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“Oh, wonderful, I just realized I now get to permanently share a bedroom with a menstruating woman.”

“It’ll be nice to accidentally bleed on someone else’s sheets for once!”

“You’re cleaning them up if that happens!”

Jane shoved her toothbrush in her mouth while Becca finished rinsing off. When she shut off the water, she said, “I also sometimes get night terrors when on my period.”

“What in the bloody hell is anight terror?”

Becca attempted to recall those words in Cantonese, which she had slowly picked up from Jane and Caitlyn over the years. “Jegaan hunbao.”

“Yes, I know how to say it in Cantonese, dear! What I mean is what the bloody hell am I dealing with now?”

“Kicking, punching, some screaming in the middle of the night.”

With her toothbrush still in her mouth, Jane gathered Becca’s clothes she had left in the bathroom and hauled them toward the bedroom door.

“What are you doing!” Becca called after her, barely wrapped in a towel.

“New rule! For one week a month, you sleep with Cait!”

Becca didn’t bother chasing her. It was much more entertaining to simply get ready for bed and meet her girlfriend beneath the covers, where they would do nothing more than grumble and snore.

Chapter 2

Jane

There was so much on Jane’s metaphorical plate as she balanced her work with integrating her niece – whom she waslegally responsible forright now – into both American life and her upcoming schooling. That included taking the quiet girl for a tour of Winchester Academy before classes began.

Cecelia was already enrolled, so that wasn’t a problem. But today was the day she met the administrators, became familiar with the grounds, and acquainted herself with her new schedule. Jane was assured that Winchester Academy catered toward the local old-money crowd as well as gifted scholarship kids who were bound for the Ivy League. While some graduated and went on to Oxford or Cambridge like Jane had, most had their sights on Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Most were legacy students who didn’t have a choice. Cecelia, though? Jane didn’t say it out loud, but this was where her niece’s life truly began – on her terms.

Which was why Jane agreed to this to begin with, as long as Caitlyn and Rebecca were on board.If anyone in that family knows how important it is to get away from Hong Kong, it’s me.Cecelia had forged part of her own identity by refusing to follow the usual path to England. She may have been raised in the Queen’s English like many Hong Kongers, but she had taught herself the American accent through Hollywood movies and talking to people online. Lilian encouraged her daughter to “follow her heart,” but the Lams were a different story. They needed Frank and his mother’s permission for Cecelia to go to America, and that only came when Jane’s mother Willow sniffed through every corner of Winchester Academy before declaring it good enough for her granddaughter. Assuming shemustgo to America, anyway.

(And she must.)

“One second, love.” Jane stopped her niece as soon as they stepped out of the car. “Quick inspection so we make a good first impression.”

Cecelia rolled her eyes as they remained standing in the parking lot, the August humidity no competition for Hong Kong. So was it any wonder that Jane’s niece stood before her in a blazer and tights under her plaid skirt?

No, Winchester Academy did not have a uniform, but it did have a strict dress code. All students were expected to be covered up to a certain degree, to have nothing written on their clothing (unless it advertised the school or a club therein,) and to not deviate from a standard of colors based on the time of year. For the fall semester, students were relegated to dark shades of green, red, and blue, complemented with black and gray. In the spring, white and softer tones were allowed, making Caitlyn quip about rules regarding Labor Day and whites.I don’t get it.

But it was Jane’s job to ensure her niece’s hair was tidy, her legs and chest were covered, and she wore an outfit that wouldbe allowed on her first day of school.God, why do we have to look so… Asian?That was her honest thought as she saw a middle-aged woman walk out with her teenaged son, who immediately stared at Cecelia as if she were God’s gift to him. Did Cecelia know about fetishization on this side of the pond? God! Did Jane have to havethattalk with her niece?

“What’s wrong?” Cecelia asked.

Jane shook the foulest thought from her head. “Nothing, love. You look great.” She erected her spine before her niece. “How does your old Aunt Jane look? Great?”

Cecelia cracked a smile. “You kinda look like a guy.”

“Brilliant! These wankers won’t know what hit them!”

That crack expanded into a full shit-eating grin as Cecelia fell into step beside her aunt. “I’ve never heard you say ‘wankers’ before.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, you’ll hear me say it enough that it loses all of its edge. Maybe don’t say that around here, though.”

They met up with the Vice Principal in her office, a portly woman with ruddy cheeks and frizzy hair like Rebecca’s. Only instead of ginger spice enunciating that figure, Vice Principal Williams dyed hers a shade of brown that did not complement her naturally pinkish skin tone. Jane thought this interesting since she was under the impression that anyone who made it this far up the food chain at a place like Winchester must know how to style herself a certain way.

She assumed a lot of things about these administrators. That was her first mistake!