The Epic Crush of Genie Lo

by F. C. Yee

  We pulled into a lot in front of the hall. It was a weird building, ugly concrete bones on the outside harboring a beautiful, creamy wood interior. People mingled throughout the upper and lower levels, mites inside a larger see-through organism.

  “You should find him before the performance,” Mom said softly. “You don’t get the chance to talk to him much.”

  I tried to do what I should have done earlier and apologize, but she shushed me. “Go on,” she said. “It’ll take me a while to find a parking space. It’s okay.”

  There was nothing I could do but get out of the car and go inside. I only prayed she wouldn’t ditch the performance and drive off into the night.

  The hallways of the auditorium were filled with older folks dressed to the nines, grim-lipped parents and grandparents readying themselves for battle by proxy. The stakes of this competition must have been even higher than I thought. The Tiger Mom Olympics.

  Yunie and the other performers were in the back getting ready. I knew I wouldn’t see her before she went on stage. Nor did I want to. The two of us never interrupted each other’s warm-up routine before big events.

  Instead I looked for Mr. and Mrs. Park and found them in the corner, avoiding the game of conversational one-upsmanship breaking out over the foyer. (“Oh, so your Guadagnini’s a rental? How sensible of you.”)

  They looked relieved to see me. Yunie’s parents were square, honest, open people, unsuited for this shark tank. Both were podiatrists who met each other at a podiatrists’ convention. It was extremely difficult to figure out where Yunie got her sharper edges from, in both looks and attitude.

  “Genie!” They got on their tiptoes to give me a barrage of kisses on the cheek. “We haven’t seen you in so long. When was the last time you came over for dinner?”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve been really busy lately.” With demons. And gods. I’m in over my head. Send help.

  Mrs. Park nodded solemnly. “It’s a tough time for everyone in your grade. SATs are coming up, college apps are around the corner. I don’t know how you kids these days handle so much pressure. It was easier for us when we were young.”

  Mr. Park clapped me on the shoulder. “We’re just glad you could make it. And so is Yunie. She was getting really lonely without you.”

  I winced upon hearing that. Then I did a mental backtrack to confirm exactly how much time I had been spending with my best friend in recent weeks, and I winced much harder at the result.

  Compared to how entwined we normally were, I’d basically cut her off. And she hadn’t said a word. She’d picked up that I had something else going on and left me to it.

  I was a terrible friend. Or at the very least, acting like one.

  I’d make it up to her after the performance. Right now I had to focus on being a terrible daughter.

  “My dad should be here somewhere,” I said. “Have you seen him?”

  Mr. Park arced his arm to mimic the curve of the hallway. “He’s around the corner. I saw him talking to another student from your school.”

  I said goodbye to Yunie’s parents with a big smile on my face that vanished instantly the moment I turned around. Quentin, I thought with murder on my mind. Whatever had passed between us on my doorstep didn’t give him the right to sneak in here with magic. To introduce himself to my father without me being there. I stomped around the hallway to the other side of the auditorium and found Dad talking to . . .

  Androu?

  “Oh hey,” he said.

  I blinked a couple of times. “I didn’t invite you,” I blurted out.

  Androu took my rudeness in stride—as if he had girls greeting him with insults all the time. “My cousin who lives in the city is performing tonight. He’s a timpanist. Holds a beat like superglue.”

  “Androu here was filling me in on your volleyball season,” Dad said. “He’s a big fan of yours.” Then he made the most obvious, over-the-top wink possible.

  I stood there, catching flies with my mouth. The silence emanating from my throat was so thick that Androu coughed and excused himself to go to the bathroom.

  Once he was gone, Dad turned to me with a twinkle in his eye. “I knew there was a boy,” he said. “Given how mopey you were at the gym? There had to be a boy.”

  This . . . this wasn’t so bad. Of all the misunderstandings.

  “You should tell me about these things,” Dad said. “You know I don’t judge like your mother. I’m okay with you dating.”

