“I’m not,” I say, trying to collect my thoughts. “And it’s not like... I mean, grades don’t matter that much anyway...” I wince. The words ring awfully false and hypocritical to my own ears. “Sorry. That was so obnoxious.”

Chanel snorts. “It was, a little.”

“So—okay, I do get why you’d be upset about it. It sucks. But also, if it helps... I genuinely don’t consider our academic records to be like, the ultimate indicator of human value or whatever.”

She looks up at me. “You really think that?”

I nod.

“Then why do you kill yourself studying all the time?”

“Well, it’s different for me...” I immediately cringe again, and hurry to explain, “Not in like a special snowflake sort of way but... I don’t know. I guess grades are the only thing I have power over. The only thing I have.”

The second I say this aloud, I realize how sad it sounds.

“That’s not true,” Chanel tells me, and I expect her to sprout some vague, corny line about how I still have so much untapped potential and my whole life ahead of me, but instead she simply says, “You have me. And you have Henry.”

I stare at her. “Henry?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“As in Henry Li? The one at our school?”

“The one and only.”

“Henry literally wouldn’t bat an eye if I dropped dead at his feet,” I say, half laughing now. “Or, no, he’d probably tell my corpse to not dirty his shoes.”

“You might think that,” Chanel says, stuffing three spicy strips into her mouth at once and speaking between chews. “But trust me, he cares a lot more than he lets on.” She arches an eyebrow at me. “He cares about you a lot more than he lets on.”

Heat rises up the back of my neck, followed by a sharp, inexplicable thrill of pleasure. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say loudly, more to myself than to Chanel.

“I swear on my favorite LV bag I’m telling the truth,” she insists, raising one hand dramatically in the air. Then she pushes herself up into sitting position, her eyes suddenly serious. “I’ve known that kid and his family for—what? Seven years now? And, yeah, he’s always worked like he has a fire lit under his ass. Hell, he used to listen in on his dad’s business meetings and draw up all these solutions for SYS when he was a freaking ten-year-old. But I’ve never seen him this...devoted to a project before. Like, ever.”

“He’s only like that because we’re business partners,” I point out. “And he gets to make a profit out of it.”

“Sure.” She rolls her eyes. “Because we all know that’s the only thing missing from Henry Li’s life—money.”

I decide to ignore what she’s implying. “You don’t have to lack something to want it. And everyone wants money.”

“Not everyone,” Chanel protests. When she sees the look I’m giving her, she adds, “Like monks, for example. My uncle’s a monk, you know. Lives in a temple in Xiangshan and eats only lettuce and everything. He doesn’t want money at all.”