We put my body double together in June Lee’s basement. Her mom was one of those chill Asian moms who liked having an artsy-fartsy daughter she could brag about at Bible study. She was already pushing the whole portfolio-for-college-apps deal, so she didn’t mind staying out of the basement to avoid contaminating our radiant artist auras humming at the frequency of the Big Bang. After I found out my sister would be visiting home for the first time in two years, we took matters into our own hands, consulting WikiHow articles and an Angelfire site almost twice as old as us with step-by-step instructions on how to build a homunculus.

This was our fifth attempt. The first four failed because step twenty-eight said to “assemble the body” with no additional instructions. This time, we would prevail in time for Homecoming. This time, we stole my mom’s Li Kum Kee soy sauce and oyster sauce to color the creation’s hair and eyes so she would be properly Chinese.

Before my parents divorced, my mother would despair at how un-Chinese I was compared to my sister Clara whenever I asked for ice water instead of boiling or craved Panda Express instead of homemade dumplings. After the divorce, my mother became a doomsday prepper. She was sure that imminent societal collapse was hiding right around the corner like low-level video game enemies waiting for you to step on that trap tile, so she stockpiled boxes with emergency supplies in our living room that I would stub my toe on while she watched the news. My new homunculus would make her stop watching the nightly news and look at me for once. My new homunculus would make me popular, just like how my dancing robot C4 would be my ticket to online virality and a mansion in Beverly Hills. Or if not a mansion, then at least enough to rent a room in Los Angeles and a golden ticket to any college of my choice.

I wrapped a one-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill for good luck around my creation’s USB-stick heart, which contained every school assignment I had ever completed and every photo on my phone and my favorite pirated TV shows and movies. And most importantly, Mean Girls. A hundred copies of Mean Girls took up most of the USB stick.

“I think she’s ready,” I told June, my loyal accomplice, best friend, and fellow woman of culture.

June put the eyebrow pencil down, clasping her hands together. Her nails were caked with paint and three brands of Korean antiaging cream. “Let’s do this. Connie, if this works, there’s no way any art school would reject me. We’ll go viral!”

“Let’s do this,” I said.

I pulled up the Angelfire site, reading the chant in Step Thirty out loud.

Hello, Nüwa Express Human Creation Services, forward to operator, please let me talk to a human, first voicemail password eight thousand and eight hundred and eighty eight, second voicemail password one hundred and eight, final password the meaning of life can be found in a burning microwave and expired popcorn—

We heard a hum.

The homunculus blinked.

It was an exquisite blink, worthy of a movie star. The homunculus pushed her hair behind her ears. Her face was identical to mine, if I had been put through a filter that removed the acne and permanent hat hair and a second filter that made my skin glow.

“Good evening, Connie Jin,” she said.

June waved at my double. “Hi.”

She mouthed, What’s her name? at me.

“Mulan,” I declared. “You’ll be Mulan.”

Mulan could become a beauty influencer, kiss boys by the lockers, and run a mile under six minutes. When life gave you lemons and nothing else, you made science fair lemon-battery-powered robot cars, using the peels to build the car itself. Confucius or Aristotle or another brainy dead man said that.

Mulan nodded, like she had been expecting her new name all along.

• • • •

Angelfire stated that homunculi needed to learn about their surroundings before they could become capable of independent thought, which meant Mulan needed real-world teenage girl training before she could become my replacement for when I left my Podunk town. In the meantime, June let Mulan stay on her basement futon and forged fake IDs with her epic art skills. We told the school that Mulan was my more glamorous, makeup-wearing cousin whose parents wanted her to stay with my family because they were moving back to China.

