[This chapter contains familial violence, or in other words, child abuse. This includes controlling behaviour and both physical and verbal abuse. Any readers made uncomfortable by these topics may want to refrain from reading, and a summary will be provided at the end of the chapter.]
...
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here to celebrate the graduation of the class of 2019." Yao's high school principal smiled down at the audience. They were seated in the school's massive auditorium, staring up at the principal upon her podium. She continued, "each and every one of these students have left their mark at Redwood High, and though we're sad to see them go, we're even happier to see them make their own futures."
Leon yawned. Vicente reached over Kiku to jab him in the chest until his head stopped drooping, and gestured towards their stepmother, who was eyeing them like a tiger would its prey. Leon prodded him back with an indignant huff. Their stepbrother remained quiet.
A few more minutes of the principal's speech was enough to make him drift off; his middle school graduation ceremony hadn't been half as dull. Vicente looked at the banner behind the stage, where "CLASS OF 2019" was written in big bold letters. A row of teachers was seated on the stage, some of them looking just as bored as him. The principal droned on.
After what could've been five or fifty-five minutes (he really hoped he hadn't fallen asleep midway), the principal ended her speech, saying, "now, let's welcome our graduating class with a huge round of applause!"
The entire auditorium seemed to come awake at that sentence, clapping and clapping as the first twelfth-graders began walking on stage in their gowns. Vicente craned up as much as he could without having to stand up, trying to catch a glimpse of his brother amidst the sea of students.
Yao was among the last of the students to go on stage, head held up high and carrying himself like an emperor. He stood at the very edge of the stage, where he was almost out of his family's sight. Then the principal continued talking, apparently inviting the valedictorian (what was that?) to deliver a speech.
To Vicente's surprise, Yao began pushing his way through his classmates and towards the podium. He tapped the microphone a few times, then began to speak.
Their father suddenly leaned over to whisper to the four siblings, "a valedictorian is the person who got the highest marks in the entire grade level. You should all be proud of your brother for achieving something like this."
He couldn't help raising his eyebrows in surprise. Yao, at the top of his class? It hadn't been a surprise back in Taipei, but in Arlingdale, with subjects like French and a tougher English syllabus, it seemed way harder to get top grades. Yet Yao had done it anyways. Leon and Ling looked impressed, while Kiku remained stony-faced. Their stepmother's face seemed to darken.
Yao delivered his speech in flawless English, without any of the accents that he'd been teased for when they first moved to the West. And when he finished, a few of the other high-school students — his friends, no doubt — clapped louder than the rest as he went to take his seat.
Then came the process of receiving the diplomas. The principal started with the last name "Adams", then "Bresson", then on and on, until an hour later right after somebody with the last name "Valdez" got their diploma, Yao's name was called. He stood up and crossed the stage again, taking the diploma with a huge smile. Vicente and his siblings clapped again, though he noticed that Kiku was glancing furtively at his mother while he did so.
Soon after, the ceremony ended and the graduates went off the stage to talk to their families. Vicente reached Yao first, stopping him at the end of the stairs. "Congratulations."
His brother's proud, elated expression faded to a nervous one when he saw their stepmother approaching. "Was my speech all right?"
"Huh?"
"I practiced so much, I really hope I didn't slip up…" Yao wrung his hands, retreating slightly against the wall. "Stepmother reviewed my notes last night, told me I couldn't make a fool of myself in front of her and Father, oh, goodness, if she thinks I did badly I don't know what she'll do!"
"It was fine," Vicente reassured. "Stepmother won't say a word." He noticed her just a stone's throw away from the stage, loudly telling Ling off for not paying attention during the ceremony while a few concerned families glanced at them.
Yao took off his cap and clutched it tightly. He still kept an eye on their stepmother and father, who were far away enough that they were out of earshot. "Today's the day all the universities I applied for let me know if I'm accepted. If I don't get in to at least one…" he squeezed his cap tighter, "if I don't get in to at least one of the universities I applied for, I don't know how Father or Stepmother are going to react!"
Why's Brother so worried about university? Vicente thought. Yao was the one who got the scholarship into a private high school, who got an hour of sleep every night and studied round the clock, whose Grade Point Average was a perfect 5.0. There couldn't be any university who'd veto his application.
On the other hand, Vicente knew his time was running short. He'd start high school in September, and unlike Yao, he hadn't won any scholarships, nor were his grades Harvard or Oxford material. He shuddered to think about what their stepmother would say when she found out he was painfully average compared to Yao.
"Well done."
Their stepmother had reached the two of them, smiling sweetly enough to make a cat sick. She placed a hand on Yao's shoulder and said, "your father and I are so proud of you."
"Oh." Yao flinched. "Thank you."
"Yes, well done," their father echoed. His smile seemed a little more genuine than their stepmother's, although it still looked unnatural. Vicente stepped out of the way to let him stand in front of Yao. "With those grades of yours, I'm sure you can get into any university you want."
The drive home was rather pleasant, with their stepmother chattering on about some of the universities Yao had applied for and the friends she had who'd studied there. "I've heard that the University of Toronto has a lovely campus," she said, "and with all the street vendors around the area, you'll never go hungry. They say that Rice University has the best dormitories, though."
"I'll be able to give you tips if you choose the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong," their father chimed in, "I got my Bachelor's degree there."
The atmosphere was so pleasant that Vicente expected their stepmother to drop a bomb at some point, to make a scathing comment and shatter everyone's good mood to pieces, but she said nothing of the sort. All the way back home, their stepmother was cheerful — almost too cheerful.
Not even lunch dampened their mood. Their stepmother served them all heaping bowls of sōmen in a chilly broth of kombu and bonito, and grilled cod, and even made dessert: sweet, crumbly green bean cakes that only lightened the mood even more. While Vicente tried to split the last bean cake into five equal pieces, their stepmother even volunteered to get the mail from downstairs — something that she normally ordered one of them to do.
