37

A WEEK PASSES. I GO TO SCHOOL. I GO HOME. I PLAY VIDEO GAMES.

I rage at Zee, who is surprised and sad by Royce's ghosting. I rage at Vern, who stopped by to see me at Grub Hub after a shift and says, "Maybe he doesn't want to be involved with the competition."

I balk when I realize he means me. "I—I don't…it can't be."

Vern flicks a speck of dust off his uniform. "Who knows. He's so used to getting what he wants in life, he probably doesn't know how to deal with you being in his way."

A dead weight settles in my stomach. My mouth is dry, unpleasant.

"Watch out for speeding Vellfires if you're alone in a dark alley," Vern says. He's joking, but I see it in my mind's eye: one of Royce's drivers/backup bodyguard, eyes narrowed, driving his Vellfire at me, who is somehow cornered in a dead end with nowhere to run from my impending doom. The face shimmers and changes, and then it becomes Royce.

Insomnia, something I haven't had a problem with since I was twelve, returns to haunt me. I head down one evening to fix myself a hot Milo when I see someone in the living room watching the news on silent. It's my mom.

"Hey," I say, joining her. "Can't sleep?"

"I should ask the same," she replies, arching an eyebrow. "Isn't it a bit late for you to be up."

"I was practicing for my set," I say, glossing over my heartbreak.

She gestures at her stomach. "Well, kiddo is practicing martial arts in there, and I figured I'd wait till she's calmed down before going back up."

We sit and watch, not watch, the news in silence.

"How are you feeling?" I ask.

"I'm good. I'm really enjoying being pregnant again. I didn't think I would, at my age, with all the things I've got going on."

An unexplained emotion rises in my chest.

My mother grins and musses my hair. "I remember when I had you, things were simpler. All I had to focus on was you."

I look at her. "But you were a student. And then you weren't. Things were…different. You had no choice but to focus on me."

The things that aren't said descend around us.

"I had a choice," my mother says after a silence so loud my ears ring at it. "I chose you."

"You say that."

Her voice hitches. "Agnes, it's true."

Maybe because it's dark and it's late, the words that I've been keeping in since she first told me about my bio dad tumble out easier. "Maybe you couldn't not have me, because of your parents." My mother's parents are Catholic, very, very religious and very conservative. They'd done their duty when she was pregnant to make sure she had me, and then they cut off all ties with us when it was clear my mother wouldn't be marrying anytime soon.

My mother flinches, and her face in the blue light of the TV is even paler than it normally is. "Th-that's not what happened! Of course I had a choice when it came to you. I chose to have you."

I get up. "Mom, it's fine. It's in the past. I know you love me now." I'd earned her love after all, bit by bit. And for everything I had cost her, I would repay her one day. "I'm going to bed."

"You've got everything wrong," she says quietly. "You are my pride and joy, from day one."

I stand in the landing and look down at her. "That's not how I remember it," I say; then I enter my room and shut the door.

~

The strange thing is Royce's weird radio silence is actually good for my concentration. Now that I know Rhode Island is an option, I've redoubled my efforts to boost my grades.

With my stand-up finals in place, I put my head down and study with Zee, who's morphed, overnight, into a bit of a scary taskmaster.

Zee's drawn up spreadsheets on what we need to do to punch up our "problem subjects" and found a TikTok on how to biohack our brains and our bodies so we can absorb more knowledge on less sleep—she is generally experimenting on us. Her cooks whip up nutrient dense foods with ingredients like wild salmon, kale, goji berries, and macadamias, while she screams "Hydrate!" every thirty minutes like some scary, water-obsessed version of Coach Everett.

And because her tutor, Mas, had given good feedback to my parents, I'm allowed to attend a rare stopover gig from eminent Swedish comedian Lars Peterson in Kuala Lumpur, who was heading to China for a tour. Lai has a spare ticket, so I am kind of their date. Given the past few weeks and how wound up I've been, I was so grateful for their generosity that I practically prostrated myself before them when they asked me at the last open-mike gig.

We're midway through the opening act, an up-and-coming local comic named Jeff See, when I see Royce a few rows ahead of me with someone I recognize from school, one of his teammates, and everything turns on a dime. My cheerful mood evaporates. "That asshole is here?"

Lai sighs. "What happened?"

"Royce. We kissed in Singapore, and I thought maybe…I don't know…that he was my…that he cared for me?" I can't bring myself to say the word boyfriend. "And now he's ghosting me, and I don't know why!"

Lai raises their eyes to the ceiling. "Oh boy," they mutter.

I shake my head. "And now, of all the things he could be doing, he chooses to come to my show. The nerve!"

Several people whip around and shush me, and Royce, perhaps noticing the disturbance in the Force, turns and sees me. He has the good grace to look embarrassed as his teammate, Han or something, elbows him with a grin. "Can we talk outside?" he whispers.

"No!" I whisper back. "It's too late now."

"Get out," the people around us hiss.

Lai palms their face. "This is the last time I'm asking a teenager to join me for a show."

