“Are you a Boba Boy?” the owner asks Bravo.

Bravo is surprised, not only by the misgendering, but also by how serious the owner seems to be about her question. Bravo knew she would be asked about boba. There was no way around it if she were to be hired to sell it. How to make it and how to serve it, what was her favorite and how often did she order it. And she knew she would be asked about non-boba questions as well. Her experience with working the register, the milk tea, dealing with customers, slipping the plastic into the sealing machine, prepping and cleaning, opening and closing, starting and finishing.

The night before, Bravo twirled a thick boba straw from the store in her fingers and ran through hypothetical answers.
“Thai tea is my favorite.”

“The best combination of toppings is whatever the customer wants, but I’m really simple. Just boba for me.”

“Never did this sort of thing before, but I’m willing to learn. I can start with a mop. I can adapt.”

Bravo said “adapt” often. It was something she had gotten used to saying to herself when her parents divorced, when she was split in two, when she grew out of her favorite shirt, when the school vending machines switched from Pepsi to Powerade Zero. She kept it in her pocket like a knife to cut through whatever she couldn’t change.

Bullshit and tragedy? Adapt.

Frustration and sadness? Adapt.

Mother and Father? Adapt. Adapt. Adapt.

But, in this moment, where the right words were important, the reliability of what served Bravo so well was being challenged. She tells herself to adapt like she spun Hail Marys on her mother’s rosaries, like a whole Novena. But they only spur more questions and mysteries. The Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries.

“Are you a Boba Boy?” the owner says.

The owner is thin and tall and dainty, except her arms and hands. They are abnormally large, like a gorilla’s. In fact, they are a gorilla’s. They don’t fit her body. It was as if someone had snapped off the limbs of one toy and replaced them with another’s. It was as if her real arms were somewhere running on their knuckles and beating rhythmically on a wide chest.

The owner rolls forward, her humongous hands nearly touching the ground, clasped together. The owner has been patient, but now she looks like she means business.

Bravo tries not to stare, but her arm fur is a thick, deep black ocean, her hands a chiseled roadmap of veins and calluses. “I don’t,” she says, but she can’t finish what she wants to say.

“You don’t?” The owner crosses her arms, and they hang like a dead animal draped above her breasts. She slouches forward at their weight.

“I don’t think I’m a Boba Boy,” Bravo says. “Honestly, I don’t even know what a Boba Boy is.”

The owner smiles the way a king of a jungle does: white teeth in the dark.

“But I can adapt!” Bravo adds.

Her father taught her that people need to think of their betters as animals. He sat her down in his truck and snapped open a can of Rolling Rock. Top of the food chain, he said, ferocious animals. They practiced animal noises before he got through a whole pack. Then he drove her back to her mother’s four hours early. She thought that if she could pick an animal for her father, it would be a blushing hippo, her mother a raven with good posture. If she could think of an animal for herself, it wouldn’t be a Boba Boy.

The owner was easy to determine though, so Bravo could see what her father meant.

“So, Ms. Bravo,” the owner grunts, “Do you want to tell me what you think a Boba Boy is?”

Bravo goes through all the animals in the jungle. “I can’t really find a match.”

The owner nods her head, and, with the way her arms are crossed, she looks like she is enjoying a hug from behind from her lover.

“Roar like you mean it,” her father had said, but Bravo couldn’t differentiate between that and a growl. She kept trying. There were squawks and hisses and wortles and other sounds for strength. One was always stronger than the other. Her father roared until he cried.

The owner gets up and her lover lets go. She walks beside Bravo and puts a hand on her shoulder, and it takes all Bravo’s strength to keep from slouching at its weight. “Another kid, he comes in here saying he knows what a Boba Boy is,” the owner says, staring at her chair. “He says he is one.”

“I’ve never seen one before.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know. Extinct?”

The owner laughs and picks her hand back up to clap. The sound is like thunder in Bravo’s ear. “I can’t say they’re extinct because then I wouldn’t be looking for one. But maybe you’re right and I’m wrong.”

“You can’t be wrong.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re at the top of the food chain.”

The owner laughs and claps a storm. “You’re a smart one. You really see things a special way, don’t you?”

Bravo looks up at the owner. She looks like she is standing on top of a mountain and her voice sounds like it echoes up in the air from far away. “I guess I do. It’s better than not seeing things, I guess.”

“I guess so,” the owner says from her peak. “And I guess the job is yours then.”

“Why?” Bravo asks, but she doesn’t care for the answer. Her insides are a zoo.

“Because I’m the top of the food chain,” the owner says and fills her whole back with a pat. “And I decide what and who a Boba Boy is. Capeesh?”