She returned with a pile of envelopes a few minutes later, just as the siblings were done with the bean cakes, turning her back on them at the kitchen counter to sort them out. No more than a minute later, though, when all the spam mail was sorted out, she gasped. "Yao!"
Yao nearly dropped his cup as he got up from the kitchen table. "What is it?" He asked.
"An acceptance letter!" She showed him the envelope, stamped with the crest of some university. "Look, you were even awarded a fifty-percent scholarship!"
He took the letter out of the envelope and read it. "I got in," he said slowly, like he was trying to believe it. Yao smiled. "Did I get any other letters?"
"That doesn't matter, now, surely you'll pick — "
"Stepmother, where are my other letters?" Yao looked through the pile of letters on the counter. "Did I get any?"
"That doesn't matter," their stepmother repeated. "Why would you need another choice?"
He looked at his letter, then at their stepmother. "Did you hide my letters?" He said slowly.
"This university is so close to home, you won't even need to pay for dormitories," their stepmother continued like she hadn't heard Yao at all, "and you won't get homesick, either. Isn't that wonderful?"
"Where are my letters?" Yao paced around the kitchen, looking in every nook and cranny, then back to the kitchen counter, laying out every envelope. "Where are they?" Back at the kitchen table, Vicente tried not to look. He could sense that both his brother and their stepmother were getting more agitated. "You hid them, I knew you did, you don't want me to amount to anything — "
"ENOUGH!"
All four younger siblings winced at the sound of skin against skin. Vicente dared to look, hardly able to breathe, and his heart leapt to his throat when he saw the red slap mark on Yao's cheek. Their stepmother's hand was still outstretched, as though she wanted to slap him again.
Even when their mother and father argued, shouting and screaming from their bedroom, or lectured them about their grades, neither had laid a hand on them. Yao clearly knew this, as he raised one trembling hand to touch his face. His eyes blazed with a combination of pain, anger and shock.
"You ungrateful brat!" She hit him again, again, until Ling squeaked, covered her ears and began to inch out of the kitchen. Kiku followed slowly, eyes on the floor. "Don't talk back to me, don't doubt me, don't turn against me! Accept it, won't you? Accept that you're too incompetent for any other school, that this local place is the only one good enough. Accept that you're not going to Harvard or Stanford!"
Before she could say any more, before she could strike Yao again, Leon jumped out of his seat and ran towards Yao. "Leave him alone!"
She grabbed his arm and wrenched him away, leaving him with angry red crescents on his forearm from where their stepmother's nails had dug in. Leon wiped his eyes and sat back down, face crimson with emotion.
"You will do what I say, do you understand?" Their stepmother advanced towards Yao again. He looked too defeated to fight back, not even flinching as she raised her hand again. "You will go to this rubbish school, you will learn what you can, and I will salvage a job for you with what little qualifications you have earned from your pathetic education. Do — "Slap. "You —" Slap. "Understand?"
Vicente, who'd felt frozen in place for most of the confrontation, mostly focused on not passing out, stood up. His heart thudded wildly; he clenched his fists, but he managed to shout, "stepmother!"
She ignored him.
"Stepmother!" He tried again, every strike scaring him more and more.
This time she looked at him, waiting to see what he'd say.
He opened his mouth to speak, looking at Yao. His nose was bleeding slightly, he had cuts on his cheeks and there was a line of bruises across his face. Whatever Vicente wanted to say couldn't come out.
She turned away, expression saying enough: "you're not worth my time." Yao grabbed his acceptance letter and stumbled out of the kitchen, head bowed, and Vicente and Leon had no choice but to follow.
He could feel their stepmother's gaze burning into them even from behind.
The rest of the day passed like they normally did, with their stepmother acting like the borderline-tyrannical overlord that she normally was. Vicente hid in his room, trying to block out the echoes of their stepmother's shouts, which were somehow a hundred times more terrifying than any argument he'd heard their mother and father have.
At least Kiku was more civil. An hour after lunch, he brought a basin of warm water and a towel into Yao's room and helped him wipe his face clean, asking Vicente and Leon to fetch bandages to patch up what could be fixed. His hands shook a few times while he was wringing out the towels; he was clearly just as shaken as they were. Vicente even saw him giving Ling a packet of biscuits when she started crying.
After dinner, which had passed with nobody saying anything about Yao's injuries, Vicente decided to take out the trash before their stepmother flew into a rage again.
While carrying the trash bag down to the nearby trash collection, he noticed a slip of paper poking out from a tear in the bag. It looked like a label, but he looked closer, and noticed the bold caption: Cambridge University.
It couldn't have been a rejection letter. Holding his nose, Vicente opened up the trash bag and found a pile of shredded paper on top of the food waste. All of them claimed to be letters from prestigious universities, and on quite a lot of them he saw the word "accepted".
Yao was right, but what could be done? Every other accepted letter was torn up and covered in trash. Vicente closed the bag again and set it down, returning to the apartment complex feeling numb. He couldn't find the nerves to tell Yao what their stepmother did, not after she'd hurt him just for accusing her of the action. What he didn't know couldn't hurt him.
...
[Summary: Yao has graduated from high school, and he receives his university acceptance letters once he gets home. However, when he only receives one letter from a local school, he becomes suspicious that his stepmother has disposed of the rest. He doesn't get his answer, as his stepmother hurts him viciously for even questioning her. Kiku has begun treating his stepsiblings kindly, helping Yao, Leon and Vicente after the fight with his mother. While taking out the trash, Vicente discovers the torn remains of the rest of Yao's acceptance letters, but decides not to tell him about it.]