This Is My Brain in Love

by I. W. Gregorio

  Jocelyn is waiting for me. So is her father.

  “Hey,” Jocelyn breathes, standing up. She takes a step forward, then rocks back. Her hands spasm like she wants to reach out and hug me, then she glances over at her dad and lets her arms hang to her sides.

  No hanky-panky.

  “Hey,” I say, with a great big grin on my face like a big dork. “It’s great to be back.”

  “Great to have you,” she says. Her answering smile is smaller, more cautious, but she’s still radiant. “We’ve got some good stuff planned.”

  “I expect daily progress report,” Mr. Wu interjects sternly from where he’s filling the register. “And Xiao Jia still have no cell phone when she is not at work, so don’t be expecting any more secret meeting.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand. When did you want me to work with Alan today?” I ask.

  “He get back around three thirty. Will come straight here to be chaperone when I go for supply.”

  “Got it.”

  Mr. Wu goes back to his work, and I walk over to Jocelyn to drop my book bag at the booth that serves as her workstation. I sit down across from her, almost aching with the desire to instead be sitting next to her, feeling the side of her body pressing into mine.

  No distractions.

  This summer may very well kill me.

  JOCELYN

  In theory, my dad’s plan is pretty reasonable, almost enlightened when it comes to Asian parenting culture (thank you, Mr. Cheng). I tell myself to think of it as delayed gratification, as hoops we have to jump through so my dad can save face.

  Approximately thirty seconds after Will comes in for work, though, I realize that it’s just torture, plain and simple.

  I can’t hug Will. I can’t sit next to him and feel his heat as we pore over advertising ideas. (My dad has demanded a one-foot rule, as if he wants us to leave room for the Holy Spirit.)

  And you know, that would all be fine if I didn’t also have to sit across from him and look into his eyes as we discuss financials, and listen to his laugh while we brainstorm more slogans.

  This is why I’m an atheist. Any God who thinks hormones are a good idea should be shot.

  I try to sublimate my feelings into spreadsheets. After we’ve been working an hour, Amah comes down to be my parents’ eyes and ears as they run a few errands. By then the tension between Will and me has come down to a simmer, which is good because I’m looking through my plan and panicking a bit about where to even start.

  “Do you want to divide and conquer with these groups?” I ask him. “You should do the college communications, and I can work on the consumer outreach.” We’d decided to make bookmarks to give out at the bookstore, as well as flyers emphasizing our “Healthy Choices” steamed menu (with brown rice and sauce on the side) that we could post at the LA Fitness down the street. “We can work together to cold-call the drug reps.”

  I’m surprised when Will’s expression flattens and he seems to physically fold into himself. When he replies his voice is off. Higher pitched. Nervous? “Actually, I can hand out the flyers at the bookstore and the LA Fitness, since I have a car and can go around. Do you mind handling the calls?”

  “Fine.” I shrug. His mother is a doctor—he got us a few more names from her, after all—maybe he had a weird interaction with a drug rep.

  Will swallows, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob. “I’m sorry,” he says in a more natural voice. “I just… I don’t like calling people I don’t know. Face to face is fine, I’ll drop off the samples at the offices, I’d just prefer not to make calls to the reps.”

  “Sure.” I mean, he’s doing all of this for free, basically, so I shouldn’t ask him to do anything that makes him uncomfortable. “It makes more sense for me to call from the restaurant, I guess. More official.”

  Will has turtled into a little huddle in front of his computer. “Thanks for understanding,” he says, staring at his keyboard.

  “No prob. I’m making the fitness flyer now—we should drop some off at the Y, too. What were the numbers again for what the protein-to-fat ratio is supposed to be after a workout?”

  Will is back to normal within a few minutes, and I forget about the little blip in an otherwise clockwork afternoon. It isn’t until weeks later that I look back on that moment and wonder: What if I’d noticed earlier?

