The sound of my mom’s voice sends an unexpected wave of homesickness crashing through me. It’s still morning on her end, and I can hear something sizzling in the background; footsteps on hardwood; the lovely, ordinary rhythm of life back home. I imagine my father in the kitchen, flipping an omelet because my mom always makes it too runny, and the homesickness crashes in harder, sweeping the shores of my ribs.

“Hi, Mom,” I say softly.

“How is everything?” she asks. “Your dad’s cooking breakfast right now. I asked him not to—I bet he’s going to burn the omelet again—but he’s been going on and on about how much he misses you. He wanted to call you yesterday, but I told him you’d be busy with all the activities you’re doing.”

“I really miss you guys too. And everything’s … good,” I say, surprised to find that it’s not a total lie. The curtains are still open a sliver, and through them, Shanghai is glowing, all its magnificent buildings bathed in an array of lights. It’s the kind of sight you could never get sick of, even if you stared at it every night. “I’ve been learning a lot. I actually won the first activity today—it was, like, this escape room thing in a teahouse—and I got this really pretty tea set for you and Dad. I’ll show you when I get back.”

“You won a tea set?” From the sheer pride and enthusiasm in my mom’s voice, you’d think I’d won a whole mansion with cash stuffed into every room and our family name trimmed into the two-hundred-acre front lawn. “That’s amazing. How’s everything else? Did you make any new friends?”

It’s an old question, a familiar one.

Did you make any new friends? she’d asked eagerly that first afternoon after I transferred schools. I’d kept quiet, my lips quivering from the sheer effort of holding back my tears, and waited until she pulled the car away from the curb before my composure cracked. Nobody spoke to me the entire day, I sobbed. I—I don’t know why. Even when I tried to be friendly and ask questions, they just … ignored me. All of them.

Maybe it’s because you joined in the middle of the semester, my mom had tried to comfort me. They’re just getting used to you.

Maybe, I’d allowed, but I knew somehow that it wasn’t so simple.