Nathan is Eugene’s son, and he’s seventeen, a year older than me. We’re friends in the way that a lot of parents who are friends like to think their kids are also friends. Which is to say, we barely know each other. I mostly just remember us watching shows like Parks and Recreation and Breaking Bad on the small TV in the smoke-filled kitchen of Foo’s while across the room our parents played games of mahjong. And our conversations rarely went beyond the typical go-tos, such as “Can you turn up the volume?” and “Pass the chips?”

I snort. “Dad, I haven’t seen him since I was, like, ten.” At eleven, Nathan had been shorter and scrawnier than me, and full of smirks because he somehow always won at Rock, Paper, Scissors each time we couldn’t agree on what to watch.

“Has it really been that long? Well, he’s a nice kid. Taller than me now, and Eugene says he’s on his school’s volleyball team. You should get back in touch.”

“He wouldn’t even know who I was.”

“Sure he would.”

My mother’s laugh in my father’s direction as she eats salad with chopsticks is breezy but pointed. “Holly isn’t right for Nathan, and he’s not right for her. Besides, shouldn’t he be busy making plans for leaving for university next year?”

Nathan’s university plans don’t have much to do with why my mother says he’s not suited for me, while him being 100 percent Chinese does.

My mother’s kind of a puzzle this way, the Old-School part of her tangled up with the Progressive, so it’s hard to figure out where one ends and one begins. She’s fiercely proud of being Chinese, but she wears her pride more like a bruise instead of a badge, earned through some kind of odd suffering. She says being Chinese is both a blessing and a curse, depending on which part of the world we’re in, which era of time we’re talking about. Holly, why would we leave China if not to make sure you weren’t just going to be us? Why are we here all the way across the sea if not for you to become someone new, someone who can shine even as they fit in?