The school ate it up. Class clown Devin Smith asked if Mulan was rich, and she shrugged him off. Which meant rumors started spreading that Mulan’s family owned a helicopter and a private jet and that her old school was an all-girls boarding school in Switzerland. Mulan joined the cheer squad. The cheerleaders accepted her with open arms because she could do multiple backflips in a row, no problem. The popular girls started trying to copy her looks, which were just my sister’s old clothes. The staircase at school was covered in blue and gold streamers for Homecoming next month, and the popular jocks started talking about who would be on the Homecoming Court this year. The rumor mill said Mulan had a shot.

More importantly for me, though, the Homecoming Robotics Showcase was the club’s most important fundraiser, how we got attention and funds from local businesses every year. I was responsible for programming C4, the club’s perpetually wide-eyed humanoid robot half the height of the standard issue classroom desk.

According to WikiHow, homunculi couldn’t disobey direct orders until they reached the rebellious teen stage of mental development. So every morning before class for the first month of the school year, Mulan would report to me before first period. She would first ignore me in favor of waving at C4, who lived inside my locker. Our conversations went something like this:

Mulan: Hello.

Me: Morning. Would you mind subbing for me in PE today? (She wasn’t in PE this semester, and I swapped places during her study hall. We looked similar enough that Coach Paul didn’t question my sudden change of heart when it came to makeup and designer athleisure wear.)

Mulan, for the first couple weeks: Sure. See you later!

Mulan, after two weeks of being a cheerleader: Sure. Don’t you know my role in life is to help you pass PE?

Me, brushing off her passive-aggressive sarcasm as a bug and not a feature: Have a great day!

The closest anyone came to catching me was Devin Smith, who asked me after English, “Dude, Connie, are you and Mulan, like, secret twins? You guys look way too much alike.”

“That’s racist,” I blurted, before the bell blared and I scurried away to the Robotics clubroom.

• • • •

After school and Robotics, where I was working on debugging C4’s dance routine in the computer lab on the second floor that smelled like sweaty socks, I discovered a text from Clara. My boyfriend Theo is dropping by with me next week. I’ll text you exact dates as soon as I figure them out. Don’t be too mean to him!

Clara, her boyfriend, and my mother deserved the best version of me possible for her visit. Clara moved to California for college and started medical school in Los Angeles last year. She was so flawless that Mom hung her photo right next to the TV even though she stopped calling home. After she started medical school and got a new law school boyfriend (he resembled a Photoshop mashup of Henry Golding and Keanu Reeves and was rumored to be in line to inherit a house in San Francisco from his grandfather), her texts had become less and less frequent. My last text from her was from summer break. She was shedding her old life like a cocoon, becoming a butterfly that was too cool for caterpillar high schooler me. If me and June succeeded and became influencers, I’d be able to move to California and be the cool little sister she could show off to her future doctor friends.

Clara used to also host Korean beauty product spa nights and would teach her friends how to make black sesame matcha cookies. Mulan had been teaching the cheerleaders how to fold dumplings during her Korean beauty product girls’ nights in June’s basement, according to June. Mulan and Clara could connect over everything me and Clara couldn’t.

In other words, Mulan was key to my victory.

• • • •

The next morning, I woke up a whole hour early to have plenty of time to hunt down Mulan after morning cheer practice and before first period. When I arrived at school, the rising sun cast the walls in the color of ripe pumpkins, like the ones me and my mom used to carve around this time of year, before she decided pumpkins were useless for survival. I practiced dramatically leaning against the lockers like all the heroes in teen movies while waiting for her to appear.

“Morning, Mulan. I have a special request for you,” I said when Mulan showed up at her locker smelling of cherry blossom perfume, hair in the same ponytail we both had, except hers was sleek and shampoo-commercial shiny. She ignored me in favor of waving at C4, whose head moved towards her, thanks to its advanced motion-detection sensor, before stuffing her gym clothes into her own locker.

She finally noticed me while fixing her makeup with help from her phone camera. “Hi,” Mulan said.

“You party a lot,” I said. Photos of her and the other cheerleader girls at their legendary game night after-parties plastered the walls of her locker. Partying wasn’t for good Asian girls. Mulan wasn’t supposed to want to socialize with other teenagers outside of class and clubs, lest she fall prey to the temptations of the world and become an even worse Asian girl than me. “It isn’t right.”

