Lumi was already typing the address of her aunt’s site into her browser’s address field. “But where did ‘Falling Star’ come from?”

Joe looked back over his shoulder. “Are we the richest family in Maplewood, New Jersey?”

Lumi was bent forward, poring over her aunt’s home page. “Not by a long shot.”

“‘Nuff said. Night, kiddo.”

############

Saifullah ran, and then he ran harder.

Up the dirty hillside trail Saifullah ran, his lungs and legs burning but his heart free. He crested the hill beneath the trail, then stopped with hands on hips to gaze down at the city of Boulder and its blazing autumn foliage.

Saifullah’s reverie was broken when Nur pulled up beside him, bent over double and breathing heavily as he put his hands on his quads. “Isn’t America a beautiful country?” the former exclaimed to the latter with arms spread wide.

Nur responded only with a gasp for air.

Saifullah looked back down the hillside he had just sprinted up, and watched dispassionately as his two other roommates, breathing even more heavily than Nur, ended their trots and began to trudge the last few yards to the crest. “All of you are out of shape,” he declared, his hands still on his hips and his eyes maintaining their downward gaze within their squint against the noonday sun.

“And you’re an asshole,” Alim declared from his hunched-over position, using the English term.