Page 75 of Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

“What is the product?” I can hear you asking, Vera. Well, the product depends on the kid. Thomas was your standard phone scammer. And here I can imagine you humphing with displeasure. I know, I know. You fell for a phone scam, and I hate the thought of it, Vera. I hope you know that. And I hope you know that Thomas did not have a choice. Father hated Thomas, I don’t know why. He took every excuse he could get to beat the crap out of Thomas. We all have quotas to meet every month, and if we don’t meet them, then we are starved or beaten or locked in our rooms for days. So that wasThomas. He’d phone people and tell them the same thing you were told, that your credit card was used by someone else to make some extravagant online purchase. Or he’d phone people and tell them they’re late on some government payment and now they’ve missed enough funds for them to lose their homes. Things like that. All of them despicable lies. Some of my brothers and sisters lost a bit of their humanity after a few years doing this. Some of them started to enjoy it, to see their victims as nothing but marks, but Thomas was never like that. He actively hated it, continued seeing his victims as people he was having to take advantage of, and he was angry at everything up until the day he died.

As for me, Mother got me to work on email scams until I was fourteen, then she said my voice sounded grown-up enough to start working the phones, so I was moved to that. Then, when I was sixteen, she said, “Would you like to start going out, Millie?”

I was so surprised. Up until that point, I wasn’t allowed to leave the warehouse. Some of us were. My older sister Yara was one of them. She’d dress up all pretty—she was so beautiful, blond hair, big green eyes, and so tall and graceful—and she’d go out on what I imagine were very glamorous dates. I was so jealous of her. I was still a stupid kid then. What can I say? So when Mother asked me that, I immediately said, “Yes!” I had no idea what was in store for me.

So Mother taught me the new product: me. She’d prepared me, all this time, for this very moment. I just didn’t know it yet. But I had been kept on a very strict diet and taught how to hold myself a certain way and to do my makeup in a very specific way, and Mother gave me all thesepretty clothes, and when she was done, I looked into the mirror and was shocked at what I saw.

“You’re beautiful, Millie,” Mother said, and I hope it doesn’t make me sound arrogant to say that I agreed with her.

She uploaded my photos onto dating apps and filled out my data for me. She registered me as a nineteen-year-old so that I would be allowed to date any man. And she gave me a script. We always had a script, whether it’s for emails, phones, or in-person scams. I was Millie, a student at Cal whose major was undecided. I liked dating older men because boys my age were hopeless. I was to be fun and must be a very good listener, and then after a few dates, I would have some kind of catastrophe: my dad got cancer, or the university canceled my funding, or this and that. Basically, I would have to be on the verge of losing my spot at Cal, and I really needed some money quick.

The first guy I dated ghosted me as soon as I tried pulling the scam, and that got me locked in my room for three days. When Father and Mother let me out, they hugged me and said, “Poor Millie.” Then they gave me a treat—more McDonald’s. Break me, then soothe me, remember? It really is a very good strategy on their part. I was scared of them and grateful to them in equal measure. They then sat me down and we had a debriefing session, where they went over everything I did wrong.

The second guy I went out with, I managed to get seven thousand dollars from. Mother and Father were so happy. Father actually got a bit teary-eyed. They gave me more McDonald’s and told me they were proud of me. I was so happy to have made them proud. And this became mytwenty-four-seven job. In order to meet my new monthly quota, I dated so many men, as many as five at a time, juggling them carefully so they would never guess that the sweet, attentive girl they were seeing was seeing multiple people at once. Not all of the scams were successful, of course, but enough were to make Mother and Father happy.

Here, I can feel you wondering how far did I go with these men to get money out of them? I don’t think you’d want to know the answer to that, Vera. I’ll say this much: I would have done anything to not be locked in my room for days with a bucket.

And now, I can sense you wondering, Why didn’t I run away? I could get out, surely I could’ve gone to the police station and reported Mother and Father.

Aha. Well, here’s where I tell you that Mother and Father are extremely clever people. They don’t work alone. They’re part of an international organization. Uncle Yang is just one of their many, many contacts. And with each child they bought, Mother and Father made sure that they always had something over the child. They told me that if I ever made the mistake of running away, that Uncle Yang would call up his friends and have my parents killed. That’s the thing with all of us kids, we were all in this situation in the first place because we were all from impoverished families. None of our families had any connections. We were the children of farmers or sweatshop workers or street urchins. It would’ve been far too easy for Uncle Yang to have my parents killed. A pair of poor farmers in a tiny village in Yunnan? Nobody would give a shit.

