Page 6 of The Obsession

The door banged open. Brandon expected us to tiptoe around him, but he loved making explosive entrances. “Boy, am I glad to be home,” he grunted, stripping off his gear and flinging it to the floor.

Mom shot me a warning glance. Like I needed a reminder that her live-in boyfriend was a monster. I rounded my shoulders and bowed my head (eye contact was a dangerous thing around here) and started walking toward the stairs, but Brandon stopped me.

“What’s going on with my two favorite ladies?” He dropped onto the couch, making the entire thing sag, and manspread his legs, taking up more space than he should. “Babe, can I have a drink, please?”

“Coming right up, sweetheart,” Mom cooed. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the shrill note of fear lacing her voice, but Brandon did not seem to notice. Or, if he did, he relished it.

“What have you two been up to?” he said, beaming at me.

“Um, not much. I was just finishing up my homework—”

“Yeah? You need any help with schoolwork?” Brandon said. His expression was earnest—eager. Even after everything, he liked to think of himself as a Nice Guy.

I was too well trained by this time to laugh in his face. Instead, I wrangled my expression into a simpering, grateful one and said, “Thank you, Brandon, but I think I’ve got it.”

“Aw, come on. Let me help. I’m practically your dad by now. Didn’t he like to help with your homework?” He gave me a big smile, one that said,Aren’t I sweet?

You’re not my fucking dad, I wanted to say. Pa was the exact opposite of Brandon in every way. He was soft-spoken, his fingers as elegant as any pianist’s. He’d moved here from Singapore for grad school. That was when he met Mom, and what was supposed to be a two-year stay in California turned into twenty. Even though he’d lived in California for so long, he never quite lost the Singlish accent. He tried hard to hide the accent in public so it wouldn’t mark him as a foreigner, but at home, he’d relax and I’d tease him for punctuating all of his sentences withlah.

He taught me many of the hallmarks of Singlish—sayingaiyainstead ofoh my god, one of the delightful Hokkien curse words that sounded so much fiercer than your usual English ones. He liked to cook us Singaporean dishes—chili crab, Hokkien mee, roti prata.

We visited Singapore twice when I was little, and though the heat slowed me down to a sweaty crawl, I fell in love with the country immediately. I loved everything about it, the breakneck speed at which everybody spoke, the way people so casually included you in everything, the cleanliness and efficiency of the place. And Pa’s family was there—loud and welcoming, always shoving food in my face. It was the reason I was working my ass off on my studies and at work. I was going to apply to Pa’s alma mater: the National University of Singapore.

Brandon thinking he could replace Pa made me want to plunge a knife in his eyeball and twist. I scrambled my brains for something to say. Something that wouldn’t get me in trouble. I’d made the mistake of asking him to help with my math homework once, when he insisted, and he’d stared at my textbook forever before—well, never mind. So math wasn’t in the cards. Same with Shakespeare. In fact, anything that made him feel stupid was off-limits.

I’d taken too long to think. Brandon’s face had lost its generous smile, and his jaw was now clenched. His jaw was always the first to tighten up. Then it would be his fist, and that would be that.

“Somebody thinks they’re too smart for good ol’ Brandon,” he said in a joking tone, but beneath the singsong voice was a small vibration of anger.

“No, no! I don’t want to waste your time with my stuff,” I said hurriedly. “You have more important things to deal with.” I forced a halfway sincere-looking smile onto my face, my insides shriveling up with hatred. It was, ironically, mostly hatred toward myself. I still hadn’t forgiven myself for not being the badass I’d always thought I would be. The past year or so, he had broken me down, softened me until I was nothing more than this useless, simpering lump with a quavering smile. Keeping my head down and my shoulders hunched had stopped being a survival trait and started becoming an actual habit that I did everywhere, even when Brandon wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity. I was becoming less me, less present, less alive. And I deserved it for being so pathetic, for not fighting back.

Brandon frowned. “Nothing’s more important than the two leading ladies of my life.”

I forced my smile to remain. “That’s so sweet of you, Brandon. But I’ll be fine, really.”

“Well, offer’s on the table if you need my help.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Time for a quick change of subject. “Hey, how was your day?”

Brandon leaned back, but his gaze remained on me. “Funny you should ask. I was just at your school.”

My heart dropped a beat. “Oh?”

“Yeah, you know, Dee, I gotta say, I’m not a fan of that place. Don’t know why your dad wanted to put you in there so badly. It’s kinda… Well, it’s pretty much filled with spoiled rich brats. And all the shit that’s happened there, man…” Brandon shook his head.

I nodded along.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me why I was there?”

“Why were you there?” I replied obediently.

He side-eyed me in what he probably thought was a mysterious detective way. “Two years ago, someone was operating a drug ring there.”

Ice prickled down my back. This was a dangerous topic, one I really needed to stay far away from.

“It was all a huge clusterfuck. You know what Mendez is like. She couldn’t leave well enough alone. Had to dig deeper and deeper.”

He didn’t know. He had no idea. I wanted to tell him I knew all this already. People at school still talked about the infamous drug-fueled case from time to time. Hell, it shook even the school staff. Lisa herself told me about it one quiet afternoon, her voice hushed and her eyes wide, always checking to make sure we were alone. Lisa never gossiped, so that afternoon was a one-time event. I bet I knew more details than Brandon did about the drug ring. But of course I couldn’t interrupt Brandon, Mr. Important Policeman.

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