Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(2)

And she held out her phone with a photo of Miles to Mom-n-Dad and everyone. It was like she cast a Silence spell on the room. No one said shit.

After a long minute, the phone turned itself off.

Mom-n-Dad went to the front door, put on their shoes, and waited with eyes averted for us to join them. We left without a word of explanation—none was needed—and the next morning Hanna vanished onto a flight back to Boston, four days early. A year later, after six or seven Hanna-free Gatherings, Ella Chang dared utter the word disowned.

And life went on. Mom-n-Dad no longer talked about Hanna. They acted like she moved to a foreign country with no modern forms of communication. Whenever I brought her up, they would literally—literally—avert their eyes and fall silent until I gave up. After a while, I did.

So did Hanna. Her text message responses fell from every day to every other day, then every week, and so on. This is how disownment happens. It’s not like some final sentence declared during some family tribunal. Disownment is a gradual kind of neglect. Since Mom-n-Dad gave up on Hanna, Hanna decided to give up as well. I get that.

But I never gave up on her. I still haven’t.

It’s a scary thing to watch someone you love vanish from sight.

I talk a lot about Hanna with Q. Q is what I call my top chap, and I am his.

I’m forever grateful for Q’s patience with me, because I can’t imagine it makes Q feel all that good to hear how Mom-n-Dad rejected a boy with the same skin color as his.

Q’s full name is Q Lee. He Lee and me Li. Like two brothers from Korean and African-American mothers. His parents, Mr. and Ms. Lee, are normal people who seem forever astonished that they gave birth to such a meganerd of a son. Q has a twin sister named Evon who is so smoking hot I can barely look at her. You say Evon Lee like heavenly.

Q’s Q doesn’t stand for anything; it’s just Q. Q decided to rename himself a couple months ago on his eighteenth birthday. He was originally born as Will. Will Lee.

Show us your willy, Will Lee, they would say.

Good choice on the name change, Q.

Like most nerds, Q and I spend our time watching obscure movies, playing video games, deconstructing the various absurdities of reality, and so on. We hardly ever talk about girls, for lack of material. Neither of us has dated anyone. The farthest I have ventured out into girl waters is when I accidentally kissed Gina Iforget during a game of spin-the-ballpoint-pen in junior high. It was supposed to be on the cheek, and both Gina and I missed and touched each other’s lips instead. Ooo-ooo-ooo.

The only time and place we even obliquely approach the subject of girl is when we happen to find ourselves sitting on the shore of Lake Girlfriend.

Lake Girlfriend is at Westchester Mall. Westchester Mall is the biggest mall in Orange County. For some reason, they leave all their doors open well past midnight, long after the stores have all shut. The mall becomes a beautifully empty, serenely apocalyptic space that no one in all of Southern California seems to know about.

Only two security guards patrol all seventy gleaming acres of the deserted mall. Their names are Camille and Oscar. They know me and Q and understand that no, we are not dating; we are just two guys with strange ideas of how to pass the time.

Lake Girlfriend is a fountain in Westchester Mall’s Crystal Atrium by the Nordstrom anchor store. It is a low polished structure formed from simple modernist angles. It bears a fancy brass plaque that says DO NOT DRINK—RECLAIMED WATER. Above, nameless jazz infuses the cavernous faceted space with echoey arpeggios.

I call it Lake Girlfriend because maybe if I give it enough confessions and offerings, a girl will rise from its shimmering surface and offer me her hand.

Q and I sit tailor-style on a stone ledge the color of chocolate by this fountain. We watch the water bubble up from an octagonal top pool, push through a stone comb, and descend staggered steps to a pool floor sequined throughout with glimmering coins.

I reach into my army-surplus rucksack and take out my Tascam, a sweet little device no bigger than a TV remote, and record the sound: low, rich syrup layered with pink noise and the occasional pwip of large bubbles. Practically a complete riff unto itself. I click the recorder off and stash it away so that Q and I can begin.

“Ideal traits in a woman,” I say. “You go first.”

Q rests his chin atop his fists. “Speaks at least two other languages.”

“And?” I say.

“Can play the oboe at a professional level,” says Q.

“Q,” I say.

“Ivy League professor by day, ballet renegade by night.”

“I’m assuming this list isn’t based in reality,” I say.

“A guy can dream, right?” says Q.

It’s a little hard to hear him over the white noise of Lake Girlfriend, and I think that’s the thing about this place that makes it easy to talk about things like ideal girls. It’s like talking out loud to ourselves, but in front of each other.

“Your turn,” says Q.

I think. A hundred faces scroll through my mind, all pretty in their own way. A thousand combinations of possibilities. Everyone has loveliness inside if you look carefully. Lots of the world is like this. One time I halved an onion and discovered its rings had squashed one by one to form a perfect heart shape at the core. One time—

“Frank?” says Q. “You gotta move your mouth to speak.”

“Wull,” I say. “I mean.”