Frankly in Love

by David Yoon

  “You didn’t get all excited and tell your parents about her, did you?”

  “You’re funny. You and Wu doing good?”

  Joy flops up onto the bed. All the animals bounce. “Eh, we fought again.”

  I find a tiny stray bolt in the sherbet-colored carpet. There are tiny nuts, too. I start trying to find one that fits. “What did you fight about this time?”

  “The same shit. He wants to take things to the next level, but he doesn’t understand.”

  “So, like, anal?”

  Joy laughs. A stuffed animal hits me hard in the temple.

  “I mean he doesn’t understand how I can’t just keep coming up with infinity number of excuses for my parents as fast as he wants. He wants to meet up almost every single night. It’s impossible. I can’t keep up with that kind of demand.”

  “I feel you,” I say. “I’m in the same boat now.”

  “Hop aboard,” says Joy to the ceiling.

  I try another nut, and another. No match yet. There are more, hidden deep in the carpet’s pile. Something wells up in me, and I jam my fingers into the carpet and grip hard.

  “The whole thing is just so absurd,” I say.

  Joy goes “Mmm” in agreement.

  I pull up the carpet and release it. “Think about what they’re trying to do with us.”

  “Mate us like a couple of goddamn zoo pandas.”

  “I mean beyond that. Once upon a time they left Korea. They came here. They had kids.”

  “Mmm.”

  “They cherry-picked what they wanted from American culture, but for the most part they built this little Korean bubble to live in. They watch nothing but Korean shows, do business with nothing but Korean people, hang out with nothing but Korean friends.”

  “Build Korea Towns.”

  “And that’s fine. I get that. If I moved to, like, Nepal, you bet I’d go crazy without my American movies and Double-Double cheeseburgers and English-speaking friends.”

  “I think there’s an In-N-Out in Nepal.”

  I laugh. “But you know what they’re doing right now? With us? They want us to stay inside their bubble.”

  Joy sits up and looks at me with her head tilted.

  “Their little dream,” I say, “is that we get married and have kids, and that those kids will marry nothing but Koreans and have more kids, and that their bubble will stay intact after they’re gone. They want us to take care of it forever.”

  Joy closes her eyes tight. She looks like how I feel: stuck. We’re both stuck. But we’re also both tired of being stuck. She keeps her voice even. “As if we had this huge blind spot for the ninety-eight percent of our school that’s not Korean. That’s like trying to fool ourselves that we’re not really here in America. That’s impossible.”

  “Mmm.”

  Joy sighs. “Is it wrong that I sometimes wonder if Wu’s even worth the hassle?”

  “Damn,” I say. “Poor Wu.”

  “No, shit, I take it back. I love Wu. I really do.”

  “Tell me what you love about him.”

  “Well, first, he’s totally hot.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” I say.

  “But also, he’s really kind, and he loves his family, like, you should see him with his mom and dad and sister and other sister who’s a bitch but whatever. He’s so sweet.”

  “That’s actually really cool.”

  “Right? And he’s secretly smart about business. Not what kind of business to run, but how to run it. You know?”

  “Sure.”

  “You think corporate operational management is boring.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “You do.”

  “No way, no,” I say. “I just don’t really know what it entails. Or care. Because it’s so totally and completely boring.”

  “Dick!” But she says it in a kindhearted way.

  “Okay, your turn: what’s so great about Brit Means?”

  I find a nut, screw it onto the bolt. Perfect fit.

  This means something. Brit Means something.

  I sigh with contentment and begin. “First of all, she’s totally hot.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” says Joy.

  “And she’s smart, and passionate about the environment and biology and stuff. But at a deeper level?”

  “Like anal?”

  I snort, then recover. “She just really likes me. And I just really like her. I’m sounding basic, huh.”

  “But you can’t tell your parents about her.”

  “Doosh, way to bring shit down.”

  “Sorry. I’m just so sick of what they want versus what I want.”

  “Eh, it’s okay.”

  Joy sits up to look at me. “Really, I’m sorry.”

  We look at each other, she with her Chinese boy problem, me with my new white girl problem.

  I think about Hanna. Was Miles worth it? Does she cry every night in his arms over Mom-n-Dad’s stonewalling? Maybe she’s hardened her heart to it. Maybe she left the bubble, and then burst it with a sharp kick before walking away.

  I fast-forward into Hanna’s future. When she buys her first home, do Mom-n-Dad visit? When she has her first child, do they come to the hospital? And Miles, the poor guy—what will he feel like as the years pile on?

  There are no good answers for Hanna. Not ever. Just living in between worlds forever, in a limbo much deeper than I yet know. I find tears swelling my eyes with their warmth. I blink and blink and blink. I want to float off the ground, so I clutch the carpet again to anchor me.

  What kind of answers could Hanna possibly have about Mom-n-Dad, who love her—and whom she can’t help but love back—but also never want to see her again? They made a choice, and ultimately they chose the amber bubble over all else.

  Oh my god, Hanna, did you make the right choice?

  And am I destined to eventually face the same choice?

  The mere existence of such a choice makes me want to punch the world flat.

  It’s just me and Hanna. The Book of Li ends with us two.