“What isn’t right?” She sounded the same way I would when talking to Brandon Teo, the only other Asian kid in Robotics and a sophomore who happened to be a certified jerk. She stopped with her makeup to put her hands on her hips. “I can do whatever I want. If I want to be a cheerleader or even Homecoming Queen, that’s what I’ll be.”

Devin Smith stopped at his own locker, which was right next to Mulan’s, and she smiled at him. He winked back.

I knew exactly what that meant. Devin liked her. Devin Smith, president and founder of the Juggling and Standup Comedy Club (advertised as a two-for-one, buy-one-get-one-free club deal), had a crush on Mulan. Seeing a boy wink at me flirtatiously was about as natural as anchovies, pineapple, and white sauce on the same pizza.

After Devin left, I said, “I need you to meet my sister and her boyfriend for me next week.”

“Why? Shouldn’t you talk to them yourself?”

Mulan must have reached the rebellious teen stage already. Mean Girls and her cheerleader friends had been bad influences. “I’m too busy with Robotics.”

“If I had a sister, I’d drop cheer practice to see her. You can definitely skip working on your robot for a few hours.”

I scowled. “Homecoming is coming up, and I’ve got a lot of debugging left. Anyway, meeting Clara should be easy for you. You can show off your Chinese skills.” The old Hong Kong movies, C-dramas, K-dramas, and J-dramas I had put on her USB-stick heart meant she could speak both perfect Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese. “You can bond over gossip about boys and makeup and shopping. She’ll love it.”

Mulan grinned, and I had never seen this grin on myself before. I didn’t like it one bit. “Wow. You’re pretty pathetic, aren’t you? Using me to run away from your own miserable life problems. I’ll do it, if you leave me alone after this.”

“You’re not supposed to be making snarky comments. Aren’t you supposed to be a nice Asian girl?” I sniffed. Were all good Asian girls this mean?

• • • •

The week leading up to Homecoming was Spirit Week, where I demonstrated my lack of school spirit by purposefully not dressing in blue and gold and skipping the pep rally in favor of a last-minute Robotics meeting to make sure C4’s dance worked. Meanwhile, Mulan and her cheerleader friends put up posters worthy of a K-pop girl group tour for their Homecoming Court election ad campaign. Mulan’s blown-up, poreless face stared at me from above my locker, complete with June’s social media handles in the corner. Mulan had worked her dark cheerleader magic to get June to betray me, so I would hold on to her phone until she released June from her evil grasp. My write-in protest vote candidate for Homecoming Queen was C4.

Clara and her boyfriend returned the day of the election. Instead of making last-minute improvements to my robot’s dance like I had told Mulan we would during the dinner with Clara and her boyfriend, June and I played video games together in her basement since I was tired of looking at code and upset at Mulan. Mulan’s makeup and other worldly possessions were scattered on a plastic table and on the futon, so we sat on the floor in front of the TV.

“You should have gone to dinner with Clara,” June said, redoing her pigtails with her brand-new scrunchies as the victory animation played after she knocked out my character with her sword. We both knew that I would beat June in the game again, but she was my best friend and was okay with always losing to me in fighting games and board games.

“Stop it.”

“Connie, Clara’s busy with her own life in California. I don’t think she meant to forget about you.”

“No, I couldn’t have gone to dinner.” If I showed up, our conversation would have been as stilted as our text messages. She and Mulan probably became fast friends, although the thought of Mulan being close to Clara made me feel almost the same way as Devin Smith’s crush on Mulan did.

“We’re going to be leaving here soon anyway,” I said, “if everything goes according to plan with Homecoming. My robot’s dance is going to get us millions of views, and then we’ll be able to leave here for good.” C4 was a gift from a local car dealership last year after June and I showed the people in charge a video and a slide deck on how old the club’s IT equipment was, the result of a week of all-nighters. We would make them proud by becoming famous and rich enough to leave.

