When You Wish Upon a Lantern - Hardcover

Chao, Gloria

 
9780593464359: When You Wish Upon a Lantern
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593464354 ISBN 13: 9780593464359
Verlag: Viking Books for Young Readers, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Acclaimed author Gloria Chao creates real-world magic in this luminous romance about teens who devote themselves to granting other people's wishes but are too afraid to let themselves have their own hearts' desires—each other.

Liya and Kai had been best friends since they were little kids, but all that changed when a humiliating incident sparked The Biggest Misunderstanding of All Time—and they haven’t spoken since.

Then Liya discovers her family's wishing lantern store is struggling, and she decides to resume a tradition she had with her beloved late grandmother: secretly fulfilling the wishes people write on the lanterns they send into the sky. It may boost sales and save the store, but she can't do it alone . . . and Kai is the only one who cares enough to help.

While working on their covert missions, Liya and Kai rekindle their friendship—and maybe more. But when their feuding families and changing futures threaten to tear them apart again, can they find a way to make their own wishes come true?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gloria Chao is the critically acclaimed author of American Panda, Our Wayward Fate, Rent a Boyfriend, and When You Wish Upon a Lantern. After a brief detour as a dentist, she is now grateful to spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the curling ice, where she and her husband are world-ranked in mixed doubles. Visit her tea-and-book-filled world at GloriaChao.wordpress.com, and find her on Twitter and Instagram @GloriacChao.
 

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Schloop
If there was ever to be magic found on this Earth—­this sometimes wretched, unremarkable Earth—­it’s when I’m standing on the shore of Lake Michigan, the cold water dancing with my bare toes, and I’m looking at a lit-­up sky. It’s not alight with stars or fireworks or a big, bright full moon, but lanterns. Paper lanterns with people’s wishes written on the side, carried into the never-­ending dark night by a fire inside that matches the fire inside the sender’s heart. What could be more magical than a sky aglow with wishes and dreams?
There are many names for this miniature hot-air balloon—­sky lantern, tiāndēng (a.k.a. “sky light,” translated literally)—­but my favorite is the one my family’s Chinatown shop, When You Wish Upon a Lantern, has coined for our community: wishing lanterns. Because to us, the wish you write on it is the most important part.
Today is the first day of summer, June 21, and for the tenth year in a row, the Chicago Chinatown community has gathered at Promontory Point, a peninsula that juts out into the lake with big grassy areas, firepits, views of downtown, and large stone ledges leading down to the waves crashing against the shore. We’re here to celebrate a tradition started by my family’s little shop that could, which is fifty-­one years old and responsible for two new holidays and many, many wishes being granted. In less than an hour, we will light up the sky.
Currently, my parents are managing the table we’ve set up with lanterns for sale, lighters, and markers.As I approach them to help out, I notice an additional person nearby assisting the surrounding customers. And he knows how to manipulate the sometimes-­finicky lanterns as well as I do.
Kai Jiang.
Oh no.
His presence stops me cold. The shock of straight, unruly black hair that’s often falling into his eyes, the confident yet humble walk, the lean forearm muscles honed from hours of kneading dough in his family’s Chinatown bakery, Once Upon a Mooncake . . . all of that would be enough to stop anyone cold when they see him, but for me? I halt because I have quite the oh no history with him, which I attempt to put out of my mind as he gives me a brief, deliberate, right-­left wave from several feet away. I try not to let the chilliness of his gesture freeze my insides, but it’s all I can think about.

Before, we were childhood best friends, constantly playing together in the alley shared by our family’s neighboring businesses. Then, more recently, he started becoming Kai, as in Kai with the infectious laugh and defined arms and delicious buns (I’m talking about the breads he bakes, okay?). But before I could figure out what all that meant . . . 

