500 Words or Less Read online

  “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

  Staff

  Directory

  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

  American girls

  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.