THE TROUBLE ALL STARTED WHEN I MADE THE mistake of letting Francine Zhang see me cry.

It was two weeks ago, during fifth period AP US History, and we were all sitting in the dark. Mr. Romero was showing The Deer Hunter, which is the kind of movie you should really warn a guy about before springing it on him, especially right before lunch. If you haven’t seen it, The Deer Hunter is about a group of American friends who go off to fight in the Vietnam War, where they’re taken prisoner and forced by their captors to play Russian roulette. Some of them survive, but the violence of it—the pointlessness of it, really—horrified me, especially when I thought about how people in my family were among those caught in the shitshow off-screen, getting bombed out by the Americans.

What really got me, though, wasn’t the gore or the carnage but the coming home after it. That sense of never being able to go back to whatever you were before. Something about that depressed the hell out of me, making my stomach twist up into my throat and, yes, goddamn it, forcing me to tear up.

I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me that day. I mean, I’m not saying I have a problem with crying necessarily, but it’s not something I really want to be doing in front of everybody. Still, the situation could’ve been totally fine, given how the lights were all out. I would’ve gotten away with it, easy—if it weren’t for Francine.

There I was, about to wipe my eyes with the back of my jacket sleeve, when she somehow dropped her eraser, a rounded piece of rubber made to look like a California roll, and it came tumbling back toward my sneaker. She turned around to check where it went, and that’s when she saw me.

For a second, neither of us moved. She blinked, her stare blank and penetrating at the same time. A sliver of afternoon light escaped from beneath the drawn shades behind us and cut across her nose. Her eyes were completely dry.

I leaned over in a hurry to retrieve her goddamn eraser, but really it was so I could swipe my arm over my face to hide the fact that I’d been low-key bawling. I handed the sushi roll to her without making eye contact, and she accepted it wordlessly before swiveling back around, the end credits filling the projector screen and the weird space that suddenly swelled around us.

I figured that would be it, that we’d go back to barely acknowledging each other, despite the fact that I’d sat behind her for months and recently noticed that her hair, stick straight and cut off at the shoulder, smelled kind of nice, like the tea tree oil shampoo I use on my dog, Dexter.

Francine, however, was sitting very still in her seat, as if contemplating something—and then, in an abrupt about-face, she reached into her backpack and produced a travel-size packet of tissues.

Which, to my utter mortification, she offered to me.

Desperate to avoid calling more attention to this sorry situation, I did the first thing that came to mind—I took a tissue. Anything to speed up this interaction, I reasoned. Anything.

But as I silently blew my nose, watching Francine refasten the flap over the tissue packet and squirrel it back into her bag, I allowed that she was just trying—in her well-meaning but unnecessary way—to be helpful. When she darted a last glance at me before facing frontward again, I think I must have given her one of those throwaway smiles, the kind that isn’t supposed to mean anything to normal people.

The kind that, unfortunately, did mean something to Francine.

OLLIE TRAN HAS A DIMPLE ON HIS LEFT CHEEK when he smiles, but that isn’t why I’m asking him to help me with The Plan. There are lots of reasons, real ones, though some are harder to explain than others. The discussion, however, is not off to a great start.

“The Deer Hunter,” I blurt out, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind when Ollie looks at me, clearly puzzled. “I want to ask you about The Deer Hunter.”

Ollie scrunches his eyebrows together, like I’m speaking a foreign language, and takes a step back, small enough to remain polite but big enough to say, Can you maybe not? We’re standing in front of his locker, which, conveniently, is just a few columns over from mine. The blessing of alphabeti-cal propinquity has always meant that wherever Ollie is, I’m never too far behind. For years, I used to swoon over this, the fact that Tran was close enough to Zhang that, sometimes, if a class was small, there could be no one between us at all.

But it’s been a while since I let myself care about that.

“What about The Deer Hunter?” Ollie asks, even though it seems like he’d rather not hear the answer.

“Well, I noticed it made you cry.” I think back to that afternoon. “Like, kind of a lot.”

