Page 77 of Didn't See That Coming

Papi jerks awake into a kneeling position, arms out defensively, when one of the floorboards in his bedroom creaks under my foot. “Stop, thief!” he shouts. Next to him, Mami grunts, then resumes snoring.

“Papi, it’s just me!”

“Kiki? Wha-what time is it? Are you okay?”

It hits me then that maybe I should’ve waited until at least after daylight before barging into my parents’ bedroom. But I’d been so overcome by the need to talk to them.

“Um, I think it’s almost five in the morning?” I say with a grimace.

Papi reaches out to the side table and flicks a lamp on. Mami grunts and shields her eyes.

“What is it?” she groans. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“Seeing that I’m no longer three years old, no, I do not need comforting from my parents from a nightmare.” The words come out so caustic that even I wince at my tone of voice. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so…mean. I just—” I take a deep breath. “I’ve been struggling for a while, and honestly, I’m kind of really mad at you guys.”

That gets their attention. Both Mami and Papi sit up and stare at me. “You’re mad at us?” Papi says. “Why?”

“Because!” I flap my arms before reminding myself to remain calm. “Because you transferred me to Xingfa.”

Mami sighs. “Sayang, I already explained to you why—”

“Yes, I get it. You wanted me to be in a school of rich kids, you wanted me to learn discipline, etc. But you never asked me how I’m doing there.”

They both look confused. “Of course you’d do well,” Papi says. “You’re wonderful, your friends love you, your teachers love you—”

“Actually, my teachers hate me and I don’t have any friends. Well, I did make friends with a few girls, but that didn’t happen until very recently, and probably only happened because they felt bad for me.”

For a few moments, Mami and Papi simply sit there gaping at me like goldfish. If I hadn’t been so sad and the subject matter weren’t so close to my heart, I would’ve laughed at their blank expressions.

“But—” Mami splutters. “You—you’re popular!”

“Iwaspopular. Back at my old school. The school you didn’t think was good enough for me.”

Mami shakes her head. “Kiki, I know you think I transferred you to Xingfa because I want you to climb the social ladder and get a rich boyfriend, but that truly wasn’t why wedid it.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Reeeally.”

“Well, okay, I did hope that you’d find someone as nice and eligible as George Clooney. But the real reason is because Papi and I—we thought you needed to learn what our society is like. Mingyang is great, but it’s just so…liberal.”

“Which is good,” Papi adds hurriedly. “But we also wanted you to learn how to survive in a more conservative setting, because like it or not, the rest of the country—heck, most of Asia—is quite conservative. And we thought it would be good for you to learn how to fit in while you’re still at school.”

I get what they’re saying, but frustration gnaws at me atthe unfairness of it all. I’m having to learn to “fit in” the way that only girls are expected to. “I get it,” I say finally, “but Ithink I’ve learned that I don’t actually want to fit in.”

“Kiki—” Mami sighs.

“No, I don’t, not in an environment as toxic as Xingfa. Do you know what the other kids there call me?” My voice cracks, my face burning with both anger and shame at having to reveal this to my parents. “Crazy Kiki.”

Papi’s jaw hits his lap, while Mami’s hand flies to her mouth. “What?” Mami gasps.

“There’s a hashtag and everything. Look.” I take out my phone, open up ShareIt, and do a search for #CrazyKiki. There are over a hundred posts with that hashtag. I pass the phone to Mami and look down at my feet, unable to meet her eyes. I know that this is for the best, that I should be truthful with my parents to make them understand what’s been going on with me, but it doesn’t make the revelation sting less for me. It hurts, ripping apart their perception of me. I know that they’ve both always been proud of me; they love telling people how loved I am by both my classmates and my teachers. When Sharlot visited last summer, I saw the way Mami’s eyes lit up whenever I gave Sharlot advice on what to wear and how to behave. They saw me as a natural leader, and to expose my weakness to them is painful.

“This—” Mami is scrolling down with lightning speed. Then she glances up at me, and I freeze because she’s wearing an expression I’ve never seen before. I’ve often seen Mami irritated, or put-upon, or even snappish. But I’ve never seen her this incandescent with rage. Her face glows with the heat ofher anger. She’s gripping my phone so tightly that I wonder if she’s going to crush it. “This…,” she hisses again. “These are posts from your schoolmates? Xingfa kids?”

I nod and hold out my hand for the phone. “There’s more.”

“More?” Papi says, aghast.

I open up TikTok and search for the hashtag again. “There’s more that I haven’t told you.” And here comes the hardest part. Telling them about my deception, the way I’ve been playing games for over a year as a boy, and how Jonas found out about it and effectively blackmailed me into dating him.

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