Chen Meiling was a good cook. For Lin An, who had a Chinese stomach, her tomato-and-egg stir-fry, garlic broccoli, shredded pork with green peppers, and steamed egg custard all tasted authentic.
Best of all, none of those dishes had any chili peppers in them.
It was obvious that Chen Meiling had learned to cook from her father. If Lin An hadn't seen her mixed-race appearance, he might not have been able to tell that an American had made all the food.
At the table, Chen Meiling struck up a conversation with Lin An. As they talked, he learned more about Darnell's family.
Chen Meiling's biological father was named Chen Guoping. He was a responsible father who not only loved Mary Washington and Chen Meiling, but treated Darnell, a Black kid, just like his own son.
Because of his influence, Mary's family had a favorable impression of Chinese people, and Darnell hadn't ended up in a gang.
Perhaps some people would think it was perfectly normal for a Black kid not to join a gang.
No, it wasn't normal. In this community, which was mostly made up of Jamaican immigrants, it was just as difficult for an eighteen-year-old Black boy to stay out of a gang as it was for a Chinese kid in Chinatown to avoid going to Chinese school.
Because a lot of the time, even if you didn't want to join, the gangs entrenched in the community wouldn't respect your wishes.
Especially for someone like Darnell, a Black kid who was strong and looked every bit the gang boss. Gangs generally wouldn't let a promising recruit like that go... Unless you moved out of the neighborhood, you didn't have much choice.
Lin An didn't know what Chen Guoping had done, but so far, Darnell had been a good Black kid. Even though he'd taken part in a few looting sprees, in a hellhole like America, looting hardly counted as a crime.
With their stomachs full, it was time for bed.
Although Lin An's presence had made Chen Meiling very excited that evening, her physical exhaustion eventually overcame her good mood. She showered first, then went to her room to sleep.
Darnell followed close behind. Lin An went last.
The fact that they showered before bed showed just how Chinese Darnell and his sister's habits were.
As for clothes and things like that, since the Live Stream Store really did offer items for exchange, plenty of viewers were happy to tip Lin An what he needed. A whole set of brand-new clothes was nothing special.
So he turned down the clean, old set of clothes from Darnell's teenage years that Chen Meiling had left on the sofa.
While Lin An showered in the bathroom, the viewers were chatting through the Bullet Screen just outside.
[Who the hell exchanged for that AR-15?]
[What about it?]
[I've had my eye on that gun for ages. I tipped a bunch of stuff, and I'd finally saved enough points. I was about to exchange for it, and then—bam—it disappeared from my list.]
[You snooze, you lose, bro.]
[Come on, man, that gun costs a ton of points. What did the guy who exchanged for it tip?]
[A whole box of medicine.]
[Holy crap, rich guy.]
[I'm reporting you for illegally possessing a firearm in China.]
[That's funny. Tell me, what year is it for you, and who was the U.S. president in 2009?]
[It's 2026 for me. The U.S. president in 2009 was Bush.]
[It's 2028 where I am. The U.S. president in 2009 was Old Brown.]
[What the hell? What's going on?]
[Parallel worlds, kid. So even if you report me, you can't do anything about it. We're not even in the same world.]
[I don't believe it.]
[I do, because my timeline is 2021, and the U.S. president in 2009 was a woman.]
[The streamer's back! Streamer, streamer, can you lower the exchange price for guns in the Live Stream Store? I don't have enough points for a handgun.]
Lin An opened the bathroom door, drying his hair with a towel. He gave the dense stream of comments a puzzled look and squinted.
The Bullet Screen seemed busier. Was the audience growing?
Never mind. It wasn't a bad thing, so he let it go.
"Don't bother asking. I can't control the points you get from tips or the exchange prices."
Lin An was sleepy and couldn't be bothered to think about what a bigger audience might mean. He went over to the sofa, picked a thick blanket from the tip list, took it out, and covered himself with it. Then he fell asleep.
The next morning, Lin An woke to the clatter of kitchen utensils. He opened his eyes, and even before his vision cleared, he knew Chen Meiling was cooking.
Yawning, Lin An sat up and saw a comment.
