It will only occur to Hai, years later, when his grandmother is long dead, how easy it was for them to laugh, that it was almost a superpower, to crack up with faces so open they seemed on the verge of falling apart, and to do so without a touch of shame in a parking lot on the side of a highway in August with only a half gallon of gas in the Toyota, their bellies filled with french fries and chicken tenders and Dr Pepper, which they mistook for Coca-Cola but drank anyway, grimacing, the taste too close to a particular brand of cough syrup from the country they fled.