  I could triage this. The patient was stable.

  “We have to have ‘the talk’ though; I won’t have you making irresponsible choices.” He tried to say it sternly but couldn’t hide his glee at getting to check off one of those American-style parenting milestones he’d read so much about in magazines. I wasn’t sure if he fully understood what “the talk” entailed.

  Androu came back. “We’ll save it for later,” Dad whispered.

  “So yeah,” Androu said, doing his best to ignore my father’s blatant winking again. “I didn’t know Yunie was performing tonight. Wild, huh? We should plan to go to more concerts together. It’d be fun.”

  Dad was about to joyously agree, but then he suddenly deflated, his high spirits gone with the wind. There was only one person who could make him go one-hundred-to-zero just like that. And she was right behind me.

  My mother didn’t say anything in greeting. She glanced at me. Then my father. Then up at Androu.

  EKG flatline. Code Blue.

  “I found a space,” she announced.

  She hadn’t bumbled into us. She could have easily avoided this encounter. Every previous indication she’d given said that was her preference. And yet here she was, claiming this patch of land for Spain. I abandoned all hope of understanding this woman for what must have been the fiftieth time.

  Mom craned her head forward. None of us knew what she was doing until the gesture stirred something deep and lost in my father. He pecked her on the cheek and then they both returned to their stations.

  “Androu, this is Genie’s mother,” Dad said. He meant to gently prod my classmate forward, but the motion resembled a Spartan raising his shield against a hail of stones.

  Androu gallantly bent at the waist to shake her hand. “Hello Mrs. Lo. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  Mom was mildly placated in the sense that the new person she had to greet was at least polite and handsome. But then Androu, that sweet summer child, ruined all hope of a clean escape.

  “I’d love to take you and Genie up on that offer for dinner at your place,” he said. “I hear your cooking is legendary.”

  In his mind he was only continuing the last conversational thread we had. He had no idea what boundaries he was stepping over.

  “Oh, so she’s making invitations to people I’ve never met now,” Mom said. She turned to me like a doll in a horror movie. “I suppose I can’t decline, can I?”

  Dad rushed in to try and douse the flames, but he was holding a jug of gasoline, not water. “Androu is Genie’s very good friend,” he said. With emphasis on the very good.

  This did not compute with Mom. According to her programming, there was only ever supposed to be one boy at a time holding the Most Favored Nation spot. Preferably the same boy throughout my entire life.

  “I thought Quentin was your very good friend,” she said.

  This was new. Tonight I got to discover the face Mom made when she thought I was being a hussy. Never mind the fact that her idea of promiscuity would be outdated in Victorian England.

  “Quentin?” Dad said. “Who’s Quentin?”

  “I see now why you didn’t want to invite him,” Mom said. “It would expose the double life you’ve been leading.”

  Androu, still out of sync, postured up valiantly at the mention of Quentin’s name. “Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Lo. If that guy’s still bothering Genie at school, I’ll put a stop to it. She can count on me. Right?” He nudged me with his elbow.

  He was prodding a corpse.
My soul had left my body a long time ago. It had flown to the top of Mount Can’t Even, planted its flag, and dissipated into the stratosphere.

  An usher came over and told us it was time for the performance to start. We all made shows of pulling out our tickets, as if they contained our queue spots for a kidney. Androu smiled and bumped my stub with his.

  “Oh hey,” he said. “I think we’re sitting together!”

  Androu and I went in first while Mom made her last-minute hellos to Yunie’s parents. We picked our way through the narrow aisles like cranes in the mud until we found our seats.

  The chair backs in front of us were too close, and they jammed our knees to the side. Tall people problems. He and I had that in common at least.

  Androu chuckled to himself.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s just—sorry if I’m being offensive, but that whole thing with your Mom and Dad out there. It felt like the stereotype was true. Asian parents not really showing a lot of affection in public.”

