Parachutes: Chapters 1–11

It takes me six hours to slog through the homework my teachers assigned me.

Her cheeks flush with nostalgia, and I settle in for a trip down memory lane.

I haven’t indulged him, but I haven’t flat out said no either.

“Promise me you’ll save yourself for someone special,” my mom says. “A Fortune 500 CEO perhaps. Or second-generation scion. Someone better.”

However she feels about my mom, she dotes on me because I’m her eldest grandchild.

But her scholarship covers only tuition and a tiny stipend for housing, so she needs the money.

“Tracking is a modern form of segregation. Kids are labeled from an early age based on how they do on a few tests and are then divided into separate tracks for the rest of their schooling. It’s based on the erroneous belief that we as human beings don’t change, that once ignorant, always ignorant. Once poor, always poor.”

I set forth evidence and examples, talk about systemic bias and racial bias and how it oozes into our subconscious and convinces us that we’re not good enough.

I set forth evidence and examples, talk about systemic bias and racial bias and how it oozes into our subconscious and convinces us that we’re not good enough.

My mom and I have this rule—if it’s a new address, I don’t go. Someone else can go and clean it for the first time, just in case there’s something dodgy with the client.

With its lush lawn and wraparound balcony overlooking sprawling views of Los Angeles, it’s got to be worth at least two to three million dollars.

This will be a cinch to clean.

I can feel her disappointment—her anxiety—with every labored breath she takes.

“Don’t get sassy with me. This isn’t about you writing your own paper. This is about you never listening,” she says.

“I’ll have to investigate that,” Zhou Lao Shi says tersely, and gets up.

My mom sits sullen on the couch, head buried in her hands, contemplating her future...because if you’re a Chinese mom whose sole measure of success is how well your offspring does, when your offspring screws up, you screw up.

I thought this was all angry talk, which is why I indulged him, but now, looking into his manic eyes, I wonder how long he’s been thinking about this.

My dad takes his hand and slips it into my mom’s, accepting her apology, and the two of them stand side by side in the kind of nauseating solidarity that makes me sad for womankind.

Mrs. Mandalay requires us full-scholarship students to attend the American Prep cocktail fund-raisers she’s always putting on to solicit donations for the school’s already inflated endowment.

Mrs. Mandalay requires us full-scholarship students to attend the American Prep cocktail fund-raisers she’s always putting on to solicit donations for the school’s already inflated endowment.

I stifle a laugh.

Eager prospective parents mixed with bored alumni roped in to attend through guilt.

I furrow my eyebrows, What is it?

There’s the former French concession, where the French dignitaries used to live.

I think about that, about all the concessions I’ve made over the years, pieces of me carved out to please my parents.

There’s the British and American enclaves, ceded as a result of the Opium War.

There’s the British and American enclaves, ceded as a result of the Opium War.

Why is it that when I’m in front of a podium, I can come up with these eloquent lines and when I’m off the stage, I can’t seem to find the words and end up sounding like a frog?

They take me to the consulate to get my visa.

My mom sits across the aisle and is too engrossed in a TV show to notice.

I drink myself to oblivion....

The living room is tiny and sparsely furnished.

My room, like the living room, is modest, with a queen bed, a small bureau for my clothes, and a desk.

I put my hands to the keyboard and start fixing his run-on sentences and his misplaced modifiers.

I bite my lip, not wanting to get into it, but Zach gazes at me with the same discerning eyes I’m used to sneaking glances at in band, and he gets it out of me.

I take a deep breath, mustering up the strength.

“Every argument is derivative,” she informs me. “Every point is based on a previously established point. There are no original points!”

Jess throws both palms over her cheeks at her desk in feigned surprise.

If this were in China, our teachers would be walking up and down the aisles, scrutinizing our every character stroke with their hawklike eyes.

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