“Mulan told me she’s probably going to win Homecoming Queen this year thanks to her cheer friends. I’m happy for her!” June fiddled with the video game remote as the game loaded back to the menu.

If she and Mulan were on friendly terms with each other, that meant Mulan was truly the improved version of me, since June usually disliked people whom I also disliked. We had been best friends since fifth grade, which was when she moved here from Vancouver. “Connie, I don’t actually want to move to LA. It’s so far away, and I’ve been thinking about going back to Canada for art school. Can’t we just be influencers here? Clara would understand, I think.”

“We’ve got to dream big, June, or how else are we going to make it?” I asked.

I couldn’t live with my mother for two more years until I could leave for college. After my father left our town post-divorce and moved in with his new girlfriend in San Diego, she had stopped going outside except for work, shunning all other social interaction except with Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, or whoever else was on CNN that day. But June wasn’t listening, instead glancing at Mulan’s nail polish collection on the table as we waited for the next round to load.

“You could always stay with me and my parents. They know your mom isn’t okay,” she finally said. “And is making it big and moving to LA what we want, or is that what you want?”

June won the next round, knocking my swordsman out with her pink frilly princess.

• • • •

The light from me and my mom’s third-floor unit was visible from the parking lot upon my return to our apartment complex from June’s. When I unlocked our front door, Clara and her boyfriend Theo were watching a video on her phone, and they were laughing. Clara’s laugh was pretty and delicate, like a real lady’s. Thankfully, they weren’t even holding hands or committing other atrocious acts of PDA.

“Hey, Connie. How’s June?” Clara asked, voice slightly wobbly, pushing her hair behind her ears the way she always did when nervous. Her ears were pierced when they hadn’t been before, and she looked like one of those cool big city Asian girls in the movies, the type that was always the white protagonist’s best friend and gave great advice.

I was about to ask how she knew about June, but I realized pretending to run off to June’s was Mulan’s escape strategy. I wanted to tell Clara about school, June, Mulan, Mom, but it had been so long since I last heard her voice, so I just said, “Fine.”

She paused, which meant she was worried. Which didn’t make sense, as Clara was always composed.

“Are you still mad at me?” Clara asked. Her eyes were red and her cheeks puffy. Did she cry? “Sorry if I got ahead of myself at dinner. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you say that you didn’t want to see me again because I was a terrible big sister too caught up in my own life to pay attention to you? In Chinese, too. I didn’t even know you could speak Chinese.”

“I don’t remember.” I scratched the back of my neck. Dinner wasn’t supposed to go like this. Mulan was supposed to charm them with her fluent-native-speaker-level Mandarin. “It must have been stress from Robotics.”

Clara frowned, but she said nothing, although I could feel she wanted to talk more but didn’t know how to phrase her thoughts. Theo came to the rescue, breaking up the awkward silence to wave at me. He looked less like a movie star in person, with his slightly askew glasses framing prominent dark shadows under his eyes.

“Based on what Clara’s told me a lot about you, you seemed out of it at dinner. Hope you’re feeling better now,” he said.

“Right. Sorry about that.” As the baby sister Clara left behind, I was surprised she mentioned me to Theo. “I’m going to bed early. I’ve got a test tomorrow,” I said, which was a lie.

I was about to scurry into my bedroom when Clara waved a phone at me. “Don’t forget your phone. You left it here.”

My actual phone was in my pocket, but I accepted Mulan’s phone before making my way to my room. I knocked on my mother’s door to check on her. The sound of the TV traveled through the door (she had one installed to watch the news in her room when she couldn’t fall asleep), and I entered before she could tell me to let her watch the news in peace.

“Connie,” she said, “Be quiet. There’s something important on the news today. Breaking News.”

“Something’s breaking on the news every day.”