Bravo sorts through her father’s cries but can’t place the owner’s sound among them. “What does ‘capeesh’ mean?”

“It means you understand. You understand? Capeesh?”

“I understand. I mean, capeesh.”

***

The boba place is called Park’s Donuts but they don’t sell donuts. They used to sell donuts, the owner had explained, until the donut maker died. People still ask for them, even the ones who should already know better.

“The name just stuck. It’s like the tail bone. The whole thing doesn’t make sense without it, even though it doesn’t really have a purpose anymore.”

Bravo didn’t ask who Park, or the donut maker were. She figured all would be revealed as she worked. Instead, she wonders what kind of animal could survive uselessness.

Each day, a thousand people visit the store. On average, each customer consumes three ounces of boba per order, meaning more than three thousand ounces of boba has to be made.

The owner ran the numbers and cut the checks. Katsu and Gene brew the teas and coffees. Alex and Doug blend the smoothies and mix powdered drinks. Salvia and Kathy work the register and clean. Everyone takes turns making the boba, and everybody takes turns telling Bravo what to do.

Bravo does everything in between. She is told to carry things from one place to another. Told to watch things, stir things, pour things. Told to say hello, goodbye, sorry, and thank you. Told to wash the windows and tables and walls. Told to open and lock and secure and unsecure. Told all this in hopes she would learn.

After work, she feels worn, like a glove stretched out by multiple hands, all at once. She sags and deflates and folds into herself afterward. What animal is there that, instead of shedding its skin, shed from another to grow?

After work, she floats home, prays the rosary with her mother, leaves an offering to the Santa Nino, has dinner, does her homework, and goes to bed. Sometimes, she brings home free drinks and her mother has them if only not to waste them. She is not one for anything sweet, but she is not one to throw away things that don’t need to be thrown away.

Into the second week, she brings home a large Oreo shake with tiny boba for her mother, a regular Thai tea boba for herself.

“Do you want to give me diabetes?” her mother asks, already halfway through with her drink. The boba is gone. Her rosary is in her hands and the beads are wet and glistening in her cold fingers.

“Sorry, Nay,” Bravo says and she is already finished with her Thai tea. She has saved seven of the boba pearls in a napkin.

“What are you going to do with that?” Her mother points at them and Bravo can tell by the way her mouth trembles that she should have brought her the regular-sized boba instead.

“I was thinking about offering them to Jesus. Does Jesus like boba?”

Her mother looks at them and then up at the altar. It is nailed to their living room wall, just above their flat screen. Bravo’s father had made it from an old chair that an old Igorot had carved for him in Baguio. The Igorot said it would last a hundred years, but her mother threw it out the window their first fight in the States and the chair broke in two on the sidewalk. From what her father told her, it probably broke because the chair was meant to be something else for a hundred years. That, or the Igorot wasn’t really an Igorot.

“Ay, hindi ko alam. Heaven only knows. At least he won’t get diabetes,” her mother says with Oreo breath. “Let’s pray now, manalangin tayo.”

But, despite what her mother says, Bravo dreams Jesus gets sick, and he needs to check his blood sugar. He wears a crown of thorns that dings when his sugar is too high or too low. Boba spills from the holes in his palms and his feet. The spear wound on his side gushes with Thai tea. She wakes up with an upset stomach. Guilt pours out of her and stains the bed. What kind of animal is there that, instead of leaving a stain, is the stain that stubbornly stays?

She pulls off her bedsheets and blanket and takes them to the washing machine and halfway to the laundry room she notices her offering is gone. She listens for praise or wrath but all she can hear are her mother’s snores, the whisper her sheets make as she drags them across the carpet, the crunch of her tampon wrapper.

***

After a month at Park’s Donuts, the owner asks Bravo to pick up her extra supply of boba from her storage across town. She hands Bravo the keys and they look so small in the owner’s fingers, a perfect fit in Bravo’s hands.

“Let’s see what you’re made of,” the owner says and swivels around and flips a book open and closed.

Bravo looks at herself, but she can only see the stain from a large batch of house milk tea, her name tag with her name misspelled with two Vs. “I’m sorry, I don’t have a car.”

The owner doesn’t turn around. She opens the book again and runs a giant finger along a paragraph. “How do you get home?”

“My dad’s picking me up.”

“Can he drive you there and back after your shift? It isn’t that far.”

Bravo thinks of her father, then herself. She thinks of the question the owner asked her. She wonders what she’s made of. In Science class, she was told the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus. In church, she was told she is made of only three: original sin, the holy spirit, and her soul. In her father, she has to ask for the answer.

“I need to call,” she says from the doorway.

