Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(13)

“Wurd.” Point.

“But Joy didn’t want to get her new skirt dirty.” He says it all stupid like durr-tay.

Wu Tang is so stupid that he loops it all the way around until stupid starts to seem kinda cool.

“Aha,” I say.

“Okay, well,” says Joy, and turns to leave.

Brit’s hands are getting sweaty in mine. I can feel my body cooling. I can feel the wind moving in the gap between us. The moment’s been cut short.

Joy mutters to herself. “Guess I’m not the only one with a problem.” She winces at her own words.

“Okay, bye,” I say loudly. I need Joy to go away, even though I know she’s right.

Brit Means is white.

“Problem?” says Brit. She’s irked, and she has every right to be. But how am I supposed to explain what the word problem means here? Where do I even begin? Chinese boy problems? Me and Joy’s conversation at the last Gathering—hell, every conversation I’ve ever had at Gatherings—seems so divorced from reality that it’s like we speak a different kind of English there, one that doesn’t translate to this dimensional plane. So I just say: “It’s nothing, I’ll tell you later.”

“Big eyes, though,” mumbles Joy, and again winces at herself.

“Huh?” says Brit.

“Oh my god, shut up,” I tell Joy. I say it in my five-, six-, seven-year-old voice.

“I’ll shut up,” says Joy.

The air has changed. No doubt about it. It no longer feels quite like I’m here with Brit and Joy’s here with Wu. Right now it’s feeling strangely like I’m here with Joy, and we’ve each brought our respective problems along.

Right now it feels like planes of reality crashing together. I have my reality, which Joy has never been a part of. Joy has hers, and I’ve never seen it either, aside from little glimpses of her closed room when it’s the Songs’ turn to host a Gathering. And there is the entirely separate reality of the Gatherings themselves, plowing right through the middle of everything like an armada of icebreaker ships.

Joy gives me a sad look: You know I’m right, Frank.

My eyes drop to her shoes: You are, Joy.

A buzzer bell razzes the silence. It’s like a signal for all of us to stop holding hands. So we do, and the two couples now become four people standing apart.





chapter 6


dying




It’s Friday. Brit’s absent today to go on a trip with her parents. They’re designing some kickass private residence in wine country, so they’re making a little family vacation out of it. They’ll even let Brit taste a fine wine or two, like a 1984 Cabernet Merlot Pinot Somethingsomething.

When I try to picture sipping fine wine with Mom-n-Dad, I snort so hard that Q looks up from his game thing.

“What?” says Q.

“Nothing.”

“Is Brit Means a funny girl?”

“Huh? No. I mean yes.”

We’re sitting in front of the school, waiting for Q’s mom to pick us up. Q is tapping away, building some kind of sprawling miniature factory full of conveyor belts and automatons on an alien planet.

“Mom says Italian for dinner, by the way,” says Q.

“I love Italian.”

“Then why don’t you marry Italian?” says Q.

My phone buzzes. I always keep it on vibrate—Q and I find ringtones depressing and believe they are forlorn cries for validation in a noisy, jaded world. “I’ll laugh in a sec,” I say, and look at the screen.

At a rest stop now, says Brit. Already missing you super bad Me too, I say. The missing you part, not the rest stop part lol my funny boy

Please say that one more time My funny boy

I miss you too, I say.

I miss you more

No I miss you more

No I miss you more

Ha we stoopid

“So this is how it ends,” says Q.

I look up from my fartphone. “What?”

Q gestures sadly at the screen. “Our friendship.”

“Shut up,” I say, and laugh, and Q laughs too.

But just to make doubly sure, I turn the phone off and make an unmistakable show of stuffing it deep into my backpack.



* * *



? ? ?

“To the left,” says Q. He passes a dish of olive oil.

“To the right,” I say, and pass the basket of bread.

“Now dip, baby, dip,” we say.

Q’s mom snaps her fingers in time to the music: a clean KidzRock! version of a racy booty-house classic that legend says was once banned from the radio. Q’s mom looks forever pleasantly surprised, even when her face is at rest. Q’s dad gets up to bring waters, and performs the most perfect dad-dance along the way. Q’s house is always filled with music and dad-dances. Q’s mom-n-dad even kiss sometimes.

Dinner at my house is a goddamn wake by comparison.

Q’s sister, Evon, wanders in like a doe appearing in a wood, rose-gold headphones and all. She glances down with mild astonishment: Dinner is happening? Oh my.

The Lees pray before dinner. But they do it quickly, with eyes open. They don’t even bother to turn the music down. They go to church on Sunday, but not if there’s a big game on. They’re postseason Christ fans, Q likes to say.