Royce heads to the exit, and Jit, who'd been sitting a few rows back, slips out to follow him.

Once outside, Royce turns toward me with the stoic expression of someone who knows he has it coming, only he isn't sure how he will be ended. Even Jit looks afraid of my expression.

"Go on," Royce says.

"Me? You tell me what's going on," I say, getting angrier by the moment.

He shakes his head. "I don't know where to even begin."

Royce's SUV pulls up just then, presumably because the driver thinks he's leaving the venue. The door opens, and I notice something on the floor of the vehicle.

A lime-green paper bag bearing a dancing lemur logo and that of TentPole Productions and the streaming company's logo.

Something clicks in my brain.

The dancing lemur. The same insignia that I'd seen on the screens at the charity ball. On his polos and tissue box in his room.

Frisson Cola's logo.

"What is that?" I say, pointing at the paper bag with those two logos side by side, my mouth dry.

Royce blanches. "It's…it's…" He swallows. "It's not what you think."

A fury I'd never experienced before engulfs me. I hiss, "I think it's exactly what I think it is."

It all seems pretty clear to me now. It wasn't hard to put two and two together. When Royce shed his Ray person and competed under his name—well, half of his real name anyway—Frisson Cola, which was probably part of the FB conglomerate held by Royce's family, decided to increase the sponsorship so that their precious son could scrape through. That's why he was acting so shifty over the past few weeks, literally right after we'd kissed.

Maybe he'd kissed me because he wanted a backup plan, as a way to manipulate my feelings, and I'd let him. Why else would he have done it? He could have had anyone he wanted. It had to have been some kind of power play.

Vern had been right all along.

A surge of humiliation as thick as bile rises through me. "You pulled strings to get to the finals, didn't you? Frisson Cola's sudden generosity?"

Royce starts shaking his head. "No. I did no such thing. Frisson Cola is not a company controlled in any way by my family."

"Oh please," I scoff. "It's what, one of your dad's golf buddies' companies, then? That's how it works, right?"

Royce stills. "Agnes, I had nothing to do with this. Neither did my father. I asked. This was his business partner's decision."

"Sure," I sneer. "Sure. Zero conflict of interest here. Poor, innocent Royce!" I turn away and start jogging to the street, while trying to hail a cab through a maelstrom of competing emotions. It's not an act, I think to myself, desperately blinking back tears. I am a fool. A naive, silly fool of a girl. But I'm not going to cry in front of him.

Royce catches up to me and tries to grab my wrist. Jit trails us uncertainly, his expression one of deep unhappiness. "Please, Agnes, I had nothing to do with this. Nothing."

"Just because you weren't the one to pull the trigger doesn't mean you didn't supply the ammo, that you didn't sanction it."

"What can I do to make this better?"

"You can drop out of the competition."

"What?" Royce looks genuinely riled now. "That's ridiculous. I did not influence the judging at all. The judges are independent, selected by TentPole! I got third place, fair and square."

"And you wouldn't have made it to the finals if your daddy's friend hadn't paid your way in."

"He acted on his own, and neither me nor my dad did anything to encourage this decision. We didn't even know until it had been decided."

"So what? You still benefitted from it."

"Like you benefitted from Vern's intervention at the clap-off?" he says softly.

I reel as though I'd been slapped. A twist of guilt flares in my gut. "I had nothing to do with that," I snarl.

"Same as I had nothing to do with this," he insists. He reaches out for me again. "Look, Agnes, let's work together to fix this. I only found out after the extra slots had been announced, and I wanted to tell you. I had a huge argument with my dad asking him to ask his friend to rescind it, because I know how it will look if anyone finds out about their link, but I was prevented from doing so because it wasn't just his friend, the other sponsor also agreed to do it and it had been announced….Look, we're in the same boat. I didn't ask for any of this."

I recoil. It's true that Vern's offhand comments had swayed the judging, I couldn't deny that. But having Daddy's friends pay your way to a competition—how is that even in the same league as what happened with Vern?

"I've been thinking about this for ages, and there's no way I can resolve this fairly," he says.

"Declare a conflict of interest to the judges and see what they say."

He throws his arms up. "But why? There was no conflict of interest at the judging. And there won't be at the finals either." The judging is supposed to be done by a panel of stand-up comics, whose identities were still unknown. "But if you make me declare this, then my reputation will very likely be ruined, Agnes. Forever."

"If you're not declaring a conflict of interest at very least, save whatever you want to say for the next fool," I say, pushing his arm away. "Touch me again and I'll start to scream."

Royce drops his hand. I hail a cab I can't afford and jump in, just before the tears come for real.

~

I text Zee, asking her to call me. When she does, the words spill out of me, hot and furious, and for once she is speechless.

After a while, she ventures to say, "Look, I think it's not necessarily so black and white."

Of course she would say that, Vern's voice speaks up. Her family is an old politically connected dynasty, they probably deal in gray areas like this all the time. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, eh?