[Chen Meiling would make a great wife.]
"What makes you say that?"
Lin An asked without thinking.
[She's in the kitchen making congee and frying dough sticks, and she's cooking eggs too.]
[And pickled vegetables. She made her own, and they're in the kitchen.]
[Goddamn it, as a Chinese person, I'm ashamed. I've been outdone in the kitchen by a sixteen-year-old Black girl. The way she fries eggs is amazing.]
"Get me a toothbrush and toothpaste... A towel too, if possible."
As soon as Lin An asked, a comment came in.
[Coming right up.]
[Guys, do you get more points if you tip in response to the streamer asking for something?]
[After conducting rigorous tipping experiments, I can confirm that's true. For the same item, tipping after the streamer asks for it gets you twice as many points as tipping without being asked.]
[That guy who got there first really deserves to die.]
A whole set of toiletries appeared in Lin An's hands out of nowhere. Darnell saw it happen.
"Whoa, you're a magician. Can you get me a set too... A toothbrush, toothpaste, and a hot coffee. Sugar, no milk, thanks."
Lin An glanced at him. Darnell looked so serious he could have been ordering at Starbucks.
"I can only get you coffee."
"That works too."
Lin An held out a hand, and a cup of warm coffee from Mixue Ice Cream & Tea appeared in it. Darnell took it without a second thought and tipped his head back to gulp it down.
"You didn't put any sugar in it."
Chen Meiling had just brought out the pot of congee and saw the whole thing.
"What's that?"
Her voice was calm.
"Coffee," Darnell answered, then realized what she meant.
"Lin An gave it to me!"
"Big brother, it's unhealthy to drink coffee on an empty stomach... And don't blame Lin for the bad things you do. That's wrong!"
Chen Meiling finished speaking, cheeks puffed with anger. She set the pot down on the table and went back to the kitchen, leaving Darnell reaching after her in an "Erkang" pose.
"Damn it, bro, help me explain."
"What's there to explain?"
Lin An shrugged and turned toward the bathroom. He needed to brush his teeth and wash his face.
"Oh, no, bro, you can't be so cruel..."
Chen Meiling's breakfast was still very Chinese, and it suited Lin An's taste perfectly. His praise made her eyes narrow into slits, while Darnell sat across from them, wanting to say something but caught in a miserable dilemma.
After breakfast, Chen Meiling slung her schoolbag over her shoulder and left the house. She was going to ride her bicycle to a public high school in the Jamaica Community.
Technically, Darnell was also a high school student, since he was eighteen. So...
"Why don't you go to school?"
After Chen Meiling left, Lin An couldn't help asking Darnell, who was sitting on the sofa watching TV.
"Bro, my grades are bad. Instead of wasting time at school, I'd rather leave and find a job to help support my family."
Darnell answered casually, but the heaviness behind his words made the Bullet Screen flood Lin An's view.
[It's about money, but it's not just about money.]
[What do you mean?]
[It's probably complicated. Hard to explain in a few words.]
"Mm-hmm. All right."
Lin An changed the subject. He didn't want to twist the knife in Darnell's wound, so he tried to think of something fun they could do.
"Your sister seems to know Chinese. Last night, when I was chatting with the viewers in Chinese, she watched me for a while."
"She does know Chinese. My stepfather taught her."
"Then why don't you know it?"
Lin An asked.
"I lived with my Black dad until I was ten. I only went to live with my mom after that..."
[Don't ask, streamer. Don't ask.]
[Feels like this is headed somewhere uncomfortable.]
Lin An thought so too, so he immediately changed the subject again.
"Where's your mom? Is she still at work?"
"She got off work last night. She's probably sleeping at the nursing home."
Darnell explained.
"The nursing home she works at doesn't have much money, so they can't afford many caregivers. She just sleeps there instead, so she can get up whenever something happens and help out."
[Darnell's mom really is a good person. Working overtime without pay.]
There it was: another sensitive subject.
Darnell himself didn't seem to mind much, but hearing about it made Lin An uncomfortable.
"Come on. Let's go out and look around, see if we can find a way to make some money."
"Why don't we keep looting?"
