by David Yoon
She’s good.
“Frankie-ya,” says Mom. “Say bye to Joy.”
“Bye, Joy,” I say, not missing a beat.
“Aigu, Frankie, stop playing and say bye.”
“It’s okay,” says Joy. “Isn’t he so silly?”
Joy holds a finger-phone up to her ear—Brief me later—and leaves.
We’ve reached the part of the song where Brit and I must actually dance touching each other, and we do—just both palms joined, practically puritanical in its innocence, but to me it feels like getting married. Me and Brit, making asses out of ourselves with everyone as our witness. Including Mom, who just shakes her head with bemusement.
The dance ends. Brit and I heave our chests and watch the score rack up.
“Frank ninety-two, Brit one hundred,” shouts Naima Gupta. “Purr-fect.”
I’m so happy for Brit that I thrust my hands in the air to cheer, and immediately punch a solid wooden ledge by the fireplace.
Brit snatches up my hand. “Ouch. Are you okay?”
“I’m purr-fect,” I say, laughing. I’ve skinned my middle knuckle, but who cares.
I feel like I’ve dodged the swing of a huge razor-sharp pendulum. Tonight was a close one. But it was worth it. Brit and I sit jammed tight next to each other on the couch with the others, and she rests her sweaty arm on top of mine, and for a long moment I can picture things how I’d like them to be. Not how others think they should be, but how I want them: my terms, me, me, me.
One day, I’ll sit on this couch and kiss Brit Means like it’s nothing.
Suddenly Brit springs up. “I’ll help,” she says to someone. To Mom.
For Brit has spotted Mom clearing the table. When she tries to help, Mom holds her at bay with gentle refusal. But Brit leans in, armed with powerful manners of her own. A spectacular polite fight ensues that culminates with Mom awarding Brit an apron and a place at the sink. Brit’s good. Really good.
I try to help, but Mom shoos me away. “Go play,” she says.
“Yeah, go play,” says Brit, and draws a long line of soapsuds down my forearm. She gives me a look like Can you believe I’m washing dishes with your mom?
The fake dating, this fake barbecue, all of it on paper equals me lying to Brit. All of it equals me treating my gentle, smart, kind girl bad. I know this, but I find it easy to pretend otherwise for now—because look at them, washing dishes like this. This must count for something in the long run. Right?
* * *
• • •
Everyone leaves at the same time. I walk them outside; Mom stands in her apron, waving from the porch.
“Thank you, Mrs. Li,” says Q.
“You welcome, Q,” says Mom.
“That was so amazing just the way the barbecue was marinated so perfectly and all those dishes must have taken you forever to make but they were totally worth it,” says Amelie Shin as she vanishes into Q’s car along with the rest of the Apeys.
“잘 먹었습니다,” says Brit out of nowhere. Chal mogosumnida is the proper way to thank a host after a meal: I ate well, thank you.
“Holy shit,” I say.
“Oh,” cries Mom. “You speaking Korean?”
“Well,” says Brit. Now it’s her turn to blush. “The Internet does.”
“천만에요,” says Mom. Cheonmanaeyo. You’re welcome.
Brit gives me a sly smirk. I frown and arch an eyebrow, impressed. Who studies vocab the night before a date?
A nerd. A beautiful nerd.
Q toots a farewell toot. As he backs out of the driveway, there’s Dad, pulling into the driveway. Dad gets out in time to wave hi-bye at Q’s car full of Apeys. Then he turns toward the house and sees me, sees Brit.
“Hey, Dad,” I say. “How was The Store?”
“Oh, same-o same,” says Dad, which is his version of same-old, same-old. He smiles at Brit. “Nice see you again.” And he heads into the house.
Brit and I look at each other like That went better this time.
“I’m gonna walk Brit to her car,” I say.
“Very be careful,” says Mom.
“It’s fifty feet,” I say.
When Brit and I walk the ten paces to her car, the urge to throw my arm around her waist almost sends me into shouting floor spasms. She smiles. But she’s quiet. I dare a glance at the front doorway: Mom is gone, leaving only an empty orange rectangle of light. So I hook an index finger and tip Brit’s chin up to face me.
