The Iron Will of Genie Lo

by F. C. Yee

  The families from New England and the Midwest, though, ate it up.

  “I can’t believe how hard it was raining back in Boston,” one mother said, marveling, as if the West Coast weren’t all the way across the country from the East Coast.

  Well, get used to it, I thought. If the weather kept staying as pretty as this, we wouldn’t have any more almonds, ever.

  A bunch of visitors, me included, had clumped up near the campus entrance by an octagonal fountain with an aged cement dish for a spout. I’d already been mistaken for a current student several times. While we waited for our respective people to come and get us, small talk naturally gravitated toward oohing and aahing at our surroundings.

  I could admit that the architecture was a big deal. It was absolutely, objectively, especially stunning. I’d seen pictures online, of course, but even the college’s official website didn’t do the sprawling sandstone buildings justice. The pinkish-brown archways that surrounded the courtyard we were standing in gave it a cloistered, peaceful feel.

  It was the most spacious place I’d ever been in. The mission-tiled roofs and dominating chapel seemed to flatten the energy of the campus into a perfect, true plane. Where an Ivy League university nestled in a city might bunch its students into hamster habitats, here in NorCal we were, like, spread out and chill, man.

  The green, ripe lawns sang with fresh-cut scent. Students floated through the pathways like platelets. Over the wafting breeze I heard the faint trills of a brass band playing “Louie Louie.”

  I shook my head and sneezed to break the spell. I reminded myself that despite this school’s stellar reputation, it was not and had never been my first choice. I wasn’t going to apply here.

  It was too close to home. I had no desire to spend another four years in the Bay, riding the same train I’d just stepped off of. I wanted to see what snow looked like. I wanted to hear people say mad or wicked instead of hella. How was I going to evolve as a person if I was stuck in the same petri dish my entire life? I didn’t want to be part of the control group. I wanted variables.

  So no. I was only here this weekend to window shop. My goal was to see what a college might be like. This place would at least serve as a stand-in for the faraway campuses I couldn’t afford to visit. I had told no one about mentally crossing this school off my list for fear of having to explain my complicated feelings. Quentin and Yunie still thought this place and I were a match made in Heaven.

  A shame. It really was pretty. I felt the urge to flop backward onto the grass with my arms outstretched and take a nap.

  “Stultifying, isn’t it?” an unfamiliar voice said behind me. I turned around.

  Yunie had returned with a tall (by normal standards), broad-shouldered girl draped in a hoodie the size of a poncho. She had a round, unmoving face as opposed to Yunie’s expressive angles. Any lingering hope of a family resemblance was killed by the chunky glasses perched on her nose.

  “Ji-Hyun,” she said, shaking my hand. “Don’t let the vibe fool you. On the surface it looks relaxed, but underneath it’s a shark pit. This place will get as competitive as you want it to be.”

  Yunie must have coached her cousin on how to appeal to my base desires. “The way back to my place goes through most of the important stops, so if you don’t mind dragging your bags for a bit, we can knock out the tour in one go,” Ji-Hyun said.

  It wasn’t like we had a better proposal in mind. We wheeled our squeaky carry-ons behind her for a few paces before realizing we were being followed.

  “Folks,” Ji-Hyun called out to the other prospective students and their families trailing behind us. “I’m not an official guide. You need to wait by the quad.”

  “Can’t we come with you anyway?” said one boy who’d picked up on Ji-Hyun’s general air of knowing what she was doing.

  “No,” she snapped. “Beat it.” The harshness of her tone caused the crowd to fall back.

  Well, guess who I liked right away.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  By the time we pulled up to Ji-Hyun’s apartment, we weren’t on campus anymore. The wheels on our luggage threatened to melt through their axels from friction.

  Our final destination was a condo building shaped like a pile of cardboard boxes whose former owners had been too lazy to break down for recycling. Each residency jutted out, offset from the others, painted in alternating shades of beige. A dusting of prematurely dried leaves covered the street leading up to it.

  Yunie wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Did we really have to look at two cafeterias and three different libraries instead of something nicer?”

