Plans I Have for You

by Lai Sanders

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Feminine rage, cancel culture, and suffocating societal pressure—a cutting and brazen thriller about two Asian American women on a quest for revenge after a public shaming pushes them to the limit, for fans of Yellowface and Counterfeit.

When a conflict with a fellow passenger on the subway spirals into a humiliating breakdown, Shelley Hu’s life is over. The incident goes viral, costing Shelley her prestigious Manhattan law firm internship, her spot at Columbia Law, and her plan to build a better life for herself and her mother.

Months later, Shelley is back in Kissimmee, Florida, working the night shift at a kitschy motel near Disney World—the very same job she held in high school. Shelley’s life is a black hole until, one night, the beautiful, enigmatic Sophia Moon checks in with her husband and young son. But Sophia’s appearance is far from random.

It turns out that, once upon a time, Sophia suffered her own episode of public shaming. Since then, Sophia has rebuilt a new life, and she promises to help Shelley do the same. More importantly, Sophia vows to help Shelley enact revenge on the three people responsible for the worst day of her life with a precise set of plans.

Shelley returns to New York with a new identity and plans that start off well. But when the situation soon spirals out of control, Shelley is forced to reckon with Sophia’s unspeakably dark side—though it may be too late.

Release date: March 17, 2026

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Print pages: 336

Sample

1. Shelley

SHELLEY

December 2016

“I don’t want to lie to you,” she said. “I know who you are.”

We sat across from each other at one of the small tables in the lobby. The whole place looked like a sunken pirate ship, and that was on purpose. The walls were aquamarine. The chairs were round, plastic, and clumsily painted in strokes of colors that gave the rough suggestion of wine barrels. And the pièce de résistance: The front desk where I worked, with its wooden wheel and glow-in-the-dark fish tank, was the stern of the ship. Glittering gold doubloons hung in strings. I was in a bright salmon shirt and a balding plastic lei, the same ones I always put on when I showed up for the night shift. I had drawn the line at wearing an eye patch.

It was two in the morning and the lobby was empty. Her eyes were moist, almost glistening. I didn’t know what to say to her. I took a sip of my coffee instead.

She had checked into the motel two nights before, arriving just minutes after I took over reception at ten thirty. Her husband was circling the parking lot in what I imagined was a minivan, looking for a spot. She’d led her kid inside by the hand and come up to me and said in one breath, “I’m so sorry to trouble you, but would it be all right if he uses your bathroom before we check in? We’ve been in the car for hours.”

It was one of those questions that instantly flipped my brain to autopilot. I jabbed a thumb behind me. “It’s right through this door.”

Before she shepherded the kid around the corner, she’d looked into my eyes and said, “I appreciate you so much.”

I could tell right away they were Korean. She had a small, pale, oval-shaped face and frizzy black hair pulled back into a loose bun. She was wrapped in a light-colored coat that made her look not rich but comfortable, like an ad for Everlane. When they finally checked in, she picked up a pen and I saw an audience of rings, cheap, dainty little things, across all five fingers. Stars and moons and obviously fake gemstones.

As for the dad: There was less to say about him. He was lanky. He wore a baggy gray sweatshirt that said CORNELL. And he had that energy a lot of men had, where if he came into the same room as you and stood there quietly, you wouldn’t even hear him breathe.

Not long after I moved back to Florida, my mom became convinced that we were being punished by a jinn.

It’s angry at us for some reason, she’d say, pacing the length of the kitchen table. I can feel it. It’s in the air.

I didn’t ask her any questions. In those first days back, I had pretty much stopped talking. In the mornings, after we ate breakfast and my mom left for her shift at the motel, I’d pile the dirty dishes in the sink, slip back under the covers, and let the daylight hours waste away like sand. In the afternoons, when I finally talked myself into getting up to pee, I’d catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror on the armoire, gray and hunched over the edge of the bed, the collar on my T-shirt greasy with sweat. Another day.

Also: The jinn stuff was old news to me. It had been there all along.

I was six years old when my grandmother first told me about the jinn, not long after my dad died and she and my grandfather had moved in with me and my mom. It usually visited her at the tail end of her long afternoon naps, emerging from the shadows in the walls and crouching over her body: a dark, silent, faceless figure that took its rest directly on her beating heart. I couldn’t see the jinn, but I could see the force of its weight. I’d see the tiny tremors in her fingers and toes, the way her chest quivered with shallow breaths. I’d see my grandmother’s eyes, glassy with terror, her tears carving a glistening trail down her papery face.

