Girl Giant and the Monkey King

by Van Hoang

“Thom,” Kha whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  He paused, and then his voice dropped dramatically low. “I know.”

  “You … know what?”

  He went to the door and closed it. “I know.” As if that explained everything.

  “Um. Okay.” She didn’t really have the patience to humor him. “Cool.”

  “No, no, Thom.” His gaze dropped directly to hers. “I know. About everything.”

  Her chest gave a horrifying lurch.

  He knew. He knew. Knew knew. Wait. But … what did he mean by everything? Her strength, or … or the Monkey King? And even weirder, he wasn’t freaking out. He still looked at her like he always had—like he had found a long-lost sister.

  Play it cool. She didn’t know what he was talking about yet, or if he’d just gone completely insane.

  “About what?” Her voice was surprisingly calm and steady, despite that she was freaking out. How did he find out? She would have to move now. Again. Make up an excuse to tell Ma. Find a corner of the world where no one could see her and she could never touch a thing, lift an object, face another human being.

  He leaned closer to whisper in her ear. “About the Monkey King. About you and your power.”

  She stood up. “How?”

  “I saw you last night. When you left with him.”

  “That was you, wasn’t it? In my backyard.”

  Stalker! Creeper! Spying on her. She was so going to tell Ma. She reached for the doorknob, but as she swung the door wide open, the knob snapped off. She stared down at it, then at Kha. There was no way he didn’t notice that she’d ripped the thing clean off with nothing more than a light touch.

  But he didn’t seem to care. “I was looking out for you!” Kha said, holding out a hand to stop her. “I thought he might come back.”

  “Come back? Wait. You’ve seen him before? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “That’s why I gave you that token. I thought it might keep him away.”

  Thom looked at the space above her bed, where a piece of tape had broken off and still stuck to the wall. “Are you going to tell anyone?” she asked quietly. That was all that mattered—if he could keep it a secret while she found some way to convince Ma to move to a dark corner of the universe, everything would be okay. She could keep hiding her powers, be more careful.

  “No, of course not. But if the Monkey King comes back, we need to capture him.”

  “We can’t. I’ve tried.” Guilt made her look away. She was the one who’d released the Monkey King. And while she did try to capture him once before, she hadn’t been trying very hard since. She hadn’t been trying at all. “He’s too strong—”

  “You’re stronger.”

  She shook her head.

  “You are. You can defeat him,” Kha insisted.

  “He hasn’t done anything wrong. Why do we need to catch him?”

  Kha’s mouth opened in shock. “He’s a demon-god!”

  “But that doesn’t make him bad. And even if I can catch him, then what?” Thom asked.

  “We give him up to the heavens.”

  But she couldn’t betray the Monkey King like that—he was her friend.

  “I’ll take us there,” Kha said, standing up straighter. “I’m a dragon.”

  Thom’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  “I’m a dragon. A guardian. Of the Fifth Order, under the command of the Dragon-King of the Jade Army’s Seventh Legion.”

  Her head began to throb.

  “Someone sent me here,” he continued. “To protect you.”

  It would have been just a little believable—he knew about the Monkey King, after all, and he knew about her power and didn’t think she was crazy—except that the story seemed too familiar.

  “Like … Mushu?” she asked flatly. “From Mulan?”

  “I’m better than Mushu. I can fly.”

  Despite herself, Thom was a bit offended. She loved that movie. “Mushu breathed fire.”

  “I can turn invisible.”

  “He helped save all of China.”

  “I can turn into a human.” He spread his arms and gestured down at himself, like this ended the argument.

  “Kha, you can’t be a dragon. You’re, like, five feet tall.” Vietnamese dragons, called rồng, could fly, turn invisible, and breathe fire, and they had other magical abilities, but they were huge serpentine creatures.

  “Wow, look who’s talking. You’re shorter than me, and I saw you throw a seventy-pound table.”

  “I didn’t throw that table. I caught it.” She slapped a hand over her mouth. Up until now, she’d admitted to nothing, but the words had slipped out before she realized that she might as well have confessed everything.

