Chapter Nineteen
I am a CIA operative, and my mission is to locate Khoi. This mission wraps up quickly, because turns out he is in the most obvious place possible: his dorm room.
Without knocking, I push the door open. He’s hunched at his desk, fingers flying over his mechanical keyboard. He’s coding.
Maybe I should leave. Like, he seems to be having a pretty good time with his computer. Heck, his computer would probably be better at getting through this conversation than me.
But he’s my teammate. And I’d rather talk this out than have it loom over us like some software update that keeps getting postponed.
“Are you okay?” I try.
“I’m fine.” He keeps his eyes pinned to his laptop screen.
“Stop coding. Look at me.”
He gives me the most obligatory two-second glance. “What is there to say? You read the article.”
“We don’t have to talk about that,” I say, and I mean it. I don’t really need to know about Khoi’s dad. It doesn’t say anything about Khoi himself. I have a shitty biological father too. “If you want to discuss it, I’ll listen. But otherwise I’m just here to be your friend.”
He doesn’t say anything.
I grab Obi’s desk chair and sit next to Khoi. “What are you building?” He’s writing in Python.
“Just something silly. It’s an open-source Pokémon game. Not officially approved by Nintendo.”
For a few more minutes, I watch him make a subclass for Fire-type Pokémon. I suspect he uses coding to bury his sadness. I’m kind of becoming a Khoi expert.
“Are you going to leave?” he asks.
I shrug. “I’m sticking around to see how you implement the Psychic types.”
“You’re not going to leave.” He laughs. It’s the most bitter sound I’ve ever heard him make. “Okay, since you know about my sordid and shameful past, you have to confess something about yourself. It’s only fair.”
My immediate instinct is to tell him about the time I called my second-grade teacher Mom, but maybe it’s better to be more vulnerable. After a moment, I say, “It was my stepdad.”
“What?”
“You asked me before where the bruises on my arm came from. It was my stepdad, Michael. I was sneaking out to catch my flight, and Michael caught me. He didn’t want to let me go.”
“Why didn’t he want to let you go?”
“Because he loved me too much, obviously.” I smirk, but Khoi doesn’t laugh.
“You don’t need to do that,” he says.
“Do what?”
“Make a joke out of something horrible. You do that a lot.”
I blink, surprised by the observation. Nobody else has ever said that. “Hey, we all have our coping mechanisms. You have programming. I have my bad jokes.”
“I don’t use programming as a coping mechanism.” But his eyes are wet. I scoot closer and grab his hand. This sends a tingle through me, which I ignore. Probably static electricity.
“Hey, talk to me. I promise I’m a better conversational partner than GitHub Copilot.”
“Copilot doesn’t even generate good code,” he mutters.
“Khoi.”
“Okay, okay. Gosh. Where to begin? My parents had to take me to the hospital a lot because I was so sickly. They wanted a second kid but my medical bills were too high for that. Eventually our family got rich and things got better. Then my dad went to prison and everything was awful. My mom moved abroad to get away from the people my dad screwed over. I moved in with my maternal aunt and uncle. Also, I started using my mom’s last name.
There. That’s my entire life story.” He glares at me almost defiantly, as if he’s waiting me to leap out of my chair and bolt for the door.
But obviously I don’t do that.
“I don’t speak to my biological father either,” I say. “He cheated on my mother and now he lives in China with his new family.”
“I’m sorry.”
I don’t need him to say that. I didn’t tell him for sympathy points. “Like, I get having a shitty dad.”
He laughs sort of shakily.
“Sometimes I wish he had died instead,” I say.
The words surprise even me. I’ve never said them out loud. Maybe Khoi will think I’m deranged.
But when I look at him, he’s nodding sadly. “Yeah, because then your grief would be something other people can understand.”
He gets it.
Something inside of me sings bright and strong. Like there was something broken within me all this time and now the fracture lines are flooding with gold. Like it’s finally okay to acknowledge the brokenness. What’s that Japanese art of repairing pottery shards called? Kintsugi.
He continues. “I can’t talk about this with anyone. Because I don’t want people to see me as the son of the crypto fraudster. You saw how Lucas and the others reacted.”
“Lucas is a walking ick factory.”
“Indeed,” he agrees. “This is why I don’t hang with the smart-kid circuit.
Like the kids who are at every science fair and quiz bowl.
Aisha is cool, but the others…” He shakes his head.
“They’re this toxic mix of entitled and insecure.
And their biggest problem is, like, if they’ll get into Harvard. ”
“God forbid they have to settle for Yale.”
“Or worse, Dartmouth.” He cracks a smile. “You know, this might be the first time I actually tried talking to someone. Usually I just code away my sorrows.”
I give his hand another squeeze. “You can always come to me.” I mean it. I want to be here for him.
His eyes flicker with something dark and indescribable. “I really like you, Char.” And his voice triggers a thrill I can feel everywhere.