She looked at me for the first time in months. “You said the news was always bad on purpose to increase advertising profits while Clara’s boyfriend was at dinner. Never embarrass me like that again.”

She turned away, and I knew Mulan had screwed things up with both Clara and Mom for good. Mom would never want to talk to me again.

I retreated to my room. My face unlocked Mulan’s phone. She was in a bunch of group chats with the popular kids, where they talked about cute boys and who was breaking up and who was dating.

Devin isn’t bad, she had written. He’s kind of cute and funny.

I had no opinion about Devin’s appearance, which bothered me because Mulan and I were supposed to be fundamentally the same despite her fashion and sports skills. But she liked boys. She talked back to Mom, and she called Clara a bad sister even though Clara was the perfect sister, but just too perfect for me.

I scrolled through more texts and opened up her thread with June. Their conversations were long and filled with emojis.

Thanks for showing me how to do that cool smoky eyeliner, Mulan had texted June a week ago, followed by a string of heart emojis. Free ice cream on me?

Friends don’t owe friends!!! June had replied. My mom likes you a bunch too, you don’t need to pay us rent for the basement! She wants you to quit that ice cream parlor job so you can study more.

I put down the phone. June’s only friend was supposed to be me, the only one who understood how she felt as a weird meme-loving Asian kid from flyover country. Mulan and her weren’t supposed to be friends. Mulan was simply my tool, my replacement self for when I moved out. Falling asleep that night was impossible.

• • • •

Homecoming was the biggest event of the football season, even though our football team was mediocre. The entire town gathered every year to eat bad nachos and watch the coronation of the Homecoming Queen and King against the blinding glare of the floodlights on the football field. The winner of the Homecoming King and Queen election would be announced at halftime, after the robot demonstration. I was planning on sneaking out before I could see Mulan gloat at me in all her Homecoming Queen Party City tiara glory.

How my master plan was supposed to go: June would film C4’s meme dance for our shared social media account during Homecoming. Then we’d go viral. Clara and I would go shopping together and be best friends forever again. Mulan would replace me to help my mother prep for the end of times and stay here, in our college town in what my cousin called Indi-fucking-ana whenever we visited her family in Seattle. I would then move to Los Angeles, with or without June. My life would be flawless and poreless like Mulan’s skin, the Mrs. Potato Head polished version of my standard supermarket Yukon Gold potato self.

At least, that was the vision, until Mulan messed things up. The Angelfire site didn’t have any tips for what happened after your homunculus developed a personality. I would have to wow Mulan with my robot at Homecoming. Then she would fall at my feet like a good Asian girl and beg for forgiveness, and I would return her phone and everything would proceed smoothly. That would be my new master plan.

• • • •

Even though June had turned traitor, I still needed her help and the fancy cameras her mom bought so she could take better pictures of her art for social media. She was nice enough to not bring up Mulan or our master plan the past few days since Mulan ruined things with my mom and Clara. Or, more likely, June liked making videos and doing artsy projects enough that she thought dealing with me was worth making a cool new video. I helped her set up the cameras for the best view of our robot dancing during the halftime show, and we sat in the front row of bleachers with C4, who was dazedly moving its head back and forth and scanning the crowd. Unlike Mulan and June, C4 would never betray me. I would reward its loyalty with eternal viral fame tonight.

“Connie, are you okay?” June poked my elbow, jolting me awake. Last-minute fixes for the robot meant I hadn’t slept more than four hours a night the last couple days.

“I’m good.” I rubbed my eyes. “If tonight goes right, we’ll be set for life.”

“I’m worried about Mulan,” June said. “She seemed upset the last few days and hasn’t been responding to my texts. Ryan at the ice cream parlor said she didn’t show up for work yesterday. Did you two fight? I don’t want my two best friends to fight.”

“We’re good,” I said, before the implications of what June said settled in. June was supposed to be my best friend. She wasn’t supposed to be Mulan’s best friend.

