The Queens of New York
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Synopsis
From acclaimed author E. L. Shen comes a sun-drenched, cinematic YA novel about three Asian American girls, their unbreakable bond, and one life-changing summer, perfect for fans of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Best friends Jia Lee, Ariel Kim, and Everett Hoang are inseparable. But this summer, they won’t be together.
Everett, aspiring Broadway star, hopes to nab the lead role in an Ohio theater production, but soon realizes that talent and drive can only get her so far. Brainy Ariel is flying to San Francisco for a prestigious STEM scholarship, even though her heart is in South Korea, where her sister died last year. And stable, solid Jia will be home in Flushing, juggling her parents’ Chinatown restaurant, a cute new neighbor, and dreams for an uncertain future.
As the girls navigate heartbreaking surprises and shocking self-discoveries, they find that even though they’re physically apart, they are still mighty together.
Release date: June 6, 2023
Publisher: HarperCollins
Print pages: 336
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The Queens of New York
E. L. Shen
Jia
There are three parts to every perfect dumpling: the skin, the meat, and the water.
Ariel is the skin—the delicate foundation that can make something beautiful out of nothing.
Everett is the meat—tough, juicy, and packed with spice.
And me? I guess I’m the water, the one keeping us all together.
The yellow awning letters that spell out Lee’s Dumpling House are chipped and faded (Dad still needs to repaint), but the kitchen is bustling. Sesame balls cover the counter, anxious to be deep-fried, while sweaty chefs awaken hundreds of char siu bao from their frozen slumber.
In the booth by the window, Ariel yawns.
“You can sleep on the plane,” Everett says, swatting her head.
Ariel sticks out her tongue and loudly slaps meat onto the fragile wrapper.
“Don’t mess up my dumplings,” I tease.
“Your parents’ dumplings,” Everett corrects. She gestures to our large assembly line. “And we’re basically free labor, so you can’t complain.”
I make a show of rolling my eyes but my heart dips. I’m going to miss all of this. Our early-morning dumpling masterpieces and lazy bike rides through Flushing Meadows. Sketching anime boys, Everett’s soft humming fanning the pages. Watching Ariel decimate her opponents at every debate and cheering on Everett at all her musicals. And then, ending the night squished into sleeping bags, falling asleep next to leftover fried pizza and half a dozen sheet masks.
When we met, we were seven-year-olds prancing through Queens’s annual Lunar New Year festival in our fluffy winter coats and fuzzy earmuffs. Back then, everything was simple. Our parents were volunteers, so we got there early, whizzing past closed storefronts and messing around with confetti cannons until Dad yelled at us. When it was time for the parade, we lifted our chins and marveled at the massive red dragon dragged through the streets by neighbors now part of something magical. Ten years later, we still feel that magic—in our city and in our friendship. Everett goes to her fancy private school in Manhattan and Ariel naturally placed into the best public high school in Queens, so during the school year, we only see each other on weekends.
But the summers? The summers are special. The summers are for us.
That is, of course, until they both decided to ditch me.
I want to be mad at them, but I’m not. Everett is making her dreams come true; tomorrow she’ll fly to Ohio to sing her brains out at a top-notch musical theater institute. And Ariel? Well, maybe she needs the time away. After Bea’s accident, she hid herself in homework, and Netflix, and vacuums of unread text messages. All her studying must have paid off, though, because she graduated a year early and got a full scholarship to Briston University in California. She starts in late August, but her parents are shipping her there today for an eight-week precollege program. I wish I could carry her through the San Francisco waves, but instead I’m stuck at home helping Mom and Dad with the restaurant until the heavy Queens air thins and the leaves ache for change.
As if Everett can read my thoughts, she nudges my shoulder, her hands still pinching dough folds. We crane our necks toward Ariel, who has stopped spooning meat and is staring out the window with wide, glassy eyes. The rising sun streaks her pale cheeks. Even though she’s here with us, I know she’s somewhere else entirely.
Everett stencils a question mark into the flour and we play our daily game of Who should bug Ariel first? I shake my head and she relents. Placing her finished dumpling on the platter, she clears her throat.
“Um, you okay, girlie?"
