“You’re a little bit of a high-rise kid. One of the good ones but still.”
I get a six-pack of athletic socks upside the head for the affront and can’t help but laugh.
High-rise kids are what we call a certain specimen of children of Manhattan (and a few in Brooklyn too). They’re that breed of rich kids that rarely take the subway or even cabs because there’s always a family car service waiting for them around the corner. FATE is full of them. Their buildings, expensive multi-floor high-rises, have apartments as big as any suburban home, with gyms, entertainment centers, and rooftop pools. Ming technically qualifies, living in Hudson Yards, overlooking the Hudson River with a dental surgeon as a father and a regular retired surgeon as a mother. Ming also hates being referred to as such.
He is, in truth, a high-rise kid.
“Don’t pout,” I say, throwing a bundle of socks at him.
“So, what are you doing tonight? Maybe hang at your place?” Ming asks.
Despite my best efforts, I can feel myself tense up. I’ve gotten used to planning FATE study groups, social gatherings, and cram sessions before finals anywhere around the city but at my place, but Ming will occasionally bring it up so casually like this that it will slip right past my radar. No one from FATE has ever seen or been to my place. Not since the days of Daniel Halkias.
Daniel was probably my first friend at FATE freshman year. Halkias, Haltiwanger: that nominal connection found us standing in line with each other at almost every gathering in which students were alphabetized by last names.
Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z and Super, and Fortnite: the kid was literate in every corner that filled my brain back then, and we pretty much spoke the same language right off the bat. We might have been friends all through high school if a.) Daniel and his family hadn’t moved away last year, and b.) I hadn’t made the mistake of inviting him over.
I begged my mom to make all the good Haitian food. But I still remember the specific way Daniel’s face fell when he stepped through our door. It wasn’t even a sad-face emoji; it was a brand-new release not yet distributed across all operating systems. Confused with a touch of frightened and just a hint of “Get me out of here, now!” coloring.
Something about the memory must be playing out on my face because Ming starts laughing that knowing laugh of his. “Or not.”
“I’ve got pups to walk tonight. See you tomorrow, dude.” I wave off on my way out of the store. “Those black ones are also fake, by the way! Don’t you dare buy them.”
“You should be an app!”
Mom cooked tonight: chicken from the Belgian corner store (recooked because, as Mom says of all white cooking, “heat is not a spice”) and djon-djon rice that’s been simmering in the Crock-Pot all day. She always makes sure to cook something delicious on nights before she leaves.
I decide it’s as good a time as any to tell them about Palm Tree and the Troys. I normally avoid updating them on my dog routes or Uptown Updogs in general because Dad would make me shutter the site right away if he learned that I was lying to people—and probably make me reimburse every client—but the fact that Corinne goes to FATE and the Troys are our neighbors means that I have to tell my folks.
“Chantale Troy is a demanding woman,” Dad muses.
“Another dog?” Ma asks, concerned. “That’s a lot of commitments, Henri. Are you sure you’re not overextending yourself? You’re not doing it for the family pot, are you? Because we can manage without.”
No, we can’t. A good chunk of Haltiwanger money comes with a “we” pronoun. It’s all household money. Three people, one set of bills.
I’ve been chipping in since I was fourteen and did grocery runs for some of the elderly tenants upstairs. I throw in a couple of hundreds from my walks and Ma and Dad aren’t well off enough to ignore them. Part of it is because New York City is, simply put, hella expensive. The fact that Mom quit her job to become a firefighter trainee certainly contributed to the collective tightening of the belt, and I know she feels guilty about it.
“I promise you it’s not. I need the money too, Ma,” I say between bites of chicken so spicy you need to blink the tears away when you hit a pepper. “I need to pay back the credit cards on all those college applications, remember?”
Ma nods reluctantly. I applied to nine colleges total, each ranging from sixty to ninety-five dollars in application fees.
“Doesn’t the daughter go to your school?”
“Corinne,” Ma chastises.
That’s how Dad likes to talk about the tenants and their broods. The daughter, the son, the other son. That cousin that stays with them. It’s not that he can’t remember the names, considering he keeps track of which light bulbs are used in which kitchen renovations. To their faces, he acknowledges the first names (especially the “call me Bill” types who love to give fist bumps to the super and in return bestow us pretty good Christmas bonuses), but as soon as we’re home, they revert to their nominal titles.
Ma told me his logic once. It keeps things simple. That’s how your dad likes the world. Simple. She’d then laughed at the face I made. Imagine dating him!
“Are you friends with her?” Dad asks. “I can never keep track of all your friends.”
“We run in different circles.”
The truth is it had taken weeks last year for me to realize that the new resident of the top-floor unit was that intense girl from school.
“You know, Chantale Troy needed a contractor to do some work for her when she first moved in. I tried to get Lionel that job,” Dad says to no one in particular, chewing more angrily at the mere name. “Another job he was too good for.”
Ma and I share a look. It’s not every dinner that that name comes up.
Lionel Haltiwanger—or Lion, as he prefers to go by—is Dad’s younger brother. He lived with us for a little while when he first came here to the States, orphaned and on a student visa. It didn’t take long for us to realize he and Dad are very different people. To Dad, Lionel Haltiwanger would be the eager-to-learn little brother he would shepherd toward a better life in America. In actuality, Lion was a smirking and charming young guy with aspirations of a music-producing career. He’d never seen a corner he didn’t think he could cut and loved to talk about the lavish parties he’d DJed for back in Haiti.
Brothers, Ma used to say when dinners got too tense and Dad looked like he didn’t recognize the young man—really, only a few years past being a teenager himself—he’d brought into his house. He’s getting the hang of America, Ma would say. Give it some time, Jacques. That was until Dad found little bags of not-oregano and pills of not-aspirin in Lion’s corner of the room we shared with a curtain in the middle. That was five months ago, and I don’t think he’s even seen Dad.
Ma clears her throat and turns to me. “I can’t believe you have your Columbia interview tomorrow.”
“It’s going to be great.” Dad smiles because nothing clears the dark Lionel cloud from his face faster than planning for Columbia University.
That’s why I really need to lock down this interview. I’m an A-minus student with SAT scores in the 92nd percentile after two tries—great, not exceptional—and nothing less than a glowing “O Captain! My Captain!” interview recommendation is going to get me through Columbia’s gates. The informal interview with an alum had already required Mr. Vu to call in a personal favor on my behalf.