I threw up on him. A few months ago. We were having a blast sipping boba tea at the café closest to our shops when he made me laugh so hard that I snorted a boba ball up into my nose (yes, I know, I’m cringing too). Schloop, out everything came. On the table, in my lap, on him. So much on him. I died a little that day. Afterward, I was so embarrassed I steered clear of him for a couple of weeks, even telling my parents I was sick so I wouldn’t have to go to our store and risk running into him. But I didn’t mean for it to last forever. Somehow the avoidance snowballed, and we’ve barely seen each other since. Perhaps he’s keeping a six-­foot splash zone between us (if it’s good for viruses, it’s good for vomit kind of thinking). Orperhaps he isn’t who I thought he was, given that he let thatincident come between us. Or perhaps the awkwardness of it all is just too much, and every time he looks at me, he sees boba coming out of my nose. Whatever it is, I miss my friend.

Before I manage to give Kai a return wave, my father says, “Kai, thank you, but Liya’s here. You should go join your friends.”

My mother narrows her eyes at my dad. Then she calls after Kai, “Thank you so much for your help!”

I say nothing as I join them at the table.

“I’ve told you,” my father says to me, “to be careful of him. His family . . .”

His family, his family, his family. I tune him out. My father’s feud with the Jiangs is bordering on obsession now. Their trash smells worse than ours. They don’t respect our half of the alley. They filled our shared dumpster with spoiled dough, and when it rose, the dumpster exploded.

I guess it was for the best that I never figured out my feelings for Kai because the Jiangs and Huangs were becoming the Montagues and Capulets, the Hatfields and McCoys of Chinatown. And all because of garbage.

We didn’t have any issues with the Jiangs before this year thanks to my paternal grandmother, the peacekeeper. But after Nǎinai passed away six months ago, every dumpster incident has led to a heated argument. Now the feud is all my father talks to me about, partly because he’s avoiding the one thing we really should be talking about. And on today of all days, I’m so annoyed that I do dare to bring up the forbidden topic.

“It’s the first Summer Lantern Festival without Nǎinai.” The festival she created. “Can we just . . . have a moment of silence for her?”

That softens him. “I miss her too, Lili.” His use of Nǎinai’s nickname for me stirs up too many emotions. I busy myself by straightening the items on the already well-­organized table.

Ya-­ya would be the more common nickname for someone with my Chinese name, Lí Yǎ (the tradition is to repeat the last character), but Nǎinai always thought the lí part of my name fit me more than the yǎ. Together, lí yǎ means “will be graceful,” but lí by itself has several definitions, and Nǎinai always thought its meaning of “dark” fit me better because it made her think of the dark night sky we love—­loved—­to look at together. “You are the night sky that other people can shine against,” she used to tell me, her own dark brown eyes shining. “That’s why you’re so special. You put others first and make them shine, and there are very few people in the world who do that.”

“Liya?” my mother says cautiously, breaking into my thoughts. Concern seeps from her narrowed eyes and tight jaw. “Are you . . .” She can’t even finish that simple question.

I wish she would stop treating me like cracked glass, but I also don’t want to tell her I’m okay when I’m not sure what I am. Since Nǎinai was more of a parent to me than my mom or dad, they don’t seem to know how to step up now. After Nǎinai passed, my parents began tiptoeing around me, afraid to make things worse or remind me too much of her, and their tiptoeing has only increased over time. I wish I could tell them what I needed, but I have no clue myself. I guess my wish is for them to just know what I need, the way Nǎinai would have, and to just do it. My worst fear is that they’re right: I’m on the verge of breaking. Without Nǎinai, without Kai, and (in the important ways) without my parents, I’ve never felt as alone as I do now.

I swallow hard, swallowing my emotions down with my saliva. “What do you need help with?” I ask them.

“We’re fine here,” my father says.

My mother suggests, “Why...

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Verlag
Viking Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593464354
ISBN 13 
9780593464359
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
VIKING BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
https://www.vtech-jouets.com/

Fahrenheitstraat 22
DC Weert
6003
Niederlande

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