Ariel snaps toward us and immediately grabs a wrapper. “Oh,” she says, “sorry, didn’t mean to stop our production train.”
Her smile is Barbie doll plastic—a look she’s mastered since last fall.
Light begins to flood the restaurant. Seventy-five dumplings stand at attention, like little boats that might float away with Ariel into the Pacific.
“You know,” I whisper, reaching across the table to touch her sleeve, “Bea would be really proud of you.”
But Ariel won’t look at me. “Yeah,” she says, and then, standing up abruptly, “Mrs. Lee, we’re all set here!”
My mother comes out from the back in her cashmere sweater and tan slacks, permed curls grazing the nape of her neck. As hostess, she always tries to look professional even if that means wearing her one good sweater every single day. Buying another would be lang fei. Money exists to pay the bills. Riches, Mom always says, are merely a dream in the night.
Now she nods approvingly at our dumplings. “Not bad. Maybe you’ll all work here one day.”
She’s joking, but heat crawls up my necks and prickles my ears. This is my future, I know. But not Ariel’s or Everett’s.
Ariel wipes her hands on a cloth napkin and pushes the platters forward. “Nowhere else we’d rather be, Mrs. Lee.”
She glances down at her phone and then looks back at us, lips drawn tight.
“Time for you to go, isn’t it?” I say.
Ariel nods, shifting out of the booth. Everett is already weeping, silent tears trickling down her chin. As we walk to the front entrance, Mom dashes for the tissues, crushing them in her palms before flinging them toward Everett. Crying is my mother’s least favorite activity, followed by goodbyes.
“Good luck in California, Ariel,” she says, hurrying to the back, trays of dumplings folded between her arms.
I crouch behind the counter and pull out three large suitcases.
“We’ll text and video-chat all the time,” Ariel promises, “and email.”
“Ooh, email,” Everett gushes, “like we’re old-fashioned and writing letters to each other. I like it.”
“Okay,” I say, “every day?”
“Ariel can’t even answer her messages every day when she’s home.” Everett sniffs, and then, realizing the weight of her words, swallows hard.
But Ariel doesn’t seem to notice. “Hey,” she laughs, “I’ve gotten better.”
“Every week,” I amend.
“Okay,” the girls agree, “every week.”
Everett throws her arms around Ariel’s waist, squishing her small frame.
“Help, can’t breathe!”
Everett is unyielding. “Meet lots of cute guys for us, okay?”
“Oh, for sure. I’ll just ditch all my classes for college boys.”
“That’s my girl.”
We make our way onto the street, hiding from the thick summer heat under the awning’s shade. Flushing is beginning to stir. Colorful Chinese signs crowd the block. Mr. Zhang slides up the glass protector on his food cart, revealing salted tofu pudding and sweet soy milk. The stench of decades-old steam stacks and stale cigarettes waft through the early-morning air.
Ariel calls a rideshare, and a sleek sedan appears within minutes. She piles her suitcases into the trunk and gives us one last squeeze.
“Eight weeks,” she says, “and then we’ll be together again.”
It seems like a lifetime and no time at all. Everett rests her head in the crook of my neck and we wave and wave until Ariel is just a dot on the horizon.
And then, she’s gone.
Jia
If there’s one thing I know about Everett Hoang, it’s that she despises the heat. So we unlock our bikes and pedal from the collection of whirring fans cramming the restaurant walls to the icy blast of Everett’s air-conditioned house.
It’s a short ride through the park, yet the city seems to transform. When we reach the promenade, I brake to stare up at the Unisphere, a massive steel sculpture of the earth encircled by skateboarders and drooling babies. It quite literally marks the line between one universe and another: the hungry, haggling streets of Chinatown, where old ladies hunch over squeaky carts filled with plastic bottles, and the dreamy Tudor homes of Forest Hills Gardens, where the sprinklers are automatic and the trash is out of sight.
Everett heaves all the way there, one hand on the bike, the other fanning herself with a takeout menu she stole from the counter. And then, the park gives way to toasted ceramic roofs and tree-lined streets and we’re here. Everett unbuckles her helmet and smooths down the flyaways poking out of her French braids.
“God,” she says, inspecting her crop top, “I’m gonna need to shower again.”
