Steam wafted out of her 99 cent Dunkin’ Donuts hot chocolate into the chilly fall air. Despite spending the last three years of her life staying up all night doing homework, she had never developed a taste for coffee. Her affinity for hot chocolate could be traced from her childhood. She remembered a time years ago in New Haven station when a girl mildly resembling herself with onyx Shirley Temple curls sipped a drink identical to the one she was drinking now. The girl was sitting next to her mother who was patiently checking the train schedule, the pair waiting for the two o’clock Amtrak to Union Station for yet another visit to her mother’s sister and her tiny Gaithersburg apartment. Little did she know that one day her mommy would finish med school and the two would join her aunt in suburban Maryland; one day she would grow up, make it through three years of high school; one day she would go and buy the same hot chocolate during lunch, walk to a nearby park and lay there remembering.

She sighed and glanced at her watch, a present from a wealthy uncle in Toronto. He was a jerk, but the poor thing tried, so she accepted the watch with a smile and made a point to wear it whenever he visited.

Twenty-three minutes. She had twenty-three minutes until the end of lunch, which meant she had about fifteen minutes until she’d be morally compelled to trudge back to school, senioritis or not. Her parents hadn’t spent seventeen years hammering in their Asian work ethic for nothing.

The park was mostly empty – a few dedicated owners walked their dogs under falling leaves, a few dedicated parents pushed their children on mostly empty swing sets, a few dedicated fitness enthusiasts jogging with headphones on. She had always wondered how those adults had time to come to a park in the middle of the day and had long decided that she when she grew up, she would be one of them. Though she loved talking to people – there weren’t enough of them to talk to at home – in the presence of the large mass of people she saw five days every week, she often found herself wishing she could come to the park and sleep in the grass.

She would miss this place when she would have to leave next fall. As much as she disliked the education system compartmentalizing her time from seven to two every weekday, as much as she disliked the awful florescent lighting, the tests, the work – she would miss the stability of suburban high school life when she left for college. Her childhood was a great dinner party story (and fantastic college application essay), but when she was being honest with herself, which happened rarely, the capricious fairytale was a lot less fun than she depicted. People were always fascinated by the story of the chubby little girl whisked from place to place by an immigrant mother determined to become a doctor flying to whatever med school would accept her. Their eyes got wide when she told them about their little ghetto apartment in Sacramento, the house-boat they lived in the Caribbean, the dilapidated mansion in Connecticut, and the other little ghetto apartment in the Bronx. She always softened the story for the PTA moms and gracious doctors that were her audience; she never told them about not being able to pay rent or her parents always fighting – those weren’t polite dinner party topics of conversation. And as far as her audience was concerned, the story had a happy ending: the two ceased their charming travels, mother became a well-respected doctor, the daughter became a well-respected student, finally able to settle down and start a proper life for themselves.

She paused to answer a text. Yes, she would be happy email today’s homework to her sick friend. Taking a few last sips of her hot chocolate, she rolled over on the grass. The sky was a perfect blue with only a few wisps of cloud in her periphery. It was framed by a hodgepodge of trees: half red and orange, half a yellowing green with a few leafless oddities sprinkled in.

The girl never liked to acknowledge the underside of the story. While she and her mother were whisking off to various clinical rotations, her father was in that dilapidated monstrosity of a house stewing at being left behind. It was an arranged marriage and there wasn’t much more to be said about it. In the brief time that the “family” would spend together, not a day would go by without a fight. When her mother got accepted to complete her penultimate step to doctordom at Southern Connecticut State University, the three would get to spend four years together under the same roof, and the girl would get her first taste of what a “normal” life was like.

At the end of those four years, the divorce that should have happened years ago was finalized. It was four years full of police reports and crouching in the bathroom begging daddy to come home late, after she and mommy had gone to bed and she was not sad when it was over. She never did understand the consolation adults offered children when their parents split; when she and her mother moved to join the aunt in suburban Maryland, the girl was so relieved that she forgot to miss her father.

But it was alright – despite their differences, both of her parents loved her, and they both did their honest best to give their only child all that they could. In the years to come she would get so caught up in getting straight A’s, memorizing scales, trying to find a date for homecoming, scoring goals, and texting her friends that her childhood would feel like a dream and at times even the girl half-dozing in the park found it difficult to imagine that it had really happened.

Seven minutes. She would have to start walking back now if she didn’t want to be late. She picked up her books and tossed her empty cup in a nearby trash can, leaving her role models behind to continue enjoying their miraculous midafternoon time in the park.