  I thought of the way Mr. and Mrs. Park clutched each other for comfort tonight, the way they loved to gross out Yunie whenever possible by cuddling and kissing in front of me when I visited.

  I remembered a fleeting dream in a fairyland tale, where my dad had chased my mom around a fountain trying to put a mouse-eared hat on top of her head while I watched and laughed and laughed.

  Maybe I had been subconsciously trying to Parent Trap them into speaking again. Who knew.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, the vowels stuck in my throat. “You know what they say.”

  Mom came in and immediately made a disapproving click. There was no way for me and Androu to avoid our legs touching each other. We were leg-making-out right next to her. Had we no shame?

  Androu tried to help her settle in. “Where’s Mr. Lo—”

  “Seating accident; not enough spaces together,” she snapped.

  We all suddenly found our programs very, very interesting. Luckily we didn’t have to wait long for the curtain.

  I tuned out the bespectacled, tweeded man explaining the history of the competition and how we could all get involved with the arts by making small donations. The pain was over for now. I could relax for as long as it took to determine who would emerge unscathed from musical thunderdome.

  “Because they’ve already worked so hard to get here, we’re going to do something a little different tonight,” said the emcee. “Could our finalists please come on stage to take a bow? No matter who wins tonight, you all deserve a big hand.”

  The majority of the audience believed that was patently false. There could be only one. But we clapped anyway as the contestants lined up on stage.

  I spotted Yunie. She looked like a star in the night sky. Mom, Androu, and I mashed our hands together when she emerged, all prior conflicts forgotten.

  And then someone flicked me in the back of my neck.

  I turned around, ready to yell at the jerk who did it, but the little old grandmother behind me was busy trying to work up enough saliva to whistle for the brass section. It wasn’t her.

  The same flick hit me from the same direction. I peered down the aisle until I saw where it was coming from.

  Quentin. Hovering in the shadows by the fire exit.

  He raised his fist to his lips and blew. The little bullet of air that shot out from the tunnel formed by his fingers smacked me in the face. It would have been the most annoying sensation in the world under any circumstances. Right now I was livid beyond belief.

  Quentin waved his hands once he saw that he had my attention.

  I slid my finger across my throat at him.

  He widened his eyes and tugged frantically on his own earlobes, hopping up and down to exaggerate the motion.

  Oh god no. Not now.

  I surreptitiously glanced at my phone, which had been on silent all evening. Forty-six notifications. Quentin had been trying to contact me for more than an hour.

  More than an hour of a yaoguai doing whatever it wanted on Earth, with no one to stop it.

  I tried to unwedge myself from the chair and kneed the man in front of me in the shoulder. He frowned at me but decided I wasn’t worth it.

  “Genie, what are you doing?” Mom hissed.

  “I—I feel sick,” I stuttered. “Light-headed. I . . . have to go outside.”

  “Now!?”

  I was able to creep halfway down the aisle before I froze. On stage, Yunie was watching me. Watching me leave.

  Of course I stuck out too much to make a clean getaway. Yunie’s eyes followed my path and flickered at its end. She’d seen Quentin.

  My universe was reduced to a handful of silent, screaming voices. The distress on my mother’s face. The urgency of Quentin’s. Androu’s guileless concern.

  And loudest of all was the confused heartbreak coming from my best friend on the biggest night of her life.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to anyone who would have it. I ran out the side door to where Quentin was waiting.

  “We need to make up for lost time,” he said in the bushes behind the auditorium. “What’s the point of me having a phone if you’re not going to answer my—”

  “Quentin,” I said, my voice as quiet as the eye of a hurricane. “I know what happened isn’t your fault, but before this night is through, I will kill someone. I would rather that person not be you.”

  He shut up and pointed at where I should start searching. “There’s barely any towns in that direction, thankfully. I don’t think it’ll be as close to the population as the other demons were.”