  “It’s okay, Thom. I know about that, and that’s why I’m here, to help you. The Monkey King is more dangerous than you think he is.”

  “He wouldn’t hurt me. He can’t. I’m strong, too, remember?”

  “There’s more than one way to get hurt.”

  “Like what? You think he’ll hurt my feelings?” She snorted.

  “I don’t know what he’s planning, but it’s nothing good. He’s a trickster. But we can figure it out together.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t need your help.”

  His face reddened. “Thom.” His voice was high. Frustrated.

  “Thom?” Ma stood in the doorway, frowning. “Everything okay?”

  Thom thought about telling Ma then and there about Kha creeping in their backyard, but then she’d have to explain about everything else, or Kha might tell—about the Monkey King, about her strength—and she had no idea if Ma would believe her or how she would react. “Yeah. We’re just—”

  “What happened to the doorknob?” Ma asked, looking at the round hole in the door.

  “It … broke,” Thom said lamely.

  “We’re trying to decide on what to wear for Culture Day,” Kha jumped in. “I was thinking of matching áo dài.”

  “Really?” Ma looked like she was about to hyperventilate, her breathing too fast, her smile splitting her face. “I would love if you and Thom wear áo dài together!”

  Thom closed her eyes briefly. Oh yeah, that sounded like a wonderful idea. The two of them in matching outfits. Then Bethany, Sarah, and Kathy could make fun of both of them—two for the price of one.

  “Yeah, this is the one I really want to buy,” Kha said, whipping out his phone and pulling up a picture of a flashy black men’s áo dài with a swirly golden print.

  Ma clapped her hands together. “That look really good with the one I got for Thom!” She pulled out her own phone and they compared pictures. “What do you think, cưng?”

  Thom plunked down onto her bed. “Sounds great,” she said, but they were too distracted with their phones to hear the distress in her voice.

  16

  AT SCHOOL ON MONDAY, THOM redoubled her efforts to avoid Kha, whom she’d secretly nicknamed Crazy Creeper. No matter what he claimed about being her guardian, he’d been stalking her. Following her around school, sneaking into her backyard. That stuff might seem cute and sweet in movies, but in real life, it was pretty scary. She checked behind her every second, looked over her shoulder, constantly felt a tingly sensation on her neck like someone was watching her.

  On top of that, soccer season was in full swing, with one or two games per week keeping her busier than ever. Not that she ever got to play. Practice was brutal, with Coach running drills like she meant to kill them with exhaustion, but during the games, Thom sat alone on the bench. Sometimes, Coach would put her in, but on defense, which wasn’t her position, and then only for a few minutes before pulling her back out again.

  Then there was the dynamic trio. Bethany and Sarah never missed an opportunity to trip Thom, bump into her with elbows protruding, pass the ball hard enough to injure a normal person. Kathy didn’t join in, but the way she watched Thom now had changed. Ever since that day with the shower curtain, Kathy no longer looked at
Thom with pity, but with suspicion.

  Did Kathy know about Thom’s superstrength? No. No way. She hadn’t seen anything; Thom was just being paranoid. The curtain rod incident was clearly an accident. But then why did Thom always catch Kathy watching her on the field now? And when Thom moved to pass the ball, Kathy always stepped back, like she was afraid. Afraid that Thom might hurt her.

  What if Kathy knew? What if Kathy told everyone?

  Thom wasn’t one to ditch practice—soccer used to be one of her favorite things ever—but the idea of putting up with Bethany, Sarah, and Kathy … only to get benched again made her want to throw up as she walked toward the locker room. Her feet dragged, and she hesitated for a split second. Then she took an abrupt turn and darted out of the building.

  Other teams were getting ready for practice, dragging equipment and buckets of ice to the fields. Before the softball coach could see her and ask her what she was doing, Thom ducked behind the bleachers.

  Already, relief flooded her. Would it be so bad if she skipped today? Did it make her a weak person if, just this once, she gave herself a break?

