstances change us, give us certain options. Like the guy who has to steal to feed his starving family. He’s not naturally a thief, but he has to do something, and he doesn’t see any other way.”

Josh nodded, climbed to his feet, and got another beer, leaving the crushed empty beside the cooler. “In my opinion, we’re all fallen. No one can be good all the time. It’s not just a matter of circumstance. Sometimes we just get in a bad mood, and we do something mean, or we let selfishness get the better of us. We choose it because, really, if we were honest with ourselves, we want to be bad more than we want to be good. Just part of being human, I guess.”

Roy had laid flat on his back with his hands under his head. He stared at the sky as shimmering stars twinkled into a brilliant array overhead. “My grandad used to say that we are all set in a mold, predestined toward a certain fate, and nothing we do can change that. But after my mom got cancer a couple of years back, she got into a big argument with him. Maybe she had no say in the cancer, but she sure as heck could decide how she would handle it. She wouldn’t let it ruin what life she had left.” His voice cracked. “She’s the best person I know.”

Silence lingered through several moments, as a cool breeze rose, sending ripples across the lake.

A shiver ran down Andy’s arms, and he swallowed the last of his beer and reached for another. Whether he had a choice or not, the image of his little sister’s face as she sounded out the Old English words still sent a bitter shaft through his heart. Perhaps I don’t want her dead. But I can’t be around her, that’s for sure. Aunt Rhona will take care of the brainchild; I’ll take care of myself.

With that resolved in his mind, he dared his friends to a nighttime swim across the lake. It might be risky, but he didn’t care. He nodded at Josh as he stripped off his shirt and long pants, shivering in the sudden chill. The guy was right, sometimes bad seemed better than good.

A. K. Frailey is the author of 18 books, a teacher for 35 years, and a homeschooling mother.
Make the most of life’s journey. 
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