  “Well, yeah,” Ji-Hyun said. “We’re talking about four years of your life here. A successful visit means figuring out whether or not you can tolerate the school in the long run. There’s no point in showing you a landmark or a gallery you’re never going to bother with again as a student.”

  We entered the apartment complex and walked up the narrow hallway to Ji-Hyun’s place. Her door had been painted several times over, as if it had been formerly exposed to the elements. “This is me,” she said. “Make yourselves at home.”

  The inward swing knocked over a shopping bag full of empty glass bottles. Yunie and I stared in horror.

  Her kitchen was more beer can than floor. Flies made strafing runs over a tower of unwashed dishes glued together at unnatural angles by dried foodstuffs. The pullout couch that we were nominally crashing on lay buried under piles of clothes that encompassed the entire spectrum of the laundering process. Most articles were firmly in the “haven’t started” phase and were transitioning into “never will.”

  We weren’t paying a visit. We were passing through a portal to a plane of elemental filth.

  “Ji-Hyun, you . . . have roommates, right?” Yunie said.

  “Five other girls,” Ji-Hyun said. She cracked open a beer that had appeared in her hand like magic. “It can get a little messy in here. That’s why the party’s down the hall this week.”

  We gingerly pushed our way inside. I trod like a fisherman on a deck, avoiding shadows and coils that might tighten around my ankle without warning and drag me below the waves.

  “Do your aunt and mom know she lives like this?” I whispered to Yunie.

  “This . . . I don’t even . . .” My friend had gone numb with shock.

  Ji-Hyun somehow found enough space on the counter to hop up and sit. “Another thing to know about college is that at any given time of day, there is always something more important to do than clean. Studying, partying, sleeping. Anything else goes by the wayside. Maybe indefinitely.”

  She let out a burp. “Microeconomics one-oh-one. Rationality at work.”

  “It’s not rational to take out the trash!?” Yunie shrieked, holding up a dripping bag that had been long forgotten.

  “Whoops, that one’s on me,” Ji-Hyun said. “Unless you want to repay me for my hospitality and take it outside?”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  “I don’t know how you’re hungry after that,” Yunie said. “I may never get that smell out of my nostrils.”

  “We still need to eat,” I said. Besides the fact that we’d skipped lunch for the tour, I had the sinking feeling that we’d need a buffer in our stomachs for tonight’s party.

  Having abandoned our bags in Ji-Hyun’s apartment to whatever beasts lurked among the wastes there, the two of us meandered along a downtown street full of shops and restaurants. Outdoor seating bled from cafes into the sidewalks. Heat lamps that hadn’t been turned on yet stood guard over the tables, a grim reminder that the weather could still stab us in the back and go freezing at a moment’s notice, the flipside of the Bay Area climate that no one ever talked about. Thin trees spaced themselves down the blocks, a token nicety that probably pleased the local dogs more than their owners.

  This town was basically Santa Firenza with money. The boba may have come in reusable glass jars and there might have been more upscale ramen restaurants than the laws of common sense dictate
d, but it was still the same flat, zoning-restricted, Northern California pancake of a burb. Maybe what I needed out of life was to swap places with Boston Mom.

  “Found a spot yet?” Yunie asked.

  “Everything is so expensive,” I grumbled as I checked another menu posted in a window. Seriously, what they charged for a taco in these parts was criminal. Had none of their customers been to the city before?

  Out of ideas, I pulled Yunie into a coffee shop that also had sandwiches. The interior was faintly lit and wooden, stained dark and glossy like a British pub. A hodgepodge of worn-down couches that promised no butt support at all made up most of the seating. A number of bespectacled TA-looking types were buried in the cushions, tapping away at aluminum laptops. The line for the counter was disproportionately long compared to the square footage of the place.

  “Grab seats before they fill up,” Yunie said. “I’m assuming you want the Cuban?”

  I nodded as I sidled through the gaps in the tables, trying to reach a two-top in the corner that hadn’t been claimed by a single person and their backpack like all the others had. I bumped a charger that had been carelessly placed in the aisle, knocking out the magnetic dongle from its device.

