Outside the bent metal blinds, a mouse-like Corolla sat parked in the driveway. The streetlights shone off its maroon paint, and the sky behind it was lavender. On its roof a sign read in bold blue letters, ‘FLIENDSHIP DRIVING INSTRUCTOR’—except for the L, black in a yellow square, and the P, red in white. What the hell was Fliendship? A play on the fact that there isn’t an el sound in Japanese, so all Asians can only say ar?

Winston had told me he was going to pick me up, so I reckoned this was his ride. I left my house, jumping into the passenger seat as Chris Brown sang: ‘All that bullshit’s for the birds, you ain’t nothing but a vulture, ah, ah, ah…’ Old mate looked like Carver from Disney’s The Weekenders, skin brown and round eyes far apart on an eggplant head. He’d told the country bumpkins at school that he was Burmese, and the Asians he was Latino. It wasn’t till way after high school, when everyone had cut him out for being a dog—always late from fucking his gopher-looking gf—that I found out he was just dark chink.