Ma nodded. “Be nice to him.”

Aunt Paula’s house was deliciously warm. I found myself lingering by the radiator in the living room.

Nelson noticed me there and sauntered over. He was wearing his school uniform too, a dark green blazer and tan pants-and then I knew. We were both in our school clothes because Aunt Paula wanted to show off the fact that Nelson was in private school too. She’d made me wear my outfit so that he could wear his.

Nelson spoke softly so the adults wouldn’t hear. “When you see our home, your eyes glow red, don’t they?”

Nelson could never out-insult me, and certainly not in Chinese. I patted his arm. “What a pity your mind is like a cowhide lantern. No matter how often you try to light it, it will never be bright.”

Aunt Paula’s voice from the kitchen interrupted us. “Time to eat rice!”

We were all crowded around their table: Uncle Bob, Godfrey, Nelson, Aunt Paula, Ma and me. The table was loaded with delicacies like stir-fried shrimp with lichee nuts, steamed peppers stuffed with meat, and a whole sea bass poached with ginger and scallions.

“You’re serving us a golden dragon on a platter,” Ma said. My aunt had gone to elaborate lengths.

She had never made such an effort for us before, and I could see that our status in her mind had been raised. It wasn’t just that she was impressed by my achievements, though. I understood her well enough to know it couldn’t be that simple. Perhaps she realized I could become more of a threat to her now, and that she ought to treat Ma and me a bit better, just in case.

Over dinner, Aunt Paula wanted to know all of my standardized test scores and how exactly I had managed to get into Harrison Prep. I gave her a general impression of what had happened, leaving out most of the details.

“And what are your grades like, now that you’re at such an exclusive school?” she asked.

I stared at my bowl of rice. “The classes aren’t so easy.”

“Really? For such a smart girl?”

“I got a hundred on my last English test,” Nelson interjected. “What did you get?”

I had just put a lichee nut in my mouth, and I bit down so hard on my chopsticks I could feel my teeth imprint on the wood. “Nelson, we don’t even go to the same school.”

“I know. So what did you get?” he said.

I was ashamed but I had to be honest. “A sixty-seven.”

Nelson beamed. Uncle Bob paused in the middle of feeding Godfrey a spoonful of rice.

“Aaah.” Aunt Paula breathed out. There was relief and satisfaction in her sigh. Obviously, her wish for me to be unsuccessful was greater than her desire to use me to inspire Nelson.

Ma’s forehead was furrowed. She had never heard of me receiving such a score before. “You didn’t tell me that, ah-Kim.”

“It’s all right, Ma,” I said. “I’m working as hard as I can.”

“You must be careful with your scholarship, Kimberly,” Aunt Paula said, though I knew she would be glad if I actually lost the money. “You wouldn’t want to be disqualified.”

“I know,” I said. This was a secret worry of mine and I hadn’t wanted to share it with Ma. Of course Nelson and Aunt Paula had exposed me. I looked Aunt Paula in the eye. “I’m at the factory until so late, I don’t have much time to study.”

Ma interrupted us. “You can release your heart, older sister.” This meant that Aunt Paula didn’t need to worry. “Ah-Kim always tries her best in everything. Do take another piece of stuffed pepper.” She speared a piece with her chopsticks and put it in Aunt Paula’s bowl, while staring at me to be quiet.

I obeyed and Ma changed the subject.

Annette was having a hard time fitting in at Harrison too, although not in the same way I was. She came from an affluent family like most of the other kids, but she was too funny-looking and outspoken to fit in easily. Every morning on the bus I saved the seat next to me, and as soon as she boarded, we would spend the rest of the ride talking about our classes and the boys Annette thought were cute. I didn’t care for any boys. I was too busy struggling to keep up in my classes, and the boys in my class only seemed to be interested in playing around and teasing the girls.

The brown-haired girl, Tammy, glanced over at us sometimes on the bus, and in class she sat next to me once in a while.

“I tried to call you for the homework yesterday,” she whispered to me once in Math. “But I couldn’t find your number in the school directory.”

“Our phone number changed,” I said. These were the same lies that I had used with Annette until she stopped asking.

“What’s your new number? I’ll write it down.”

“Now we have a problem with the line. They are working on the road outside.”

“Oh.” Tammy looked at me strangely. After that, she sat more often with Sheryl, Greg and their group of friends.

I paid attention to everything my English tutor Kerry taught me, and she told me that she’d never seen anyone improve so fast. I knew there was still a long way for me to go, though, and I studied English in all of my spare time.

By the second semester of seventh grade, I had more trouble understanding my fellow students than I did my teachers. The combination of the kids’ use of slang and my lack of cultural context made their discussions bewildering. One day, I thought I’d found an opportunity to learn something about religion when I heard Curt, sitting at the end of the cafeteria table, talking about the afterlife.

I wasn’t really listening at the beginning because Annette had been chattering to me but I caught a few of Curt’s words like, “… Pearly Gates… nun meets Saint Peter… he says… Sister, life you led… go back to earth.”

I paid more attention then because I was interested in their faith. I hadn’t expected Curt to be so thoughtful.

Curt continued speaking. “‘I’d like to be Sara Pipeline in another life,’ the nun said. She pulled out a newspaper article and gave it to Saint Peter.

“He read it, then said, ‘No, dear, it was the Sahara Pipeline that got laid by fourteen hundred men in six months.’ ”

From the way the other boys laughed especially loudly, as if showing off their comprehension, I saw that what I’d thought was a spiritual discussion had actually been a dirty joke. I had no idea what in the world the Sahara Pipeline had to do with a nun, or how a pipeline could be dirty in a sexual sense. Annette had kept on talking the entire time so I couldn’t ask her about it without exposing the fact that I’d been distracted away from her.

Despite all of this, however, I was thrilled to go to Harrison Prep every day. When I left our graffiti-covered area in Brooklyn and arrived at school, with its green lawns and birds circling overhead, I felt like I had gone to paradise.

It was also a relief not to have “fun” assignments like dioramas and posters anymore. Instead, my assignments were tests and papers, which were easier and didn’t require any extra materials. I sometimes still missed the teachers’ sentences in class, but it mattered less because much schoolwork was based on reading I’d done at home, so I already had some background knowledge. When I made mistakes in my writing, the teachers were kind.

My teachers graded my English skills only by my improvement and not by how I compared with my classmates, who were all native speakers. Some teachers actually corrected the mistakes in my writing, which helped me enormously.

Mr. Jamali was rarely in the library itself when I was working, although I always knew I could find him in his office upstairs or at the theater if I needed him. Sometimes, though, he would suddenly appear behind my shoulder. When he found me studying books like How to Improve Your Vocabulary in 90 Days, Mr. Jamali started giving me old books and magazines the library threw away. They were a random assortment: Philosophy Through the Ages, Moll Flanders, The Wonders of Your Own Window Garden. I read them all and kept them in a pile by our nonworking radiator in the apartment.