  The owner looked up at me with a frown, and then did a double take.

  I’ll have to get used to that again, I reminded myself. This wasn’t my hometown school, where everyone had acclimated to my height over the years.

  But the college kid’s surprise was only fleeting, without the usual disdain or gawking that came after. He smiled and yanked the cord out of my path. “Sorry, I’m in your way.”

  “Yeah,” I said. He was.

  I sat down on the free armchair and sank so fast that I had to catch my skirt from riding up. I tugged it back over my knees and glanced around to make sure no one saw.

  College Kid was hacking away at a long sentence, but still caught me looking at him. He bit his lip shyly and pretended to be engrossed in whatever idea he would lay down next, but the tapping of his fingers stopped.

  “That’s, uh, that’s a striking color,” he ventured.

  “Huh?”

  He waved his hand around his eyes. “The gold. That’s not natural, is it?”

  Oh. That. Quentin and I had long given up on masking my (ugh) golden true sight eyes with brown, and I’d completely forgotten they were such an outlandish hue. I should have gotten them touched up before the long weekend, but he and I—

  Man. We were fighting, weren’t we? Quentin and I were having our first fight. Hooray for couple milestones.

  I pushed the notion aside for now, or else I’d start wallowing. “No, they’re not natural,” I said.

  “Aw. I thought maybe it could have been a mutation of your OCA2. It would have been pretty special.”

  “I’d better hope my OCA3 picks up the slack then.”

  I was somewhat pleased with myself when the guy laughed. I was well aware that my image at SF Prep was cold and prickly, a giant cactus that no one could get near. But this was college-level banter I was succeeding at. I could set a better tone than I did those first few days at SF Prep where I was too hung up to talk to anyone besides Yunie.

  “Genie, could you come here for a sec?” Yunie said, louder than she needed to.

  “I’ll save your spot,” said the guy.

  I extricated myself from the chair and joined Yunie in line. “Are you out of cash?”

  “No, not that,” she whispered. “That guy’s a creep.”

  “What?”

  She nudged the air with her chin. “I caught a glimpse of his laptop.”

  The line had moved to the point where I couldn’t see what she was talking about. I debated in my head how wrong it would be to shoulder surf, and decided I could take the hit to my karma. I put my hand to my temple and beheld.

  This was an especially egregious misuse of my powers. But I saw what Yunie meant. The guy I’d been talking to wasn’t working. He was on some kind of chat app, the thread full of crude memes and gifs, including a few that I didn’t understand how he wasn’t being kicked out of the cafe for looking at.

  ayyy im about to climb everest, he typed.

  WUT went the person on the other end.

  theres this alternative japanese chick at the rookery shes so tall her legs go to the ceiling

  tatted up her arm and wears contacts

  I looked down at my wrist. I’d forgone my sweatband in favor of long sleeves, but they weren’t long enough. The iron Milky Way mark peeked out.

  you know when theyre in the rebelling against daddy phase thats the time to strike

  PICS

  PICSPICSPICS

  ill try to get her to lean over the camera when she sits down again

  I blinked back to normal. Our order was up.

  “We’ll take it to go, please,” I said to the cashier.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  “You’re looking a little shell-shocked there, Stretch,” Ji-Hyun said.

  We were safe back in her apartment. I didn’t think I would ever call such a festering pit safe, but here we were. I hugged my knees to my chest, perched on top of a beanbag that had more dried stains than a Pollock painting. Yunie was taking her turn in the shower.

  “Are . . . are guys terrible?” I said.

  Ji-Hyun shrugged. “I hear yours is pretty good.”

  My guy’s not human, I thought. And he’d needed a while to come around to the limits of acceptability. I supposed if I gave Quentin the benefit of the doubt, his early bad behavior toward me was weapon-related confusion and not him wanting to hit it and quit it.

  Anyway, now wasn’t the time to give Quentin the benefit of the doubt. We were fighting. And I wasn’t thinking about him.

