“That’s nice. Good for him.”

She snorts.

“Really.” I move over to sit down beside her. Before she can turn the topic to Henry again, I say, “But back to your chem results...”

“You sound like my mum,” she grumbles.

“I’m not going to lecture you, I promise.” I raise my hand, too, mimicking the oath she made just now. She shakes her head and laughs. “I was actually just thinking—and this isn’t directed at you personally or anything—but...if you had the opportunity, would you ever cheat on the next test? If it was a matter of pass or fail?”

She considers this for a moment. “I don’t think so,” she says finally. “But only because I’m not that desperate.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how it is.” She shrugs. “A lot of the kids here were born when the one-child policy was still around. They literally have their entire family—all their aunts and great-aunts and their grandpa’s cow—just counting on them to succeed, not to mention how many of them have parents who immigrated just so they could get a foreign passport, a better education, a better life, whatever. And with that kind of pressure weighing down on you all the time... It can push you to do extreme things. It makes failure a nonoption. Unthinkable. You know what I’m saying?”

I do know. I know all too well what she means.

But my next decision still doesn’t come easily.

In the dead of night, long after Chanel’s fallen asleep, I make lists.

Lots of them; pros and cons, risks and costs.

I map out where and how I’d be able to find the exam answers, the probability of me getting caught in the process, the chances of me getting kicked out, thrown into jail (which sounds super melodramatic, I know, but according to a quick Google search, two students were actually sent to jail for cheating a year ago).

I think about why I’m doing this. I think about why I want—no, need, always need—the money. More money. I think about how ironic it is, that in order to become the person I’d like to be, I might have to do the last thing others would expect of me. I think about guilt and karma and survival and how being good doesn’t ever promise you anything in this world—only power does that.

Power I finally have.

And as the night drags on, I can’t help but think of Mama.

I think of the thin, ugly cut slicing through her worn hands, where once there was an open gash, flowing blood, a dark red river running past her fingertips.

I remember the sound of the robber breaking into our store—the only Asian grocery in our tiny rural Californian town, how proud Baba was to be the owner of the very first one, to “share a slice of our culture” with the locals there.

I remember Mama’s sharp cry of alarm—then pain, the metallic clatter of the knife hitting the floor. The robber’s grunts as my father raced to the cash register, tackling him from behind.