We wheel our bikes up to her garage and enter the mudroom. Even though I’ve been to Everett’s house probably six hundred times, I always feel like a tourist in a royal palace. The Hoangs hired an interior designer so the house resembles a prettier, more modern version of Mr. Bingley’s home in Pride & Prejudice. Columns frame the doorways, flanking Persian carpets and crystal chandeliers. Bay windows overlook the garden, where the landscaper hunches over a hydrangea bush, rings of dirt lining his sleeves. He examines me and smiles, his eyes crinkling like we know each other, like we’re friends from the same world.
Everett follows her labradoodle, Watkins, into the living room and plops down onto the couch, one leg swinging over the edge.
“Ariel’s going to be okay, right?” she asks as I smooth out the carpet and settle beneath her feet. Watkins flops across my lap, anxious for a belly rub.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “I hope so.”
“Well, even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t tell us anyway.” She rolls her head to the ceiling and groans.
We have the same conversation every day: Ariel detached, Ariel unresponsive, Ariel lost in her own mist. But now she’s gone for real, and there’s nothing we can do. I nudge Watkins off my lap and squeeze onto the couch beside Everett.
“Cheer up,” I say. “Think about tomorrow.”
Everett cracks a smile and bolts up so she’s sitting on her knees. “Jia, it’s going to be so great. They’ll announce the show on the first day, and I have a feeling it will be something really, you know, emotionally resonant. Like Cabaret. Or Ragtime. Oooh, or maybe something artsy, like Merrily We Roll Along.”
“Or The Sound of Music.”
Everett throws a pillow at me and I yelp as it brushes the side of my face. She hates The Sound of Music because she detests anything that’s—in her words—cheesy and simplistic. That girl could spend years talking about the symbolism of the gorilla costume in Cabaret or the complicated morals about art and sacrifice in Sunday in the Park with George (yes, she’s ranted enough that I remember). To her, musicals aren’t just about two people falling in love. They’re about the meaning of life.
“You’re going to have so much fun,” I say. “You and all those cornstalks.”
“And all those boys.” She wiggles her eyebrows.
“You never end up dating theater guys, Everett.”
She opens her mouth to offer some witty comeback but she can’t because it’s true. Everett has always wanted a boyfriend, but her theater friends are usually girls or too tied up in drama for her to date. She had one,
Richie, in ninth grade, but the relationship lasted exactly two makeout sessions and three after-school Starbucks hangouts before they called it off. I know she wants this to be her summer though—the one where she has some salacious fling with a farmer’s-tanned guy from Montana or a charming hipster from Oregon. I can see her fantasizing about it right now, absentmindedly petting Watkins, her eyes drifting toward the garden.
“Jia?”
“Yeah?”
She smiles to herself. “This is going to be the best summer ever.”
I can’t help it. Needles of jealousy prick my skin and course through my veins. I stare at the space between my feet where tufts of carpet peek out from under my socks. Everett immediately swoops toward me, her chin on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “that was insensitive.”
“No.” I shake my head. “You will have the best summer ever. I’m just being pathetic.”
“Jia Lee? Pathetic? Pretty much impossible.” Everett kisses my forehead and lies back down on the sofa.
I am being pathetic though. If Dad were here, he’d tell me, “The torment of envy is like a grain of sand in the eye.” It’s an old Chinese proverb he loves. He repeated it the day I cried because I couldn’t go on the class trip to Boston. All I could think about were Paul Revere’s black shutters, the Battle of Bunker Hill obelisk my classmates would Snapchat in front of, late-night gossip under hotel sheets, and bus ride movies no one wanted to watch but everyone secretly enjoyed. Dad told me I could learn all those things from Wikipedia and that we needed the trip’s cost for next month’s rent. “Remember what’s important,” he warned.
I breathe in the smell of expensive perfume and hydrangeas and try to remember. What’s important is that Nai Nai’s Parkinson’s is getting worse and she needs my help. If she falls or forgets to take her pills, I won’t ever forgive myself. And CeCe is only six, still playing hopscotch, and picking trash off the subway floor, and screaming whenever I don’t pay attention to her for five minutes. I have jobs to do this summer. I have a destiny to fulfill. It’s all part of Mom and Dad’s master plan: community college, where I’ll earn my associate’s degree, shadow my parents, and eventually run the dumpling house so they can retire. My future is as crystal clear as the Hoang family’s chandelier.