  This Is My Brain on Solicitation

  WILL

  The next day, I print off a set of flyers at my mom’s office and head over to LA Fitness. They won’t let me put the flyers up in their locker rooms, but there’s a community bulletin board at the front entrance, and I have enough menus in my trunk to put one under the windshield wipers of each car in the parking lot. My family are regulars at the bookstore, so the people there let me leave some A-Plus bookmarks at their counter when I promise to put out their monthly newsletter with the magazines our customers read when they’re waiting for take-out orders.

  When I get back to the restaurant, I’m starving. “Did you have lunch already?” I ask Jos, who is portioning food out for the bento boxes I’m going to distribute in the afternoon.

  She shakes her head, concentrating on her work. “Nah, I’m not hungry.” Surprised, I glance at the clock—it’s past two, and I didn’t see her eat anything in the morning. I go back to grab some of the chicken and broccoli that’s always premade for lunch specials. “I don’t know how you can be around these amazing smells all day and not constantly have the munchies.”

  Jos shrugs and starts on another sampler. Each office is going to get a dozen jiaozi, an extra-large order of pork fried rice, and two cucumber avocado rolls. We’re dropping off three a day based on geography and which drug reps Jocelyn was able to get in contact with.

  I’m still embarrassed that I had to pawn that part of the job on Jocelyn, but I console myself with knowing that she’s 1,000 percent better at it than I would be. I’m happy to be the food mule, and though it does ratchet my anxiety up to knock on people’s doors and talk to them, it’s a type of nerves that I’ve gotten used to.

  Having spent a significant part of my childhood doing homework with my sister in a storage room in my mom’s office, I know my way through medical buildings. I know enough to dress up in a suit so they know right away I’m not a patient, and to wait until there isn’t a line at the front desk to politely give them the business card I made up on Vistaprint and leave them one of the ribboned tiers of take-out containers that Jocelyn made.

  One of the reception ladies at the surgeon’s office actually moans when she smells the tower of goodness. “Oh my god, I love dumplings.”

  “We’re definitely one of the more affordable catering options out there,” I say. “Make sure to order extra dumplings so you can take some home. Gotta have fringe benefits, right?”

  “You said it,” she says, glaring at an elderly patient who’s been giving her the stink eye since I walked in. She calls in our first catering job that afternoon.

  When we get the order, Jocelyn and I exchange high fives without thinking, only to hear Mr. Wu’s shout of outrage from the counter.

  “No hanky-panky!”

  Later on in the afternoon, two identical Post-it notes show up on our laptops:

  A-PLUS RULES

  * No touching allowed (any body part)

  * Will use nanny cam if hanky-panky continue

  * Also no secret whispering or messages

  PS: We expect revenue report on Friday.

  I can practically hear Jocelyn’s teeth grating when she sees the note.

  “It’s okay,” I say, glancing over at Grandma Wu where she’s pretending to snooze at a booth at the far end of the restaurant. “It’s kind of funny—I’ll have to tell my friends that I have a rep for being handsy now. They’ll think it’s hysterical. Do you think your dad would lay off if I gave him their names as character references?”

  “I think my dad’s going to lay off when I’ve reached menopause,” Jocelyn says sourly. She tears the note off her comp
uter screen with extreme prejudice and crumples it up into a tiny dense ball before tossing it into the trash.

  I shrug and stick my note in the little blank spot to the right of my touchpad.

  For the next few minutes Jocelyn just takes her anger out on her keyboard, hammering out quick violent finger strokes with a scowl on her face. I see her look up at me a couple of times in my peripheral vision, but I keep my eyes on my own work. I’ve never been good at defusing other people’s moods.

  Finally, Jocelyn slams her laptop shut. “I just don’t get how you just sit there and take it,” she says, and it’s like the blast of heat you get when you open the door of a car that’s been sitting outside all day in August.

  “Why aren’t you more angry about this?” she hisses at me. I don’t know what it means that my first concern is that she’s breaking rule number three. “Shouldn’t you be resisting? Or fighting back? Is it because you assume that you have something to prove, that my dad’s right and you’re not worthy to date me unless you fulfill some sort of bullshit arbitrary contract?”

