I was feeling ridiculously grateful for everything and everyone—for my grandparents, as always, for EMBRS and Prof. Logan making this happen, and for this girl, Louise, who would ferry the culmination of a year’s worth of effort to me. I was even grateful for radical sharing. EMBRS never would have found Louise if she hadn’t been doing her own form of radical sharing. I figured I should try to be more open, and really it wouldn’t do for whatever Meng wanted to give my grandmother to be lost in the mail, so I asked, contrary to my nature, if Louise wanted to meet in person. I told her I went to school not far from Cherry Hill and wanted to thank her properly.

ooh yeah, sounds good! would it be too much to ask you to come to NJ though? i hate driving and id make a mess of it with jet lag

I agreed, and it wasn’t long before we were setting a date at a frozen yogurt shop.

Which brings me to today. It wasn’t hard to convince Prof. Logan to lend me his car. I told him the truth: I had been using EMBRS, or eating our own dog food, as they say in the industry (though Prof. Logan prefers “drinking our own champagne”), and it had sparked a connection for me, the potential to reunite my grandmother with her long-lost cousin, and the only thing stopping me from making this connection a reality was however would I get to New Jersey? He practically threw his car keys at me.

“A real-life connection sparked by EMBRS!” he cried. “You must go!”

For better or worse, on the forty-five-minute drive, I was too nervous about messing up Prof. Logan’s car to overthink the upcoming encounter. I relaxed only after I pulled in to the strip mall and saw it had amazingly wide parking spots. Louise had offered to meet me halfway, said she could get a ride, but I insisted she was the one doing me a favor.

lol you’re worse than my parents

I had laughed alone in my dorm room at that.

She was already at the frozen yogurt shop when I arrived, easy to recognize since she was the only other Asian person there. She looked up from her phone when the door opened and broke into a wide smile, standing. She was much taller than I imagined, though really I shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing she was on the volleyball team. She had shorter hair than in her profile picture, stopping right above her shoulders. She wore turquoise running shorts and a T-shirt of a band I had never heard of.

We had a good conversation. A really good one, actually, and I’m not sure why that is, given I’m normally not great at conversation. But she was so easy to talk to, open and curious and quick to laugh.