Everett and I sit in silence for a moment—just us and Watkins and the gentle whir of the air conditioner. Her parents are working and her older brothers are in college doing summer internships, so the house feels peaceful and still. Maybe nothing will change and we’ll stay like this forever.
As I lean down to let Watkins lick my hand for traces of scallion, Everett pushes my head aside and points toward the foyer.
“Ice cream truck,” she says, and soon enough, I hear it too. The faraway, sparkly m
elody inching closer and closer.
She grabs my arm and practically yanks me from the couch, racing toward the foyer. We slip on the wood floors like speed skaters lurching on ice. Everett digs her palms into fistfuls of dollar bills from the tin by the door and jets down the steps, motioning for me to keep up.
I pant behind her. Everett’s second favorite thing after theater? Ice cream.
We make it to the street just as the truck pulls up—blue and white with the classic Mister Softee cone-head logo, like it’s a city delicacy instead of three-dollar watered-down milk and sugar. Forest Hills Gardens is one of the only neighborhoods in Queens where the ice cream truck actually comes to your doorstep. At the dumpling house, we walk two blocks over and cross a busy intersection, hoping for treats after a long, stuffy shift frying shaobing and pouring oolong tea.
Everett and I aren’t the only ones with ice cream on our minds. A curly-haired boy hands the child next to him a swirled pink cone.
The boy and the child turn. Everett waves as we jog up to them.
“Oh, hey!” She pulls me out from behind her shadow. “Jia, meet my new neighbors.” Everett gestures to the little boy, his mouth coated in strawberry ice cream. “Masud Abboud.”
I follow her gaze up to Masud’s brother, tall with impossibly gray eyes.
“And Akil Abboud.”
Akil looks down and then back at me, offering a wide-toothed smile. My insides are humming with bees. It’s not like I haven’t seen cute boys before. And I’ve certainly seen lots of them in Everett’s neighborhood, strutting around in pastel polos and khaki shorts. They’re just usually more Everett’s type, not mine.
“I’m Jia. Jia Lee. Nice to meet you.” I crouch down to Masud, liquid ribbons now streaking his striped T-shirt. “How’s the ice cream?”
Masud grins. “Yuuuuuummy.”
Akil rolls his eyes. “Hopefully worth the mess he’s making.”
Masud skips around us in circles, forcing me to step closer.
I shake my head. “I understand. My sister’s six. She’s a pain.”
“She’s adorable,” Everett counters.
“An adorable pain.”
Akil laughs, and I watch the muscles bounce up and down beneath his jersey shirt. The bees tickle my throat even as I try to force them down.
“Masud is five,” Akil says as his brother happily digs his face into his cone. “And he definitely loves his ice cream.”
“Ah, just like Everett.”
Everett fake scowls, crossing her arms over her chest. “Hardy-har-har.” She marches up to the server. “One chocolate cone, please.”
Akil’s brother skips farther and farther away from us, rounding the cul-de-sac.
“Well, I should probably go get him.” He groans, running a hand through his curls. “Nice meeting you, Jia. See you around, Everett.”
I watch as Everett’s new neighbor steers his little brother into a massive brick house covered in tendrils of ivy. It looks like something from a fairy tale. A beautiful home for a beautiful boy.
Everett links her arm in mine, smirking between licks of chocolate.
“Maybe your summer won’t be so bad after all.” She winks.
I shake my head, pulling her back toward the driveway. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But the bees are still swarming.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
5:03 PM
Subject: The land of crocs
Dearest Jia and Everett,
Aren’t you proud of me? I texted when I landed and I’m writing you an email. On the same day, no less. I think I’m turning a new leaf. Now that I’m in San Francisco, I would like to report that it is freezing. In the middle of June. Like, put on a heavy coat and shiver. Also, I counted and have already seen five guys wearing Crocs on the street. It is not okay. Please save me. I miss you both.
