Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(21)

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 ma?tre 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.