Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

I can’t possibly remain on school grounds. It won’t be long before everyone rushes after me to continue enjoying my humiliation, and I sure as hell am not about to hop into Jonas’s car. So after I burst out of Xingfa’s main gates, I keep running, which is quite the feat, considering that form-fitting mermaid dresses aren’t built with mobility in mind. Still, I manage to do a thigh-squishy waddle all the way to the main road, where I finally stop long enough to order a GoCar.

“Your GoCar will be here in four minutes,” the app announces, and I groan out loud.

Might as well be a whole eternity. I don’t have a choice, though, so I stand there, my chest heaving, my gaze skittering back to the dark silhouette of Xingfa now and again. Nobody comes after me. But just as I’m about to breathe a sigh of relief, my phone judders in my hand. It’s a notification from TikTok. Someone’s tagged me in a video. Dread unfurls in my gut. My phone vibrates again. And again. More TikTok notifications. An Instagram notification. Another Instagram notification.

I don’t want to look at any of this stuff. But my thumb moves on its own accord and taps on the top notification. It directs me to a TikTok of Jonas on the stage, talking about Dudebro10. Then the camera swivels off the stage and locks onto my stunned face in the sea of students, gaping at Jonas. The caption reads: “Org yg paling tdk tau diri didunia #CrazyKiki #BestBoyfriend.”

It translates roughly to: “The most oblivious person in the world.” But oblivious here isn’t being used as “ignorant,” it’s being used to describe someone who doesn’t know her place, who thinks she’s better than she really is. That’s how my schoolmates see me. Someone who doesn’t know how good she has it.

The next TikTok has similar content—Jonas onstage making his speech. The caption reads: “Pls how can anyone not love himmm?! #CrazyKiki.”

I should stop, I know I should, but I tap on the next notification, and the next.

“Omg wtf just happened #CrazyKiki.”

“What does he see in her??? #CrazyKiki.”

“LMAO look at her stupid bitch face!! #CrazyKiki.”

The phone screen suddenly turns dark and the name “Eleanor Roosevelt Tanuwijaya” appears along with the phone icon. It takes a moment for me to realize that Eleanor is calling me. I don’t have it in me to have any sort of phone conversation right now, so I hit the red phone icon, but my hands are shaking so hard that I accidently tap the green one instead. “No!” I cry.

Too late.

“Ci Kiki?” Eleanor’s voice comes out of the speaker. “What’s going on? Are you okay? You’re kinda blowing up all over my feed….”

In the background, Sarah Jessica calls out, “Some people are tagging Lil’ Aunties on these posts.”

The mention of Lil’ Aunties Know Best is what does it for me. I break, letting out all of my shame in a torrent. “I don’t care about Lil’ Aunties!” I yell.

Eleanor and Sarah Jessica abruptly stop whatever they were saying, and their shocked silence spurs me on. “I wish you’d never asked me to join, and I wish you didn’t rope Liam into joining—” I hate myself so much right now, it’s overwhelming, a rushing river of rage and humiliation and grief drowning me. If only I was never enrolled at Xingfa, if only I’d stayed at Mingyang. None of this would even have happened if Sharlot hadn’t met George Clooney. And the thought of this, the realization, is the last hit of the hammer. I drive the nail right into Eleanor Roosevelt’s heart. “I wish I’d never met you or your brother!” With that, I hit the End Call button. When I look up, I see that my GoCar has arrived. I have no idea how long it’s been there, the driver gaping at me through the open window. I ignore his shocked expression and throw the back door open.

“Uh, you’re not drunk, are you?” he says as I slide in. “Because if you are, I’m not driving you anywhere. I don’t want to have some drunk teen vomiting in my car.”

“I’m not drunk,” I manage to mumble, right before I dissolve into wrenching sobs.

“Um…,” the driver says. He gulps audibly, but when I continue weeping, he sighs and puts the car into drive. Thankfully, he drives the whole way in silence, the only sounds in the small car my uncontrollable sobs as my heart cracks all the way open.

---

“Kiki! You’re home so early,” Mami calls out as I step inside the front door. She hurries over from the living room, her face aglow with excitement. I take some pleasure at the way her eyebrows shoot up before knitting together. I’m glad she’s not getting the arrival she expected: me with Jonas, arm in arm, her dreams of her daughter dating some billionaire hotshot smashed into jagged pieces. “What happened? Are you—have you been crying?”

I take in a shuddery breath, and the fact that I can’t even inhale without my breath flapping and fraying, threatening yet more tears, makes me even angrier. “This is all your fault. You enrolled me at that stupid school to fulfill your own ambitions, and I will never forgive you for it,” I hiss. Hot tears spring into my eyes, and I hurry past Mami, ignoring Papi as he gets up from the sofa. I rush up the staircase and make sure to slam my door shut, just to drive in how angry I am, before locking it.

The knocks come a few seconds later, because of course, my parents don’t understand—or won’t understand—the universal cues for “Leave me the hell alone.” So I do the only thing I can. I shout it at them. When they continue knocking, I grab a cushion off my sofa and fling it at the door for added effect. Thankfully, after that, the knocking stops. I huff a relieved/disappointed sigh (I’d been prepared to turn full banshee on them) and flop very dramatically down on the sofa. I thought I’d cry some more, but my eyes have run out of tears, which is somewhat inconvenient, because I still have all these squishy emotions inside me.

With a frustrated cry, I push myself up, trudge to my desk, and fire up my computer. Time slows, my heart thumping at least three times a second, as I wait for my computer to start. I click on the Warfront Heroes icon, and I swear it takes literally forever to load. While waiting, I tap out a message to Liam on my phone.

Hey, please let me explain

Kiki:It’s not what you think

Kiki:Liam, please

No reply. The app says that Liam hasn’t been online since 8:42 p.m., which is over an hour ago now. Warfront Heroes finally loads, and I quickly open up my Friends list and locate his name. I double-click it and type out a message.

Hey, it’s me. Kiki. I just want to explain everything to you. Please give me a chance to do that

I hit Send, and an unfamiliar tone beeps at me. A notice pops up in the middle of my screen: You are not on Sourdawg’s Friends list. Message not delivered.

My breath catches in my throat. I’m not on Sourdawg’s Friends list? That’s not possible, that—realization thunks with the weight of an anvil. He unfriended me on Warfront Heroes. I release a choked sob. Maybe I could—I could do what I did with Jonas and try to locate Liam on a battleground, but what good would that do? He unfriended me. Somehow, this is the thought that hurts most of all, the one that carves up my insides and leaves me completely empty.

I’m barely aware of shutting down my computer and turning off the lights. All I recall is slouching, zombie-like, from my desk and crumpling into my bed without bothering to take off my dress or my makeup. I have just enough energy to wrap my duvet around myself and turn into a cocoon before I slip into a deep, exhausted sleep. Maybe when I wake up, all of this will turn out to be nothing more than a nightmare.