Chapter Two
“Are you done now?”
Her superior tone clenched my jaw.
“How much more time are you going to waste?”
“I’m not wasting time,” I snapped over the wheezing engine. “I’m trying to get my car to start!”
Sue stood outside my window, hands on hips and tapping her Gucci boots. She watched me try, and fail, to start my car with a mixture of annoyance and amusement.
“Come on, baby,” I whispered. “Don’t give up on me now.”
“I told you I’d drive you.”
“And I told you, there’s no way I’m getting in a car with you.”
Sue rolled her eyes. “Okay, then drive out of the parking lot. I’ll follow behind you.”
The taunt cut particularly well since my engine chose that particular moment to hack up an ear-splitting cough, and then die completely.
Sue smiled at me. “Shotgun?”
Swearing, I shoved out of the car, snatched my bag from the backseat, and stormed over to the only Porsche parked in the lot. “No,” I said, covertly reaching into my bag and turning my phone recorder back on. “I’m driving.”
“Suit yourself.”
She handed over the keys without issue, which was good because I would’ve fought her for them.
For as long as I was forced to endure Sue’s presence, not only would I record everything she said and did, but I wouldn’t put myself at her mercy in any way, shape, or form—and that included being her passenger.
She might drive me home, or she might drive me across the border to the sex traffickers she sold me to for the low, low price of twelve bucks.
This was the same person who almost killed an innocent eighteen-year-old boy, and her only response was to laugh over getting away with it.
I’d put nothing past her.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I stopped just short of the street, and leaned out. “Nicky?”
The kid stopped faking like he was texting and looked up.
“I’ve left your lunch in the fridge. I made plenty for your sisters, so take some home to them too.” I tossed him my apartment key without blinking. “No product in my apartment, but if you ever need a safe place to stay for the night, it’s all yours.”
His hard act softened for the barest moment, letting through a shy smile. A reminder that whoever he worked for, he was still just a kid. “Thanks, Ms. Kim.”
“Can we go now?” Sue demanded.
I ignored her. “Also, there are two cops clocking you across the street.”
“Ah, don’t worry.” He winked. “I clocked them first.”
We said goodbye, then I set off—starting the eight-hour drive back home.
I didn’t need directions. I knew the way back to my old life by heart.
“YOU MUST BE WONDERING what I’ve been up to since you went away.”
Twelve minutes. That’s how long it took Sue to break the silence after the fifth time I told her I didn’t want to talk.
“Nope,” I replied simply.
“Obviously I got accepted into a string of Ivy League colleges,” she plowed on. “Nearly did the full sweep. Harvard, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Penn... Yale.”
I felt her eyes on me, but mine stayed glued on the road—my expression as bland as the gray stretch of road before me.
“I’m sure I would’ve gotten into the others if I applied, but I decided to only entertain universities near Omma. She lost Appa and her youngest daughter took off. I couldn’t abandon her too.”
“Does this car take regular or premium gas?” I asked, not rising to the bait.
It was wild how quickly she tried to drag me into our old routines.
Sue used to love making her little, biting digs, but when I called her out, she’d spin it on me so fast—saying I was too sensitive, and attacking her for telling the truth. Some people change over a decade.
And some people don’t.
“Or is it electric?” I continued. “If it is, good for you looking out for the environment.”
“Well, I should,” she returned, a tad snappish. “I’ve built my entire brand on natural and sustainable methods and products.”
“Admirable.”
“Yeah, it is admirable, Sarah.” Temper leaked into her voice. The poor thing finally got her favorite punching bag back, only to discover it’s nothing but a damp old sock.
No fun to hit.
“Some of us are trying to build things that last.” She snapped her fingers in my face.
“Leave a legacy that makes the world better than we found it. What do you have to show for yourself? Did you even go to college? Or was that rathole what your prestigious law firm gives you when you make partner?”
I burst out laughing. “Hardly,” I chirped.
“Can you imagine? Here’s a raise and a smallpox-laden apartment.
Try not to think too hard about why there’s a chalk outline on the floor.
” I howled. “Everyone turning to random strangers on the internet for legal advice has really hit the profession hard.”
Sue tsked, turning away. “Always the clown, Sarah. That’s forever been your problem. You could never take anything seriously.”
I snapped up straight, setting my chin. “You’re right, Sue. Tell you what? I’ll take the next six hours we’re going to sit in silence seriously. You won’t get another word out of me.” I made a show of zipping my lips and throwing away the key.
True to my word, I didn’t utter another syllable to Sue, even when she made two more attempts to drag me into a conversation where she could brag about how great her life was. When I still didn’t respond, she went ahead and did it anyway.
“—that’s why I ended up leaving the influencer space,” she said.
“While I loved being an inspiration and role model to young Asian girls and women, I couldn’t get past the fact that I was pouring so much of my time and energy into uplifting other people’s brands, when what I really needed to do was create something of my own. ”
Biting hard on my lip, I flicked to the clock—my nostrils flaring. We were now at hour six, and Sue had spent three of them droning on about herself.
“When I was at Columbia— Oh, did I mention I went to Columbia?” she asked, nudging my shoulder.