“Hey,” I say. “You’re my favorite, did you know that?”
Brit takes my hand in hers. I check to make sure it’s not visible from the front door.
“I know what I’m up against,” says Brit, because Brit Means is not stupid.
But I pretend anyway. “What do you mean?”
“I know your mom wishes you were with Joy.”
“Did she say something to you?”
“She didn’t have to,” says Brit, playing with the thick part between my thumb and forefinger. “But man, she really, really wishes it. She knows Joy’s with Wu, right?”
“She doesn’t, because I’m pretending to date Joy to hide you from Mom-n-Dad.”
I of course say no such thing. Part of me wants to just do it. But I think about how much those words would hurt Brit, so I leave them unsaid. Instead I say:
“I’m sorry about Mom. It’s such bullshit.”
“It’s okay,” says Brit. “It’s just—you’ve seen how my family is. I’m not used to being held at a safe distance. And look at me. I’m as safe as safe bets get.”
“You’re way better than safe,” I say. “I so want to kiss you.”
“Me too, frankly.”
“Here we are, wanting to kiss, and we can’t. I’m sorry.”
We stare at each other for five otherworldly seconds. Five seconds on Venus.
“Can you bear with the bullshit?” I say. “I promise you it’ll be worth it.”
I’m saying it to myself, too. I promise all this gem swapping, all this deceit upon deceit, will be worth it.
“As long as we’re honest about what we’re dealing with,” she says, all trust and smiles, and gets into her car to drive away.
Her word honest slithers up my pant leg like a vine of shame. Her car slides around the corner and fades away. I stand there as the night increases its volume around me.
My phone buzzes. It’s Joy.
Everything okay?
I survived, I say.
I’m sorry
Not your fault! Can’t avoid the physics of parental forces.
Joy types for a while, then says: Everything would be so much easier if only we just actually liked each other lol
“If only,” I say.
chapter 14
more true
5PM
J+F: DEBRIEFING
6PM
J: DINNER (LOCATION TBD)
F: WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM EXHIBIT @ THE HENRY GALLERY
8PM
J: SKEEBALL TOURNAMENT @ GAMEDOME
F: BEACH
11PM RETURN TO BASE
Making the drop is kind of a pain this time around—apparently Wu’s decided on a Cheese Barrel Grille right behind the very place I’m taking Brit, this pop-up art event thing called We All Scream for Ice Cream. I let Joy out of the car.
“Go do you,” I call through the window, quoting Joy back to her.
“You too,” she says, strutting backward.
Then I drive over to Brit’s. I climb the steps to her house and knock on her red door and she appears immediately, as if she’d been waiting just on the other side.
We stand there for a moment, just admiring each other. Her tee shirt reads WHAT HAS FOUR LETTERS, which takes me a second to get. Brit immediately kisses me. She hangs on to my ne
ck. And when Brit’s dad appears, she doesn’t let go. Again, I’m amazed at how comfortable her family is with open affection.
“Hey, Frankie,” says Brit’s dad, dressed in a gray tracksuit, cradling a beaker of tea.
“Hey, Mr. Means.”
“I read in the paper about this ice-cream exhibit thing. They’re calling it art for the Snapstory generation.”
Snapstory is an app where you can share photos. Everyone uses it, everyone loves it, everyone hates it. It’s basically this horrible corporate surveillance machine that cranks out nonstop soul-crushing envy as a side bonus.
“Eh, I’m taking a break from Snapstory these days,” I say. It’s true. I feel so much happier not having to obsess over getting or giving likes.
“Really?” says Mr. Means. “I was just thinking I should get up to speed on Snapstory.”
“It’s a super-self-conscious, super-judgy place. You can’t just be yourself.”
“So everyone there is faking it.” He sips his beaker.
I nod with a knowing eyebrow: Pathetic, right?
