For the next half hour, Jess helps me set up my Insta in class while I erase what she wrote about hot dogs and try to write something meaningful. I end up going with minestrone soup and how I like it because it represents the melting pot of American society. When I’m done, Jess glances over at my essay and says, “Damn. Mr. Harvey might actually have to put on his reading glasses.”

“How do we get out of here?” I ask her.

“What do you mean?” she says, handing me back my phone. She’s made my Insta handle @ClairrreLA and posted a picture of her smiling and me writing my essay in the background with the caption “smartbitches.”

I point at Mr. Harvey snoring at his desk. “He’s sleeping!”

Jess glances at him and shrugs. “Whatever, could be worse,” she says. “At least he’s not straight-up racist. I heard the teachers in the normal stream, they write, ‘Do not cheat’ in Chinese and put it up in their classroom!”

I make a face. For real?

The bell rings, jolting Mr. Harvey awake. He scrambles to get out of his chair to collect the papers before his students leave. “Great class, guys! I can’t wait to read these!” he exclaims.

Jess hands him our essays as we walk out. In the hallway, two Chinese girls run up to Jess. Their bracelets clink and clang as they run.

“Florence, Nancy, meet Claire,” Jess says. “She’s a new parachute.”

They smile and compliment me on my backpack and my shoes. As we walk, they ask me about my host family.

“They’re okay,” I say. “It’s this woman Maria De La Cruz and her daughter, Dani.”

“You’re so lucky you don’t live with a guy,” Jess says. She makes a face. “My host dad leaves the toilet seat up all the time. And, like, he always misses! There’s pee everywhere!”

“My host,” Nancy says of the ABC family she lives with, “she looks at me like I’m the shittiest thing to happen to Asian Americans since affirmative action.”

“Wait, I thought we’re Asian Americans now,” I say.

“No, we weren’t born here. That’s why it’s called ABC—American-born Chinese,” Nancy explains. “God forbid we take up one of their precious few seats in uni. . . .”

“Or they’re mistaken as one of us,” Florence adds.

Wow. I had no idea. I turn to Florence and ask her who she lives with. She says she lives alone in an apartment.

“Florence’s dad is a hedge fund mogul,” Jess brags, rubbing her fingers together for money.

“Stop,” Florence says, slightly embarrassed. “But, yeah, it’s nice.”

As we’re walking, I notice all the parachutes are going one direction and the other kids a different one. It’s the weirdest thing. An entire lane of black hair headed one way, and every other color of hair the other.