Rich People Problems-Kwan 2017 (WWT)

saw across the hallway the line of light underneath the door to his parents’ bedroom. Did
he dare leave his room? Or would they be shouting at each other again? He didn’t want
to hear them fighting—he knew he wasn’t supposed to hear them. He was feeling thirsty,
so he walked out to the landing where there was a refrigerator that was always stocked
with ice and a jug of water. As he opened the fridge and stood in front of it, feeling the
cool draft against his body, he heard sobs coming from his parents’ bedroom. Creeping
over to their door, he could hear his mother suddenly scream, “Don’t you dare! Don’t
you dare! You’ll see your name splashed over the front pages tomorrow.”
“Lower your voice!” his father shouted back angrily.
“I’m going to ruin your precious name, I tell you! What I’ve had to put up with all
these years from your family! I’m going to run. I’ll run off with Nicky to America and
you’ll never see him again!”
“I’ll kill you if you take my son!”
Nicky could feel his heart pounding. He had never heard his parents this angry before.
He rushed into his bedroom, stripped off his pajamas, and threw on a T-shirt and his
soccer shorts. He took out all the ang pow money he had saved in his little metal safe box
—$790—and grabbed his silver flashlight, tucking it into the waistband of his shorts. He
went out the door leading onto the veranda, where a large guava tree arched over the
second floor. He grasped hold of one of the thick branches, swung onto the tree trunk,
and quickly shimmied down to the ground, as he had done hundreds of times.
Jumping onto his ten-speed bicycle, he raced out of the garage and down Tudor Close.
He could hear the Alsatians at his neighbor’s house begin to bark, and it made him cycle
even faster. He sped down the long slope of Harlyn Road until he reached Berrima Road.
At the second house on the right, he stopped in front of the tall steel electronic gate and
looked around. The concrete fence had glass spikes at the top, but he wondered whether
he could still climb it, holding on to the edges and propelling himself quickly enough that
he wouldn’t get cut. He was still out of breath from his escape. A Malay guard came out
of the sentry box next to the gate, astonished to see a boy standing there at two in the
morning.
“What do you want, boy?”
It was the night guard who didn’t know him. “I need to see Colin. Can you tell him
Nicky is here?”
The guard looked momentarily perplexed, but then he went into his sentry box and got
on the phone. A few minutes later, Nick could see lights come on in the house, and the
metal gate began to slide open with a quiet clang. As Nick walked down the driveway
toward the house, the porch lights came on and the front door opened. Colin’s British
grandmother, Winifred Khoo, who always reminded him of a plumper version of
Margaret Thatcher, stood at the doorway in a quilted peach silk robe.
“Nicholas Young! Is everything all right?”
He ran up to her and breathlessly blurted out, “My parents are fighting! They want to
kill each other, and my mother wants to take me away!”