Ollie’s face goes pink. “I don’t know if it was a lot.”

“What’s . . . your definition of ‘a lot’?”

“Okay, I’m gonna just go.” Ollie points two fingers off to the side and scoots away.

As I watch him zigzag between the sun-beaten lunch tables, nearly tripping over a hydrangea bush to hasten his escape, it occurs to me that maybe I could have approached this differently. But I hadn’t talked to Ollie in so long—I had no idea what to say. We hadn’t even interacted at all, really, until . . . The Deer Hunter. Still, I don’t know who else to ask. I need to make The Plan happen, The Plan requires a boy, and of all the boys in my life, I’ve known Ollie the longest.

Our families, you see, go way back. A long time ago—a lifetime, practically—Ollie’s dad grew up two doors down from my mom and her sisters. This was in Hanoi, where both our families lived for decades before the Vietnam War. If you ask any of them, they’ll probably tell you they’re Chinese, then turn around and speak to each other in Vietnamese. But that’s how they all came to be refugees. After the Americans left, there was another war between Vietnam and China, which meant that anyone Chinese remaining in Hanoi had to hightail it out of there. We ended up here, in the United States, which is where I was born. Ollie, too. And because wàh kìuh Chinese tend to find each other no matter where they go—whether in North Vietnam or Southern California—his house is only three blocks from mine. I’ve known him since kindergarten, and now we’re both juniors at Hargis High. A history that long has to count for something, right?

Maybe not. Ollie’s halfway across the quad by this point, keys already pulled from his pocket, and if I don’t say something else quick, he’ll disappear into the parking lot.

“Ollie, wait,” I call after him, breaking into a jog. “I . . . just want to talk to you.” My voice wavers, and I hate that it does. But a few feet away, Ollie stops.

Given how precariously this exchange has proceeded so far, I figure I’d better cut to the chase.

“My grandpa has cancer,” I say. “We just found out.”

The news hits the way I expect it to, clumsy and heavy, and Ollie folds a little, like I’ve jabbed him in the soft part of his stomach. “I’m sorry,” he says in a tone I haven’t heard from him in at least four years. For some reason, it makes a small ball of sadness lodge in my throat.

“It’s all right,” I manage, even though it’s not.

Ollie traces a line with his sneaker, the toe acquiring a black smudge that he doesn’t seem to notice. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“No, I don’t think so. It’s pancreatic cancer.” Ollie looks concerned, but I can tell he has no idea why that’s significant. “It means he’s going to die.”

“They already know?”

“The doctors said he could have up to a couple of years, but probably more like a few months.”

“Jeez, I’m sorry.”

I struggle with how to follow up on this, and in the silence, Ollie starts to look like he feels bad about how far away he’s standing. I want to tell him it’s fine, that I don’t expect a shoulder pat or anything. What I’m hoping for is not quite so conventional.

I take a deep breath. “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

Ollie hesitates, but then he says, “Sure.”

I’m relieved, though that doesn’t last very long before the doubt creeps in. We’re finally having a somewhat real conversation, and in about fifteen seconds, he’s going to think I’ve completely lost it. Like off-the-wall, bonkers lost it. Because I have to admit: The Plan is a little out there. But it’s also the last important thing I can do for my a gūng.

“So,” I begin, “you know how my grandpa doesn’t have any sons?”

Ollie mulls this over like he has to dig real deep to retrieve this fact. “I guess so, yeah.”

“He doesn’t have any grandsons, either. It’s really a statistical anomaly. Like, the probability of having six daughters in a row is actually quite low if you do the math out, and the probability of that plus—”

Ollie cocks his head, and I realize I’m rambling. Focus, Francine!

“The point is, there’s no one to carry on the family name after he dies. And, well, I guess this is a big deal to him. Like, still.”

“Even now?”

“Yeah.”

“After all these years?”

I shake my head. “Yeah, I dunno.”

Ollie is dumbfounded. “He’s how old?”

