In the Shade of Groves [COMPLETE]

Chapter 3

Like most first days back at school, this one goes by in a blur. The majority of my teachers ask how our breaks were and give us an overview of what's to come for the rest of the year. Normally I would have been given some kind of assignment to do over the break, but senior year is different. Teachers know this year is just a formality and even if they did give us an assignment most of the senior class wouldn't do it.

My break wasn't much of a break anyway. My parents spent most of the time lecturing me about the importance of my college essay and what Princeton would be looking for. I find it odd that two people that over-plan for everything don't want me to apply to any other schools, not even back-ups. Every morning for two and a half weeks my parents asked me if I received my SAT score, knowing that I didn't. Finally when I did get my score, they seemed merely satisfied. I am definitely not the test taker my sister is which showed in my results, but it was just good enough to get into Princeton and more than enough for Pratt and Chicago.

After AP English, I hurry to meet up with Raven and Loli so we can try to get seats together in the senior section. There are about ten tables reserved for seniors in the cafeteria and over a hundred seniors, so spots are coveted. Last semester we tried to get seats there but couldn't get there in time. It's not like the seats are reserved with people's names on them but the way people act they might as well be. We rush to the cafeteria so focused on getting good seats that we hardly exchange a word between each other. We walk in, hearts pounding and rush to the nearest empty table. We look around waiting for someone to throw us out, but nobody does. All of us let out a simultaneous sigh of relief.

"How was your break mùi tây?" Loli's family moved here from Vietnam in middle school when her mom got a job transfer as a nurse. The first class we ever had together was English and she hadn't quite mastered the language yet. The teacher told us to write down our names and put them on our desk so other students could learn them. Loli misread my name as "parsley" and has been calling me the Vietnamese version of the word ever since.

"Well my parents hounded me about my college applications and then there was the annual Christmas Eve party," I reply.

"So not great," she remarks.

I let out a laugh and sift through my mother's prepacked lunch for me, a cobb salad. "What about you two, anything fun?"

"My family and I went back to Vietnam for the Christmas Eve parades and to see family. The parades were fun but the family reunion, not so much. It's basically like a week-long interrogation of what it's like to live in America. Also, my bà ngoại always acts like she's going to have a heart attack every time she sees me in jeans." Loli pops open her Tupperware bowl filled with noodles and peas. Her lunches are always so much better than mine.

Even though she complains every time she has to go back to Vietnam, the stories she tells of the Christmas parades sound amazing. She says her hometown city lights up with string lights, parade floats, and inflatable Santas. Our town puts on holiday events the entire week leading up to Christmas. Everyone in my neighborhood hires people to put lights up on their house for them and the fire station goes down every street handing out candy. There's also a party every night at someone's house. My mother gets invites to all of them because of the various clubs she's in. Only one household in the neighborhood is allowed to have a Christmas party on the night of Christmas Eve and every year that honor goes to my family. It's a really big deal to my mother and the other women in the neighborhood. My mother has told me on several occasions how jealous the other women are of her because of it.

"Maybe it's not the fact that you're wearing jeans but the style of jeans you're wearing," Raven points out.

Loli stops eating, "What do you mean?"