Page 5 of Didn't See That Coming

Sharlot:Why would he see it?

Kiki:Screenshotted and saved for future blackmail

Cassie:Kiki, pls look out for cute girls at your new school for me

Kiki:Always!

Cassie:Love you!

Sharlot:

I’m beaming when I tuck my phone into my skirt pocket (my skirt has pockets! Yay!) and glance up at my reflection once more. I nod to myself. “Looking good, Kiki.” Maybe I sound slightly deranged, talking to myself like this, but I’m all for positive self-affirmation. Mami says that even when I was a baby, it was obvious I thought I was the shit. At my baby class, I was always the first to crawl toward the ball or whatever the teacher was holding up.

I swipe on some tinted lip balm, pull out a few strands of hair from my braid to keep it from looking too severe, and release my breath. Okay, time to slay.

Mami and Papi are downstairs in the dining room, already halfway through their breakfast. Well, if one can call a glassful of alarmingly green veggie juice breakfast. No, wait, today’s concoction isn’t witch’s-brew green; it’s actually more mud-colored.

Noticing my look of disgust, Papi lifts his glass and wiggles his eyebrows. “Bayam, kale, bok choy, and kunyit.” Spinach, kale, bok choy, and turmeric.

I give him the ugliest sneer I can twist my face into, and he laughs.

“Hey, this stuff’s going to make us live to a hundred! Just you wait and see.”

“I’d rather die young than drink that,” I shoot back without any venom. I think it’s kind of adorable that Papi is so into his disgusting vegetable juice.

“Aduh, choi! Touch wood!” Mami cries, knocking hard on her wooden chair. “Kiki, how many times must I tell you not to say such inauspicious things?”

Papi and I share a look. Normally, I would’ve been a bit more considerate and not said such things in front of Mami, but honestly? Just a tad resentful toward her this morning, because moving me to Xingfa was her idea. I should’ve known she would do this after the way she reacted when she found out that George Clooney (the knockoff, not the original) goes to Xingfa. But how could I have known that even my ambitious mom would be ridiculous enough to take me out of Mingyang High and enroll me in Xingfa for the last year of school? I mean, really now. When she told me a month ago, she was, like, “Mami and Papi made a mistake enrolling you in that hippie school. Now you can barely speak Chinese, you have no manners, and you’re too—too prideful!”

“It’s called confidence, Mami,” I snorted.

“You see!” she crowed. “You’re talking back to your elders. You need a good, traditional school instead of Mingyang, which is too—too liberal. Xingfa is a very traditional school. It’ll get you in line.”

I looked at Papi then, expecting him to step in and tell Mami to back down, but instead, he gazed at me, unsmiling, completely serious. I realized then that he was on Mami’s side.

“Mami’s right,” he said after a second. “You’re too—too…what’s the word?Pede?”

Pedeis short forpercaya diri,which literally translates to “belief in oneself.” It means confident but in an arrogant way.

“This is such BS,” I groaned.

“No, we want you to learn to be humble,” Papi said.

“If I were a boy, you’d be praising me for being confident.”

Mami glowered at me. “Maybe. But you’re not a boy.”

Papi sighed then. “It’s not that I don’t want you to be confident, Kiki. Unfortunately, our society is still very conservative, and I worry that you’ll struggle in the real world. Learning to fit in with social norms is important.”

Story of my life. Whether in-game or in my own house, things would be a lot easier if I’d been born a dude. Fast-forward a few weeks, and here we are on this fine morning, with me making tiny passive-aggressive remarks and/or well-timed snorts to show Mami that I haven’t quite forgiven her yet. Technically, I guess I should also be mad at Papi, but the bulk of the blame rests with Mami. She was the ringleader in this whole mess.

I pour myself a bowl of cereal the color of a radioactive rainbow and start eating in front of them. Mami winces as I eat. I know she’s dying to tell me that I might as well be eating poison, that I’m going to give myself cancer, and so on, but she thinks better of it. Instead, she forces a smile and goes to the fridge. She brings out a takeaway cup of Starbucks caramel latte, which she sets down in front of me.

“I got it for you this morning.”

Damn it. Why does she have to go and be nice to me now? I consider turning my nose up at it to make a point, but the point doesn’t seem worth making anymore, and gosh, I can see that she’s ordered extra caramel drizzle on the top. “You’re playing dirty,” I grumble.

“Fine, I’ll throw it a—”

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