  “Ummm…” It makes me slightly breathless, not only to see the depth of her rage, but to have it directed at me all of a sudden. I blink heavily, like I’m trying to ward off smoke, or tears. “I mean, it’s his prerogative as your father…”

  “What about your prerogative as my… kind-of boyfriend?” She stutters over what to call us, and it makes my heart hiccup at the idea of even having a kind-of girlfriend. “Shouldn’t you stand up for yourself?”

  I have to admit that I never really questioned the deal I made. I accepted it at face value, because it never crossed my mind that Jocelyn wasn’t worth it. Maybe another guy would’ve bargained for a better “dating contract,” but I just didn’t see the point. It wasn’t worth losing Mr. Wu completely by pushing back.

  I try to explain. “It’s not that I don’t want to stand up for myself, it’s just that I’m choosing my battles. I didn’t want to put up a fuss only to have your dad shut me out completely. I’m happy with the deal I made. You’re worth it. I might not be fighting, but I’m persisting. He’s not going to get rid of me.” I offer a tentative smile as Jocelyn seems to deflate, like a cat smoothing down its hackles. “You’re not going to get rid of me.”

  Jos sighs. “I don’t want to get rid of you.” And like that the storm’s over. “The scary thing is, I think he really does have a nanny cam somewhere,” she says, resigned instead of furious. “We had this one checkout clerk that he was convinced was siphoning money on the side. Also, I don’t know why he’s asking for revenue reports so early. It’s barely been a day since we started our outreach.”

  “We did already get those two catering orders,” I offer. “Also, my mother saw my flyers lying around and gave me a tip. You know who orders out a lot? Shift workers. We can make up a bento box for the ER and each nursing station, and I can drop them off tonight with some menus.”

  “Maybe we need a hospital-specific flyer,” Jocelyn says. “How about something like, ‘You worry about your patients. We’ll worry about your food.’”

  “Yes! We can highlight the low-sodium and low-carb choices, too. And put a ‘No MSG’ callout.”

  “Ummmm…” Jocelyn looks a little shifty.

  I raise my eyebrows. “You guys use MSG?” I mean, it isn’t like there are huge kegs labeled “monosodium glutamate” lying around.

  “You know that MSG is in, like, everything?” Jocelyn says. “Most soup bases have it, and any soy sauces that aren’t Kikkoman, which is super expensive. And it’s not just a Chinese food thing, either. KFC and Chick-fil-A use MSG in their seasonings. There’s natural MSG in Parmesan cheese, for God’s sake. Heck, it’s in freaking Doritos. I don’t know why Chinese food gets such a bad rap for it—sinophobia, anyone? Besides, recent studies show that it’s not actually that bad for you.”

  I blink. My mind whirs, wondering if I can leverage this into a blog, an op-ed in the O-D, or even a longer think piece revealing common misconceptions about ethnic food. Mr. Evans might even be proud of me. He wanted me to dig deep for material? You can’t get more behind-the-scenes than this gig here.

  This Is My Brain on Personal Statements

  JOCELYN

  Perry High School has a Rising Stars of Business club that’s basically composed of tools. To the best of my knowledge, it’s an all-white group of six boys and two girls who sit around playing at being grown-ups. They wear ill-fitting business suits to their meetings and tote around giant flip boards so they can brainstorm shit and talk about “economies of scale,” play with imaginary money, and brag about how much they won in the Stock Market Game. I am never going to fit in with that group and don’t want to try.

  What my dad wants me to do is the University of Utica Junior Business Program, which allows high school students to take a college course each semester during their junior and senior years. A lot of people get into the program—basically, it seems like if you can pay tuition and string together sentences for an application essay you are in. What interests my dad, of course, is a scholarship program where the person who plans the best business project gets free tuition, not to mention access to a faculty adviser and $5,000 seed money for their proposal.