Over time, we’d learned the best way to deal with it. I’d lay my head over her chest, my ear to her heart, and count out loud for her. One. Two. Three. Four. By thirty, her heartbeat would start to slow. By sixty, she could move her fingers, wriggle her toes. By two hundred, sometimes three hundred, she could find her voice again. I’m okay, she would say, straining to raise her arm so that she could stroke my hair, her palm damp with sweat. It’s gone. It’s gone.

Count yourself lucky that you can’t see it, she would say once she was back on her feet. These things make themselves best known to those who have experienced the greatest despair.

My grandmother was right, it turned out.

Because here I was eighteen years later, back in the ratty little apartment I’d grown up in, no job, no Columbia Law, no friends, no reputation, no future. Nothing left in my life but my mom and the vast, bitter disappointment that she hid behind a flimsy veil.

The day after I returned to Kissimmee, lying in the bed where my grandmother had once slept, I saw the jinn peel away from the shadows and slither onto my bed. This time, it had come for me.

And this time, there was no one who could make it leave.

A month after she picked me up from the Orlando airport, my mom burst into my room with a red plastic pail. “Look what I got for you,” she said.

It was filled with water and about a dozen small dark-green turtles; some were paddling wildly across the surface, while others were motionless at the bottom, either resting or dead. “Manuel from maintenance got these from his brother-in-law at the pet store for a discount,” my mom said. “Twelve turtles for less than two hundred dollars.”

“I don’t want twelve pet turtles, Ma.”

“They’re not pets,” my mom said. Her face was shining with an animation I hadn’t seen since the day I told her that I’d landed a coveted internship at one of the biggest law firms in New York City. “Get up and get dressed. We’re going to do a life release ceremony.”

At Lake Toho, we found a quiet dock overlooking a marshy mass of lily pads and bulrushes and yellow-tinged water. In the distance was a gray bark-like thing that was either driftwood or a snoozing alligator. I looked down at the pail in my hands, where the turtles were stirring uneasily, and back at my mom. “So what am I supposed to do?”

There was a pause, and that was when I realized she hadn’t thought this far ahead. “I don’t know,” my mom said. “Just pour them into the water gently, I guess.”

“Should we even be doing this? We don’t even know if they can survive in this habitat. They could get eaten by a gator.”

“They’re not going to die,” she said. “We’re giving them a new life. That’s why it’s called a life release.”

She stepped forward to stand next to me. “Put them in the water, and I’ll say something. A prayer.”

As I tipped the bucket, my mom clasped her hands together. “Dear Buddha,” she began, her voice tentative. “Dear Guanyin bodhisattva, my daughter has saved these turtles from a pet store, and she is now giving them back to nature. So please… please bless my daughter. Please give her good fortune and protect her from evil things. Thank you.”

The last turtle fell into the lake with a plomp. My mom and I looked at each other. “You lied, Ma,” I said.

“What?”

“You lied to the bodhisattva. You told her I was the one who got the turtles when really, it was Manuel. So now the karma’s going to him instead.”

For a moment, I saw my mom’s brows come together, a deep ridge forming in her forehead; then she relaxed. “Oh, what does it matter who got them?” she said. “You were the one who let them go. The karma belongs to you.”

In the car, as we put on our seat belts, my mom became pensive again. I watched her absentmindedly rub the car keys between her fingers, and after a while she said, “If this doesn’t get rid of the jinn, maybe next week we should go to a mosque and ask for the imam’s guidance.”

I couldn’t help it, then. I let my head fall back against the headrest and exhaled. “Jesus, Ma, are you for real?”

“Don’t say that. And I’m serious. There’s a big masjid in Orlando that has a Chinese person on staff, a Hui like us. I saw a flyer on the bulletin board in the Chinese supermarket.”

“When was the last time you even stepped foot in a mosque?”

“Three years ago,” she said. “I went to one with your little aunt when I was visiting her in Henan. You know she’s become very devout in the last few years. She’s even applied to the Chinese government for permission to go to Mecca. And she prays five times a day, like clockwork.”

“Yeah, only because she found out she has cancer.”

My mom winced. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true, though,” I said. “Didn’t you guys stop being Muslim during the Cultural Revolution because you were afraid of getting beat up by the Red Guards or something? That’s what Laolao and Laoye told me. And then Dad died, so you were born-again Christian for, like, five minutes because you thought that would help him get into heaven, and now you’re tossing turtles in a lake and praying to Buddha because you think that’s going to get me out of the shit I’m in. But it doesn’t work like that. Religion isn’t a buffet. You can’t diversify your portfolio by investing in multiple gods. You can’t be…”

There was no other word for it. “You can’t be so fucking Chinese about it, Ma.”

