Paper leaves

Have I ever told you about my first kiss? I was 8. He was 13. My mom knew his dad from church; his mom was studying for a cosmetician exam. She needed help on the English. My mom volunteered my dad, who brought me to their house on those weekend tutoring sessions and Jonathan, the poor teenager, was instructed to entertain the little kid who tagged along. They lived in a big, sprawling house that was perpetually in a state of remodel. His dad was a contractor, doing all sorts of projects in their gigantic yard, raw materials piled high on the open asphalt. They had countless fruit trees and always gifted us bags and bags of oranges. My dad would go off for his lesson, and I would sit down with the boy in the spare bedroom, chatting in Chinese. Jonathan's English was terrible. He told me he liked listening to me speak it, instead. He had an inviting face, wide expressive eyes, acne scars, a buzzcut. Tall, played basketball. Solid looking. I tried to talk about books; he didn't…