Chapter 2

Han

Rap Monster’s hand slid into my back pocket at the same time the phone in my front pocket buzzed. I let him have the three seconds it took for me to grab my phone, then I elbowed him, and he removed his hand.

I’d had to elbow him three times on the way to the coffee shop. He was like that cartoon fish with memory problems.

I looked at the screen, and it showed a picture of my mum that I’d snapped while she was looking. She had been chopping vegetables and looked like a knife-wielding maniac, which she pretty much was all the time, minus the knife.

I jogged the last few steps to Memoir and slipped inside before answering.

“Hello, Mum.”

There was Christmas music on in the background when we haven’t even got Thanksgiving over with. I mean it’s a North American thing but my family is a heavily religious family: being grateful for everything and anything along that line so it’s kind of an annual thing for us to celebrate Thanksgiving. “Us” being a family which I don’t want to be part of without getting ridiculed.

Maniac of a mum.

“Hi, sweetie!” She stretched out the end of sweetie so long I thought she was a robot who had just malfunctioned. Then finally she continued, “What are you up to?”

“Nothing, Mum. I just popped into Memoir for a coffee. You remember, it was that place I took you when you and Dad helped me move here.”

“I do remember! It was a cute place, pity they served alcohol.”

And there was my mum in a nutshell.

Rap Monster chose that moment (an unfortunately silent moment) to say, “Han, babe, you want your usual?”

I waved him off, and stepped away from him a few steps.

Mum must have had me on speakerphone because my dad cut in, “And who is that, Hana?”

Hana.

I shuddered. I hated my parents’ absolute refusal to call me Han. And if they didn’t approve of Han for their baby girl, they sure wouldn’t like that I was dating a guy that called himself Rap Monster.

My dad would have an aneurysm.

“Just a guy,” I said.

Rap Monster nudged me and rubbed his thumb and fingers together. That’s right. He’d been fired from his job. I handed him my purse to pay.

“Is this a guy you’re dating?” Mum asked.

I sighed. There wasn’t any harm in giving her this, as long as I fudged some of the details. Or you know, all of them.

“Yes, Mum. We’ve been dating for a few weeks.” Try three months, but whatever.

“Is that so? How come we don’t know anything about this guy then?” Dad, again.

“Because it’s still new. But he’s a really nice guy, smart.” I don’t think Rap Monster actually finished high school, but he was gorgeous, an amazing rapper and a killer drum player. I wasn’t cut out for the type of guy my mother wanted for me. My brain would melt me from boredom in a week. That was if I didn’t send him running before that.

“Where did you meet?” Mum asked.

Oh, you know, he hit on me at the go-go bar where I dance, that extra job that you have no idea I work.

Instead I said, “The library.”

Rap Monster at the library. That was laughable. The tattoo curving across his collarbone would have spelt villian instead of villain if I hadn’t been there to stop him.

“Really?” Mum sounded skeptical. I didn’t blame her. Meeting nice guys at the library wasn’t really my thing. Every meet-the-parents thing I’d ever gone through had ended disastrously, with my parents certain their daughter had been brainwashed by a godless individual and my boyfriend kicking me to the curb because I had too much baggage.

My baggage was called Mum and Dad and came wearing polka dots and sweater vests on the way home from bridge club. Sometimes it was hard to believe I came from them.

The first time I dyed my hair dark purple, my mum burst into tears, like I told her I was sixteen and pregnant. And that was only temporary dye.

It was easier these days just to humour them, especially since they were still helping me financially so I could spend more time working on my music. And is wasn’t because I didn’t love them…I did. I just didn’t love the person they wanted me to be.

So, I made small sacrifices.

I didn’t introduce them to my boyfriends. I dyed my hair a relatively normal colour before any trips home.