To be fair, I had been surprised as well. A few weeks ago, Mom got a phone call from A Pòh, who spoke in a voice for once too quiet to eavesdrop on. Not, of course, that it stopped me from trying. Mom saw me hovering at the door and waved me in. I crawled into bed next to her, and she set the phone down on the comforter between us, a harsh rectangle of light in the darkening bedroom. We huddled over it as A Pòh spoke, her words brisk and matter-of-fact.

“Your father isn’t happy,” she said in Cantonese. And then, by way of explanation: “He doesn’t feel well.”

Suddenly, we heard A Gūng’s voice in the distance. “Is that her?” he asked in faint Vietnamese. A Pòh handed him the phone, and he, too, switched over to Cantonese. “Have you eaten, Lāan?”

In my family, that question always comes first, even if it’s four in the afternoon and you’re not sure anymore whether you’re being asked about lunch or dinner.

“Yes, Bā, how about you?” Mom replied, because that’s never not the right answer, including when you’re about to learn the other person is dying of cancer.

“I’m sure your mother will start cooking soon.” A Gūng shifted the receiver to his other ear. “How is my granddaughter?”

“Hóu, hóu, all good. She’s right here.” At this, I made an impatient gesture at the phone, and Mom cleared her throat. “But, ah, Bā, we wanted to ask . . . what did the doctor say exactly?”

There was a long pause. “Is Fōng listening?”

“Yes, I am,” I chimed in. “Hello, A Gūng.”

“Ah, Fōng, I was hoping not to worry you.” He exhales. “I didn’t want to discuss this with you, either, Lāan.”

“But you have to tell us,” I insisted. “We’re family—we have to know everything. Right, Mom?”

She didn’t answer the question, just reached over to smooth my hair. “We’d like to be able to help, Bā.”

Sighing, A Gūng finally explained the bad news. As he spoke, Mom furrowed her brow, the lines getting deeper with each small, brittle revelation.

Into the phone, however, she simply said, “Oh, Bā.”

“It’s fate.” A Gūng sounded like he was trying to persuade himself. “The time comes for every person. I only wish—”

He broke off then, and all we could make out was his slow breathing and the soft fuzz of static.

“What is it, Bā?” Mom asked.

His response shook me. “I only wish I had not been such a failure.”

“Aiyah!” A Pòh’s voice muscled through the silence. “Why must you say such ridiculous things?”

“Why else?” A Gūng sighed again. “It’s true. I have no sons.”

Mencius, the famous Chinese philosopher, supposedly once declared, “There are many unfilial acts, but the most unfilial is to have no sons.” This makes the most sense if you understand that Chinese people talk about being filial the way Americans talk about being free. Letting your family line die out, dooming yourself and your ancestors to neglect in the afterlife—because male descendants were traditionally the ones responsible for making offerings to the dead—was the worst thing you could possibly do. You brought shame not only to yourself but also to your entire family. For eternity.

I’d obviously heard all this before, and I suspected that A Gūng, being rather ancient and very much Chinese, still believed some version of it. But I’d always written it off as an old person ailment, like progressive hearing loss or the inability to set up your own cell phone. The whole idea was clearly sexist, not to mention based on an outdated conception of gender—and anyway, who even worried about the afterlife these days?

Apparently, I guess, A Gūng.

“There won’t be anyone to pay respect to our ancestors when I’m gone,” he lamented. “Who will remember them? Who will take care of them?”

“We’ll continue the traditions,” Mom assured him. “We’ll make the offerings.”

“You know it’s not the same, Lāan. Your duty is to the Zhangs now, and Fōng—well, she’s never been a Huynh, has she?”

Mom shot a glance over at me, but I couldn’t come up with anything helpful to say.

“What can we do about it at this point?” A Pòh interrupted. “In the old days, you could just find a family with too many sons and offer to take one off their hands.”

“How did that work?” I asked, surprised. “Would you basically adopt them?”

“Sure, if it was a child, you might in a conventional sense,” A Pòh explained. “But if the boy was older or even a young man, the adoption could be merely honorary, like if a second son agreed to take your name in exchange for an inheritance.”