  I know at least one of the people applying, this guy Geoff from my school, who is student council treasurer. He’s apparently trying to start up a solar power assessment company.

  As it turns out, Geoff is dating Priya’s friend Sophia, so Priya was able to give me intel. “Basically Sophia tells me that his parents told him to play up the clean energy angle because it’s hot now, not because he’s really interested in it. It’s all just résumé fodder for him; he doesn’t actually want it.”

  I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse, to feel like some scrappy underdog battling a faceless group of overachievers. Actually, there’s no question. It makes it worse. I know the people applying for these honors—I pirated the frosted polypropylene report covers that one of them bought for our group project, for God’s sake—and they are not to be underestimated. They probably have recommendation letters from VPs of Fortune 500 companies or something. Who am I supposed to get my recommendation from, my amah?

  Just scrolling through the application for the scholarship gives me hives. The program’s general application just requires a transcript, a statement of purpose, and two recommendation letters, one from a teacher and one from another supervisor or counselor. But the scholarship application asks questions like, “Tell us about a leadership position you have volunteered for.” and “What was the most challenging ethical dilemma you’ve ever had and how did you resolve it?” It also calls for a third recommendation, from a colleague or someone else who has witnessed me in a leadership role.

  I reluctantly admit that this third letter is going to have to come from Will. He’s the obvious choice, not only because he can string more than five words together in a sentence. I’m already stressing out that my “supervisor” is also my dad, until I realize that I can probably ask my middle school librarian, Mrs. Morgan, whose media section I reorganized and curated.

  My biggest problem is that it’s going to take me at least a week to produce enough bullshit to populate a seven-hundred-word statement of purpose. “My dad’s making me do it” probably isn’t going to cut it.

  “I don’t get it,” I whine to Priya as I pump her for more information about Geoff and his project. “What do these admissions people really expect from these essays? I mean, isn’t it obvious that people’s purpose when they go into business is to make money?”

  “Maybe this is the part of the application where you have to do some ego stroking. I mean, you have to appeal to their idea of B-school having a higher purpose. You can spout off about how prosperity brings growth or something like that. I don’t know, talk about how thriving companies mean thriving communities. I think I’ve heard that on a commercial somewhere.”

  “I guess I need to watch Wall Street again.” I sigh. “Greed is good.�
��

  “No, just google ‘best business school essays,’” Priya says. “Find the one that least makes you want to vomit into your own mouth and model it after that.”

  “Ugh, why do these sites all give you advice that essentially amounts to ‘be yourself’ and ‘just remember not to be a jerk’?”

  “It’s good practice for college admission essays. It took my brother seventeen drafts before he came up with one that my dad approved of. He basically became the king of the humble brag.”

  “A lot of people say you should mention your failures,” I note, browsing through a few summaries. “That’ll be kind of easy.”

  “Yeah, schools like you to show that you have ‘grit,’” Priya says vaguely. “It’s like in interviews where you have to talk about your biggest weakness and somehow make it into a strength.”

  “Hey, I think I asked Will that one,” I exclaim. “Maybe I am meant to go into business after all.”

  “Of course you are,” Priya says, like it’s completely obvious. “You’re the OG get-shit-done-woman. I’d want you to be CEO of my company any day.”

  It’s such a Priya thing to say. I love that about her. “You’re just saying that because Excel gives you hives.”

  “No, I’m not,” she insists. “Stop deflecting, or I’m going to make you do your daily affirmations again. University of Utica is going to accept you because you’re ridiculously organized, have experience with creative ways to run a business, and because you’ve been raised to have an unreasonable work ethic that will probably give you a heart attack before you’re thirty.”

  When I don’t say anything, Priya grumbles, “Jocelyn Wu, don’t make me ask you to repeat after me.”

  I laugh so I won’t cry. “I don’t know. Will I even make the cut for an interview? My GPA isn’t exactly stellar.” It’s not the worst. I don’t take enough honors classes to get above a 4.0, so it’s a 3.8, which sounds good but is basically an Asian C.