But June wasn’t my biggest priority at the moment. Mom still wasn’t talking to me. I wasn’t sure if Clara was here or not, but I was sure Mom wasn’t. I didn’t want to look for her, not after what Mulan did.

Next to the Robotics kids were the jocks. Devin and Mulan were somewhere in the mix. They were talking to each other in line at the concession stand earlier, and the fact that I did not step in there and forcefully separate them was a sign of how I was morally superior to Mulan, who would have flipped her hair and said a few sugarcoated passive-aggressive remarks to break up any conversation she didn’t like. The rumor mill said she was the frontrunner this year for Homecoming Queen, and they’d be announcing the winner tonight. I wasn’t looking forward to her sneering at me at the halftime coronation.

The band started playing a drumroll in anticipation of our robot until June cleared her throat into the mic.

“All proceeds from the concession stand today will go to Robotics, and if you’d like to contribute more to supporting STEM education at this school, find me or anyone else in a Robotics jacket.”

I picked at the zipper of my Robotics varsity letter jacket, zipping it up because the sun had fully set and a chill was coming in. The club president had arranged for them given how much time Robotics Club took, but wearing them felt more like being in jock cosplay.

“Take it away, Connie,” June said.

That was my cue to hit the play button on my remote from my spot at the edge of the football field by the bleachers. I pressed play. C4 started its routine. The lights in its eyes flashed different colors with the beat and it also bobbed its head, which had taken a week to figure out. A meme music medley—composed of both greatest hits like “All Star” and “Gangnam Style” combined with newer meme songs—blared through the football field via speakers as C4 boogied and woogied and wooed the crowd as it transitioned into doing the worm. Then C4 dabbed, finishing up its routine. Everyone clapped. June gave me a thumbs-up from behind the camera. I returned the gesture. We would go viral, and then I’d be able to escape this town for good, with or without June.

Clara and Theo were awestruck in the stands, holding up their phones to record the robot. Closer to the football field, Devin and Mulan were sitting together. I watched as Mulan leaned in and closed her eyes.

She kissed Devin. Devin squeaked.

“Stop!” I said. Time slowed down like in a kung fu movie, and I heard myself say stooooppppppppp in full view of June. Before I knew what I was doing, C4’s remote had escaped my grip and landed at Mulan’s and Devin’s feet.

The remote clacked against the concrete. C4 froze. June yelped, loud enough to hear from the stands. The band started playing to cover up for our technical difficulties. Devin and Mulan broke apart, and Devin’s face was flushed. I power walked towards them before June could stop me, giving Mulan my best Mean Girls face.

I could tolerate seeing myself being popular and talking with boys and even holding hands with boys, but Mulan had gone too far. Me kissing a boy was just wrong. Me kissing a boy was even worse than deep dish Hawaiian white sauce anchovy pizza. I didn’t ever want to kiss a boy, nor did I ever want to imagine kissing a boy. Why couldn’t Mulan be more like C4 and simply follow the script I’d laid out for her?

Mulan stood up, redoing her ponytail with music video backup dancer finesse. “You need to stop. I’m not your dancing robot, Connie Jin. I wish I could stay here and see how you try to squirm out of explaining this, but I’m done with you. I have a new phone and won’t be giving you my number. Have a nice life. Don’t try to stop me, because I won’t be back.”

Her heels clacked as she walked away. Some part of me knew that if I let her go now, I wouldn’t ever see her again. I watched until she vanished into the crowd, hoping my family hadn’t seen the confrontation.

Devin’s eyes were still closed. “Mulan?” he bleated. “Can we kiss again?” He opened his eyes to find her gone, and he scurried after her.

I stood where Devin and Mulan were, waiting for June to get mad at me for ruining things with Mulan. The football game itself continued going as if nothing had happened, even though student council members were frantically running around and searching for Mulan for the delayed Homecoming coronation. Going home and hiding was at the top of my plans because Mulan was right, that I was nothing more than this bad Asian girl doomed to be stuck at the bottom of the social ladder and not sipping fruity drinks by a pool in LA. I felt something warm and wet in the corner of my eye as someone tapped my shoulder.

