The bell rings, and the expat kids pour out of the doors of Grace International Dhaka. From school they funnel out into the city, each day taking them different places…violin lessons, Bangla tutoring, after school sports and so on. They’re here on Daddy’s dime and his company or embassy or private fund splurged for the penthouse in the diplomatic quarter where they’ve lived for the past several years…consequently there’s really nothing they need, but they still ask Mom for cash the morning before the bus arrives to whisk them off to class in flawlessly purified air which is 250 times cleaner than the air wafting through the streets of this city of 23 million.

Today happens to be Friday and the evening hours are for treating the city like it’s their own personal playground…easy and cheap. 30 cents gets them a rickshaw ride through the heart of Dhaka, and if they pay a little extra, sometimes the drivers give them the carriages to run races with the mounted bikes through the parks. As Friday evenings give way to the night hours the student group dwindles down to its core, the kids who have lived in Bangladesh the longest. Some of them started kindergarten here and many of them speak flawless Bangla, not that it makes them seem like locals. They are spotless and well-behaved in school, but they get loud, snotty, and increasingly rude as the evening wears on. They figure this is their chance to let go and they don’t think much of the impression they might make on the culture around them. Their futures do not lay in this southeastern Asian country on the sea but in the rarified halls of Oxford or Yale or wherever else they’re headed after graduation.

Clouds drift across the pale moon and the kids gather on the grimy banks of the green river, murky water lapping against their designer sandals. They light cigarettes and flick lit matches at the mosquitos drifting by. One of them suggests a new idea and, bored with the city, they sneak into the Crown Plaza hotel, silently stealing up the service stairs to the penthouse pool, perfect for skinny dipping on top of the sprawling city below them. Wet bodies slide through the chlorinated water, lightly slicked on the surface by oily residue from the polluted city air. If it was daytime they might where masks to protect their expensive lungs, but by nighttime the kids don’t care. Anything to distract themselves from the world churning away below them.