Page 75 of Didn't See That Coming

“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 Icontinue 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 allyourfault. 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 theWarfront Heroesicon, and I swear it takes literally forever to load. While waiting, I tap out a message to Liam on my phone.

Kiki: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 8:42p.m., which is over an hour ago now.Warfront Heroesfinally loads, and I quickly open up my Friends list and locate his name. I double-click it and type out a message.

Dudebro10: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’sFriends list. Message not delivered.

My breath catches in my throat. I’m not on Sourdawg’sFriends list? That’s not possible, that—realizationthunkswith the weight of an anvil. He unfriended me onWarfront 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? Heunfriendedme. 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.

CHAPTER 20

I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing. Groggily, I grope around in my bed, but it’s nowhere near me. With a groan, I push myself up, wiping off the trail of drool from my cheek and blinking in the dark. My god, what time is it? There is no daylight streaming through the gaps in my curtains, so it must be the middle of the night. For a beat, I sit there, confused. Then it all comes back to me in a painful, overwhelming rush.The Spring Dance. Jonas’s speech, outing me as Dudebro10. The look of absolute betrayal and hurt on Liam’s face. I gasp and hurry out of bed before belatedly recalling that I’m still in Mami’s mermaid dress, which catches around my thighs and makes me tumble in a distinctly ungraceful pile onthe floor.

“Ow!” I scramble up and waddle to the sofa, where I locate my phone stuffed between the seat cushions. I mash the green phone icon. “Liam? Liam, I’m so glad—”

“Uh, not quite.”

“Huh?” I put the phone away from my ear and wince at the bright light scything into my eyes. Turns out the phone call is a video call. How did I not notice that before? It takes a moment for my mind to catch up with what I’m seeing. “Sharlot?”

“Hey, cuz!” She waves at me. “How’s it going?”

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