“I wanted to talk to you about your English essay, Alice,” he says.

“My essay?” I repeat, like an idiot.

“Yes. From your midterms.”

“Why? Was it—was it bad?” The words tumble out of my lips before I can stop them, like water gushing from a broken dam. I hate that this is always my first instinct: self-doubt, anxiety, the nagging feeling that I did something wrong.

But Mr. Chen puts my worries to rest with a firm shake of his head. “On the contrary—yours was one of the most well-written essays I’ve read in years. And I don’t say that lightly.”

“Oh,” is all I can think to say as the compliment sinks in. One of the most well-written essays I’ve read. And that’s coming from Mr. Chen, the same teacher who was invited to speak at Peking University only weeks earlier, who received his education at Harvard. I’ve never had drugs before—never plan to in my life—but I imagine this is what the high must feel like. “Wow.”

“Wow indeed,” he says, but he doesn’t smile. “That’s not the main reason I asked you to stay behind, though.” He taps a finger absentmindedly on his desk like a pen, as if deciding how best to phrase his next question. “Do you remember your main contention for the essay?”

I try not to look too taken aback. “Um, roughly.”

“So you remember how you positioned yourself in...support of Macbeth and his actions?”

Now I see where this is going.

“It was only for the exam,” I say quickly. “To make an interesting argument. I obviously don’t believe you should go around killing people to gain power—or for any reason, really, unless the person you’re killing is about to wipe out the human species or something, but that’s a whole different topic. And I wasn’t saying that he was right either. Just—sympathetic.”

“Just sympathetic.” Somehow, when Mr. Chen repeats something, he sounds all wise and philosophical.

“I mean his ambition,” I say, feeling the need to clarify further, especially as his contemplative silence drags on a beat too long. “The fact that he goes after what he wants.”

“Well then, Alice.” Mr. Chen clasps his hands in front of him, peers at me across his desk. I feel vaguely as if he’s about to give me a test of some kind. “Since we’re on the topic—tell me. What is it that you want?”

“What do I want?” I echo.

He nods, expectant.

But the open-endedness of the question catches me off guard, knocks the air out my lungs as a million answers surge up to meet it—

I want to be respected. I want to be rich. I want to become an acclaimed civil rights attorney or a business director at a Fortune 500 company or a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist; I want to be a professor at Harvard or Oxford or Yale, to walk those gleaming lecture halls with my head held high and know that I belong; I want to inherit a giant multimillion-dollar company, like Henry, or be bold and gifted and innovative enough to pave my own path in some niche field, like Peter, or to have endless opportunities to stand before thousands of people and be seen, like Rainie; I want my name to be spoken at Airington long after I’ve left, for all my teachers to be proud that they once taught me, to say to future students, “you heard of that Alice Sun? I always knew she would make it”; I want glory, recognition, attention, praise; I want to buy my parents a brand-new apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony that overlooks a glittering green lake, to earn enough money to treat them to roast duck and fresh fish every day; I want to be great at what I do, no matter what I do; I want, I want, I want—