Clara waved at me, with the broken remote in her hand.

“Nice robot,” Clara said, handing over the remote. “You should be proud of yourself.”

“Thanks.” The remote cracked more in my grip. The club wouldn’t have the funds for a replacement. In my peripheral vision, C4 had fallen after freezing in its dance pose, hitting its head on concrete after losing its balance. So that was that. I had messed up with C4 and Mulan.

I wanted to cry, but Clara was there. I didn’t want her to see me like this. I wanted to be a little sister she was proud of.

Clara hugged me briefly. She smelled like her favorite peach shampoo, which I had forgotten she used until now. “Mom didn’t want to come.” Clara didn’t sound upset or surprised at this news. “It’s not your fault. She didn’t even come to my undergrad graduation because of the earthquake risk in California, did you know that? If not for you, I wouldn’t have visited.”

When we were kids, we used to do everything together, and I had gone to her to cry about my first (unfortunately straight) crush back in middle school. Our interactions hadn’t gone beyond superficial How are you doing? and What does Mom want to know now? text messages for the last few years, and I missed talking to her.

“Thanks for visiting,” I said. “Sorry. I’ve been kind of a jerk.”

“No, you were right,” she replied. She glanced down at her spotless shoes. “I’ve been a bad sister. I tried texting and calling you, but I guess you were too busy with school to pick up.”

“What? No, you’re the perfect sister.”

She chuckled before looking back up at me. “Perfect? Connie, I’m a mess. I’ve been lying to Mom and you about my grades. I had to repeat a class this year after failing it once. My friends were mad at me for ghosting them last year after a bad breakup, too. And Theo’s not my boyfriend, he has a boyfriend already. We’re just friends.” She showed me a hot pot restaurant photo on her phone. Clara was with her twenty-something friends, and Theo was seated next to an Asian boy, arm around his shoulder, caught mid-smile. Clara was telling the truth. “I promised him a free vacation and convinced him to come by telling him about how you were stuck with Mom. I hoped that she’d like him since his Mandarin is good, so maybe she’d pay attention to us over the TV for once. Even though he’s Korean, not Chinese like Mom would like, and his parents stopped talking to him after they found out about the boyfriend.”

Clara lying to Mom and me about her grades was hard to believe, although the photo was physical proof that Theo wasn’t her actual boyfriend. It hurt to learn that her perfect life was just as much a sham as Mulan was when pretending to be me in PE.

“I’m the bigger mess. I messed things up with Mom and broke C4,” I said. Not to mention Mulan, who had escaped from me after making Mom mad. Clara wasn’t the only one who had made mistakes recently.

“I don’t know about Mom, but the robot’s fixable. Aren’t you a pro with Google? Plus, you can always blame me. Tell your club president that I got in a fight with that girl who looked just like a cheerleader version of you. You were just trying to avenge me. We can tell Mom you postponed the apocalypse by defeating that girl, since she was leading a campaign to get an oil rig built in town.”

I laughed, despite everything. She laughed, too. The fact Mulan without makeup fooled Clara that we were the same person was funny, considering how different we were. I promised myself that I would come clean to Clara about Mulan.

June was heading towards the bleachers. She wasn’t just my best friend and unquestioning accomplice. She was her own person with her own friends outside of me. She was sure to be upset about Mulan and how the show had gone, given how much work we had put into the video last year. But if I could create a homunculus, I could get back on June’s good side. Tonight proved Mulan wouldn’t solve my problems. I had to apologize and fix things myself.

June stopped in front of me and my sister. She didn’t look happy.

Mulan was wrong. I wouldn’t run away this time. Holding on to the broken remote, I glanced at Clara. She put her hand on my shoulder. We were ready for whatever came next.