Junior year, we had a college fair. Rosie and I wandered for a few hours, trying to suss out which schools would be best for our respective interests. We spent almost an hour at the NYU booth with fifty other students, and Rosie came out with a starry-eyed look and a dream.

Then we got to the USC booth. The Queens representative was a young man who went by Dr. Stewart, and the moment he started talking about the School of Cinematic Arts, I knew.

I went home that night with an armful of pamphlets, Dr. Stewart’s business card, and high hopes.

I remember sitting down at the dining table with a wide grin. “The University of Southern California,” I told my parents.

They laughed.

And then they realized I was serious.

And they laughed again.

I left, slamming the door to my room shut. And then I spent days watching YouTube videos of USC students giving tours of their rooms and campus. And then I spent days looking up USC’s famous alumni. And then I spent two and a half days crafting a perfectly worded email to Dr. Stewart.

His response was far more enthusiastic and encouraging than my parents’, telling me that I was an ideal applicant and that I had a bright future ahead of me, and it settled the remaining doubt in my heart.

I was going to get into USC, even if it killed me.

Soon afterward, the fights started. It’s not as if it was exactly new. It’s been years since my parents and I have gotten along well—it’s hard to look at families like Nazifa’s and still maintain respect for my own. But for most of my childhood, I kept quiet about it. Even if I didn’t agree with their methods, I never said anything about it to them.

But my future isn’t something I’m willing to compromise on.

It began small, with my parents finding stray USC flyers lying around the house. And then it got bigger and bigger as I started doing more and more research on the school, meeting up with USC alumni for coffee and watching informational videos every spare minute I had, until the day before my USC interview at some fancy hotel in Midtown.

“You’re not going,” Ma had screamed.

I remember I sneered at her. “Who’s going to stop me? You?”

“This is ridiculous! Fahim, tell her!”

Baba gave me an awful look, one burned into my memory—as if I was his biggest disappointment. “What’s the point of being interviewed, Poppy? You’re not going to get in.”

The words were a slap in the face. “Why wouldn’t I get in?”