Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(49)

“Wait. How?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

“By making her Korean?”

“That feels racist. Are you being racist?”

“Your parents are the ones who are racist. They’re not gonna change anytime soon.”

I already know all this. There’s nothing to say, so I just let my arm press into my eyes until the green-and-black checkerboards begin to swirl.

“Listen,” says Q, softer now. “Don’t get mad. But you need to prepare yourself for the imminent possibility of telling Brit the whole awful truth of what you’ve wrought.”

“Thanks for having my back.”

“I have your back. Your back I have.”

“Doesn’t feel like it right now.”

“Listen—” Q tries to lift my arm up but I hold it firm, and when he releases it I just wind up hitting myself in the face. He does it again and again.

“Why do you like hitting yourself?” he says.

“Gyahguahghghah,” I say, finally bolting up to slap-fight the air. “Why can’t I just date Brit and have fun like a normal teenager? Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?”

Q carves out a perfect cube of air with his hands. “Because, listen: the longer you date Brit, the more you will eventually hurt her. You are amassing a debt of emotional pain that you will eventually have to pay for. You need to tell her sooner than later.”

I grip my knees. He is right. Fuck you, Q, for being so damn right. I don’t know how to tell Brit she’s on a collision course with the hard wall that is Mom-n-Dad. The thought terrifies me. The thought of what could happen afterward terrifies me.

“But I like her,” I say.

“Then you have to decide how hard you want to fight your parents for her.”

“But I’m scared to fight.”

Q opens his hands. There is the conundrum.

I don’t have to mention Hanna. Q already knows.

“Do your parents want you to date only black girls?” I say.

“Ha, to keep me pure black?”

I laugh. We’ve laughed before about the notion of a pure black. There are so many kinds of black. Nerd black, artistic black, old-skool black, super-black (see also: super-Koreans). Black can mean a million things. “It’s funny to hear you call yourself black.”

“But I am,” says Q plainly. “I’m black.”

“I thought you hated all that black-versus-white crap.”

“It’s a false dichotomy. White is an artificial construct.”

“Amen,” I say.

“Black is an artificial construct.”

“Preach.”

“But the fact is, as long as white motherfuckers keep being the way they’re being, we’re stuck with these words. They’re gonna call me black. And they’re gonna call you Asian. And to them it means we’re all the same. But we know the truth.”

We’re entering strange, sensitive territory. Q and I have talked about race a million times, but mostly to make fun of it as an abstract, intellectual concept. We’ve never really gotten that personal about it, until now.

“So you don’t hate having to call yourself black,” I say carefully.

“I’m proud to be black. Black can be whatever you want it to be. That’s what my parents always said from when I was little.”

I imagine Q having heartfelt conversations about race with his parents as a kid. Conversations I never have with Mom-n-Dad.

“So I’m guessing they don’t care who you date, then.”

“You mean like your racist-ass parents?”

“Yes, like my racist-ass parents.”

“Nope.”

“So it’s not Amelie.”

“Nice try,” says Q.

“Not Naima.”

“I’ve already told you,” says Q, not bothering to open his eyes. “She’s in love with someone else. The whole thing is moot.”

“But I could help Cyrano de Bergerac you one fling before summer.”

Q lifts his arm and peers at me. “I think we should focus on solving your problem first before we move on to mine.”

This shuts me up. I realize what I’m doing. I just want to be carefree, like in those teen movies where all the kids (meaning all the white kids) get to play their guessing games and act out their love dramas and lie tête-à-tête on moonlit lawns to gaze up at the stars. To wonder about all those higher things: the universe, fate, other philosophica. Not mucky-muck bullshit like the racism of their parents.

“I wish Korean could be whatever I wanted it to be,” I say. “Korean’s like the opposite. Korean’s just the one thing, and nothing else.”

“Super-Korean,” says Q.

“Bingo,” I say. “You know there are these Koreans out there who actually believe Korean is its own separate race, with its own single origin? Forget rich versus poor or strong versus weak; for these fools it’s like Koreans versus Earthlings.”

Q settles in to the end of the sofa opposite me and wiggles his toes into my armpit. “Korea is one of the most homogeneous countries in the world, old bean. Sorry that was the hand you were dealt.”

“I could start my own successful billion-dollar music service, but to these fools I’d still be just some Korean guy.”