Chapter Twenty-Nine
Later that night, Aisha texts that she’s grounded until senior year and won’t have access to her phone anymore, crying-face emoji. Without her and her stuff, the dorm room is too empty. It’s the first time in years I’ve had a space to myself.
It’s weird. I’ve been manifesting my own room for years, pretty much ever since I discovered how smutty those Sarah J. Maas books can get. But now I’m too sad to even care.
So I call Mom.
Honestly, the Chadhas were kind of a vibe check. At least Mom’s never actively prevented me from pursuing my dreams. I mean, I don’t know if I ever had any specific dreams to pursue besides getting through the hellscape that is high school, so maybe that’s not saying much. But still.
She picks up on the first ring.
“Char?” Her voice is all hushed, wind against grass. Like she’s at the library, which I don’t think she’s visited in years.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Michael is sleeping.”
I check the time. It’s ten p.m. here, so it’s seven over there. The sun hasn’t even set in Oregon. “He’s already asleep?”
“He’s not doing so well lately.”
“Is he sick?” Maybe he has food poisoning. That would be cool.
“He’s fine,” she says. “He lost some money. He’s stressed.”
“Is he treating you right?”
“Char, don’t act so suspicious.”
“Mom, if Michael is—” I try to reach for the right words in Mandarin. “If he’s not being a good guy, I want to know about that.”
“Your stepfather has been good to us, baobei. Even if you can’t see that right now.”
She cannot be serious. I grit my teeth. “What. Am. I. Not. Seeing?” I’m not tripping, right? Because I am seeing the alcoholism, the gambling, the toxic, controlling energy, the straight-up unhinged rage. It’s not like I’m hallucinating those things.
“He gave us a roof over our heads, he put food on the table. He pays our bills. He helped me get a green card and then citizenship. Once you get older, you’ll see those things don’t come easily.”
There must be other ways of securing all that, I want to say.
But my mind is giving nothing. My mother dropped out of her doctorate program, and besides, the degree was in art.
I don’t know what employment opportunities are out there, but the job market probably hates her. Maybe if I could work too…
“He’s been here consistently,” Mom continues. “Unlike your father.”
Of course. The bar is so deep underground, it’s paying rent to Satan.
“Quinn? Who you talking to?” Michael’s voice sounds faraway. “I heard Chinese.”
Raising her voice, she calls in English, “Nobody, honey! Telemarketer.” I can’t decide if it’s more insulting to be described as nobody or a telemarketer.
My stepdad says, “Which one is it? A telemarketer or nobody?”
She whispers, “I have to go.”
“But—”
“He won’t be happy if he finds out it’s you. I’ll call you back later.”
Before I can get another word in, she hangs up.
I stare at my phone, feeling like I’ve been punched in the gut.
God. I can’t believe she’s so terrified of him, she won’t even speak to her only daughter.
I know I should put aside my own anger and focus on Mom’s well-being—it sounds like things are deteriorating back in Chinook Shore—but I’m too upset to care.
Why won’t she ditch his ass? At the very least, it’s not like her citizenship is going to get revoked if she divorces him. I think.
I guess he makes decent money with his veteran’s pension and that job where he scams tourists on overpriced timeshares.
And because he inherited the house, we only pay property taxes and utility bills.
I know not everyone is lucky enough to even have that.
A few of my classmates have had their homes foreclosed on.
And he used to be nice. He bought my mom these beautiful sable brushes so she could paint. He talked about how her stuff would hang in the Louvre someday. He took us camping in Oregon’s high desert, way out east. He showed us the constellations and taught me how to make a campfire.
Like, yeah, he always had bad days. PTSD is a bitch. But his bad days were balanced out by plenty of good days, so it was okay.
But life happened. Olive’s mother, who he coparented with, dipped to go live her best life with an Italian tour guide.
Michael’s dad passed and we moved to Chinook Shore.
His chronic pain got worse, which led to more drinking.
He started playing cards with some bar regulars.
One night he and his friends hit up the casino on a nearby reservation, and then he started going there by himself.
Summarized like this, it sounds like a bad episode of Euphoria, but you have to remember this happened over a stretch of years.
It was this awful train wreck in slow motion, so slow that I didn’t even get what was happening until it had already demolished half the town.
And if Mom isn’t going to leap off a train that’s barreling straight for the cliff, it’s on me to save us both. And this hackathon could give us the money and the connections to find a new life. Otherwise… well, I don’t even want to think about otherwise.
So, no pressure or whatever, but I have to win this whole thing.
On the last Sunday of July, Khoi isn’t at breakfast, which is weird.
“Maybe he’s at church,” Obi suggests.
I frown. “Last I checked, his only Bible was Stack Overflow.”
“Who knows. Maybe he found a bug so unholy, he’s seeking divine intervention.”
So that’s on me for expecting Obi to be helpful. Anyway, maybe Khoi slept in, which isn’t like him. He’s usually such a chipper morning person, it’s like he swallowed a rooster.
So after finishing my Canadian bacon—which is just ham with a foreign passport—I go up to his room.
His door is ajar. He’s still in his pajamas, frantically digging through his dresser drawers.
I lean against the doorframe. “You good?” I hope this isn’t some random side quest of his. I want to get back to working on Hello World.
“Char, I can’t find my meds.” His hair sticks up in all directions, and his eyes are wild and confused.
He reminds me of one of those cautionary “After” photos on posters that warn you not to snort crystal meth.
“The bottles are always on my desk. I saw them this morning before my shower. I think someone stole them.”
