Page 73 of Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

Gripping Millie’s shoulder tight, Father gives her an unforgiving shake. Millie wonders if her neck is about to snap. She doesn’t want to die. Despite everything, she wants to live. “I’m sorry!” she manages to gasp out. “Sorry, sorry!” He releases her so suddenly that she thumps onto the floor, out of breath, her face wet with tears and snot.

“We’re gonna have to take care of this Vera, thanks to you,” Mother says.

No, not Vera. Vera’s warm laugh echoes in Millie’s head, and she scrambles to Mother on her hands and knees. “Don’t do anything to her. Please!” She grabs hold of Mother’s feet. “I’m sorry, I’ll do anything you want.”

“You should’ve thought of that before involving her.” Mother steps back.

“Mother, no!”

“Stop all this screaming,” Mother snarls. “You’ll wake your siblings up, you selfish little brat.”

“Please, Mother!”

Father grabs her by the hair again and flings her backward as though she were a doll. Millie crashes into the wall and the breath is punched out of her. By the time she manages to peel herself off the floor, Father and Mother have stormed out, slamming the door shut. She runs toward the door, but it’s locked. Of course it is. She pounds on it. “Leave her alone!” she shrieks.

Mother’s voice comes through the door. “Millie, if you do not behave, we will have to fix you, do you understand?”

A promise. She knows Mother always follows through on her promises. Millie slides down to the floor sobbing. Yara had fought too. She remembers all the screaming, all the shouting. She remembers hearing Mother say those exact same words to Yara right before Yara left. One day, Yara was in the room next to hers, and the next day, there was Thomas. Thomas never met Yara, though Millie told him all about her.

Millie doesn’t know how long she stays on the floor crying. It feels like forever. She runs out of tears at some point; she’s so thirsty. Father and Mother have been sliding in just one glass of water every morning. “A kindness,” Mother had said, and Millie was so stupidly grateful every time the glass of water appeared. Now she’s cried and sweated and struggled so much that she feels like a desiccated corpse. She pulls herself up. She needs to warn Vera somehow. But how? Her phone is gone. The window in her room is much too small for her to climb through. She goes to it anyway and gazes out longingly. When she first arrived here, she spent many hours just looking out the window, searching for stars to wish on. Her reflection on the window catches her eye. Millie studies it.

For once, she doesn’t have makeup on. Her face is red and blotchy and her hair is a mess, but she sees herself. “My name is Millie,” she whispers. “My name is…”

Her face scrunches up and tears slide down her cheeks again. “Fuck you,” she tells her reflection. “Fuck Millie. My name is Penxi!” She screams it. “My name is Penxi!”

There is a knock on the wall. Mina’s voice, small and scared, comes through a hole. “My name is Channary.”

Millie shuts her eyes, crying. “Hi, Channary.”

“Hi, Penxi. It’s Mina, by the way.”

A laugh burbles out of Millie’s mouth. “I know.”

“But my name is actually Channary.”

“It’s a beautiful name.”

“It’s Cambodian. That’s where I’m from. I don’t think I ever told you that before.”

Millie goes to the wall and places her hand there. “I’m from China.”

“America isn’t really like how I thought it would be.”

“Well. This part of it isn’t. But there are parts that are like a dream.”

“Next week is my twelfth birthday. I was kind of hoping I would be able to celebrate it like American kids do, but I guess that’s not something Mother and Father do, huh?”

So young. Too young. Millie rests her forehead against the wall. “You shouldn’t be here. None of us should be here.”

God, eleven. Despair threatens to swallow her whole. There is so much emotion surging through her. She needs to let something out before she bursts apart like an overripe fruit.

Millie goes to her desk and takes out a pen and paper. She sits down and takes a shuddery breath. Then she begins to write.

Dear Vera,

You know me as Millie, but my real name is Lin Penxi. I am from Yunnan, China. When I was twelve, I left my family farm and moved to Shanghai to live with my aunt, where I had hoped to become a star. Ridiculous dream, I know that now. But Shanghai has so many talent shows, and there are so many kids who do make it big, so I didn’t think it was that ridiculous at the time. Anyway, I was auditioning for one of these shows when I met a man—he told me to call him Uncle Yang. I don’t know his real name. Uncle Yang told me that American talent shows are where it’s at, and I would be wasting my talent here in Shanghai. It all sounded too good to be true. And it was.

My parents aren’t well educated. They were just as starstruck as I was when I called to tell them that Uncle Yang wanted me to go to America. He even paid them a fee. Isn’t that amazing? I begged them to let me go, and they did. Papers were signed, Uncle Yang got me a passport, and before long, I was on my way to America. I should’ve known that things were wrong during the journey there. We went on an airplane at first, which was fine. There were seven other kids and teens with me. We were all very excited. But then we stopped off somewhere, I don’t know where, and we were herded out of the airplane and led to a ship. Some of the teens asked why we were getting on a ship instead of flying to America, and Uncle Yang told them to shut up. That scared me, because up until then, Uncle Yang had been so nice to us.

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