  I take a breath. Joy hasn’t noticed my wet eyes. When she is looking elsewhere, I squeegee them dry with my thumbs.

  It occurs to me that the brainlock is not with us Limbos. It’s with them.

  Our parents are fooling themselves that they’re not really in this world, here in America.

  And I get an idea.

  “Huh,” is all I can say. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “Listen.” I take a breath. “I just thought of a big what-if.”

  “How big?” says Joy.

  “This is going to sound weird.”

  “I’m totally okay with weird.”

  “My big what-if,” I say, and look into Joy’s eyes. “It’s more of a proposal.”

  “Uh,” says Joy.

  I drum my fingers on my knees. “You have a Chinese boy problem. I have this white girl problem. Our parents have these big, huge blind spots—racist blind spots—in their brains. What if we used those blind spots to our advantage?”

  Joy raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean.” She says it like a statement, not a question.

  “What I propose we do is this.” I take a breath and hold it. “I propose we pretend to date each other.”

  Joy stares at me.

  I gallop a little in my seat. “We pretend to date each other, because you know the parents are just gonna let us date and date and date as much as we want, right? School nights. Holidays. Whenever. But on every date—”

  Joy’s eyes go big. “On every date, we meet up with our date-dates.”

  I point my fingers, Wu-style. “Wurd.”

  Joy’s frozen with this incredulous smile that grows and grows until she explodes with her weird rapid-fire squirrel
army laugh. She laughs and laughs and laughs.

  When she stops, I notice that the party downstairs has gone silent. They’re trying to listen.

  “You’re crazy,” says Joy.

  I fold my arms and smirk the righteous smirk.

  “But you’re a fucking genius,” says Joy.

  chapter 9

  total perfect mind control

  Joy and I huddle in close over our phones.

  “So I just text you when Wu wants to go out?” she says.

  “Yeah. And then I make sure to set up a date with Brit for the same day and time.”

  “But they can’t know.”

  “You mean Wu and Brit.”

  “‘Oh hey there, Brit Means,’” says Joy in dumb-boyfriend voice. “‘I’m just pretending to date Joy as my rent-an-alibi so we can see each other without any questions from my super-racist parents who hate ninety-eight percent of the country.’”

  “You put it like that, I guess it wouldn’t go over so well,” I say.

  “But just logistically it makes life so much easier,” says Joy.

  I smile at her. Right?

  “So then you just text me back when our dates are in sync, and vice versa?” says Joy.

  “That’s a lot of texting,” I say. “Oh, I know: we should make a shared calendar.”

  “Nerd,” says Joy.

  I just look at her like So?

  “Actually, a shared calendar might make sense,” says Joy finally.

  I send her an invite. She accepts. I create a test calendar event for tonight on my phone, titled FRANK AND JOY OFFICIALLY START DATING.

  Joy’s phone buzzes; she sees the calendar event, laughs.

  “Okay, then.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Frank!” yells Mom from downstairs. “Dinner ready!”

  I nod at Joy. “You ready for this?”

  Joy nods back, and for a second we feel like two rangers getting ready to jump out of a plane.

  The way we do it is this: we hold hands and walk down the stairs together. I’ve held her hand plenty of times in the past: during thumb wrestling, ersatz seances with the other kids during Halloween, or interminable prayer circles before holiday feasts. That’s always been with other people present, though—this time, it’s just me and Joy.

  “Your hand is all sweaty,” says Joy as we descend.

  “That’s all you.”

  “You.”

  “You-you.”

  Once we reach the bottom of the stairs, we execute the final part of the maneuver: turn, make sure to fall into the parents’ line of sight, hold hands for a half second longer, and then let go quick. The point is to appear as if we forgot to stow our PDA until it was just too late, because that’s how into each other we have miraculously become over the last ninety minutes up in Joy’s room.

  It works.

  “Ahhhh,” say the parents.

  “What?” I say, all innocent.

  “Eat,” says Mom.

  “Eat, eat,” says Joy’s mom, fussing with Sternos under ornate silver pans.

  “You want wine?” says Dad.

  This is when I know they’re falling for the plan. Wine?

  We grab some food. Dinner’s French food done all Korean-style, meaning in the form of a buffet and in quantities that are way, way too much. I pile my plate. Joy piles hers. When we get to the last buffet pan, I see that Dad is waiting for us.

  He escorts us over to the kids’ table and hustles out chairs for us, like a swarthy maître d’ from Middle Earth, and we sit. The kids’ table is usually larger than this. There are usually more Limbos. This table is meant for only two. We sit facing the adults; the adults sit facing us. It’s like a sweetheart table at a goddamn wedding.

  It’s silent for a moment. Then someone—Mrs. Song, fiddling with her giant Korea-only phone/tablet thing—abruptly puts on an adult contemporary rock song: some insipid string of croony cliches.

  Meanwhile Dad pours the wine all the way to the rim of our glasses as if it were orange juice and we were six.

  I never knew I could feel this way / The clouds are breaking it’s a brand-new day

  Joy is vibrating, like she’s itching to flip the table. “Oh man oh man, I can’t do this.”