XO,
Ariel
Ariel
This is what I know: San Francisco is dull and cold. The buildings here are gray. Umma and Appa have already texted me fifteen times. They want to call later. Sandwiched between How was the flight? and Are you hungry? Go buy a sandwich on the debit card in case the cafeteria is closed is a message I’m trying to ignore: We’re so proud of you.
The lady at the front desk is wearing a horrible neon green shirt and a gold lanyard. I realize I’ve forgotten that these are the school colors. Briston University. My future for the summer, and the next four years. Cold, gray San Francisco forever. Hurrah.
Everett and Jia are probably loafing around, licking ice cream from their fingertips until Everett’s flight tomorrow. What I’d give to be with them in Queens even though it smells like pee and garbage and rat feces. At the very least, I could have squeezed them in my suitcase to make this all a little more bearable.
When I won the scholarship, I tried to put on a happy face. I tried to be the Ariel from before. The one who picked out which picture frames went best with her high school awards and mulled over whether to buy a glass cabinet or a bookcase for her debate trophies. I chose the cabinet. Now I wanted to smash all that glass with a baseball bat. I text Appa and Umma: all good, checking in now and turn off my phone.
“Hi! Are you here for the precollege program?” Front Desk Lady is far too cheery. She smiles wide and I can see the plastic invisible braces lining her teeth.
My hair is too long and drapes over the table. I stuff it into the back of my shirt and nod.
“Great,” she says. She pulls out a binder with five dozen laminated pages. “What’s your name?”
“Ariel.” I stare down at my chipped nail polish. “Kim.”
Front Desk Lady flips through the pages so ferociously, you’d think there was a million-dollar check hidden in there with her name on it. Finally, she reaches K.
“Wonderful. ID?”
I rummage in my backpack and fish out a leather wallet. Bea gave it to me the day she left for South Korea. Over a year ago now. It was March, slushy and freezing, the worst time to travel. We were in the kitchen. Umma and Appa weren’t speaking to her. And I was frustrated. I remember leaning my elbows on the granite island and parroting that she wasn’t applying herself. She could do better, if she tried. She didn’t have to ditch America. Ditch us.
Under the harsh kitchen lights, Bea’s face looked freckled and sallow—free of her usual makeup. She winced at my lecture, like I had burned her with a frying pan instead of telling her the truth. Or what I thought was the truth. Then she pulled out the wallet from her jacket pocket. It had a little gold bee engraved on its center. She said she bought it at the flea market. A bee for Bee, she explained, so you won’t forget me. She squeezed my arm and told me she’d be back soon.
My license clatters to the ground. Front Desk Lady is all elbows and knees. She snatches my ID and matches it to my face. Then she brightens. Her plastic braces catch the glare from the window.
“Oh, you’re one of our matriculating students!” she squeals. “And I see you’re part of our prestigious science and technology summer program. How wonderful. Your parents must be so proud.” I wait for her to pinch my cheeks like the ajummas at church.
“Thanks,” I say. I shove the license back into my wallet and dump the whole thing in my backpack. It lands with a heavy thud. Front Desk Lady starts droning on about summer dorm rooms, and schedules, and keys. But I can only think of my sister’s freckles. The way her shoulders heaved when she dragged her luggage to the front door. Did she look back before she left? I swear she did.
I hope she did.
I try to focus on Front Desk Lady’s small, chipper voice. When she finally finishes, I make the long trek across campus. Most of the Briston students have left for the summer so it’s just us precollege kids. Girls cluster under a lamppost like cyclopean fireflies. I overhear them buzzing about the upcoming guest lecture on Rosalind Franklin’s pioneering DNA research. They must be in my STEM program. I’ve never seen anyone bond over DNA before. Except for the boys in my high school’s science research club, but they shoot spitballs at each other and make inside jokes that I don’t understand.
Someone yells “Incoming!” and a soccer ball flies over my head and somersaults onto the grass behind me. I should go and kick it back, but I don’t. Instead, I count my footsteps and repeat amygdala under my breath. It’s my favorite part of the brain. If I focus, I can picture it smothering each fear receptor until I feel numb. Amygdala. The syllables stick to my throat.
