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“Because all good Chinese boys do,” he snickers. “Right, Darren?”
She raises a brow at me. “Is that true—for you, I mean?”
I had promised my mother I would go to college so that I would have something to fall back on if I chose not to continue with the Jing San, but I’m not sharing that with her.
Instead, I say, “It’s not true…because I’m not that good.”
“You’re better than me,” JD says. “Didn’t you graduate with honors? Overachieving asshole.”
“You still haven’t said why you went to college,” Bridget says.
I can feel her careful stare on me. “Honestly, I didn’t know what else to do.”
That should put an end to her questioning. To cement that, I add, “Why did you decide to go to Cal?”
“Because I wanted to further my education, and college is a pretty good place to figure out what you want to do with your life. And, sure, there’s nothing like hands-on experience, but in a lot of areas, you don’t want to be learning on the job. Can you imagine being hit with a pandemic and having to figure everything out as you go? It’s useful to study best practices and understand the options and trade-offs beforehand.”
She takes her undergraduate education a lot more seriously than I did mine.
“Shit, that’s serious stuff,” JD says.
Bridget turns to him. “What do you do in your import-export business?”
“Import and export goods.”
“Like what?”
“Stuff you’d find boring.”
“How do you know I’d find it boring?”
JD does a double take. Most women don’t ask this many follow-up questions.
“I find it boring,” he answers. “Stuff like chemical compounds.”
“What are the compounds for? Pharmaceutical companies?”
“Yeah.” JD looks at me for help.
I ask her, “What is your friend majoring in?”
“Amy’s pre-med.”
JD shakes his head. “Another addition to the stereotype.”
“It’s a stereotype with a small grain of truth to it,” I say.
“It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“What, you don’t like the model minority myth?”
“Fuck the model minority myth.”
“At least the majority of the time, the cops don’t pull you over thinking you stole the wheels you’re driving, which doesn’t happen for a lot of other POCs.”
“That’s not true. I got pulled over last week.”
“Were you speeding?”
