Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(50)

“A man can be president of the United States, but to similar fools he’d just be some black stereotype. Everything else is trumped for these fools.”

“Kinda wishing I could be white right now. Without the actually being white part.”

“White can be anything it wants and be white last, not first.”

“Although, eh, too many war crimes.”

“True,” says Q.

“I just know I’ll never be able to do Korean right. You know what I mean?”

“Me and my family,” mumbles Q, “we get shit all the time just for the crime of being ourselves. None of our DC relatives think we’re black enough. We got shit when we moved from black Baldwin Hills to white Playa Mesa for Dad’s job. At the last gathering, my uncle made fun of my bougie accent and said he’d have to take away my black card.” Q lifts his arms to make air quotes each time, but with just his middle fingers facing out. He calls them his fuck-off quotes.

Q has Gatherings of his own? And they’re just as annoying as mine?

Huh.

“We West Coast Lees have always been the black sheep of the family,” says Q. “The black black sheep. So yes, I know what you mean.”

“Hey, Internet, what are black people?” I call to the room.

“Ha ha,” says Q.

I feel something squeeze my toes, one by one.

“Are you squeezing my toes?” I say.

“Mhm,” says Q.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

With that accomplished, Q speaks. “You’re a Korean black sheep. So are your mom-n-dad. They left Korea for here, after all. We’re all Limbos to some degree.”

“Probably,” I say. “Except Kyung Hee.”

“Who’s Kyung Hee?”

“Ella Chang’s sister. She’s getting married this weekend.”

“Wait,” says Q. “Your dad isn’t gonna try to go to a wedding in his condition, is he?”

I sigh. “He is, even though he really shouldn’t. It’s this whole stupid pride thing.”

“That sounds super Korean.”

“You want super Korean, you should see the groom-to-be. He’s this Korean dude, like Korean-Korean. Kyung Hee’s basically Korean-Korean too. She’s fluent, lives in K-town. She doesn’t even use her English name anymore.”

Q gives a sleepy gasp. “So she chose the tribe.”

“Yup, she chose the tribe.”

“Good for Kyung Hee. Hey, Internet, what are Korean people?”

“It must be so simple for her. She’s chosen to be Korean. None of this hyphenated bullshit. Oh hey, Kyung Hee, where you from? I’m Korean, Frank. Full stop. I understand that. I just am unable to make that choice for some reason. You know?”

Q just breathes up into the room.

“Did you just fall asleep on me?”

“No,” says Q, but it’s a sleepy cry, like he’s dreaming of being leg-humped by sewer pipe monsters.

“Don’t you fall asleep on me, William Lee,” I say.

Q does not respond. His breathing fills the room like a white noise machine. Pretty soon, my eyes close too. So little rest last night at the hospital. We sleep like two boys in a canoe set adrift.

I have a vivid, insane dream where I am walking in a pulsating forest of moist black trees all strung up with red pinlights. Brit walks with me. She’s in a futuristic yellow glow-in-the-dark dress I’m afraid will get stained from the trees. I know the trees are the insides of Dad’s lungs; I know the spongy ground we walk upon is the slowly rising tissue of his diaphragm.

The whole thing could be creepy. But it’s beautiful in a gross way. Brit is just as wonderstruck as me. Her hand in mine can read my mind well enough to hear me think, Get a load of that up there, and we both marvel at the light of the full lemon-lit moon. It’s not really the moon. It’s a round perforation 0.22 inches in diameter letting in sunlight from the outside world.

When the moon blots out, I know it is because a great eye has moved in to peer at us through the hole. I let go of Brit and wave at it with both arms amid the constellation of blood-red stars adorning every dark limb. The eye belongs to Joy—I know this—and I bet she can see me way down here.

I wave and wave and yell and yell.

“Joy! Joy!”





chapter 19


hey internet what are




“Hey, Internet, what are black people?”

Here’s what I found: The definition of black varies by country. In the US, people classified as black are defined as having roots in sub-Saharan Africa, and black is generally associated with those having darker skin tones. The term black has many meanings and connotations, many of them controversial and still a subject of debate today. The full article is 13,881 words. Would you like me to continue?


“Hey, Internet, what are white people?”

Here’s what I found: The definition of white varies by country. In the US, the term white is ever-changing. The category that once only included English and Scandinavians expanded to include those once considered to be nonwhite, such as Germans, Greeks, Iranians, Irish, Italians, Jews, and white Hispanics. The full article is 13,752 words. Would you like me to continue?