He tilts his face down toward me. And suddenly he’s close. Too close. I catch another whiff of his sandalwood soap. His eyelashes are so long…
There’s this electric millisecond where I’m tempted to lean in, close the distance between us, meet his lips with my own.
But then my logic catches up to my lust. He has a girlfriend. I can’t do this to my roommate. This is all wrong.
I scoot away and spring to my feet. “What are you doing?” The question sounds more panicked than angry.
He stands too. “Char—”
“You’re not single, Khoi. This isn’t right.” I turn to walk out.
“Char, wait.” He catches my elbow, but I shake him off.
“Leave me alone. I need to go.” It’s late. Aisha is probably back by now. I have to tell her what happened.
I’m so sick of people’s bullshit. I didn’t think he’d be the type to cheat on his girlfriend.
I’m furious at myself, too, for letting things escalate. I can’t believe I let myself get so lost in the sauce.
There’s a prick behind my eyes, but I will myself not to cry. He’s not worth that.
God. Maybe I should swear off boys forever. I’m going to live my best life as a crazy cat lady. At least cats won’t betray you.
When the door slams shut behind me, he doesn’t follow.
When I get back to my own room, Aisha is already in her pajamas, scrolling Instagram in bed.
“Khoi tried to kiss me,” I blurt out as soon as I see her.
There’s a beat. I wait for her to throw something at my head.
She puts her phone down and sits up. Her face is weirdly neutral. “Oh, so he finally got his shit together.”
What’s she on about? “I’m really sorry. I ran here immediately to tell you.”
Aisha considers me. “I guess he didn’t mention?”
“Mention what?”
She sighs. “Okay, promise to not tell anyone else this.”
“Sure?” How many secrets does this girl have? She’s like a total plot twist of a person.
“Char, Khoi and I aren’t dating.”
I blink.
“It started as this lie last fall because I’m seeing a girl I met through dance.
We’re actually both doing the Harvard program.
She lives in Roxbury, and I didn’t want my homophobic parents to know.
Khoi is my friend, so he agreed to fake a relationship.
My parents track my location, so it gave me an excuse for why I was traveling into the city all the time. ”
I need to download all this. My heart rate steadies as I chew through the info dump. God, I’m so relieved to find out Khoi isn’t really a cheating f-boy. Now I feel bad for freaking out on him.
My mind is pinwheeling with questions, but the first thing I can think to say is, “You guys really couldn’t come up with a better story than fake dating?” This isn’t a K-drama.
Aisha shrugs. “Probably could have. But it was funny at the time? And now we’re committed to the bit.”
It’s low-key annoying. Like there was this big joke everybody was in on. Everybody but me. “Okay, so you lied to your parents, but why’d you have to lie to me?”
“The first time we met, my parents were also in the room. And after that, I figured the truth didn’t matter and it seemed safer to keep it a secret. And I’m not ready to come out to everyone.”
“Of course,” I say quickly. I wasn’t trying to act like she owed me that.
“Obviously Khoi wanted to spill to you, because he caught feelings.” She waggles her eyebrows suggestively.
I’m not discussing Khoi and his feelings right now. I still have more questions about Aisha’s secret agent life. “But you said your parents track your location? So can’t they see when you go to Harvard?”
“I give my phone to Khoi, and he carries it around while I’m gone.” She taps her chin. “Come to think of it, maybe I could’ve just done something like that from the beginning. Oh well.”
“Is this really easier than telling your parents the truth?” The mental gymnastics needed to keep up this lie… She’s really doing the most.
“Trust me, it is.” She doesn’t say more, and I don’t probe further. Family drama can be a lot. We’ve all got our own shit to work through.
There’s a knock on our door.
It’s Khoi. “Char? Sorry, I know that you said you wanted space, but I don’t want you to go to sleep mad… Please, will you listen to me?”
I let him in. His eyes are round and frantic. It makes me want to smother him in a fluffy blanket and reassure him everything will be okay.
“Aisha told me the entire story,” I say. “I know you two were fake dating.”
“Oh.” He slides into a relieved grin. “Great!”
Ugh. He thinks that because I now know the tea, we can be all hashtag relationship goals. But it’s not that simple. I have literally no idea what I want. But I have this sinking sense that it isn’t smart to get more entangled with Khoi.
Sometimes boys are adorable and sweet and kissable. That doesn’t mean I should catch feelings.
I go, “So I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“But—”
“It’s almost curfew anyway.” It’s five minutes to eleven.
“Promise we’ll talk tomorrow, though?”
“Dude, you’re my hackathon teammate. Of course we’re going to talk.”
“No, but about non-hackathon stuff,” he says. “I don’t want to act like we’re coworkers and, like, only talk about sharing public SSH keys.”
This guy. He’s lucky he’s cute. “Yes, Khoi, we’ll talk about other stuff too. Now good night.”
He finally leaves.