“Not everyone at our school
shits money.”
“I know,” I said.
But I didn’t. Not really.
Everyone I knew had houses
that lined the golf course
or encircled the lake.
Everyone I knew had fathers
who were executives
at Microsoft, Amazon, or
sold their tech start-up
for a couple million.
Everyone I knew had mothers
with platinum credit cards,
Mercedes SUVs,
and addictions to expensive
chardonnays and champagne.
I knew about a lot of things.
I knew how to apply
L’Hospital’s rule to evaluate limits
of indeterminate forms.
I knew that Alexander Hamilton
believed that the debt accrued during
the Revolutionary War was the price
we had to pay for liberty and freedom.
I knew the difference
between an epistrophe and an anastrophe.
I knew what it felt like
to be enveloped
by expectations.
What I didn’t know
“Do you know
our star quarterback?”
Ashok asked.
“Of course. Bryant Barnett,”
I said.
“Do you know
his stats?”
“Of course,
All-American,
three state championships,
forty-two touchdown passes
just last season.”
“Do you know
why he plays for Meydenbauer?”
“Uh, because he’s good.”
“But do you know
who cleans the men’s locker room?”
“No. Why would I?
What’s your point,
Ashok?”
“How do you think
a kid like Bryant Barnett
ended up in a place like Meydenbauer?”
“The same way the rest of us got here—
our parents,”
I said.
“You think Bryant’s parents live
in a house like this?
Work in a place like Microsoft?”
“I don’t know,
maybe,”
I said.
“You don’t know shit.”
Keyword searching
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Meydenbauer High
“So you’re saying
Bryant Barnett’s father
is a janitor at Meydenbauer?”
I asked.
Ashok looked up from his textbook.
“Can you at least
read a draft of my boy Bryant’s essay?
As a favor?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Like you said,
I don’t need the money.”
I did what my father told me
To make him proud,
to make him love me.
I excelled in math and science.
I went to Chinese school
for eight years,
every morning.
I respected my elders
when they came to visit.
I ate everything off my plate.
Yet it was never enough
for him to stop working
so late.
Mom didn’t help
the situation either.
I did what they told me,
and yet
we lived in a household
where my parents
avoided coexisting with each other,
where they were clearly
the worst roommates,
where their only daughter
served as some sort of Switzerland.
I should have asked
“Do you even love each other?”
to my parents
at some point.
But I knew the answer.
My parents did not marry for love.
Mom saw my father at a party.
She said he was cute
She said he had social cache
and a reputation,
whatever that means
at MIT.
My father,
from China,
here on an F1 visa,
was focused,
determined,
and fascinated
with beautiful,
blond,
talkative
like my mother.
Mom got pregnant.
Dad insisted on marriage,
partially to defy his family
who expected him to return
after graduation
and partially because,
as a good Chinese man,
he felt obligated
to take on the duties
of fatherhood.
Everything Dad had grown to understand
about the American dream—
the good job,
the stable family,
the fancy cars—
crumbled in on him
the day Mom left.
Dad walked around untethered
for months.
He stayed at the office
most nights.
He went in on weekends.
Until one day
he, too,
up and left,
just like Mom.
But at least he gave me his flight info
and a phone number
while he was away in China.
He trusted that I could take care of myself,
not because I had earned it,
but because he didn’t know any better.
He didn’t know me.
I threw a house party
Two years ago
while Dad was in China
and Mom was
God knows where.
I invited everyone I knew
and then some.
I wanted a house filled
with something
other than
loneliness.
Strangers filled empty spaces,
squeezing by,
finding friends
and a beer.
The boy
who sat next to me in Spanish,
who smelled like cut grass,
who gave me
the good cheese and the good crackers
out of his Lunchable
in third grade,
stood on the other end
of the kitchen.
Ben and I were friends
in first grade.
He told me jokes.
He let me drive his Power Wheels
up and down the block.
But our friendship
had faded as
Ben, Jordan, and I
became Ben and Jordan
and I
was left to find
friends who wore makeup,
friends who wanted boyfriends,
friends who were like
Audrey and Jenny and Jilly.
We had a past together,
but tonight
something inside me hinted
that maybe we had a future.
Maybe
was what his sly smile said
from across the kitchen.
I didn’t need alcohol to approach Ben,
but it certainly helped.
“Hola, amigo,” I said.
Ben leaned against the counter.
Our bare arms touched.
He drank a Keystone Light
slowly,
like it was a can full of something
far more satiating.
He tipped it back.
I knocked his shoulder.
“Empty?”
He shrugged.
But the way his mouth stretch
ed
across his face,
the way his charm stretched
across our conversation,
made the fuzzy boundaries
of my skin
grow boundless.
I should have known
a boy’s shrug
meant apathy,
not answers.
But I wanted so badly to be
all his answers.
One of the twins jostled me.
Jenny or maybe Audrey.
I couldn’t tell tonight.
Ben reached out
and pulled me out of the way,
pulled me closer
to him,
and closer to
the opposite
of loneliness.
The moment passed,
and he dropped his arm,
but I wanted
more than anything
for that arm to linger
longer
around my shoulder.
I wanted to feel it
again.
“My dad has better stuff
to drink. You want?”
I said.
He nodded,
his tousled brown hair messy
in the just-rolled-out-of-bed
kind of way.
“Follow me.”
I pushed our way through the crowd
to the end of an empty hall.
We entered the study
with a fireplace, a leather couch,
and sconces casting solitary shadows.
A cabinet sat behind an oak desk,
which I unlocked with a key.
“Whiskey, bourbon, or scotch?”
I said.
Ben stood behind me.
He laid his palm lightly on my shoulder
as if to crane his head around for a better view.
I felt his warm breath on my neck.
I turned around and looked up.