“Maybe we should’ve looked into that more,” A Gūng murmured.

A Pòh clicked her tongue. “Eh, who had the money for it?”

“Don’t worry, Bā,” Mom put in. “None of that matters now, especially in America.”

“Yes, everything is different in America,” A Gūng agreed, but his voice sounded small again. “Sometimes it’s strange to think how we ended up here, so far from home.”

Then the line went quiet, like the void that settles over the air when the power goes out.

The conversation must have continued from there, but I couldn’t get over that long stretch of emptiness. I kept thinking about it afterward, while I set the table and parceled rice into my mouth with chopsticks, and later, while I practiced four-octave scales on the piano, up and down, up and down—until, in the middle of E-flat minor, I remembered something. Years ago, A Gūng had told me he’d yearned for a piano as a kid, but only one boy in his neighborhood, the son of a doctor, had been rich enough to afford the extravagance. Many afternoons, A Gūng would walk by their house, book bag slung over his shoulder, listening for music that he would never, not in a lifetime, learn to play.

If A Pòh had been the one to share this anecdote, it probably would’ve been apocryphal, the type of immigrant tale concocted to make sure I appreciated the opportunities I had. But that wasn’t A Gūng’s way. He treated me like I would understand things, and even though I was barely eight at the time, I could tell his story was true. I knew it especially because he came to my Christmas recital every year and sat in the front row, clapping longer and harder than anyone else. And because I sometimes found him standing at our little upright, poking out the notes to “Home, Sweet Home,” the only song he’d ever asked me to teach him.

I couldn’t, however, recall when A Gūng had last touched the piano. I wondered if he even remembered his old dream. Instead, he seemed too busy worrying about something that I thought he’d come to terms with long ago—this pointless preoccupation with having no male heirs. Why couldn’t he have a normal dying wish, like learning to make pottery or seeing the Grand Canyon? That was the kind of stuff other nonagenarians wanted, at least in the heartwarming articles you saw online. Those stories never talked about, say, how the grandpa was a little bit sexist—even though I bet a bunch of grandpas probably were. Those stories never said what you were supposed to do if you still loved them.

I slid off the wooden bench and trudged into the kitchen, where Dad, still in his mechanic’s uniform, was putting away leftovers and Mom was washing the dishes.

“Do you think A Gūng really feels like he’s a failure?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe.

“No, of course not,” Mom replied automatically, but the way she let the water run so long over the plate meant she was lying. She did that a lot—said things just to make me feel better. Lately, though, it was getting harder to believe her.

“Why can’t he see that having no sons isn’t a big deal?”

Mom shut her eyes, like I was giving her a headache. “Bǎo bǎo, this is a grown-up problem. It’s not something you can fix.”

“I’m not trying to fix it.” I was, though.

“Your grandpa is sick.” Mom ignored me and wiped her hands on a dish towel. She did that for a long time, too. “We should let him be.”

“But he’s wrong, and it’s making him worse.” I didn’t understand why she refused to acknowledge this. “Shouldn’t we help him find some kind of peace?”

“That’s not up to us, Francine.” Dad spoke up for the first time. “It’s a decision A Gūng has to make for himself.”

“I know, but maybe we could distract him by getting him a gift or taking him on vacation or . . .” Even though I knew it was futile, I found myself grasping at ideas, anything that could mean we wouldn’t have to sit around, acting like hopelessness was as inevitable as death. “What about piano lessons?”

“Piano lessons?” Mom was perplexed. “Francine, A Gūng doesn’t want piano lessons.” She sighed and turned back to the sink. “You heard him. The situation’s more complicated than that.”

I slumped a bit. She was right, obviously. How were we supposed to solve a problem that only existed in A Gūng’s head?

That’s when it hit me. It wasn’t complicated at all—the solution also only had to exist in his head. In other words, we didn’t actually need a male heir.

We just needed to make A Gūng believe we had one.

“I know this is all super weird,” I say to Ollie now. “But I have a plan.”

