"Bettering the city? Oh, no," I say with a soft laugh, shaking my head. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I would not make choices that make things worse for the city. But I think the campaign that I want to run on is more about the people who are coming into the city. Not everyone is very nice to us. It's the same as the way that my family was treated when we first got to the United States from Taiwan — it's not that everyone is mean to you, but everyone treats you like an other, and sometimes that just makes it hard for everyone to get along. I see lots of that in Darrow, too."

I sigh. Maybe at the end of it all, what I really want to be able to do is learn more about the city. But I also know that I am not going to get to that without people caring about the people who are coming into the city. You can't get people to think that funding research about Darrow is important if you don't care that there are people suddenly popping up in your city — or if your first answer is that the people who are popping into the city should just leave.

"So I want to figure out how we improve that. I don't know if it's policy or education or research, but the mayor of Darrow actually cares about people from outside the city so I figure getting elected is not completely impossible," I explain.