  I pressed the side of my head and swept over the landscape. Quentin was right; the area around the dancing light was mostly empty grassland, dotted with sleeping bovines. Guanyin’s alarm had given us a decent head start this time, for once.

  “It’s in a farm,” I said.

  Quentin plowed through the barn roof feet-first. I disembarked from his back and called out to the shadows.

  “I’m not really in the mood,” I said. “So I’d appreciate it if we made this quick.”

  A stream of sticky, gooey threads shot out of a dark corner with the volume of a garden hose. It methodically swept over Quentin and me, covering us in a thickening, hardening cocoon of webs. It didn’t stop until we were encased from the neck down, our legs glued to the floor of the barn.

  A man stepped into the moonlight in front of us and wiped his mouth. His face was bearded with fingers—human fingers. They sprouted from his skin and wriggled as he spoke.

  “Ha!” the yaoguai cackled. “You’ve fallen into my trap! Vengeance is mine!”

  “Who are you?” said Quentin.

  “The Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord!” The fingers coating his face pointed in unison on certain words for emphasis. “Master of webs and venom!”

  The yaoguai opened his jaws wide to flash a set of dripping fangs at us. “I’ve been distilling my poisons in the fires of Diyu for more than a thousand years, waiting for this moment! You cannot escape my bite, for the silk that imprisons you is stronger than the hardest steel—bu hui ba, what are you doing!?”

  I tore my way out of the cocoon with a few thrashes of my arms. The strands of silk twanged like overtuned guitars as I snapped them. Looking down, I found that the one nice dress that I owned was completely ruined. There wasn’t going to be a way back into the performance tonight.

  Quentin shook his head, not bothering to try and free himself.

  “Oh buddy,” he said to the yaoguai with genuine sorrow for a fellow sentient being. “Oh, buddy, I couldn’t do anything for you now, even if you begged me. This is the end of the line.”

  The Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord looked at my face. Whatever he saw there made him give off a high-pitched skreee in alarm. He fell to all fours and scuttled away from me like an insect. The yaoguai backed into the barn’s wall and went straight up it, reaching as far as the rafters in his attempt to get some distance between us.

  I didn’t feel like chasing him. Loo
king around the floor, I found the nearest object I could, picked it up, and winged it hard at the demon with all my might.

  The metal horseshoe zipped from my hand. It flew so fast I couldn’t see its arc, but I did spot the hole it left behind in the roof after it punched straight through. The edges of the wood glowed red hot like a cigarette burn in a sheet of paper.

  “Holy crap,” Quentin blurted out.

  “You—you missed!” the Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord said in nervous triumph.

  “Good thing horses have four feet,” I said, waving three more horseshoes in the air.

  30

  It was three weeks after the night of the concert when finally I could take no more. We’d just finished a yaoguai hunt. A successful one, but somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory.

  “Call them,” I said to Quentin.

  “Why?”

  The demon had been aquatic. Hence the reason we were currently standing waist-deep in freezing ocean water, still in our school uniforms.

  We’d cut class for the second time. A third strike would go on my permanent record and earn me an in-person parent-teacher conference. There was a piece of seaweed stuck in my ear.

  “I feel the need to talk,” I said. “Right now. Call them.”

  Quentin gazed over the coastline. This section of the beach was normally open for people to bring their dogs to play in the surf, but right now it was vacant. The picnickers up on the cliff who’d triggered the earring alarm hadn’t seen our thrashing and flailing in the shallows on their behalf.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to keep our interactions with those two down to a minimum,” he said. “They never end well.”

  “Quentin, we just spent the last hour beating up a fish. This can’t go on. Call them.”

  He closed his eyes, put his palms together, and grumbled under his breath for about a minute. It looked like he was throwing a tantrum instead of praying.

  Nothing happened.

  “Okay,” I said. I waved my hands at the general lack of gods in the vicinity.

  “What, you think they’re going to plop down in the middle of the water? They’re somewhere on shore. Go find them and talk to them.”