Ollie looks down at me curiously, and once again, I’m a little nervous. At some point, we were the same height, but in the years since, he’s grown nearly a foot to my measly two inches. I notice, though, that he’s still got the slight under-eye bags he’s always had, and the same dark eyebrows, too.

“I’m guessing the plan involves me?” Ollie asks.

“Um, yeah.” My gaze slips to the frayed collar of his T-shirt, and I rush to ask the question before I lose my nerve. “Could you pretend to be my A Gūng’s honorary male heir?”

Ollie shakes his head, like he couldn’t have heard right. “Sorry . . . what?”

“Just for a little while,” I add quickly. “Just until—” I falter as I try to say it out loud. Just until he’s gone.

“But what do you mean by ‘honorary male heir’?”

“You know, spend time with him in a grandson-esque way. Come over for tea, smile and nod at stuff he says . . .” As Ollie listens, his forehead begins to unknit. “And, um, tell him you’ll change your last name to Huynh and look after our ancestors.”

His brows squinch back together. “What?”

I explain to him what A Pòh had described, how people in the past sometimes added a boy to the family in name only. I say we’ll make A Gūng believe we’re going to do exactly that, so he can rest easy knowing his responsibilities to the dead will be passed on. Even though, of course, none of it will be true.

“You can’t just say you’ll do whatever he wants?” Ollie scratches the back of his ear.

“The problem is my A Gūng’s convinced it’s got to be a boy.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

I force myself not to hesitate. “It’s not about me.”

Ollie is watching my face again, but he doesn’t seem to find what he’s looking for. “This is a little nuts, Francine,” he says, fiddling with his keys.

“So you’ll think about it?”

“What? No.” He goes back to sidling away. “Look, I gotta go,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

I barrel around in front of him, a last-ditch effort. “What if I helped you with something? Anything. Whatever you need.”

“I’m good!” He throws the words over his shoulder, high-pitched and squirrelly, then skedaddles toward the parking lot.

I let him go then, because contrary to popular belief, I can take a hint. Ollie clearly doesn’t want to talk about this right now. But I’m sure there’s a way to get him to help with The Plan—there has to be. I’ve just got to figure out how.

THIS MORNING, FRANCINE IS PASSING OUT THE lab worksheets in AP Bio, which reminds me that it’s been about a week since she told me her grandpa is dying and I’ve basically acted like I don’t give two shits.

I feel bad. Of course I feel bad. The problem is, every time you give Francine an inch, she comes back with enough absurdity to send you to Jupiter and back. Like this thing about pretending to be some kind of honorary grandson for her a gūng. What was that all about? How did she expect me to pull off something like that?

And why me?

I had to disengage, I tell myself. For my own self-preservation. Francine’s weirdness is the kind that could rub off if you’re not careful. It’s not so much the way she looks—if you never had a conversation with her, you might be fooled into thinking she was normal. You might even, occasionally, think she was cute. But no, Francine is always getting involved, jumping up to volunteer for this or that, waving her arm in your face like there’s actual competition for World’s Most Annoying Samaritan. Everybody at Hargis already knows the honor belongs to her.

I admit that maybe I didn’t always feel that way—maybe, ages ago, I actually found her semi-tolerable. Except I haven’t really thought about that in a while, and I don’t feel like starting now.

Francine doesn’t notice as I watch her bustling down the side of the classroom, handing out packets of worksheets to each row. She purses her lips slightly as she counts, like she’s almost but not quite forming the numbers aloud. When a stack drops to the floor, pages splayed out, she stoops to pick it up with near-professional efficiency, and something about that—the way you can’t tell anything’s up with her at all—makes me want to wrench away the packets and pass them out for her.

“All right, loves,” says Ms. Abdi, leaning over the lab station at the front of the room. She’s extremely short, with long dreads and a habit of stretching out sentences into yogic-breath territory. “You all remember what today is, right?”