Darnell asked curiously as he stood up.
"Like yesterday, bro. You take us to the shop's stockroom, we grab stuff, and then we run."
"Doing that once in a while is fine, but do it too often and the New York police will start watching us. Besides, it doesn't pay much. It's not worth spending a lot of time on."
"Let's go, let's go."
It was still a little cold on Jamaica's streets in March, especially when the one riding the bike was a strong Black guy. The wind blowing into their faces felt even colder.
People heading to work that day were lucky enough to see an unusual sight... A strong Black man rode a bicycle down the avenue with a yellow-skinned passenger, moving as fast as a motorcycle and kicking up a silent gust of wind.
The roads in the community were a little run-down, riddled with uneven potholes. Almost all the houses Lin An passed were old, mostly made of wood or a mix of brick and wood. Pure brick houses were rare.
But that wasn't the point.
The point was that after they turned down a street, Lin An saw tents... Lots of tents, packed closely together and stretching all along the road, almost as far as the eye could see.
Some tents were neatly set up, their guy lines pulled taut. Their residents had clearly only recently become homeless and still had the strength and spirit to build themselves a small, dignified home.
Others had partly collapsed, their tarpaulins sagging and billowing in the wind like a diseased lung drawing breath... Those residents had been homeless for a long time, and their situation was dire. They could no longer keep up appearances; death was already waiting for them.
As they passed, Lin An also saw things piled in the walkways between the tents... Shopping carts, cardboard boxes, sleeping bags, plastic buckets, and sheets of cardboard.
Some people sat at the mouths of their tents, staring blankly toward the intersection. Others crouched on the ground, slowly sorting through a black garbage bag.
Some were standing, leaning backward or bent forward with their heads down, filthy and covered in wounds, like zombies.
Lin An looked at the scene and scratched his head.
[Capitalism really is brutal.]
[The American landscape.]
[This is rough.]
Just then, Darnell slowed down. The road ahead was half-blocked, and even Aodebiao had to slow down to avoid hitting someone who might suddenly dart out from between the tents.
"Bro, don't come here alone when you're free."
Darnell warned him as he rode.
"It's dangerous here. Even gang members don't come alone at night. The people living here are nearly starving. If they got a chance to eat their fill, they'd do anything."
"I remember there are a lot of Churches around here. Can't their food banks and charity food-distribution centers ease the hunger?"
"Not much, bro. Christian food banks and food-distribution centers have the longest lines of any charities, give out the least food, and are most likely to hand out spoiled stuff."
Darnell explained.
"When I was little, I lived with my Black dad and went hungry a lot. To keep from starving, I learned to line up with the other Black kids to get food. You don't want to line up at the Christian places. Sometimes, even when it's finally your turn, the food they give you is expired and rotten. Eat it and you'll get diarrhea.
"The Muslim food-distribution points are worth lining up for. They give people in line flatbread and lamb soup. You can get food just by saying you're Muslim... A lot of the time, you don't even have to say anything."
[Darnell's got a lot of experience. Anyone who knows the situation care to explain—is there any truth to this?]
[Nothing wrong with that. Christian Churches really do have the biggest aid operations and the least food. You can wait in line all day just to get a cold slice of bread. It won't let you starve to death, but it will keep you from having time to line up anywhere else.]
[Also, they don't give out hot food because they say people might get burned.]
[That's how aid is designed in capitalist countries. They keep you alive, but make you suffer. They make you feel grateful, and keep you too busy to think about rebellion. Then, a couple of years later, you die.]
"Your best bet is actually to check bakeries or the dumpsters behind supermarkets."
Darnell continued passing on his hard-earned wisdom to his good bro as they sped along on the bicycle.
"The dumpsters there usually have expired food packed up by the staff. Even though it's garbage, that kind of food is actually the cleanest.
"But those 'treasure chests' are hard to get into. Strong scavengers guard them, and ordinary Black guys can't beat them.
"And even if you do find food, you can't take it away. They'll steal your stuff and beat you up."
"Ah, I've learned a lot."
Lin An sighed.
The Bullet Screen filled with sighs and discussion as well.
Before you continue