I shake Brit’s dad’s hand and dance away with his daughter down the steps, and when we get into the QL5 to drive away, Brit puts her hand atop mine atop the drive shifter knob and we sit in silence like a young king and queen sharing a scepter.
The pop-up museum is in what once was Playa Mesa’s old factory district. There’s a bunch of hipster restaurants and bars in converted warehouses; people my age go there to pretend we’re adults already. Hanna used to take me here before.
Before she got disowned.
I park and snap a pic of the outside of the museum: it looks like a corrugated hangar that’s been attacked by giant multicolored scoops of ice cream. But I don’t Snapstory it—I text it to Hanna.
Guess where I am.
Look at you, hipster, writes Hanna in a rare quick response. I wonder where she is. Is she at home, curled up next to Miles? On the train going home from work?
I miss you, I want to write. Also, I’m dating Brit by fakedating Joy. But me and Hanna don’t really talk like that. Instead we use the world as our backboard, like squash players.
I’m growing a beard and a man bun after this just to piss you off, I say. This means I wish you were here.
You do and I’ll come back and cut that shit off myself, says Hanna. This means I miss you too, little brother.
And when I say I dare you, I really mean: I wish you could come home and everything could be simple like it used to be.
I wait and wait for a response, then give up. When Hanna goes silent, it could be ten minutes or ten days before she writes again.
“Who’s that?” says Brit.
“Hanna.”
Brit knows I have a sister Hanna. She knows I love her. She knows she’s cool. Brit knows because I’ve told her so. But she doesn’t know about the Miles situation.
“Tell her I say hi,” says Brit.
“I will,” I say, but I don’t.
Inside the museum we find ourselves surrounded by a forest of towering sugar cones and Popsicles the size of felled trees.
Brit cranes her neck in amazement. “Guh, I feel like Brit and the Brownie Factory.”
“I feel like Frank and the Frozen Yogurt Factory.”
There’s a swing made of licorice; there’s a climbable wall of gumdrops the size of watermelons. In the distance, I can see people swimming in a pool full of rainbow-colored jimmy sprinkles. Everyone is doing the Snapstory dance: swing the phone up, pose for the photo, then chimp around the screen hunting for the perfect emoji, stickers, and filters to post with.
“This place is manipulating my brain at the ganglion cellular level,” says Brit. “Must. Take out. Phone.”
“Stay strong, dammit,” I say, shaking her shoulders. They’re awesome shoulders.
“Must. Snapstory.”
She takes her phone out of her back pocket, raises it, and tucks her face close in beside mine.
“Come on, one selfie,” she says, laughing. “Let’s brag about us. Let’s make everyone feel like shit compared with us.”
For a full second, panic racks my body like a fever. I imagine our selfie going up, then one of the Limbos seeing it, then one of their parents perhaps catching a glimpse over their shoulder, then phone calls to Joy’s mom and my mom, and then the slow rumble of suspicion and its impending questions looming dark in the sky.
But no way in Pastafarian hell can I deny Brit a selfie. To do so would be incredibly awkward. Like ruin-the-night awkward.
So we take the selfie. At the last second, Brit kisses my cheek. The kiss is captured. She tags it, stickers it, face-filters it, the whole nine, until it becomes a perfect mess of a social media garbage plate. Then she hits Share. It’s undeniably a boyfriend-girlfriend selfie. There is nothing at all friend-friend or study-buddy about it. She writes a caption:
Love demands you do stupid things like post goofy selfies, but if that’s what love takes, then I can be stupid all day. At #WeAllScreamForIceCreamExhibit with @frankofhouseli
Wait. Is Brit saying she loves me?
I look at the photo, then at Brit. I want to know how it would feel to say the word love. But I’m scared of where that would lead. I’m scared of the stakes it would raise. I find myself standing paralyzed before a whole entire next level to our relationship.
“There’s a whole entire next level to this exhibit,” says Brit, and leads me up a flight of vanilla wafer stairs. At the top they’re handing out samples of ice cream with bizarre flavors, like jasmine and bacon caramel.
“I’ll try the jalapeño pistachio,” says Brit.