The car was silent. My mom was no longer looking at me; she was staring into the bushes at the end of the parking lot.

When she finally spoke, she said, “You know what’s going to get you out of the shit you’re in? A job.”

In the lobby, the Asian mom smiled at me. “I was hoping to get your advice on something.”

It was the first time I’d seen her since they checked in. She was wearing this formfitting lavender jacket, the sporty kind you go jogging in. “I’m thinking about going out for a walk.”

The clock on my desk said 02:27. I said, “Out by yourself?”

“I can’t sleep. My son and husband, they sleep like logs. But lucky me—I’m a lifelong insomniac.”

Then she said, “It looked like a busy block when we were driving around in the daytime. There’s that pizza place nearby. Lots of hotels and souvenir shops. But I just wanted to ask—do you find it safe, personally? You know, for people like us?”

There was a pause.

I said, “I would probably stay on the premises if I were you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t think you’d necessarily get mugged if you went out. This is a pretty safe area. It’s just—”

She finished the sentence for me. “It’s late.”

“It’s late.”

The mom nodded slowly. “I guess I’ll stay put, then. Thanks for the advice.”

She half turned, glancing at the brochure stand by the front desk, and that was when she noticed the pot of coffee sitting out. “Oh, look at that! Just what I was looking for.”

As she reached for a paper cup, I said, “That’s not decaf. Just a heads-up.”

“Oh, that’s sweet of you. But I’m way past that. Caffeine, decaf, melatonin, even prescription stuff—none of it makes a difference. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for decades.”

She turned to face me. “I’m Korean. Well, Korean American, but also Korean Korean. My parents and I moved from Seoul to Massachusetts when I was eleven. We had this family joke that I never got over the jet lag. I nap during the day. At night, that’s when I’m wide awake. All of my best work, I’ve done at night.”

When she brought the cup to her lips and took a sip, I saw that her fingers were long, thin, and bare. No rings.

She said, “I know this might be strange, but would it be all right if I gave you a hug?”

“Um,” I said.

She didn’t wait for permission. She picked her way around the desk, stepping gingerly over a box of opened brochures, and wrapped her arms around me. My limbs froze; my brain went wheels up. I considered wriggling out of her grip. Clearing my throat and saying, Okay, thanks for that.

But I didn’t. She kept hugging me, the soft fleece of her lavender jacket pressed against my skin. Time seemed to move differently. Everything slowed down. She smelled faintly of pine trees and snow; the gurgling sound in the fish tank behind us was like a lullaby. When she finally let go of me and we looked into each other’s faces, something about her was different.

She was crying.

“Oh,” I said. My mind was still reeling. “Oh, um… are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m wonderful, actually. I’m just really happy right now.”

I passed her a tissue and watched as she blew her nose quietly and folded the used tissue neatly, into a square.

She said, “The reason I’m so happy is because I finally got to meet you. It wasn’t easy to track you down after you had deleted all of your social media accounts. I had to call a lot of hotels in Kissimmee before I found you at this one.”

It took a few seconds for the words to sink in.

“You were looking for me?”

“I was.”

“Are you a journalist?”

She shook her head.

“I’m not a journalist. I’m an artist. But more importantly, I’m a friend. To you. Because I have… I have been exactly where you’ve been, you know.”

I blinked at her.

“It’s why I came all the way to Florida, in fact. I came here to tell you that everything you’ve gone through, I have gone through. Every emotion you have experienced, every fear, every moment of despair—I’ve felt it. Because what happened to you? It also happened to me.”

She smiled at me, and I felt the hairs on my back stand up.

She knew. Fuck, she knew.

Everything about her was suddenly too close. Her hair, her breath, the warmth of her body through her lavender jacket. I got up from my chair and shoved it against the pigeonhole behind me; a stack of letters fell out with a clatter. She was still, quiet, watching me.

I said, “You also had a mental breakdown on the 6 Train, exposed yourself, and had the whole thing filmed by a reporter from the New York Gazette?”

Her voice got a little quiet. “No, I didn’t.”

“Then excuse my language, but how the fuck would you know?”

She nodded at my phone. “Look up the name Soyoung Kim—or, actually, don’t, there’s so many people with that name, the results are all muddied now. Search for ‘Cornell Hobo.’ Or ‘Homeless Heather.’ Read the first news article that comes up, and when you’re done, come have a coffee with me.”

I watched as she refilled her cup. She went to a chair in the lobby and sat. Her pale face was turned towards me, calm, waiting.

Against my better judgment, I followed her. I typed the words Cornell Hobo into my phone, and in that silence punctuated only by the occasional hiss and gurgle from the fish tank, I began to read.