"I disagree," I say to Zee. "Some things are pretty black and white, to me at least. I just think that sometimes an omission can be just as bad as an action. Also, I've never been comfortable with these types of string pulling." I make my voice high-pitched and grating, "Oh please, I'll donate a hospital wing if you allow me to be a patient in your drug trial! Please, let my son get into Harvard, I'll donate a quarter million! It's a competitive tender and your offer isn't, but because you and I are university mates, I'll accept your bid!"

There's a sharp intake of breath and I realize, too late, that there's been a recent case in Zee's extended family that mirrors the last scenario. "I'll respect your decision," Zee says curtly, "but in this instance at least, I don't think this case is as clear-cut as that."

"Vern says—"

Zee interrupts, "I don't put much stock in anything that boy says."

I stare at the phone, stung. Why is Zee reacting so badly to Vern? Why does she hate him so much?

"Are you jealous of Vern?"

"Urgh, absolutely not. He's got nothing I want."

Zee didn't mean it that way, but all of a sudden I hear Vern's voice in my head: For people like Zee, it's all about what you have to offer to them. For now, she's interested in you because you're different. She and Royce exist in a cocoon, in their own hermetically sealed world. You are interesting to her because you are everything she isn't, and she's a voyeur, isn't she? With her fascination with reality TV, the hoi polloi. When she graduates, she's going to a non-Ivy college, right? Berkeley, was it? Film and media undergrad? Wow. Once she's there in California and finds herself surrounded by cooler versions of you, you'll no longer be special. She'll drop you like a stone. You'll lose her.

My eyes blur. "Just because Vern isn't like you, you look down on him," I say. "You don't see what I see because he has nothing to offer you."

"TF? What the hell are you even on? Have you completely lost it?"

Dump her first, Vern's voice advises.

"Now that senior year is almost over, we're no longer going to have anything in common."

That's not true, another voice, possibly mine, squeaks. I think about our inside jokes about other Dunians, our love for what we called non-rom K-dramedies, our little textual shorthands. Abort mission! Abort mission!

But I can't stop. Vern is right. She's not from my world—she never was. She's already a star, and I'm a speck of stardust.

"Maybe this is the end of the road for our friendship, Zee."

A jagged intake of breath issues from my phone.It only took five minutes to undo four years of friendship. My lips tremble and I have to jam my fist in my mouth to prevent myself from howling.

"Agnes, wh-what…n-no, don't."

I hang up on her and block her number before my resolve breaks down.

My phone buzzes.

Royce:Agnes, please

Royce:What can I do?

My fingers quake as I type out: You can stop contacting me and drop out of the competition

Royce:I deserve to be in this competition. I got where I did, fair and square. We were tied at no. 2 on points! And no one knew who I was. I went onstage officially as Royce Lim in the semis, you know that

Me:I don't know what you're capable of anymore tbh

Royce:Winning at all costs isn't my thing. But I'm starting to think it's yours

Me:Don't insult me. I'm a fair competitor

Royce:So when Vern helps you, that's fair?

Me:Low jab for the person who pulls strings to get where he wants to go

Royce:For the last time, I had nothing…my family had nothing to do with that. I thought you knew me better than that

Me:So did I

~

It's midnight. My heart hurts. My head however is clear as day.

I don't want Royce to drop out. I don't want him to go through, either. Not until it is objectively determined that there isn't a conflict of interest.

I need to talk to someone. Someone who understands.

I video-call Vern and tell him everything.

"I can't say I'm surprised," Vern says, making a face. "Another rich boy manipulates the situation to get what he wants."

"Zee…Zee doesn't think he did anything wrong."

Vern's laughter has a cruel, mocking ring to it. "Of course she'd take his side! I warned you this would happen. They always look out for their own." He sighs. "Agnes, you really are too nice. Anyway, what do you think we should do?"

"We?"

"Sure," Vern says. "We have to do something. It's only fair if we expose him."

"I…I don't know."

"I don't know why you are always looking out for Royce. He certainly wasn't looking out for you throughout this competition."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, how much help was he, tutoring you? Didn't he refuse to be your peer tutor?"

"It's…er, I mean…" I hesitate. Actually, I had been the one who decided to stop getting tutored by Royce sometime after our third or fourth session (Mas was more than enough help, plus I caught myself staring at Royce when I thought he wasn't looking, even when we were in a group) but he could have fought harder to help me, right? Like Vern had been doing. Fighting for me.

"And super-convenient timing of how he kissed you, only when he thought he had no chance of progressing in the competition. And didn't he just avoid you as soon as you officially become competition again? Not exactly someone who puts you first."

It's hard not to find Royce's behavior damning when it's cast that way.

"I can't—I don't have the headspace for this now. My final exams start tomorrow."

"I understand," Vern says. "And I wish with all my heart the timing was better. But this is important. The finals for the competition are in two weeks. We should strike when the iron is hot."

"What are you planning on doing, then?" I ask, uneasy all of a sudden remembering Kima's slashed tires. "I don't want to hurt him."

Vern's face breaks into an easy-going smile. "Leave it to me, then."