Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(6)

Wu’s full name is Wu Tang.

Yep.

Joy continues. “Wu’s all, I want to meet your parents. I’m all, no, but he keeps insisting. We had this big fight.”

To understand why this is an issue, it’s helpful to know that basically every country in Asia has historically hated on every other country in Asia. Koreans hated Chinese, and Chinese hated Koreans, and have forever. Also Chinese hated Japanese hated Koreans hated Thais hated Vietnamese and so on. They all have histories of invading and being invaded by one another. You know how European countries talk shit all the time about each other? Same thing.

“That’s stressful,” I say with a frown.

Joy and I are up to green bricks now. I hold one up and notice it’s the same color as the green hiding in her hair.

“I don’t just have boy problems,” says Joy. “I have Chinese boy problems.”

Koreans hating Chinese hating Koreans hating blablabla.

“Racists,” I say.

Joy just nods. She knows I’m talking about her mom-n-dad.

I know this is the point where one of us should say some-damn-thing about Hanna. But what is there to say?

There’s plenty to say. But I’ve said it over and over and over, so many times that I don’t have to even actually say it anymore. Now I’m just super tired of saying it.

Our parents are racist. I wish things were different. I miss Hanna. I wish things were different. Our parents are racist. I miss Hanna.

Chk, chk. We build until we reach the violet bricks. There’s a bunch of white and black and brown bricks left over.

“What should we do with these?” I say. “They don’t fit into the rainbow spectrum.”

This is a ridiculous and obvious metaphor, and Joy smacks my forehead to point it out.

“Metaphor incoming, doosh,” she says.

Then we just kind of stare at each other.

“Fuckin’ parents, man,” I say.





chapter 3


more better




Mom’s driving me and Dad back home from the party. It’s a long way from Diamond Ranch back to Playa Mesa. The neighborhoods start all Korean, then go Mexican, then Chinese, then black, then back to Mexican, then finally white.

Playa Mesa is in white.

We’re only at the first Mexican when Dad quietly throws up into an empty to-go cup.

“Eigh,” says Mom. “You drink too much, Daddy.”

“I’m okay,” says Dad.

“Eigh,” says Mom, and rolls down all the windows.

Dad seals the lid on the soda cup and leans back with his eyes closed. The straw is still sticking out of the top. It’s like Satan created a drink daring all to take a sip.

The fresh air helps with the smell.

“You don’t drink like Daddy, okay?” Mom says to me through the rearview mirror.

“Okay, Mom,” I say.

“One time, one man, he drink all night, drink too too much? He sleep, he throw up, he choking in his sleep? He die.”

I’ve heard this story before. “That sucks.”

“Really don’t drink, okay?”

“You got nothing to worry about, Mom.”

And she really doesn’t. I’ve had about two drinks my entire life, and I didn’t bother finishing them. Same thing with top chap Q, Q’s sister, Evon, or any of my other friends. We’re all sober kids, all in the same Advanced Placement (AP) classes, and therefore do not get invited to parties and their concomitant opportunities to imbibe. We wouldn’t drink even if we did.

We are APs, or Apeys for short. We do not go to keggers or ragers. Instead of parties, we find empty parking structures and hold midnight table reads of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. We pile into my car, a teenaged front-wheel-drive Consta with manual windows, and drive halfway to Las Vegas just to see a meteor shower and get a good look at Orion’s scabbard in the flawless black desert sky. To be clear, we never actually continue on to Vegas. Whatever happens in Vegas, whatevers in Vegas, who cares. We turn the car around and head home and wonder about life outside Earth, and whether we’ll ever encounter aliens or they’re just ignoring us because we’re still so embarrassingly primitive, or if the Fermi paradox is true and we really are the only intelligent beings in the entire universe.

Traffic is super light—just a stream of lights rocketing along at eighty-five miles per hour—and already we’re up to Chinese. Dad points it out.

“This all Chinese now,” he says. “Used to be Mexican, now totally Chinese. They take over whole this area. Look, signs say HONG FU XIAN blablabla, ha ha ha.”

“Chang-chong-ching-chong?” says Mom, laughing too.

“You guys,” I say.

“They eating everything,” says Dad. “Piggy ear, piggy tail, chicken feet, everything they eating.”

I facepalm, but with my knee. Koreans eat quote-weird-end-quote stuff too: sea cucumbers, live octopus, acorn jelly, all of it delicious. White people, black people, Indian, Jamaican, Mexican, people-people eat weird, delicious stuff.

I want to say all of this, but I find I can’t. It’ll just get me nowhere. My parents are just stuck on thinking Koreans are special.

“Ching-chong-chang-chang?” says Mom again.

Dad laughs, steadying his to-go drink from hell, and for a second I can imagine them before they had me and Hanna. It’s a paradoxically sweet vignette. Mom-n-Dad warmly muttering to each other in Korean, most of which I can’t understand, except for the startling appearance of the word jjangkkae, which means chink.