“Getting crazy,” I say, kissing her cheek. “I’ll try the cinnamon churro.”
“Frankenbrit!” says a voice in strong California Surfer Local.
It’s Wu.
“I saw your post, so I figured—” says Wu with a little pop-n-lock move “—we’d come check it out to kill some time.”
Joy appears from behind a gummy bear the size of a real bear. “The wait for Cheese Barrel Grille is like ninety minutes.”
I have to stifle a laugh. Joy absolutely despises Cheese Barrel Grille, whose presence fatally undermines any hipster cred the warehouse district might’ve had. She hates it down to its spelling of Grille with that extra French-for-no-reason e.
French-for-no-reason is originally Brit’s joke. Brit is here, Joy is here, Wu is here. We’re all here standing close together, and it makes me feel like my deception is hidden only by the thinnest of curtains, ready to be revealed by the slightest accidental breeze. My head starts to spin and my heels leave the floor just a millimeter.
Wu starts performing for a selfie video, and he hook-arms Joy into the frame, where they make goofy faces and stick out their tongues and laugh. But as soon as he stops recording, he’s all business, tagging and captioning and whatever. Brit leans in to help Wu spell tags correctly. While they screen-chimp, I whisper to Joy.
“Seeing all of us together is kinda freaking me out.”
But Joy seems lost in her own thoughts. “We’re fighting.”
Fighting? A moment ago they were having fun for the camera. Then I remind myself that social media is all a lie. “Why?” I say.
“Same shit,” says Joy. “He feels like I’m holding him at a distance. Because I am.”
“Wait, so it’s hashtag?” says Wu to Brit. “Not circle-A?”
“Hashtag,” says Brit. “And then hit Share.”
“Nice, thanks,” says Wu with a moonwalk step. Then he notices Brit’s tee shirt.
WHAT HAS FOUR LETTERS
Wu thinks. “I don’t know. What has four letters?”
“That’s the joke,” says Brit. “What has four letters.”
Wu stares and stares.
“W-H-A-T,” says Brit, counting on her fingers. “Four
letters.”
“It’s the word what!” cries Wu. He claps his big hands once. “Which has four letters! Fuck, Brit Means, that’s funny—but like mind-blowing also?”
He looks around at the room as if to say, Have you seen this fucking tee shirt? Many, many girls stare back at him. He elevates his elbow, runs a hand through his hair, and stuns every single one of them with his eyes: zap-zap-zap. Their boyfriends lead them away like orderlies.
“I just wish we could be ourselves, out in the open like everyone else,” says Joy. I can see a weariness in her eyes. She looks tired.
“I wish the same wish,” I say.
Joy’s left buttock starts vibrating. She reaches into the pocket and holds up a restaurant pager flashing angry red.
“Baby, our table’s ready,” says Joy.
“Fuck yeah,” says Wu. “See you, Brit. See you, my Asian stud brotha!”
He gives me a devastating body slam of a hug. Like many things Wu Tang, Asian stud brotha somehow makes sense coming only from him and no one else. When he says it, I start to think, I am Asian; I am a stud; I am a brotha. Even though by the next minute I’ll have no idea what any of that meant.
I watch them leave. I watch and watch. I realize what I’m watching for: a lookback from Joy.
Joy looks back with a smile and a shrug. Wish me luck, Frank.
“Wu is so . . .” says Brit, searching for the word.
“Dumb?”
Brit looks shocked. “No!”
“It’s okay, you can call him dumb. He’s dumb. I still like him.”
“It’s just that Joy’s so . . .”
“Smart?” I say, with a little pride. For Joy is my very good friend, maybe better than I fully realize. I’m proud to know her.
Brit nuzzles my neck. “You’re smart.”
“I’m not so smart,” I say. “I’m kind of a dum-dum.”
Brit giggles. But it’s true. Only a dummy would keep a girl like Brit a secret. Only a dummy would think that made any kind of sense. Or that it was in any way fair.
* * *
• • •
“Should be peak sparkles right about now,” says Brit. “Wanna see?”
