Page 30 of Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Sana’s chest expands as she inhales deeply, her eyes softening. Message received. As long as Riki minds his own business, Sana will mind hers. He can just about live with that.

SIXTEEN

SANA

Sana knows the bitter taste of unfulfilled expectations very well. After all, it’s basically what she is, isn’t it? She sees it in the mirror every morning, smells it in her hair, her natural musk, sees it on her skin like a stain that refuses to be scrubbed away. She wears it on her entire body; it’s become such a huge part of her identity she doesn’t quite know who she is without it.

Now, as she stares at the big and overwhelmingly huge blank canvas in front of her, the heaviness of all that unfulfilled expectation smothers her. It crushes her under its weight and fills her throat and her nostrils and chokes her entire body. She looks down, paint palette in one hand and brush in the other, both hands frozen, the brush hovering just inches from the pristine canvas.

“Just fucking draw, damn it,” Sana hisses at her hand, but still it won’t move. Her teeth are gritted. She feels a trail of sweat rolling down her temple, past her cheekbone, tickling like an ant, andshe shudders, wipes it off with her arm.Just one brushstroke, she tells herself,if you do just one, the rest will come easily.

It has always been this way from as early as she can remember. Her parents told everyone who would listen that Sana learned to paint before she could walk, or even stand. There are countless photos and videos of chubby little baby Sana on her hands and knees, dipping her hands into puddles of paint and smearing them across drawing paper, an expression of intense concentration on her face. At every family gathering, her mom would brandish these photos on her phone at their relatives and do that deep-throated laugh of hers that goes:Oh ho ho, but like a middle-aged woman in a Japanese anime instead of Santa Claus.

“Oh ho ho!” she’d say. “Oh, my Sana has taken after me.Socreative, isn’t she? She’ll be an artist, you’ll see. No, not a writer, oh, publishing is so volatile, no, I wouldn’t want her to be a writer. She can follow her own path, of course, but just look at her, she’s got that je ne sais quoi, doesn’t she? An artist from birth.” She’d give a pointed pause and say, “Of course, if she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer I shan’t stop her, but let’s face it, art runs in our family.” This latter part would be said very meaningfully, with a little sweep of her long-lashed eyes, to drive home what a uniquely open-minded mother she is, especially within the Asian community, which is well-known for driving their children to study medicine or law or business. Who’s ever heard of an Asian parent wanting their offspring to pursue art? She’d remind Sana of this every chance she got.

“You’re so fortunate, my dear. You can do anything you want, anything at all! I’m not stuck in the old ways. If you don’t like science? Who cares? Not good at math? Why, I myself failedelementary math, and look where I am now.” A multimillionaire whose books are basically a household name. She was so proud of not having the stereotypical Asian expectations of Sana, of telling everyone that Sana is a natural artist and that she’s so proud of her artist daughter. When Sana got into CalArts, her mother threw her a huge bash at the Fairmont, renting out the ballroom to fit three hundred of her relatives and friends.

“To the next creative force in our family,” Mom said, raising her champagne flute, and Sana could practically feel envy seeping from her cousins, most of whom were enrolled in premed or prelaw or some kind of engineering program. She’s so lucky, they all said, so fortunate that her mom is so understanding and supportive. That her mom is world-renowned author Priya M. Singh, who understood and respected the creative arts. So lucky she was allowed to pursue her dreams. So lucky her mom was paying for her to go to CalArts.

Except here she is now, no longer at CalArts. Living in SF instead of Pasadena, not drawing, not painting, not creating anything. With a furious cry, Sana flings the paintbrush at the floor. Lucky Sana. Blessed Sana. Fraudulent Sana.

The phone rings then, and Sana glances at the screen. “MOM” is flashing on it. With a sigh, Sana wipes her paint-smeared hands on her apron and answers.

“How is my little art genius doing?”

Sana closes her eyes and counts to three before replying. Her mom is just proud of her. She knows that. But there’s just something infuriating about her mom calling her “my little art genius.” Somehow, in ways that Sana can’t quite explain, it manages to come off as both condescending and yet full of heavy expectations. “I’m good,” she manages to bite out.

“Are you busy creating?”

“Um, the usual. You know,” Sana mumbles.

“Oh, sweetie. Don’t tell me you’re still blocked. Remember, there’s no such thing as a creative block. God, the number of writers I’ve come across who insist they’re blocked...” Sana’s mom sighs, and Sana can practically hear her eyes rolling through the phone. “You know, it’s like I always tell you: It’s mind over matter. I just tell myself: Nope, writer’s block doesn’t exist. I don’t have time for writer’s block. And it’s that simple! Just tell yourself that.”

Sana squeezes her eyes shut.Shut up, Mom, she wants to yell.You don’t understand what I’m going through. I am blocked, damn it.

And it’s all because of Marshall.

“Thanks, Mom, you’re right,” she says, because what’s the point in saying anything else? “Sorry, I actually have to go because I was in the middle of painting...”

“Ah! Yes, of course. You should put your phone on silent when you’re creating. Respect your art, Sana.”

It takes a lot of effort not to fling the phone at the wall. “Yep, thanks, Mom. Respect my art. Got it. Talk to you later.” She hangs up with an exhausted sigh, then trudges to the small kitchenette and begins to clean her paint palette. It’s clear there will be no painting done today either. As she wipes off the globs of paint, jagged pieces of memories flash through her mind. Of Marshall, always of Marshall. He’s haunted her for so long now. She foolishly thought that the news of his death would set her free, the asshole got what was coming to him, but why is she still blocked? Why does her hand refuse to move the brush across the canvas? Why, why, why?

Her teeth grind loudly, painfully. What the hell kind of deathis that? An allergic reaction. How completely anticlimactic. In her mother’s books, bad guys are knifed, drugged, strangled. Deaths that are intentional, premeditated, and dramatic. Nothing like an accidental allergic reaction. It feels wrong somehow, like even though Marshall died, he also got away. Which, Sana tells herself, is an incredibly stupid thought to have. The guy’s dead, for god’s sake. What more could she ask for?

Her love for painting back, her body screams. His death should’ve set her free, so why is she still stuck here?

Mind over matter, her mom whispers.It’s all in your mind.

She knows it’s all in her mind, obviously everything is in her mind, but that doesn’t mean she knows how to make it unstuck.

Right. Sana takes a deep breath. So in the end, what she needed wasn’t revenge. It’s something else. Closure. That’s it. She needs to... what? She needs to regain ownership of what Marshall stole from her. Yes, that’s it!

The thought alone revives Sana. It makes sense now, why she still can’t paint. So what if Marshall is dead? It doesn’t erase what he did to her, what he ripped from her trusting hands. The naïveté he destroyed, her belief that people are basically good. What Sana needs to do is to reclaim what is rightfully hers.

And to do that, she’s going to have to go back to Marshall’s house. Days ago, the thought of it would’ve made her balk, but just this morning, she was driven there and ended up having a whole feast there. She met his widow and played with his daughter. Could she really do it? Lie to get back in there?

She thinks of Riki then.Buzzfeed reporter my ass, she thinks.He’s so clearly hiding something.Sana’s not sure how she missed it before. Probably because she was so distracted by her own guilt. But she’s not the only one hiding something here, she’s sure of it.And if the others have their own secret motivations for hanging around, then why can’t she? She’s supposedly doing a podcast about this, so why not capitalize on that cover story?

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