Half the room groans because how could we forget? Ms. Abdi gives the projector screen a tug, and it snaps up, coiling into a roll. On the whiteboard, in Francine’s handwriting, are the words PIG DISSECTION DAY in purple marker. In the corner, she’s even drawn a little pig with a curly tail, which I can’t decide if I think is sort of funny or totally grotesque.

“Now, keep in mind this is a privilege.” Ms. Abdi looks us each in the eye, and in spite of myself, I straighten a bit in my chair. “Treat this opportunity with the respect it deserves. Honor the process and your specimen.” She gestures to the trays lining the counter along the far wall and then brings her hands back together, eyelids fluttering closed. I almost expect her to bow her head. “Be present.”

Francine has reached the row in front of me, and I slump down again, eyes averted. While waiting for her to pass, I study the wooden panel just beneath the tabletop, where somebody in my seat, during some dreary class period, had scratched the initials “S. T. + L. D.” and encircled them in a shaky heart. For months now, when there hasn’t been anything better to do, I’ve found myself absently retracing the lines with my own pen, doing my part to preserve the mark for posterity. Sometimes I wonder about S. T. and L. D. and whether they made it past AP Bio.

Ms. Abdi is strolling down the aisle now, hands clasped behind her back. “Dissection is a way for you to gain an intimate understanding of how organisms are built,” she says. “Of how you are built. Because don’t forget, humans, too, are physical beings. We, too, are flesh and bone.”

I find myself getting kind of interested in Ms. Abdi’s monologue, but then my phone buzzes, and I sneak it out of my pocket. The text is from Rollo Chen, my best friend and usual lab partner, who is noticeably absent from the seat next to me.

Gonna miss lab, the message reads. Taking care of some biz.

I met Rollo on the first day of seventh grade, when he tried to sell me a subscription to “Rollo Pool,” a rideshare service pitched as an alternative to being driven everywhere by your parents (no credit card required). I didn’t take him up on the offer, but that hardly mattered: Rollo had already gotten dozens of other kids to sign up, and he would have made a killing if all his drivers—recruited from among his older cousins—hadn’t quit based on claims that they were being underpaid. (“I don’t see Uber paying a living wage,” he said later, shrugging.)

I wasn’t sure what to make of a guy like Rollo, but I ran into him again a few weeks afterward, when Mom made me go to the Welcome Dance. Everybody else was in the gym having a grand old time, but he was sitting under the bleachers by the basketball courts—exactly where I’d been planning to hide out until it was time to be picked up. “I know you’re gonna find this hard to believe,” Rollo said, remarkably smooth for a kid who was crawling out from under a metal bench. “But I can’t dance for shit!” Then he grinned, a big chipmunk-like smile crisscrossed at the time with braces, and somehow, in that force field of his shamelessness, I felt a little bit less alone.

Right now, though, Rollo is nowhere to be found.

Me: Dude, it’s the pig dissection. It’s like 50% of our grade.

Rollo: Relax, you got this.

“Ollie,” says Ms. Abdi. “You need a partner, don’t you? This isn’t one you can do by yourself.” She skips her eyes over Rollo’s empty seat to land on Jiya Jain, who pushes back a lock of magenta hair and removes an earbud in the same sleight of hand.

“Um,” I stall. “Rollo might be . . . late.”

Jiya slouches a bit as she leans forward, though on her, the habit is almost intimidating. Other than a nose ring, she dresses like a child from the nineties, but don’t let that fool you. Her vibe is definitely too cool for school. Right now, she pulls her notebook closer, flipping to a fresh page as if preparing to jot down whatever Ms. Abdi is about to say, but the giveaway is the intricate pattern of thick lines bleeding through from her drawing. She’s basically always drawing, often very intensely, which is why I avoid saying much to her. Also, she scares me.

“Tell Rollo he needs to see me about all the classes he’s missed.” Ms. Abdi rubs her chin, like she’s tallying how much Rollo has let her down. “And then can you please put your phone away, Ollie?”

I scramble to stuff it back in my pocket.

“You’ll work with Jiya today,” Ms. Abdi decides, and before I can convince myself it won’t be that bad, Francine, now empty-handed, skips up and slides into her seat at the end of the row.