Which is a lot of paranoia for Khoi. “Why would someone take your medication?” I don’t know anything about seizure meds but they don’t seem like a hot commodity on the dark web. I would know. Haru spends a lot of time talking about where he gets his weed.
“Lots of people would kill to get their hands on Adderall. At my school, kids use it to study. There’s an entire black market. Goes for ten bucks a pop.”
Oh. “I didn’t know you took that,” I say. “Do you have ADHD?”
“Not as far as I know. Keppra—which is for my seizures—makes me really tired. So my doc prescribes Adderall for focus and energy.”
I nod. I’m not trying to be nosy about his medical situation. But it’s kind of weird that we’re so close and yet he never told me this.
I don’t know. It’s not like we’re girlfriend-boyfriend. Maybe we’re just hooking up. Maybe that’s how he thinks of us.
“I’ll help you look,” I offer, stepping inside. The sooner we handle this, the sooner we can get back to the grind.
Twenty minutes and a way messier room later, we conclude that Khoi has too many mysteriously orphaned socks (“They’re being eaten by the washing machines, I swear!”), there is a previously unknown microbial ecosystem flourishing in the boys’ trash can, and the medication is not here.
“Who else knows about your Adderall?” I ask.
“Obi?” Khoi wrinkles his nose. “I couldn’t hide it from him.”
“I don’t think he would steal your meds, though.”
“We don’t keep our door locked. It really could’ve been anyone.”
So he was giving “please rob me” energy. I decide against doing a whole TED Talk about not getting your stuff stolen. Instead, we find Obi to ask if he knows anything.
Khoi’s roommate is slumped over in his usual spot on the first floor of the Stratton Student Center, and when I tap him on the shoulder, he wakes with a jolt.
“Hmmmph?” He looks at us blearily. “Oh, it’s you two. My favorite and second-favorite Alpha Fellow. What’s up?”
“Wait, which one of us is first-favorite?” Khoi asks.
I cut in because I’m not sure I want to know. “Obi, can you help us with something?”
After we explain the situation, he shakes his head. “I’ve been here since seven a.m.”
“Do you have any guesses as to who might’ve taken it?”
He shrugs. “No clue.”
“Okay… Did you tell anyone else about Khoi’s meds? You’re the only person at camp who knew about them.”
“Oh!” He brightens up. “At dinner Lucas and some of his minions were talking about how they wanted Adderall so they could pull more all-nighters. And I cracked a joke about how they could buy it off you.”
“Obi.” Khoi buries his face in his hands.
“Don’t worry, bro. I don’t think they actually thought you were a drug dealer.”
“That’s not the point! I didn’t want them to know I take Adderall!”
“Sorry, I didn’t know it was meant to be incognito!”
“You didn’t know what medications he takes was supposed to stay private?” I ask.
Khoi groans. “These guys already hate me. They call me a grifter. Now they think I’m cheating my way to the top by abusing drugs. If I’m going to be known as a drug addict, I want to at least be doing a cool drug, like ecstasy!”
“Ecstasy isn’t even cool anymore,” Obi says. “These days, it’s all about ketamine.”
I touch Khoi’s back. “Forget them. If they stole your meds, we have to do something.”
“You’re right.” He squares his shoulders. “I’ll go to Brenda. No, Courtney.”
I was thinking more like confronting the thieves directly. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
He frowns. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Do you really think the adults will do anything to help?”
“Of course. Isn’t it their job to solve a problem like this?”
I’m pretty sure their main job is to keep Edvin Nilsen happy, but maybe he’s right. Maybe a lifetime of being failed by grown-ups has made me way too cynical. Besides, it can’t hurt to try.
“Do you want me to come with you?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, you should work on Hello World. We still have to add web socketing for the chat feature.”
Then he marches off to find HellomynameisCourtney.
“Wait, so are you guys mad at me?” Obi asks.
The next day at breakfast, HellomynameisCourtney walks into the dining hall and claps to get everyone’s attention.
People fall silent. She’s all business. “One of the students has misplaced his Adderall medication. If it has come into your possession, please come forward.”
There’s a beat, and then everybody turns back to their conversations.
Khoi is stricken. “Wait, this is so not helpful! Nobody is going to fess up like that.”
It’s like he just found out that Santa isn’t real. I bite back the urge to say I told you so. “Yeah, adults are useless,” I say. “More breaking news at eleven.”
“I really thought that going to the administration would help,” he says.
I stab at my scrambled eggs. I’m not sure what’s worse—the Adderall theft or Khoi’s naiveté.
He’s a baby cow, and it’s adorable, but you know what happens to baby cows?
They get sent to the slaughterhouse. “What can they do about it? It’s not like they can search every single student’s room to find the culprit. ”
“But they don’t have to search every room. It’s probably in Lucas’s room.”
“Nobody else at this program is enough of an ass to steal medication,” Obi adds. “That shit is low, even for Lucas.”
“Right, but there’s no real proof that it was him. And now that Brenda’s made the announcement, I bet he’s going to get psyched out and throw the pills away,” I say. “Khoi, can you get a refill at the pharmacy?”
“Adderall is a controlled substance. I can’t get a refill until August.” He groans. “Maybe I can chug Monster. Or stop taking my seizure meds so they won’t make me tired?”
I shake my head. “No. Absolutely do not do that.” Skipping seizure medication sounds super risky.
“Monster is D-tier,” Obi says. “Ever heard of Red Bull?”
I locate Lucas across the dining hall. He’s still chatting with his friends, seemingly unfazed. He can’t get up now, right after that announcement, without looking sus. But as soon as he gets a spare second, he’s scramming to flush those pills down the toilet.
“We need to break into his room,” I say.