  Ji-Hyun drained the last of her beer. I had no idea what count she was on. Over the short time I’d known her it had become clear she was a gigantic lush, albeit one that held her booze very well.

  “I’d be lying to you if I said that kind of stuff never happens at college,” Ji-Hyun said. “You said he might have been a bio major? I’m not terribly surprised.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “There aren’t as many women in STEM, so some of the dudes there get warped ideas about what’s okay or not. It can get even worse when you enter those fields and they see you as encroaching on their territory. One of the other premeds in my study group insisted I be the one to make coffee runs.”

  “How do you handle situations like that?” I asked her.

  “I encroach.” Ji-Hyun wasn’t a smiler, but her eyes gleamed with confidence. “That particular guy had to find another study group.”

  Yunie passed her cousin in the hallway, the two of them swapping turns for the bathroom. My best friend toweled off her hair in the drier climate of the common room.

  “Ugh, I can feel the dirt seeping back into my pores as we speak,” she said.

  “From here or the sandwich place?”

  “Both. What did you do to that guy’s laptop when we left?”

  I pointed at one of Ji-Hyun’s empty beer cans on the counter. Once Yunie was looking, I flicked my finger. It shot out like a rocket, telescoping across the room, impaling the can. I pulled it back just as fast, leaving a bullet-sized hole in the brewer’s logo. Exactly like it did in said guy’s laptop screen.

  I’d figured out this trick trying to turn my light switch off while in bed. But it could be weaponized, too. We’d had to make a very quick escape out of the cafe.

  “Oh my god,” Yunie said, giggling hysterically. “Didn’t anyone see that? It was fast, but I could still kind of make out your finger for a moment there.”

  “Eh.” I shrugged. “Who’s going to believe them?”

  10

  The party was technically in the room down the hall, but functionally it had spread over the entire building like an alien spore. A pulverizing beat rattled the plates in the kitchen. Unintelligible conversation from the hallway trickled into the suite. As soon as Yun
ie and I stepped out Ji-Hyun’s door, we’d be in the thick of it.

  Before we did, though, Ji-Hyun lined us up at attention. She solemnly placed an empty red Solo cup in our hands and poured almost-as-red liquid into them from a pitcher that had long sweated away its ice. The ritual sureness with which she was moving silenced any questions we might have had.

  Ji-Hyun stepped back and took stock of us.

  “I promised your parents that I would keep the two of you safe,” she said. “And I intend to keep that promise. You don’t hesitate to call me if you need me, and you don’t consume anything that I don’t give you myself.”

  Yunie tried to say something, but her older cousin cut her off.

  “However,” Ji-Hyun went on. “In the real world, there won’t always be someone looking over your shoulder, and it’ll be up to you to use your best judgment. The way to keep your head is to learn your own limits without letting anyone else pressure you beyond them, including me. The two of you are smart girls. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  We both nodded. Yunie took a tentative sip from her cup and made a face.

  “This tastes revolting,” she said.

  “That’s because it was mixed inside a picnic cooler,” Ji-Hyun said. She drank directly from the pitcher and lowered its contents by an inch in one swig. “Now get out there and have fun.”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  The hallway was mobbed. Someone had rigged a light filter that switched from purple to green to blue and back again. Candy-colored people milled about in the square inches allotted them. The bassline was determined to reach all the way to my back teeth.

  With Yunie presumably trailing in my wake, I pushed forward through the crowd, hoping that some cues on what to do would rub off and stick to me like lint drawn by static cling. Sure, I’d been to the odd house party thrown by one of my classmates, but there I could usually talk shop with a teammate or gripe about a teacher with a lab partner. That option wasn’t available right now, so I just listened dumbly to as many people as possible.

  If I had to say what the biggest difference was between the high school scene and college, it would have been the amount of facial hair on the guys. I mean, this was like a lumberjack meetup being held on a crab fishing boat. I imagined the boys at SF Prep being forced to turn in their razors at graduation, dumping them into a cardboard box.