But the light in Mrs. Wang’s eyes didn’t last long. When we arrived at the obscene mansion by the man-made lake (there were fucking columns out front and two spewing fountains), we were engulfed by other guests as soon as we entered. And suddenly I didn’t exist, to the point where Mrs. Wang did everything she could to create physical distance between me and the rest of them.

A middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and broad shoulders placed a hand on Mr. Wang’s shoulders. “How are you feeling?” he asked, his volume low as if it were a secret.

“Dr. Lin, hello!” Mr. Wang answered nervously, shaking hands with him longer than normal societal standards would dictate.

At the same time, a woman ran up to Mrs. Wang and, in lieu of a greeting, rambled, “Aiyah, I heard your Jing-Jing is studying economics at UChicago! I wish my Charlie would major in something that practical, but he just had to become an MD-PhD, which, giǎ xiláng, is a nine-year program—though I think he’s on track to do it in six, giving me gray hairs worrying about how hard he’s working!”

Mr. and Mrs. Wang threw their coats and scarves on top of me to slow me down. As I tried to untangle myself, the chatter around me increased as more guests swarmed the Wangs.

“Oh! Hey,” I heard Jing-Jing say.

A voice I didn’t recognize said “Hey” back in a mocking way. (How could anyone make fun of the word “hey”?)

I’d just freed my head from Mr. Wang’s scarf when Mrs. Wang threw Jing-Jing’s outerwear at me too.

“How are you, Lisa?” Jing-Jing said with a forced smile. (I couldn’t see her, but I knew from her tone what her facial expression was.)

“Oh, you know, there’s a lot of pressure on me in law school, but it’s Harvard so I can’t complain, right?”

Oh, gross.

A boy piped up, “The pressure probably comes from your older sister having three master’s degrees and now getting a PhD, right?”

“Well, everyone in our family has at least two master’s, so that’s not a big deal, but yeah, the PhD is prestigious.”

“And I’m going to be a Rhodes scholar!” another girl blurted as if she couldn’t hold on to the information a second longer without bursting.

How the eff had Jing-Jing survived high school with people like this? My childhood Asian community had been nothing but supportive, lifting one another up because no one else would help us.