Then, after killing our parents, Father and Mother would hunt us down—and make no mistake about it, they would find us, no matter where we hid—and they would make an example out of us. My sister Yara, did I mention that she was a fighter? She ran away. I thought she’d made it out safely, but about a week later, Father and Mother came back to the warehouse and tossed something on the dining table. It was Yara’s necklace. I was there, doing the dishes, and a couple other kids were there as well, cleaning up. Father and Mother made sure we’d all seen the necklace before they said, “Well, that was a shame. All that time and money we spent on her.”

I thought of my beautiful sister Yara, and I went on doing the dishes, but my hands were shaking too hard and I smashed one of the glasses. Earned myself twenty-four hours of being locked up in my room.

The other thing that Father and Mother often reminded us, as though all the threats weren’t enough, is “You are all illegal aliens in America. There is nothing we hate more here than illegal immigrants. Not to mention the fact that you’re not just illegal immigrants but criminals as well. If you go to the police, they will arrestyou.”

So. Now do you see why I didn’t just escape? I had nowhere to escape to, and although I knew the cops would arrest Mother and Father if they knew about their operation, I was also convinced that I would be arrested as well. Especially since Mother and Father documented all of my scams. Not to mention my countless victims, who would only be too happy to testify against me. I would rot in prison as a scam artist, and rightfully so, I guess. But maybe all of this is just an excuse to avoid facing the truth, which is that I am acoward, Vera. I have forgotten the faces of my parents, and I’m sure that by now they have assumed that I died and moved on with their lives. I hope they have, anyway. Sometimes, in the very early mornings, when I wake up and I am in that state between sleeping and waking, I think,I’m home with Mother and Father.Sometimes I forget, you see, that they are not my real parents. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what life was like before I came here.

Oh, Vera, I’m sorry this letter is so long. I didn’t mean to ramble on and on the way I did here. Meeting you was the best thing that has happened to me in America. I remember that day so clearly. After Thomas disappeared, I thought that maybe there was a way that I could report it to the police without exposing myself and my other brothers and sisters. But every possible story I came up with felt so flimsy. I had no idea if Thomas was okay, maybe he’d made it out, maybe he managed to outsmart Mother and Father, or maybe not. That was why I was loitering outside of the police station that day. I was so scared and had no idea what was the right thing to do. I thought maybe I should just turn myself in, consequences be damned. If you hadn’t found me, I would’ve probably given up and gone back to the warehouse. But you did find me, and you whisked me off to your magical little teahouse, and Vera, I need you to understand how much everything you’ve done meant to me.

I think I am going to die here. I have gone against Mother and Father in a way that is simply unforgivable, and I think they no longer trust me to behave myself, and when a child loses Father and Mother’s trust, that child is no longer a useful product. They will discard me the same way theydiscarded Thomas and Yara and Jeffrey and probably others I don’t know about. I’ve accepted it. But what I can’t accept is what they might do to you, and all because of me. If I were less selfish, I would wish that I had never met you, but I am selfish, so I’m glad that I got to know you, but now you’re in danger because of me, and I am locked up in this room.

I’m so sorry, Vera.

With love,

Penxi

Twenty-Five

VERA

•••

It’s been quite a busy day for Vera, so busy in fact that she hasn’t had time to think about Millie’s strange texts. It was a good day, all in all. Her customers were a pleasant crowd, some of them regulars, the rest of them newcomers who heard about her from social media, and all of them were curious and respectful and wanted her to serve them tea based off her intuition, which is exactly how tea should be served—hot with a side of judgy but also motherly advice from Vera. Later tonight, Aimes will come over and spend the night here again, just so Vera isn’t alone. Vera rather likes having people staying over at her house. Makes for a really nice change.

She’s just drying the last of the teacups when there is a loud crash and the shop window seems to explode. A shard of glass whizzes across her forehead and she doesn’t even feel it slice into her skin, but a moment later her vision is darkened by blood.

“Oh,” she says. Stunned would be an understatement. Vera puts the dish drying rag to her forehead as the door flies open.

In walks the largest man she has ever seen in real life. He’s so tall that he actually has to lower his head as he enters, and seeing his hulking figure in her tiny shop brings the phrase “a bull in a china shop” to mind.

“My window seems to have broken,” Vera says. It is possible she might be somewhat shell-shocked.

“That would be because of the brick I flung through it,” the man says.

“I see.” She can’t help but shrink back as the man advances toward her. His gray eyes regard her in a cold, detached way. The kind of look a predator would give to its prey. “What do you want?”

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