The bell rang and we were part of the bumpy rush to pour into the huge building, banging up to the third floor so we weren’t late. My breaths were hot and sharp in my lungs by the time I got to Ms. Ricardo’s English class. Not that I worried: she’d gone light on me ever since I got the scholarship. Just as I was sitting down, my phone buzzed: a text from my mother.

Kamal’s taken care of?

I shoved the phone to my pocket but it vibrated. Rania? U there?

In class. I told you. Yes.

Where again?

His friend. Derek.

Sorry. Home late tonight.

Totally annoying. We just went over the arrangements an hour ago! Ammi said she had to visit immigration in the afternoon. A routine check: she does it every year while our asylum application makes its way through the system. Each time she goes I feel a spike of fear. Especially these days, with what we see on the news. The Muslim ban. No more asylum seekers allowed. But this morning Ammi insisted it was nothing, just the usual rubber stamp. I watched her slide off her bangle. “Why are you doing that?” I asked. She gave me a blank smile. “It’s been rubbing me lately.” As if to prove it, she kneaded her wrist. That didn’t make sense. The bangle came from my father, a long time ago, when they married. I listened to it drop, clinking, into a bowl.

After school, I spotted Fatima squatting by a wall and taking a picture where someone had graffitied BROOKLYN IS LOVE in bright fuzzy letters. She tucked her phone in her pocket. “Another idea for a T-shirt. I can sell it on Etsy.”

Fatima’s always coming up with creative schemes like this: she stays up late sewing sequins onto shirt collars, or cuts up her mother’s old housedresses to make patchwork turbans. Last year she made all of ninety-seven dollars, but she’s still sure that this will be her life.

“You’ll major in accounting,” her dad told her. After I don’t know how many fights and tears and her texting me at all hours of the night, she agreed, telling me that at least with an accounting degree, no one will cheat her when she opens her own clothing line. Fatima’s not one to back down easily. “You’re so lucky,” she says. “Your mom is a warrior. She wants you to be a writer. Or whatever you want.”

It’s not that simple.

What I really feel: my mom wants to be me.