“Good,” the owner says and closes the book and opens another. Bravo can’t tell if she’s really looking at anything. “Boba doesn’t move on its own.”

An hour before her shift ends, Bravo texts her father about the boba. Forty minutes later, her father marks her text with a thumbs up. When she opens the door to his truck, an empty can falls out and the hollow tin echoes at her feet. She lifts herself up and even when the roar of the engine drowns everything going on outside, the sound stays with her. What kind of animal makes a different sound when they’re empty from when they are full?

“How was work?” her dad asks, steering out to the street.

“Fine,” she says and replaces his empty cans of San Miguel in his cupholders with two Thai teas with boba. One for him, one for her. There are straws already in them.

Her father looks down at them and then back at the road. “You get a raise yet? If you haven’t, you should ask for one.”

She tosses his empty cans down at her feet with the others. Even though her father has asked this question every week, she humors him. “Not yet. I’ll ask.”

“No harm in asking. It shows inshutib.”

“Initiative?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Initiative.”

“Inishutib. It’ll serve you well. Add that to your bocabularee.”

When they get on her father’s street, Bravo speaks up. “Do you remember the text I sent?”

“Putanginangshit,” her father says and slams the brakes. The truck skates forward and the seatbelt bites into her chest. Her head snaps back and bounces on the leather headrest from the sudden jerk. “Why didn’t you remind me?”

“I thought you were going there.”

“There and here are two different places, anak. Here is here. There is not here.” Her father turns around. “And if we were at home already, would you still think we were going there?”

She looks at her father’s house shrink around the corner of the rearview mirror. She wonders what would have become of her if she had refused. What kind of animal refuses to be? Is it even anything at all?

She doesn’t answer her father. Instead, she stays quiet the whole car ride and even when they arrive at the storage facility. The truck stops before the office, before the jungle of shuttered units.

“Listen, anak,” her father starts. His breath is a fog of stale beer and unfiltered cigarettes. He quit drinking and smoking when she was born, but he started again when he left. “Listen to me. I’m sorry for yelling.”

“That’s all right, dad.”

“No, really. I am. Listen, anak. Just, don’t just do what people tell you to. Got it? Be more complicated.”

“Sure.”

“Aye nako! What did I just say?”

“Oh. Then I won’t.”

“See, you got it. Inishutib.”

Bravo lets herself out of the truck and into the tiny office. Behind the front desk, she sees a giant gorilla with thin, delicate arms, and she knows she’s in the right place.

The gorilla fixes his glasses. “Can I help you?” he asks. He is wearing a polo with the storage company logo above his heart. His fur bursts from his collar. His gut spills from the bottom of his shirt. Bravo can’t tell if he’s wearing pants, but what kind of animal needs to?

“I’m here to get the owner’s boba,” she declares.

“Oh, that,” the gorilla says and picks out a pencil from a mug with his tiny fingers. He opens a book and writes something down. “You’ll have to sign here,” he says and pushes the book between them on the counter. He holds the pencil out.

Bravo looks in the book. The gorilla points a manicured finger towards a row. At the beginning of it, he has written “6” under the heading for unit number. Bravo takes his pencil and writes her name under “visitor” and “boba” under “item taken” and nothing under “item stored.” She finishes it with the date before handing the pencil back.

“Thank you. Storage unit six is just six doors down. Tell the owner I said hi.”

“I will,” Bravo says and notices the ring on one of his fingers. “Is that a wedding ring?”

“Sure is.”

Bravo cannot recall a ring on the owner. “It’s on the wrong finger.”

The gorilla’s lips curl. They are the most human part of him besides his arms. They are light like a kiss. “That’s because I married the wrong woman.”

“Who were you supposed to marry then?”

“No, it’s supposed to be a joke.”

“Oh,” Bravo says and laughs.

“Don’t. Please. It’s not a joke anymore if I have to explain it is.”

“Sorry,” she says, but, before she leaves, she needs to know. “Then what is it ?”

The gorilla scratches his head, and an arm disappears behind his fur. The other one stays limp on the table, rapping a muffled rattle on the open book. “Beats me. I just know it’s not. If something isn’t what it’s supposed to be, is it anything at all?”

Back in the truck, Bravo’s father asks, “What’s this boba stuff, anyway?” He gulps down half of his Thai tea. His cheeks smack as he chews.

“The boba’s six doors down,” she says and snaps her seatbelt on.

“Do I really need to drive down?” he says, already letting off the brake and moving up.

Bravo watches the boba shoot up his father’s straw. Before she can reply, they’re there. “We don’t know how much there is we have to load.”

She lets off and leaves the door open, so it chimes until her father turns off the engine and takes out his key.

“Anak?”

“Yes?”

