Ma’s standard way of answering the phone became “Kimberly not home” and then hanging up. She spent her time pacing around me, calling loudly, “Dinnertime! Dinnertime!” which was pretty much the only other word she had learned in English. Ma was particularly anxious because she couldn’t understand what the boys and I were talking about, but she needn’t have worried. The calls were all about inconsequential things like homework, motorcycles, mean teachers.

I didn’t consider myself pretty at all. With time, I had grown too long-limbed and skinny for Chinese tastes, and despite Annette’s best efforts, the intricacies of makeup and clothing remained incomprehensible to me. I was not beautiful and I was not funny, nor was I a good buddy or a particularly good listener. I was none of the things that girls think they need to be for boys to love them. Mostly, I stayed on the call with my eyes closed, listening to the thrum of the phone line underneath our words. I knew what these boys really wanted-freedom. Freedom from their parents, from their own unsurprising selves, from the heavy weight of the expectations that had been placed upon them. I knew because it was what I wanted too. Boys weren’t my enemy, they were co-conspirators in a mission to flee. My secret was acceptance.

At school during my free periods, I spent a lot of time taking walks hand in hand with boys. We would walk and we would make out. This was exactly what Ma had warned me not to do with boys, which only made it more fun. I was forced to be responsible in so many other ways that I was glad to have the freedom over my own body. I could only go so far-there’s only so much you can do in fifty minutes on school property-but the boys didn’t seem to mind much.

“I don’t know how you stay so detached,” said Annette. “Don’t you ever fall in love?”

The fact was, I didn’t worry about these boys the way other girls did. The details of whether a particular boy called or not, of an invitation to a dance or a party or a movie, didn’t matter to me. Despite my own strange access to the popular crowd, I didn’t care if a boy was popular or not, a good athlete or not. Of course, I did have a slight preference for a smart boy, sometimes a handsome boy, but I could also be won over by a certain shy way of smiling or even the shape of their hands. The boys at Harrison Prep were merely a dream to me: delightful and delicious but evanescent. The blistering reality was the deafening thunder of sewing machines at the factory, the fierce sting of cold against my skin in our unheated apartment. And Matt. Despite Vivian, Matt was real too.

Even though Curt was now back at school, we still met once a week for me to tutor him in whatever he needed. The subject was usually math, at which he was atrocious. The school scholarship program counted this as working time for me, so I was initially glad to do it. As Curt emerged from the immediate danger of failing out, however, he reverted to his old ways. Sometimes he came to our sessions with a joint in his hand. And stoned or not, he never missed an opportunity to flirt with me. I didn’t take him seriously because I’d seen him doing the same with other girls. I understood he was just practicing.

There was quite a bit of swooning over his eyes, which were a startling dark blue with a glimpse of white in their depths, but I found them to be too empty to be intriguing. He was not interested in math or most of his other subjects at all, and was hardly ever prepared when we met, which annoyed me. A few times, he was late or didn’t come at all. I learned that when he was working on a piece of sculpture, he forgot about the time. Curt had taken over a corner of the enormous room used for Shop and he had a pile of wood pieces there that he worked on endlessly.

Finally I asked him, “Why do you bother coming, Curt?”

He raised his eyebrows flirtatiously. “Don’t you know?”

“Maybe another tutor would be better for you. Someone stricter.” I hated feeling like I was wasting my time.

Now he looked alarmed. “No. I like you. Sometimes I even understand stuff after you talk about it.”

“It should not be sometimes, it should be all the time. You don’t listen very well.”

“Yes, I do. And for me, sometimes is really good.”

“All you do is flirt with me. I would like it more if you just do your homework.”

“Sorry about that. It’s kind of a habit. And you have such great legs.”

I glared at him and he immediately added, “Oops, did it again. I’ll try, okay?”

After our talk, Curt did improve. He stopped coming stoned and he was usually punctual. Most of the time, he still hadn’t done his homework but at least he seemed to make a real effort to listen more. I realized that he was intelligent; it was only that he didn’t care for school. He was my complete opposite.

I found that he was more present in his workspace and I started trying to have more of our meetings there. He made abstract carvings out of separate pieces of wood that he glued together and then polished. I was walking around one piece that looked almost like the simplified Chinese character for water, a vertical stroke in the middle with two wings on the sides.

“This is beautiful, but why do you not ever sculpt something from real life?” I asked.

He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “If you’d pose for me, maybe I would.”

He saw my annoyed expression and sighed. “Believe it or not, some girls like it when I say things like that.” Then his face turned serious. “Because when something is not realistic, it becomes a container for whatever you want it to be. Like a word or a symbol or a vase. You can pour anything you want into it.”

I hated the idea of so much choice. “But that means it’s empty by itself.”

“That’s the beauty of it. There doesn’t have to be any meaning.”

“I cannot live a life without a purpose.”

He looked at me. “You don’t care about superficial things, do you?”

“Like what?”

“Money, clothing.”

I had to laugh. “Yes, I do. I need to.”

“No, you don’t, not really. I’ve been watching you-you don’t even notice what the other girls are doing.”

“You think that because my clothing is different from theirs. It is actually only because I do not understand what they are doing.” It felt good to admit this to someone. “I wish I could look like them!” An image of the lovely Vivian flashed across my mind. “But I don’t know how.”

“Because you don’t really care. Even if you could, tell me you would really spend your free time in front of a mirror trying to make your eyelashes look longer?”

I was silent.

He continued. “You’d be too busy inventing something to save the world.”

“Just because I am better at math than you are does not make me into a paragon of virtue.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“What?”

“Where did you learn that-I mean, did you hear someone say ‘paragon of virtue’ at home or something?”

I paused. “I memorized it from a book.”

“See?”

“Don’t they talk like that at your home?”

“Actually, they do. I’m the son of two editors-my parents talk like that all the time, God help me.”

“So how come you didn’t think they’d do that at my home?”

“Do they?”

I looked away. “No.” To change the subject, I started talking about his sculptures again. “But I do wonder if you could make something real. It is very difficult.”

Curt didn’t answer but the next week, he had made a small carving of a swallow. I immediately saw it lying next to his usual sculptures.

“This is wonderful,” I said.

“You like it?” His eyes were a bright, warm blue. “You can have it, if you want.”

“Oh no,” I said quickly. I had been trained by Ma not to be beholden to anyone. “Someday this will be worth a lot of money. I cannot take it.”