The room spun
and I was drunk
on love
and alcohol.
I ran my fingers along the side of his body.
He squirmed
and smirked
and grabbed my hand in his.
He pulled me closer.
Our lips met.
It felt drunken
at first,
then real.
He tugged at the zipper on my dress,
fumbled with the clasps on my bra.
I unlocked my lips and stepped away.
“Not here.”
I rehooked my bra
and zipped up my dress.
“Have you ever had
a five-thousand-dollar bottle
of whiskey?” I asked.
Ben’s eyes widened,
his lips now glossy
like mine.
I poured us both
a glass of Glenrothes 1970
single-malt whiskey.
I handed him a crystal tumbler.
We clinked glasses and sipped
the caramel-colored alcohol.
We nosed the complexity of the drink.
I couldn’t tell whether it smelled
oaky, or citrusy, or sweet, or acrid.
“It’s a shame I’m too drunk
to appreciate this,” I said.
Ben nodded and took another sip.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
I wove my hand in his
and led him back through
the mass of bodies
sweating alcohol and cheap cologne.
We wound our way
to the other side
of the house,
ending at a door
that led upstairs
to my bedroom.
At the top of the stairs
we found solace
in a moonlit room
nestled among the pines.
I untangled my hand from his
and fell on top of my bed.
I closed my eyes
and listened to the rain
that drummed against the windows.
Ben fell on top of me.
His mouth tasted like
five-thousand-dollar whiskey
and his cotton shirt smelled
of cheap beer.
He tugged at my zipper
and fumbled with my bra.
This time I didn’t stop him.
That song Mom would always play said
you can’t always get what you want,
but that night
I had exactly what I wanted.
I had Ben,
and that was enough.
On our first real date
Ben took me to a movie.
One with superheroes
and lots of CGI effects.
Before the house lights went down
and we settled deeper into the faux-leather recliners,
before we fixed our eyes on the twenty-by-fifty screen
and fell out of consciousness with the world
around us—our unanswered texts,
the piles of homework that lay at home—
Ben’s eyes found mine
in the dim light,
and for a moment
I thought
he saw me
for who I was—
a girl, anxious
and possibly in love.
Bryant Barnett
The decorated quarterback
of our venerated football team,
motioned to an empty seat.
“Do you mind?” Bryant Barnett asked.
I shook my head.
He swung his enormous quads
over the bench and sat down.
“Ashok said you could help me.”
His eyes darted to the girls next to us,
preoccupied with their phones.
“But I can’t . . .”
“. . . pay. I know,”
I said softly.
Bryant grimaced.
Three hundred dollars was less than
a new iPhone and slightly more than
a new pair of skinny jeans from Nordstrom.
But three hundred dollars
was more than a week’s worth of pay
from a part-time job
at the deli counter at Safeway.
Was I so wrong
to charge
what the market
would bear?
“I’m the oldest.
I’m the first to have a shot,”
Bryant continued.
“College means everything to me.
“I’ll go to Oregon.
I’ll play football if I have to.
“But Elbridge College—
if I can get in,
get a full-ride
without being an athlete—
that would be
life-changing.
“It’s a long shot, I know.
But, man, it would be
an achievement.”
An achievement
“What about winning three state championships?
Hoisting a trophy above your head?
Smiling into all those flashing bulbs?
Getting caught in a confetti shower?
“Being wanted by all the top recruiters?
Pursuing a Heisman?”
I asked.
“Winning a Heisman
isn’t winning
life, Nic.
“And football isn’t
the game I need to play
for my future,”
Bryant said.
When Bryant Barnett wore
A #BlackLivesMatter shirt
after another police shooting last fall,
it made the school
uncomfortable,
as if to remind us
that he is more than
a football star,
more than a golden boy,
more than a pawn
in our town’s obsession
with greatness,
as if to remind us
that Bryant Barnett
is black.
We forget that race exists—
Because it’s so much easier
to pretend
it’s not there.
It’s so much easier
to try to blend in
like neutral beige foundation
soaked into skin.
But it’s there
in line at the grocery store
when the White cashier
wrinkles her nose
at the bottle of fish sauce
and can of bean curds
Xiaoling has found
in the Asian aisle at
Whole Foods.
It’s there on the playground
at the downtown park
when someone else’s mother
grabs me by the arm
and asks,
“Who do you
belong to?”
It’s there in the East parking lot
after school as some White guys
blast Kanye
from a thousand-dollar stereo,
as if his words
speak their truth.
It’s there when you see
a Toyota Camry
driving down Main Street
driven by a black man
being tailed
by an officer.
But the stoplight turns green
and we keep on driving,
distancing
ourselves
from what makes us
uncomfortable.
To own
“Don’t do what you do for everyone else,”
Bryant said.
“Just read it. Tell me
if it sucks.
“This one’s mine
to own.
Okay?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
Bryant Barnett slid a single sheet
across the table.
I took the essay in hand.
I fell into the weight of the words
he stood to own.
I began to read.
Elbridge College Application
Written by Bryant Barnett
Elbridge College offers ample opportunity for students to explore activities in the arts, athletics, sciences, social life, and in the community. In 500 words or fewer, tell us who you will be and what you may do as a student at Elbridge College.
I have a powerhouse arm and countless records in yards rushing. I’ve taken Meydenbauer High to the state championships three out of four years of high school. I train seven days a week, lifting in the mornings, drills and scrimmages in the afternoon, to prep for the Friday-night game.
To play football here in Meydenbauer, to be coached by the best, to be on the state’s most established team requires my dad to work three jobs and my mom to work weekends. We live in the cheapest apartment complex there is within the school district boundaries. My little brother is the only Black kid in his fifth-grade class. My family has sacrificed a lot to live in Meydenbauer, to have me play here, at this high school.