Except I didn’t. That was just the plan. In reality, I crept up to their door like the Cowardly Lion and hovered outside trying to gather my nonexistent courage. Which, yes, was embarrassing, but also led me to overhear this:

Dad: “Do you think Andrew will be able to take care of Jing-Jing when I’m gone?”

Mom: “Aiyah, don’t talk like that. You’ll be okay.”

Pause.

Dad: “I want to make sure, just in case.”

Mom: “I know, I know, you don’t think I want the same? Hongbo was my idea, remember?”

Another pause.

Mom: “Do you think you’d feel better if you told her?”

Dad, immediately: “Of course not. Why worry her for no reason? We’re protecting her. What will her knowing accomplish, except hurting her focus? Her grades? Her future?”

Mom: “She’s strong.”

Dad: “Yes, but why even put her through that?”

Longest pause.

Dad: “And… maybe telling her will make it too real for me. I can’t handle that right now.”

Even though I couldn’t see them, I pictured my mother nodding at him, not looking up from her computer, and my father’s eyes also never leaving his screen.

I ran my feet over the couple of tears that had fallen to the floor, then slunk my way back to the tiny lab I was supposedly tidying up. Except all I did was lean against the counter and squeeze my eyes shut, counting my breaths because I didn’t feel in control of anything anymore.

My parents and I had too many lies between us. How would we find our way back from all this? And… was I running out of time?

In a messed-up way, I understood where my father was coming from. Yes, dysfunction—and a whole lot of it—was at the root of our lies, but so was love. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t bother. I would’ve just given up on our relationship because of the Hongbo mess instead of going to the extremes of hiring Andrew… yet hiring him was also so ridiculous I sometimes couldn’t look at myself. But when you feel as desperate as I had, the absurdity slowly distorts until, eventually, the previously absurd path becomes the only way out, then a good idea. Obviously, if I could wave a magic wand and make it so my parents and I could understand each other, I would. Expecto Perspectivito! But life was, maybe both unfortunately and fortunately, not a Harry Potter book, and I say fortunately because I’m pretty sure I’d be a muggle. Or a squib. Girls like me don’t get to be the hero, just the weird sidekick.

I had no idea how much time passed before my mother came to get me.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, half gentle, half accusing.

I rubbed my nose. “The CaviCide got to me.”