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In my car, I rip the package open and pluck out my final portfolio, examining the project I spent weeks putting together. Ms. Choi gave us the freedom to design our projects any way we wanted. Mine is a photo album made of construction paper and tied together with yarn, photographs pasted on each page and captions written beneath each glossy rectangle.

Is this a sign to show Jase my photos? There’s a tumble in my stomach just thinking about it.

Written on the cover is a message from Ms. Choi. Beautiful work, Emilyn! I love how you capture all the small details like they’re the true stars.

She wanted to take her time looking through our portfolios, so she mailed them out once she finished. I’m so glad she did because I beam reading through all her comments. My smile doesn’t leave my face when I head home.

Upon stepping inside, I hear my mom speaking intensely in Tagalog. She must be talking to my Tita Maricel. Though they’re both in their fifties, my mom still looks after her. Not even living in different cities—my Tita Maricel lives in Fresno—can stop my mom from being a responsible Atè.

She sighs as I walk into the living room.

“What’s wrong, po?” I ask.

“Your Tita Maricel’s new boyfriend is yet another drunkard.” She runs her fingers through her curtain of black hair that I’m pretty sure she’s ready to yank out.

“Uh oh.”

My Tita Maricel was once married to this man with a serious drinking problem. After they divorced, she found a job in Fresno. There seems to be a motif with the men she dates—their other companion is usually alcohol.

My mom clasps her hands over her face, shaking her head into her palms. I sit down beside her and wrap my arms around her shoulders, my final portfolio laying in my lap.

“Sometimes I wish I was a better Atè,” my mom says.

I hug her tighter. “Don’t say that, po. Tita Maricel still has a wonderful job as a physician. You helped her study hard to become one.”

“But I should’ve done more than push her academically. I should’ve told her what I thought about her other choices like marrying her first husband or allowing Amado to go to an arts school.”

My stomach constricts at the latter.

“All I did was ask her if that’s what she really wants, and of course she was going to say yes. Now she’s dating wrong man after wrong man, and she still has to financially support her son. If I had told her what I really thought, maybe she wouldn’t be having the life she has now.”

I hug her even tighter than before. After she hugs me back, she says, “Let’s just get started checking on your homework.”

“Before we do,” I hold up my portfolio, point to the A+ penned at the top, and add, “look what came in the mail.”

“Ah, galing mo, anak,” she says. But I know she’s only referring to my grade, not my photographs.

“She wrote a lot of good comments.” I turn to the first page and look for a photo that might impress my mom.

“Let’s start with your AP Bio homework.”

I probably should’ve expected her to ignore my eagerness for my photographs, but for some reason, I still have hope.

That hope vanishes even after we finish my homework checkup.

“Ah, that’s good,” my mom says as I show her some of Ms. Choi’s comments.

Her response is so polite I doubt she even listened to anything I said, let alone took a good look at any of my photos.

My dad comes home, and as we eat dinner—pinakbet with white rice—I show him my portfolio, pointing directly at my photos so he can actually look at them.

“You got an A+ on that, right?”

He says this so expectantly, as if to say Of course you got an A+, that class is so easy. But photography itself isn’t.

“Your GPA is so high, anak.” Though my dad pats my shoulder in an I’m-proud-of-you way, I only carve a smile.

I wish my parents could see photography as something more than just an easy A. There’s more to it than just homework and grades. There’s also the photos themselves, but I guess when they think of art, they just think of Amado.