Win Me Something

Maybe it wasn't that everyone else was more loved, but that everyone else tried. Or that if you knew you were loved, it was easier to try.

Sometimes I did this when I was self-conscious, thought endlessly about what I was doing wrong and ignored the person I was worried about pleasing.

I often found myself in friendships with people like this, self-absorbed and sparkling. It took the pressure off me when everyone was looking at them. But it curdled into resentment, for how neatly I clicked into the slot of sidekick, for how quickly they cast me there.

It was September. Autumn only in advertisements. Cartoon orange leaves and red backpacks lining the signs for back to school sales. The warmth whittling down, but still keeping us in short sleeves.

I'd been trying to count how many words I spoke at each meal, telling myself that I should participate more, but it was hard when they were standing around the kitchen island, responding to starts of sentences I didn't know the ends to.

Ray was white like boiled potatoes cut into quarters, white like flour that sticks to skin, but he was also obsessed with pad thai and sweet-and-sour soup, and his hair was like mine–close enough to black that everyone called it that. That was one reason I didn't like him, when I was with him and my mom, people assumed I was his before being told I was hers.

Thursdays she had Mandarin, private lessons out of a West Village brownstone with a woman named Li. I felt like Li distrusted me immediately because I was one of those American-born Chinese kids who wasn't really Chinese enough.

Thinking too far into the future was a problem for me. I loved looking at job listings, internship ideas in careers I'd never dipped a toe in, real estate websites that showed rent I couldn't afford. I wanted to be chosen, or to choose–maybe I wasn't sure of the difference yet. I saw choices glimmering outside my reach, and I wanted badly to get closer.