  She missed Thuy. She needed someone to talk to—about Kha and the Monkey King—and Thuy would know exactly what to think.

  She looked up at the clear blue sky. “Wukong?” He hadn’t shown up the whole weekend, and she was starting to wonder if Kha didn’t even have to worry about him anymore.

  Then his nose and whiskers appeared, followed by his giggle. “I thought I told you only my friends call me that.”

  “Aren’t we friends?”

  The rest of him materialized, upside down, legs crossed. Excitement ballooned in Thom’s chest. She was surprised to realize that she had actually missed him. “Do you want to be? It takes a lot to be friends with someone like me, you know. Not everyone makes the cut.”

  “I don’t know,” Thom said.

  At her serious tone, he flipped right side up, legs untangling, feet padding softly on the pavement. “Then why did you call me?”

  “Kha … The new kid next door.” She paused, and the Monkey King flew into the air, leaning his head back on his hands. “He said you’re a demon-god, that you’re … bad.” Kha wasn’t the only one—Shing-Rhe had confirmed that the Monkey King was part demon. But Shing-Rhe was a demon himself.

  “Hmm. He did, did he?” The Monkey King giggled, tilting his head. “He’s right. The only demon-god to ever exist.”

  “But does that mean you’re bad?”

  “What is ‘bad,’ really? What does that mean? Don’t you think, perhaps, we all have a bit of bad inside us?” He was in a mischievous mood, and talking to him was like trying to get Mochi to let her pet him again. “How good do you have to be to be considered good? How much goodness do you need to have? Half goodness? A quarter goodness?” He twisted his legs into a pretzel and sniffed at his feet. “What if only nine of your toes were good but one was bad? Does that make this foot a bad foot?”

  He stuck his foot under her face, wiggling his toes. She shoved it aside.

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  The Monkey King turned onto his side, floating at eye level with her. “I have never pretended to be something I’m not.”

  Thom didn’t know what to think. Was the Monkey King bad? Was Kha lying? Or maybe Kha just didn’t know the Monkey King like she did. Kha believed all the stories that said the Monkey King was a bad guy, but Thom knew Wukong.

  She needed someone else’s opinion. She needed to talk to someone she could trust. She checked her phone, which Ma had finally given back to her, for a text from Thuy, but her last three messages remained unanswered. It had now been three weeks since Thom had asked Thuy if everything was okay. What if Thuy wasn’t okay? What if something had happened to her? If only she could see her BFF face-to-face.

  “You’re sad,” the Monkey King said in a bewildered tone, like he couldn’t understand why anyone would choose not to be happy. “Why?”

  Thom couldn’t answer, looking westward, or what she thought was west, toward her old home. She missed it so much. Missed her friends, missed who she used to be: just a girl who liked soccer and boba with popcorn chicken, whose toughest decision had been whether to get red socks with or without stripes as part of the team uniform.

  “What can I do, Thom-Thom?” the Monkey King asked, touching her cheek with his knuckles. “We can do anything you want.”

  But there was nothing to do in Troy, at least no one to do them with. Back in West City, there’d always been boba, ice-skating, beach picnics, movies. Here in Troy, she had three stops—school, home, and the library.

  “We can go anywhere,” the Monkey King added.

  “Anywhere?” An idea formed. A strong craving for a place, to see her friends.

  “I am the great and handsome Monkey King who has mastered the Seventy-Two Transformations!” He bounded above her. “I can take you anywhere you’d like!”

  “Anywhere,” she repeated, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s go to California.”

  * * *

  As they rose high into the air, Thom shut her eyes, clinging on to the Monkey King’s shoulders, gripping his coarse hair so tight her fingers grew cold and numb.

  The wind blew past her ears and tugged on her hood, whipping her hair all around her face. Her teeth were clenched, the muscles of her mouth pulled back in fright. But then, they reached a height just beneath the clouds and suddenly leveled out. After a few minutes passed and she still hadn’t plummeted to her death, Thom relaxed her body, her muscles loosening just a fraction. She would never get used to flying like this.