“I know you were all about New Haven, but there is nowhere on earth like New York City, and no better place to go to college.
When I lived there, I met people from all walks of life, from so many different cultures and countries.
“The one thing they had in common was a desire for clean, healthy, sustainable products that they could afford, and that’s what SueNation is all about. Clean. Healthy. Affordable. That’s my motto.”
I turned off the highway, setting down the road that would take me to Lantana—a town that I still found unique after ten years of living in many different places.
A wealthy, insular community, it backed onto the rocky, mountainous coast. Flatter land and smaller bank accounts made for closer neighbors, but as it was, the richest, longest-dwelling residents had acres upon acres to themselves—even whole chunks of the coast.
The Kim family was one of them.
I could walk our estate for an entire hour, and not reach the end of it. I also wouldn’t see another soul who wasn’t staff or family.
I didn’t mind that so much at first. I made friends easily with the staff’s kids, and we’d run through the forest—playing hide-and-seek, and stashing secrets under the rocks.
It was nice... until a jealous Sue drove them all away from me with lies and bribes.
Even at ten years old, she knew how to get people to do what she wanted.
After that, every minute in my own home felt cold and lonely, making me wish for the bustling, vibrant vibe of a city like New York. But even though we lived only a few hours away, Omma never took us. She used to say it was a dirty place for dirty people.
She wouldn’t pay for a weekend trip to the place. I slid a look at my sister. But now you’re claiming she paid for you to go to college there? Did my mother do a complete one-eighty? Indulging Sue’s every wish and whim once she became her only child? Or is Sue lying through her teeth?
That was my car game as ten minutes of her droning turned into an hour: Fact or Fiction? How much of her boasting was true? How much was only true in her daydreams?
I got a break when we made a pit stop to fill up. I stayed at the pump while Sue went in to get snacks and use the restroom. I hadn’t noticed she came back until I bent over the car window, and saw her messing with my phone through the glass.
“Hey!” I shot inside, snatching it from her grip and tearing a tiny scream out of her. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Don’t touch my stuff!”
“What the fuck are you doing!? You scared the shit out of me!” She threw something at my head. “I only touched it because I heard it beeping. Your phone died. I was trying to charge it for you. You’re welcome!”
I flicked down to the thing that bounced off my face and saw it was indeed a phone charger.
“No one asked for your help.” I flung it back at her. “Boundaries, Sue. Learn about them.”
“Losing, Sarah,” she mocked, adopting a high-pitched tone. “Learn about it. Because you just lost your little silent game.”
“I wasn’t playing a game with you, so how could I have lost?”
She smirked. “Life’s a game, and you’re always losing. That’s why you can’t tell the difference. It’s second nature to you by now.”
“Bitch.”
“Slut.”
“Cunt.” I slammed the door before she got in her comeback, leaving her to scream unintelligibly through the glass.
I went inside, got some snacks because of course she didn’t buy me anything, then went back to the car.
“Failure,” she greeted me before my butt hit the seat.
“You broke, miserable waste of life that privilege expelled into the shitter like explosive diarrhea. You have no future, no friends, no family, and no one who loves you—that’s why the only one who’ll miss you when you’re gone is some leeching, gangbanger brat.
“And even he only likes you for your cooking.”
Pale knuckles strangled the wheel—as choked as the lump pressing in my throat. A lump filled with all the insults and profanity I wanted to drown the bitch in. But what was the point? Sue would only laugh and say she was just telling the truth.
“You’re not ready to be anyone’s mother, Ms. Kim. Come back when you get your life together.”
And she’d be right.
Pushing that lump way down, I started the car, plugged my own charger and phone into the port, and then set off—resuming my silent game as Sue’s laughter filled my ears.
WELCOME TO LANTANA: The Only Thing Nicer Than The Scenery Is The People
I blew past the welcome sign, officially entering the town limits of the only place I’d known for eighteen years.
Night chased the sun over the horizon, blanketing the world in an inky, shining duvet.
Sue had long since tired herself out from her nonstop self-congratulating and fell asleep, her head resting on the window. The peace and quiet was almost meditative—allowing my anxious, irritated mind to relax, and imagine the scene waiting for me at home.
I wasn’t kidding when I first dismissed Sue’s news, not believing that my mother was dying. Wasn’t it just an eerie fact of life that spiteful, cruel people got to live forever while those who tried to be good struggled on to a miserable end?
No? Okay, maybe that’s too cynical, but I did always believe my mother’s stubbornness would outlast my life. I would die before ever getting her to see the truth. I believed it, and now here I was... going home.
I halted at the stop sign, looking up and down the three-way stretch of road cutting through the dark and shifting forest. On one side was more forest, but on the other were the cliffs, and the sea.
What do I say to her when I see her? I turned right, taking the final street that spilled out onto the Kim Estate’s private road. Do I bring up the past? Do I ask if she finally believes that I had nothing to do with that evil prank?
I sped along the natural bend in the road.
Or do I just thank her for making a real gesture and welcoming me bac—
A deer shot through the trees, racing out onto the street.
“Ahhh!” I slammed on the brakes.
Bang!
The last thing I saw before the deer’s body flew to meet me, was the steering wheel rising to meet me first.