  “Stay strong,” I whisper.

  We both crack up.

  The parents freeze and gaze at us with these big, dumb happy-donkey smiles. Then they all catch themselves and clumsily resume their adult conversation, like drunks trying to be sly.

  It’s excruciating, but it’s working. So it’s a sweet pain.

  “Let’s toast,” I say. “I hear booze can help.”

  We can’t lift our glasses—they’re too full—so we duck our heads and sip and immediately regret it, because damn, who seriously drinks wine straight up like that without at least mixing it with Sprite or something? Alcohol, I don’t get you.

  “Hey,” whispers Joy. “Watch this.”

  “What?”

  “Just look at me for a three-count.”

  I look into her eyes for three seconds, and out of my right ear I can hear the grown-ups’ table fall dead silent.

  “Now look at the grown-ups’ table.”

  I do, and so does she, and the drunks pretend to chatter again.

  “Look back at me,” says Joy.

  And I do. I always assumed her eyes were black for some reason. But they’re not. They’re a deep hazel. I find myself wondering if they would be big enough to meet Mom’s ludicrous size requirements. Her upper eyelids have that little double fold to them: that ssangkkeopul so coveted by Koreans they’ll risk cosmetic surgery to get it.

  I don’t have ssangkkeopul. Does that mean I should be envious?

  Eh, whatever. I like my eyes. They’re black, by the way, like the soul of an ultra-rare level twelve chaotic evil antipaladin.

  “Huh,” I say. “I never noticed you have ssangkkeopul.”

  Joy attempts to look at her own eyelids, which is funny. “They went like this after puberty for some reason. Mom says they make me look tired.” She blinks, tugs her eyelids flat.

  “Stop doing that, dude. It’s like Chinese-Japanese-look-at-these-dirty-knees.”

  “Jesus, that shit.”

  “Sorry to remind you.”

  Chinese-Japanese-look-at-these-dirty-knees was a racist song white kids used to sing to kids like us when we were little. It was always accompanied by the pulling of the eyelids, to make things extra ching-chong.

  “Anyway,” I say. “Your eyes look nice just the way they are.”

  Joy just starts laughing her full-on Joy laugh, eekeekeek-honk-eekeekeek, because two things are happening right now: the grown-ups’ table is as dead silent as fascinated meerkats, and the music playing is actually singing the words:

  You’re beautiful just the way you are / Girl, you know you’re a shining star

  “Ah, fuck,” I say, and laugh too.

  “Look back on three,” says Joy. “One, two, three.”

  We do, and the parents start talking again.

  I feel the potential of immense power. Total perfect mind control will be mine.

  Dad approaches and knocks his heels together to stand at attention, and I swear he considers a curt bow but decides against it. He sees my still-full glass. “You no drinking wine?”

  “Dad, I’m so full, I’m gonna barf.”

  “Eigh,” says Mom.

  “You wanna go visit the vomitorium so we can keep eating?” I say to Joy.

  “That’s disgusting,” says Joy, and giggles, and nudges my shoulder.

  And the parents fall silent again. Really, it’s like a light switch.

  Finally it’s time to leave. Me and Joy execute the fatal finishing move of tonight’s smashing inaugural test run.


  “I’ll get the car warmed up,” I say. It’s chilly for Southern California, meaning an arctic 60 degrees, and Mom likes a warm car even if it increases the likelihood of Dad throwing up in a to-go cup.

  I go outside. Joy follows me.

  I do just like we planned: start the car, crank the heat, and leave the vehicle.

  Then, in full view of the Songs’ open front door, I lean in to Joy and make like I’m kissing her cheek.

  “We’re a couple of goddamn zoo pandas,” I whisper into her ear.

  She laughs.

  Let me tell you something. I live to make people laugh. Parents, siblings, friends, lovers, doesn’t matter. I just have to. If you for some reason don’t know how to make someone laugh, then learn. Study that shit like it’s the SAT. If you are so unfortunate as to have no one in your life who can make you laugh, drop everything and find someone. Cross the desert if you must. Because laughter isn’t just about the funny. Laughter is the music of the deep cosmos connecting all human beings that says all the things mere words cannot.

  Joy laughs and we separate, and the orange rectangle of the Songs’ front door has become crowded with silhouettes.

  This is gonna work gangbusters.

  frank li

  in

  love

  chapter 10

  old new loves

  Joy and I spend the next couple of days working out the kinks in our system. First, I set a calendar event titled OLD NEW LOVES MOVIE WITH BRIT. Joy immediately deletes it.

  Dumbass, don’t use any names, she writes.

  Aha, I write back.

  So I make a new event titled simply SATURDAY: F—OLD NEW LOVES MOVIE. The F very cleverly stands for Frank.

  A day later I’m in Calculus, and we’re going over test answers together. Q got a perfect 100, for he is Q. Q also scored a perfect 1520 on the PSAT, forever ago.

  I got a 97. So did Brit. She reached over and drew a fat heart around my number, which is totally middle school, but I do not care one single bit.

  I feel a buzz and dare to take a peek at the screen:

  SATURDAY: —TITANFIST 3 RESUSCITATION MOVIE