Counterfeit

by Kirstin Chen

It takes only a couple generations for nouveau riche to become old riche, am I right?

I’m merely suggesting that all of us fixate on certain kinds of cheating, while willfully ignoring other kinds.

The boundaries between us were finite and clear, and we couldn’t argue about the things I didn’t tell her.

Equality is about having choices, even if my choice isn’t the one she would have made.

but when you grow up as I did, schooled in the supremacy of “face”—the figurative face, the image, reputation, honor that must be fought for and preserved at all costs—breaking free from constraints to think for oneself becomes a Herculean task.

The look they traded gave me a sense of all the text messages exchanged and lunches grabbed without me.

You see, Detective, that’s how deep in I was. Instead of being repulsed by Winnie’s marriage to Bertrand Lewis, I held my friends’ wholly natural reaction to it against them. In fact, in my sick and addled mind, I admired Winnie for once again saying, To hell with the haters, I’m going to do what I have to do. That level of audacity, daring, nerve—well, it was intoxicating.

That’s when I grasped just how determined Boss Mak was to join that transplant list. He smiled serenely at me, the very picture of a man who always got what he wanted.

Everyone else laughed along, and I followed suit, a split second behind, like an alien desperate to appear human.