Right next to Jiya.

“Oh, yes,” adds Ms. Abdi, nodding like I’m in for a real treat. “And Francine, of course. You girls don’t mind?”

This is another reason I don’t really talk to Jiya: she and Francine are best friends. It’s as true as it is inexplicable.

They both glance over at me now, and Francine raises her chin slightly. “Sure,” she says, her voice a shade more apathetic than I expected. “Ollie can be in our group.”

“Wonderful,” says Ms. Abdi. “Let’s get started, then.”

Francine, of course, is the one who jumps up to get first crack at the pig fetuses. I stay in my seat, as does Jiya, who flips back to her artwork-in-progress. The drawing, done elaborately in black and gold Sharpie, features an Indian American girl with dark-rimmed eyes, like Jiya herself, whose face is being grabbed by a hand wrestling its way out of a phone screen. The effect is a little alarming.

“So, you and Francine always work together?” This is not the most unnecessary thing I could have said, but it’s up there.

“Yup.” Jiya’s head is still bent over the page, like she can’t even be bothered to notice how inane my comment was. “She’s usually the one who does the heavy-lifting, though. She loves labs.”

As if on cue, Francine reappears and sets a tray on the tabletop with a clink. Our pig, encased in its shrink-wrapped sarcophagus, teeters a bit, and I try not to look at it.

“Here,” says Francine, handing me an apron. She’s already got hers on, along with goggles and gloves, and before Jiya and I have time to follow suit, she cuts a straight line across the bag and frees the pig from the plastic. Unceremoniously, she lays it onto the paper towels nestled in our tray, and the three of us stare down at the rubbery form.

“Are you okay, Ollie?” Francine nudges her goggles up her nose. “Is it the smell?”

“No.” I grip the edge of the table, wishing I’d thought to lie about having a religious reason to get out of this. “I mean, yes, I’m fine.” The smell is vaguely chemical but less pungent than I’d imagined. The issue is more that it’s a fully formed piglet, complete with skinny legs that end in little hooves, eyes resting in the appearance of sleep, and—the thing that really gets me—fuzz along the top of its head.

“Are you sure?” says Francine. “Do you want to just be the instructions reader?”

I would like nothing better than to be the fucking instructions reader, but I can feel Francine’s concern settling around my shoulders, trapping me like a heavy cloak I don’t need.

“No,” I say again. “I said I was fine.”

“I’ll be the instructions reader,” Jiya pipes up, grabbing one of the lab packets. When I shoot her a look, she raises an eyebrow. “Well, someone’s got to.”

“Jiya’s a very good instructions reader,” Francine assures me.

“Great,” I say. “Terrific.”

“I think we should name him.” Jiya inspects our pig fondly. “Any ideas?”

Francine shrugs, and they both turn to me. Unfortunately, I’m too nauseous to come up with anything good. “How about . . . Piggy?”

“Piggy?” Jiya appears to notice me properly for the first time, and it’s not a positive assessment.

Francine decides to riff on my suggestion. “What if we made it . . . Pigby.”

“Pigby,” repeats Jiya, thoughtfully this time. “That’s better.” And I guess it is.

Francine, however, is already moving on. “Can you lift up the tray, Ollie?” She knots together two rubber bands and tugs them taut over Pigby’s head. “I need your help tying him down.”

Somehow I recover enough to do as she asks, which enables her to slip the linked elastics under the tray. But when she stretches one loop toward me, I balk. “Can you at least hold it?” she sighs.

I take it reluctantly. “You’re awfully chill about all this,” I observe, hoping she doesn’t think I’m impressed. Even if I am.

Francine wraps her side of the rubber band chain around Pigby’s front right leg. “I’d like to go to med school someday, so I’ll have to get used to a lot worse.”

Ugh, I should’ve known. Every time I hear about an Asian kid who’s planning to become a doctor, I could throw up. “Do you really want to, though, or is it just what your parents want?”

