Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(45)

“Ai-oh-gey,” says Dad. I okay.

“Wait, so the guy didn’t take any money?” says Joy.

“No money,” says Mom. “He going to three other store, smog check store, water store, dambae-jip, he shooting them too, every time he take no money.”

Dambae-jip means smoke shop.

“Anyway police catching him. He so crazy white man.”

“Wait, so they caught the guy?” I say.

“They catching. He shooting three more people. Nobody die. Everybody okay. Daddy gonna be okay, doctor say.”

I fall into the chair. Joy catches me halfway down to make sure I don’t miss the seat with my ass.

“That’s so crazy,” says Joy.

“I buy big bag of Nachitos,” says Mom. “You want Nachitos? Too spicy. Daddy love Nachitos.”

“I’m okay, Mrs. Li,” says Joy. “I can’t eat food that’s too maewo.”

“You don’t like maewo stuff?” says Mom. Maewo means spicy. Mom smiles, because Mom can’t deal with spicy food either. She’s been known to eat Nachito chips on top of rice to cut the heat, which is almost as weird as my habit of eating Nachitos with chopsticks to keep my fingertips from turning fiery orange.

While they go on and on about spicy food, I basically just let myself slip into a complete space-out.

Dad just got shot.

The bullet was small, and hit him in a safe enough spot.

But what if the bullet had been just a little bigger?

What if it had hit his left side, not his right, and gone through his heart?

I feel like this moment should be more . . . momentous. But instead, there is Mom, talking about spicy foods, and there is Joy, sitting for all the world like the perfect Korean daughter. She’s even got her knees lined up neatly together and her hands folded in her lap.

I see Dad, staring at me through his mask. He looks frail. I’ve never seen him frail before, and a vision of him convalescing in old age flashes in my mind. But: he’s smiling.

Dad is happy.

And I understand why. Mom is taking care of him. Joy is taking care of me. We are all here together. His son has chosen a proper girl. All four of us are keenly aware of the specter of death, and remain defiantly alive. Cozy, even. Here in this small emerald room.

I glance at my phone for no reason. Q is twenty minutes away. Nothing from Brit. Why would there be anything from Brit? It’s late and she’s off prancing about in dreamland in her sleep, where me and her are a genuine, authentic Dating Couple.

“Are you okay?” says Joy.

I’m breathing faster and faster. “Can we . . . go . . . outside?”

“Sure, yeah,” says Joy, urging me up. She stares and stares into my increasingly vacant eyes. “Go go go. We’ll be back, Mrs. Li.”

Joy hustles me through the maze of corridors like a Secret Service agent scrambling the president, and we make it outside into the freezing night air to stand under a cube of brilliant blue-green light. I hunch over my knees and breathe and breathe and breathe.

“Slow it down, you’re having a panic attack,” says Joy. “Deep breath in through the nose, slow breath out through the mouth. That’s it. Make a long shh sound.”

“Shh,” I say. “Shh-h-h-hit fuck piss.”

Joy stifles a laugh and puts on her serious face. “In through the nose, shh-h-h-hit fuck piss through the mouth.”

“Oh man,” I say. “I think I almost just lost Dad. Oh wow.”

My eyes are dancing. Something inside my chest is clenching tight. I stop speaking.

“What do you need?” says Joy. “What do you need? A hug?”

I nod.

So Joy hugs me, and my thoughts evaporate into cloud form, then fall again to crystallize into something different. My arms spring up to embrace Joy’s back. I’ve hugged her plenty but never like this, never with the whole length of my body, and I feel like I’m clinging to a raft.

“What if all three shots hit?” I say. “What if he bled out? What if it was a bigger gun? He could’ve died so easily tonight, but for some random reason he’s going to be okay, and now we get to pass around a bag of Nachitos like we’re just hanging out.”

I’m babbling. “Shh,” says Joy.

“Seriously, what if he died? He would just get erased, and the world would just go on, and he knows so little about me and I know so little about him, and fuck, if he died, then that would’ve been it, just like oh, come to America, have this kid named Frank, work at a store, die. You know Dad never talks about his childhood? Almost never? He’s already a huge question mark, and if he fucking died, I wouldn’t even know who I was missing.”

“You still have plenty of time to get to know him,” says Joy. “You’ll get sick of him. I promise.”

“He could’ve died, Joy.”

“He’s gonna be okay.”

“And then that would’ve been it.”

“He’s gonna be okay.”

When Joy releases me to examine my face, she wipes my tears with her sleeves one by one, left, right, then left again, then right again.

I lift her hair, find the green there, and smile at it. All at once my tears stop. My face feels hot and swollen, like someone just kicked a soccer ball at me.

“Thanks,” I say.