She is squatting at the lock as her father comes around and gets down beside her on a knee. “What is boba?”

“It’s what was in your drink.”

“I know, but what’s it made of?”

“Tapioca,” she says and twists the key. The two of them lift the shutter. It rises until both of their arms are in the air as it pulls up and clicks into place. “Hello,” a voice says from inside.

To Bravo’s surprise, it’s a boy. A Boba Boy.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. She has so many questions but that is the first thing that comes to mind.

“I’m the owner’s extra,” he says and walks past her and her father. He has one bag. It is empty. It is only then that she realizes the owner has nothing left, that this is all she’s found, all she’s needed until now.

“Kid,” her father says, following after him, “let me put something down so you don’t mess up my seats.”

“No problem,” Boba Boy says and waits while her father scrambles through his truck for something. Boba Boy is small and occupies almost no space at all in the world. What kind of animal is there that, despite being so important, can be considered unimportant enough to be extra?”

“I got a jacket you can sit on,” Bravo’s father says, spreading it on the back seat. “But tell the owner she’ll have to pay for dry cleaning. And if you can do me a favor and lean forward so you don’t stick to the back of your seat that would be appreciated.”

“Ok. I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” Boba Boy says and gets in.

Inside, Bravo asks, “Are your parents divorced?”

“Anak,” her father whispers, although she already knows how rude it is to ask.

“I guess,” Boba Boy says. “Separate but equal is more like it.”

Bravo thinks of what they took from each other. What they gave each other. What they had between them. “You think your father married the wrong woman?”

“Anak!”

“I don’t think so,” Boba Boy says. His voice slides through her heart and settles in her stomach. It is the first time anything has made her feel that way besides boba. “The right one is the one you get.”

After they drop Boba Boy off, the owner embraces him, and her thick arms get coated in syrup. She waves and they shine back and forth in the store lights. Her father lets Boba Boy keep his jacket and it sticks to his waist like an apron.

At her father’s home, he snores like her mother while she finishes her Thai tea on the couch. The boba is old and crumbling in her drink. When she sleeps, she dreams about her blood turning into sand and passing right through her until she’s stained her sheets and blankets again. When she wakes up, her father shakes his head before he helps her fold everything up and toss it in the wash. They eat toasted pan de sol and Neapolitan ice cream for breakfast before he drives her to work.

When she comes in, Boba Boy is behind the counter.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” he asks.

“I work here,” she says and goes behind the counter. She grabs her apron and puts it on.

“Oh, you’re the new person. The owner told me.”

Bravo takes her place beside him. She tries not to look down at him, but it’s impossible. “The owner told me she was looking for a Boba Boy, but she never told me she already had one.”

“She probably just assumed she did. It’s a boba place. If there’s boba, why wouldn’t there be a Boba Boy?”

“I guess you’re right,” she says. The boy glistens. What shows shines, and what hides beneath his clothes bleeds through and sticks. “But why aren’t you here all the time?”

“I’m just the extra. Sometimes the boba here is already enough. What do you do around here?”

“I,” she says, but pauses. She has to think about it. She thinks of beads. First bubbling in a pot, then dangling on strings in a loop. She prays for each one. She sees them in everyone. “I guess I help out with everything.”

“So, you’re extra too,” Boba Boy says, and Bravo’s lips go dry. Her insides get pulled to her core. There is a smell that permeates the air coming from Boba Boy. It isn’t bad. It’s the smell of someone Bravo would rather keep close than run away from. What kind of animal is there that, despite smelling hot and sticky, can make her feel like eating and feeding it at the same time?

For weeks, they work together. They both do as they’re told; they both do everything extra. They are inseparable to the point that Bravo is mistaken for Boba Boy and Boba Boy is mistaken for Bravo. Bravo does not mind though. She finds it flattering. And she sees Boba Boy smile at her name, as if he is hiding a secret hopeful delight for it.

But extra isn’t needed forever, and when Boba Boy says he will leave at the end of her second month, she asks her mother and father, weeks apart, about what she should do.

“Let him go,” her mother says, ten pounds heavier than when Bravo started. “You should focus on school. When you get a career, you can afford a boy.”

“Let him go,” her father says, his truck seats covered in plastic. “Let him go before he sticks to you, and you can’t get him out anymore.”

And, the next day, when she goes to ask Boba Boy what to do, he is already gone, save what’s already meant for the store. Before her shift starts, she finds the owner running the numbers but all she can afford her is the answer she already knows. “He’s all used up. Now get back to work.”

But, as far as boba goes, they fill her more and more. Every day, there’s a new drink that needs them. Every day, they boil over and are strained. She is hopeful she will be enough one day. If only to give extra.