“Both, I guess.” She points at Pigby’s other front leg, and even though I’m still feeling squeamish, I follow her example and secure his limb to the tray.

“What kind of doctor?” I ask, curious in spite of myself.

“Primary care,” Francine answers without hesitating, and I picture our family doctor, the ancient Dr. Nguyen, whose office in a boxy Little Saigon medical building is adorned with faded posters about handwashing and heart attacks (courtesy of pharmaceutical companies). He’s the only doctor I know personally, and I wouldn’t want to be him at all.

I flick another rubber band across the table. “Doesn’t that seem kinda boring?”

“There’s a shortage of family physicians nationwide,” Francine explains, and I don’t know whether that’s better or worse than if she’d just said her parents made her. “Can you lift the tray again?”

Seeing no other choice, I help her tie down the pig’s remaining legs. Together, we make sure poor Pigby, strung up as if in a medieval torture device, won’t be going anywhere.

“Now cut a V shape,” Jiya reads from the instructions. “Under the pig’s neck.”

Scalpel in hand, Francine squints over her shoulder at the diagram on her lab sheet. “Okay,” she says, feeling her fingers along the skin where she’s about to make the incision. “Here goes—”

“Wait,” I say. “We’re gonna . . . just like that?”

Francine’s scalpel is still hovering over Pigby. “Yes?”

“But his entire existence has been about nothing. We didn’t even let him make it out of the womb alive. His sole purpose was being a specimen for dissection.”

Both Francine and Jiya seem surprised by my outpouring. I’m a little surprised, too.

“That’s not nothing,” says Francine. “His sole purpose would have been being a byproduct to the pork industry.”

“They raise the sows for meat,” Jiya clarifies. “And then they remove the fetuses to discard or use as fertilizer.” She turns to Francine. “I guess Ollie’s kind of right? If it weren’t for the meat industrial complex, Pigby could have grown up to be a happy adult pig.”

“If it weren’t for the meat industrial complex,” Francine replies, “Pigby wouldn’t exist.”

“How do you know, though?” I mean for the question to be combative, but instead it limps forward, practically begging everyone to feel sorry for it.

“Are we talking about . . . pig souls?” Francine sets down the scalpel, and there’s a whiff of incredulity in her question.

“I’m just saying, we don’t know. We don’t know where life comes from, or where it goes, or how it gets allocated. But you’re just standing there, with death in front of you, and you’re not even thinking about it.”

Francine studies me for a moment, and then the full weight of my douchebaggery hits me as I remember: her grandpa. Her grandpa’s fucking dying and I’m asking why she isn’t thinking about questions of life and death.

I try to fumble together an apology as Francine picks up the scalpel again. But instead of going back in for the cut, she pauses and drops her hands, clasping one wrist over the other. “Would you like to say a few words for Pigby?”

“What?” Coming from anyone else, this would surely be sarcastic, but from Francine, it’s hard to tell.

“Like a prayer or something,” Francine prompts. “Whatever you want.”

I look over at Jiya for help, but she only shrugs. “I don’t believe in God.”

I’m not sure I believe in God either. My parents are technically Buddhist, but I have no idea what Buddhists would say for a pig who’s about to get sliced open.

“I don’t know,” I stammer.

With the air of somebody who realizes she has to do everything herself, Francine bows her head. “Thank you, Pigby, for being our specimen and giving us a chance to learn about mammalian anatomy. We don’t know where your soul is headed, or if you even have one, but what matters is that you were alive once. Your life, though short, was given over completely to the service of others, which is the most anyone can aspire to. You had, and always will have had, a purpose.”

She straightens up again. “How’s that?” she says generally, but her eyes are asking me.

I’m astounded. Francine’s speech, unfussy yet strangely thoughtful, was somehow appropriate, its poignance buried beneath the breezy pragmatism. It’s clearly more than I was able to muster and much more than I was expecting from Francine.

But I don’t know how to say any of that, or even if I want to. So I cross my arms and turn toward the window because it’s easier than looking at her.

“It’s whatever,” I mumble. “Can we just get this over with?”