By the time I reach my dorm room, I almost forget about Bea. I almost forget that she’s dead.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
10:16 AM
Subject: One step closer to BROADWAYY
To my best friends forever and ever and ever,
Ariel!!!! I’m so glad that you made it to San Fran okay. And yes, v proud of you for the email AND the text. You deserve a trophy.
Though we do need a follow-up on all those dudes in Crocs. This is a tragedy and you need to teach them some fashion sense, stat. Give them your best New York crash course, girl!! And Jia, hold down the fort for us. Maybe with Akil???? (Ariel, to recap, this is my new neighbor who Jia is DEFINITELY in love with, 900%.)
Anyway, this is a PSA that I’ve made it to nowhereeeeee, Ohio!!! I think I’m in a relationship with corn now. I might buy a straw hat and live here forever with my farmer husband, hehehe. But in all seriousness, this is my time to SHINE. Don’t worry, I’ll still remember you when I’m rich and famous.
Much love,
Everett
Everett
In the magazines, you read about actors who’ve really made it, who are rolling in millions and cherry-picking their roles, and they always talk about that formative moment when they were seventeen and had some amazing teachers and met some soon-to-be-legends and two years later—BAM. They transformed. They became stars. Well, that’s going to be me. And this is my Extremely Amazing Summer of Seventeen.
Except maybe not right this second, while I’m trying to wipe sweat from my armpits with the paper towels in the communal bathroom. Jia did warn me about how ridiculously hot it was going to be here. I mean, has Ohio ever heard of air conditioners? They’re apparently big supporters of recycled hot air blasting in my face all day long. Catch me swimming in a humidifier filled with seventy-five mosquitoes feeding on my skin. I run my hands under the faucet and splash flecks of cool water on my face. They should rename it Ohio: Earth’s Swamp.
No matter. I take a deep breath and focus on the name tag in my reflection: EVERETT HOANG in large, typed letters, and then underneath: The Lucius Brown Performing Arts Institute. Actually, they messed up, so it really says EVERETT HANG, but I squeezed in an o with a marker I stole from the check-in desk.
In Flushing, everyone’s last name is Hoang. There are the Hoangs who own the phở place in the mall—they always try to speak Vietnamese to me and laugh when I remind them that the only language I speak is English. There are the Hoang twins who sit in front of me in math class. And then there are the hundreds of other Hoangs whose names are on every sign, and attendance sheet, and soccer jersey.
So Ohio misspelling my name? It just means I’m original. Here, I’m the only Everett Hoang you need to know.
A girl with a fuchsia lipstick smile swings open the bathroom door. She adjusts her halter top and squints at my name tag.
“Everett? Room 202B?”
I glance down at the sopping information sheet sitting in a puddle next to the sink.
“Yup.”
“I’m Valerie. Your roommate!”
She rushes toward me with a wave of floral perfume and loose curls. I hug her back, trying to make sure my sticky armpits aren’t suffocating her. When I process the face attached to the hair, I realize that my new roommate is basically a glossy headshot come to life—like if Elle Woods and Glinda the Good Witch had a child and she decided to go to acting camp. This is not the kind of girl you see at the Queens supermarket, in black pants and a black leather jacket, glued to her cell phone, talking vaguely about corporate policy. As Aladdin would say: I’m in a whole new world.
Valerie releases me from her clutches.
“I’m so excited!” I babble. “Although, I should tell you, I already nabbed the bed by the window.”
“It’s okay, I like to be by the door. Closer to the boys.” She laughs and winks at me.
I already know we’re going to get along splendidly.
Together, we leave the bathroom and the dorms and head to the auditorium where Abel Pearce, the director, is finally, finally, finally going to announce the show (okay, it’s only been like an hour and twenty minutes since we arrived at camp, but it feels like forever). On the way there, we chat about our hometowns (Valerie is from South Dakota, which is wild because who lives in South Dakota?), and what age we started voice lessons (age twelve for the both of us, and I judge people who ruin their voices by taking them any earlier), and our favorite type of dance (tap), and our least favorite type of dance (ballet, I don’t care to tendu five days a week, thank you), and what we think the musical will be, although neither of us truly has any clue. The gnats keep chewing on my skin, but I swat them away and try to take in the wild yellow fields in the distance, ...
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