Skip to main content

Excerpt from "American Dreaming"

Short Descr

"May, she seventeen. Senior year. Everyone say, pretty, that girl. Too pretty. All she care about, how her hair look, how her clothes look. College application, just sit on desk. No good. I'm scared." She looks directly into Mrs. Allen's eyes.

"What a thing to worry about!" Mrs. Allen's syllable of laughter sounds like a cough. "You're only young once. Didn't you have some fun, at seventeen?"

Pranee touches the raised patch of skin on her left forearm, sees her seventeen-year-old self moving the pot of noodles at the same moment as her father moved the charcoal grill in their street stall, recalls the searing sting of the burn. But it was midday and neither had time to stop; she wrapped a dishcloth around her arm and kept counting skewers of chicken into portions, kept slicing mango to sell with sticky rice. Her nostrils widen at the memory of the mingled scents of coconut milk and the peanut sauce her father added to his curries.

"I'm scared," Pranee repeats.