The school year had recently started, and so had the school day. Assembly started in five minutes, and every second until then was paradise to the class. There was no work to do, no notes to take, and nowhere to be. I was at my desk, my nose in a book, tuning out the outside world, and focusing on the one in my hands. I turned a page, and was suddenly startled to feel a finger tap me on the shoulder. Hard. I turned, already knowing who had tapped me based on the immense amount of strength that he had poured into the simple act of trying to get my attention. Sasha was at his desk with his body turned towards me, and looked me dead in the eyes with a sincere gaze, but obviously thinking. I turned my head to face him, and gently flipped my book upside down.

“Hm?” I asked, returning his puzzled gaze with my ears open, awaiting his question.

I did not expect what was coming next.

“Wait, are you, like, communist?”

His question itself was uttered in an innocent and sincere tone, yet the words it contained completely knocked me off guard. It was a question that I had never expected to be asked, and it hit me so hard that I felt like the air had been painstakingly strained out of my lungs. 

How much more random can you get?

Here I was, sitting there at my desk, nose in a book, when all of a sudden, my classmate looks at me with a straight face and asks if I’m communist.

I stared at him, my eyes suddenly hardening from a wide eagerly question-awaiting stance into narrow stilts of confusion. My eyebrows furrowed, and for a moment, my mind was blank. I felt as if Sasha had suddenly shot a bullet out of a water gun at me.

What kind of question is this? I thought, eyebrows furrowing, staring hard into the ground, Why on Earth would that thought ever even cross his mind? 

And then it hit me. It’s because I’m American-Chinese.

 I should be angry! I asserted, realizing why he had asked this, but I felt no anger. All I felt was shock.

Sasha looked back at me, maintaining his genuinely curious eye contact, awaiting my answer. It was obvious that he had not meant for the question to come off as labeling, but as a genuine question, as unlikely as it seemed. I stared back into his eyes, and my mouth stumbled finding my answer. I wanted to lash back hard, I wanted to make him realize how stupid of a question that it was, I was going to-

“Um… no.”

“Are your parents communist?”

I felt another wave of surprise hit me. Shasha still had not fully realized what his question meant. His water gun shot another bullet. 

This time, however, I was not in a full state of shock. I had somehow already expected him to ask me this in some distant crevice of my mind, and so I came prepared to a degree.

I scoured my mind for the best way to answer this question, and came up with an obvious yet effective solution: play up my innocence.

“Uh… no. Why would they be communist?”

It was then that Sasha had finally realized why it had taken me seconds too long to answer his questions. I watched as his eyes suddenly widened apologetically, and he fumbled for an answer. 

“Um, well, it’s just that you’re…”

He paused, and his eyes avoided mine, searching the air desperately, as if the answer to my seemingly innocent question might be written somewhere in it, visible only to him. He eventually gave up, and waved away the question dismissively, as if it suddenly did not matter anymore.

 “Well, nevermind. You know what? Forget it.”

Sasha turned away and looked out the window, and I could see the obvious discomfort that he had put himself into, which gave me an odd feeling of satisfaction. I opened my book again, and returned to reading. I was struggling to hide a smug smirk, and was content with myself for teaching him a lesson.

Later that day, Sasha asked me if I ate dogs.