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would have felt less on edge and defensive had they not been going out of their way to be tactful.
“So Genie,” said Mr. Sun. “What are your plans for the future? What do you want to do with your life?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, with what I hoped was a demure smile. “I guess one of the reasons why I study as much as I do is to keep my options open.”
There. A better answer than screaming I just wanna be somebody! like a chorus member from a forties musical.
“Do you have a favorite subject?” Mrs. Sun asked. “Sometimes that can be a big life hint.”
Jeez, let it go already. “I like them all about the same.”
“Really?” said Quentin. “Rutsuo told me you once got pretty excited about computer science.”
“That was an elective that didn’t count for credit,” I said. “And I only jumped on the table to celebrate because my code for a binomial heap finally compiled after fifteen tries.”
“Passion’s passion,” said Mr. Sun. “Ever thought about being a programmer?”
I had. And no.
We lived in the epicenter of the tech industry. I’d paid enough attention to the news to know that all the good programming careers were concentrated right here in the Bay Area, not even fifty miles from where we were sitting. I wasn’t going to work my ass off only to end up right back where I started in life, within shouting distance of my mother.
I racked my brain for a more polite way of saying that I felt zero obligations to the place where I grew up. Santa Firenza wasn’t a quaint bucolic suburb where happy families were grown from the rich earth. Santa Firenza was a blacktopped hellscape of bubble tea shops and strip-mall nail salons, where feral children worshipped professional video-game streamers. The major cultural contribution of this part of the country was recording yourself dancing alongside your car while it rolled forward with no one driving it.
“Well, I’m sure that once you decide what you want, you’ll get it,” Mrs. Sun said in response to my silence. “You have so much determination for someone so young.”
“She’s always been like that, even as a baby,” said Mom. “She used to watch the educational shows with the puppets and get the questions for the kids right. But then there would be a joke for the adults that she couldn’t have possibly understood, and she’d get so angry that she’d missed something. That she didn’t get a ‘perfect score.’ She was such an angry little girl.”
“It’s not like you got the Masterpiece Theatre references inside Sesame Street either,” I snapped. “I remember asking you to explain them, and you never could.”
The only person to smell the change in the wind was Quentin, who glanced up at me while chewing a mouthful of noodles.
“There was also the time you cracked that boy’s rib for pushing Yunie into a tree,” Mom said. “The only reason you didn’t get suspended was because he was so embarrassed he wouldn’t admit the two of you got into a fight. You should have seen yourself standing up to the principal, saying over and over that you did hit him and you deserved your proper punishment. The teachers didn’t know what to make of it.”
“Ah, so she has a sense of justice,” Mrs. Sun said admiringly. “If only our boy were the same way. He was such a little delinquent when he was young.”
“Now look at him,” said Mr. Sun. “He pretends to be good but it’s all an act. He thinks he has us fooled.”
I did look at Quentin, who was busy slurping the last of his soup. He didn’t seem at all bothered by his parents’ put-downs. In fact, he gave me a little wink over the edge of his bowl.
“I also hear that you’re the star of the volleyball team,” Mrs. Sun said to me. “Their secret weapon. Have you always been stronger than other people?”
“Yes,” said my mother. “She’s always been big.”
Oh boy. The gates were open.
“Oh, I meant in an athletic sense,” said Mrs. Sun. “Skill-wise. Good gongfu at sports.”
The distinction was lost on my mother. All those words meant the same thing to her. Masculine. Ungirly. Wrong.
“She’s always towered over the other girls,” Mom said. “The boys, too. I don’t know where she got it from.”
“Oh yeah, like my height is under my control,” I responded. “There was a button you press to grow taller and I got greedy and hit it too many times.”
“Maybe it was my fault,” she added, turning martyr mode on. “Maybe I fed you too much.”
“Okay, the implications of that are horrifying.” I raised my voice like I’d done a thousand times before. “You’re going to say you should have done the reverse and starved me into a proper size?”
“Why are you getting so upset?” Mom said. “I’m just saying life would be easier for you if you weren’t . . .” She waved her hand.