  It took a long time before her pulse slowed to a normal rate, and she found the courage to force her eyes open.

  They couldn’t have been in Georgia any longer. For one thing, there were too many buildings. Georgia, or at least, the part that she knew, was full of greenery and nothing but trees and miles and acres of land. She was reminded every day how far from any city she lived.

  But now, beneath them, houses cluttered the area, rooftops bare and deserted. They were in West City. Cars moved slowly on the freeway like tiny ants crawling. She had missed the sight of traffic, as weird as that was.

  She couldn’t hear anything through the roar of wind, and she still was too busy trying not to die to notice much else. If she hurt the Monkey King by holding on to his neck and shoulders too hard, he didn’t seem to care. His giggle echoed back at her every few minutes as he ran through the air, his legs cycling beneath him like he was riding an invisible bicycle. He spread out his arms and jerked sideways, and Thom shrieked loudly, afraid he was about to show off with some tricks. He then righted himself and patted her hand apologetically.

  Cars honked in the distance. No one looked up, but if they did, they didn’t seem to notice a monkey piggybacking a girl.

  Music blasted from speakers as they floated closer to the ground. Buildings grew bigger, going from unrealistic boxes to skyscrapers with colors and details, the frame of a window, the carved edges along a rooftop. There was the corner shop where she and Thuy would buy Flamin’ Hot Cheetos before school so their parents wouldn’t find out. As she got closer, she recognized the Boba Queen, where Ma would take them for milk tea and popcorn chicken after school.

  They landed in a field connected to West City Middle School. In the distance, she could make out the empty basketball courts. At this hour, the students would be gathered in the cafeteria for lunch.

  Thom’s feet barely touched the ground before she was off running, not knowing or caring if the Monkey King followed. As she reached the buildings and ran past the rows of portable classrooms, familiarity hit her, along with a deep feeling of sadness that threatened to knock her down. She kept going. She was here. She was home. Thuy would be so happy to see her. She would be at lunch—all Thom’s friends would be there. They’d be talking about the latest shows they were watching or whatever trouble Thuy had gotten into at her Catholic weekend school. Thom’s spot would be empty, but sh
e was here now, back to fill it.

  Her heart thundered as she neared the cafeteria. Students’ laughter and conversation filled the air. No one noticed her as she blended into the crowd of kids shoving to get to their food, the groups gathered at tables, some sitting to eat, some standing and hanging out. No one looked at her weirdly or moved out of the way when she walked toward them, or stopped talking to whisper behind hands, like they did at DeMille.

  She made her way through the room, squeezing between backpacks and cliques of students who barely noticed her. Some smiled, recognizing her from last year, even waved, but her friends weren’t there. She knew exactly where they’d be, at their usual table in the courtyard.

  As she pushed the door open, sunlight blinded her, seeping across her vision and setting a glow over the scene. Maybe this was all just a dream, or a hallucination. That would explain how she had been in Troy just an hour ago and was back in West City now. That would explain the Monkey King, too. Had Thom finally snapped, the shock of moving across the country too much for her?

  Her eyes adjusted to the bright daylight. The door closed behind her with a thump. The courtyard was full—it always was. The area was popular, with its patches of grass shaded by cherry trees. They weren’t in bloom until spring, but the branches arched up and encased them in a fairy-tale-like oasis.

  She spotted them immediately. Third from the left, where the shade fell just right during lunchtime, with just enough sunlight to keep them warm and for taking the perfect selfies. Thuy and her friends—Emily and Hannah—were there. With Thom, they made the perfect foursome, and all the best things came in fours. The Incredibles—if you didn’t count Jack-Jack. The Fantastic Four, obviously. Even the three musketeers were actually the four musketeers when you remembered to count D’Artagnan. Without Thom, their group just didn’t make sense.

  Except it did.

  Because in Thom’s usual place was another girl.

  Amber.

  Thom recognized her from last year’s science class. She hadn’t wanted to be Thom’s partner—which was fine because Thuy had later changed her schedule to be in that class so she and Thom could hang out more.