Last night I was doing my homework when suddenly I heard the garage door open. My father was home and this night I had dreaded it more than on any other night. Yes, my mother had told my father I had a boyfriend. I hadn’t told him because I knew it would be bad. First of all I wasn’t actually allowed to date.
Second I had lied to him about it.


































I heard the car door close with a clang. He always closes the door with great force but this was no usual clump.
Slowly, I heard his steps coming up the stairs. The sound his feet made, which was only slightly muffled by the one centimetre of carpet, sounded the same way a hammer would.
As he came closer and closer I realized there was another thing he didn’t know and would surely push him over the edge. I had no time his footsteps were becoming increasingly louder, so I made up a plan. Actually, it wasn’t much of a plan but it was an idea that had suddenly flourished in my mind like one of the little prince’s flowers, the kind that flourish and die in a day.
So there was my father on the other side of my bedroom door. I could hear his heavy breathing. Ever since he had gotten a stent in his heart the exertion of climbing stairs took a toll on him.
I was expecting his wind like breathing to stop and for him to barge in like he had done every other time I had done something wrong as far back as I could remember. Yet this time this didn’t happen. He knocked on my door with his oversized knuckles, and I slowly opened the door revealing a towering man with a very wide waistline and shining pink face. On his face was a disappointed look which was better than his ‘I will strangle you’ face that I expected.
He didn’t say anything and I let him in. My dad’s round head with nothing but a semi-circle of hair shining in the warm glow of my bedroom lamp. Slowly he made his way to my bed and sat on my pink comforter covered bed. All my dolls seemed pulled towards him like gravity. The sound of jazz softly radiating from my radio echoed in my head. I didn’t know what to expect but this felt like the calm just before the storm. The silence between us felt like a thin sheet of ice about to shatter.
Finally he broke the silence “So you have a boyfriend now.” “Yep”, was all I could reply? “You know you aren’t allowed. Right?” he asked. “Right but dad, but dad come on” I said. “I don’t want any dad but this, but that’s” said my father looking down at me sitting on the floor. After a few moments he spoke again “you think your old man wasn’t young once. Well I was and I know that these things are a part of





growing up.” My father has always referred to things he isn’t comfortable talking about as “these things”. “You think I’m immovable, right?” he asked. “Kind of” I had to cautiously and truthfully reply. “You know I’m not happy, but it’s not about you having a boyfriend. Of course if he ever touches you disrespectfully I WILL kill him. I just wish you had told me the truth.” He said focusing his aqua blue eyes on mine. His one look felt like a thousand words I knew he would never be able to speak. Not that my father had ever been a man of few words but they never mean much. “Dad I couldn’t tell you the truth.” I said while in my mind I formulated what the reaction would be after I told him a minor detail. “Now, can you tell me the truth?” he asked his face getting tense. I knew I couldn’t but I had to. “Dad he’s Asian.” I said. “He’s what?! He’s Asian?! I won’t have you marrying an Asian!”. He thundered going on like that for a good fifteen minutes.
Slowly, he regained composure and I had to tell him “Dad, I know you’re a little racist but you’re Asian. I think it’s time you got some counselling.” I calmly said. Quickly, he got up and left only to return a minute to say “By the way I’m only half Asian!” Slowly, his feet clumped to the living room. Seconds later my mother was in my room, supposedly to “deal with me”. She didn’t do anything because from the beginning I had told her the truth. “Your father was really offended but you should just give him time” my mother said with a hug and a kiss. “Now, get back to your homework” and that’s what I did.

The End