Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(65)

“Man, it keeps hitting me that Dad got shot,” I say. “That actually happened.”

“Everything’s okay now,” says Joy.

Joy holds me. I hold her back. We are both carrying and being carried at the same time, in a hug that defies gravity.





chapter 24


the same school




The next few weeks before winter break are an ontological free-for-all. It’s like someone accidentally bumped the settings of reality, fumbled to fix them, and wound up only making things worse. Up becomes down, light becomes dark, the water in the toilet bowl starts spinning the other way from usual. Counterclockwise? Clockwise?

I forget.

Calculus becomes boss-level awkward as Brit stonewalls me. Mr. Soft chops away at his nominators and denominators. But the Apeys can feel that me and Brit are no longer together. Worse, they can sense I was the one who did the leaving.

For a few days, Brit wears long baggy clothes, then tight clothes, all black, all white. She shockingly cuts her hair almost entirely into a bob that, it turns out, looks pretty damn good on her. It’s like she’s trying on different Brits to see which one is real. I want to hug her. I want to tell her she’s beautiful and she will find the right boy, that it just wasn’t me. She’s right there, after all. But I can’t reach out to her. I would never dare intrude.

Meanwhile, me and Joy keep our own relationship on the down low. Neither of us want to hurt Brit or Wu. Or deal with questions from friends. They know me and Joy are now Frankenjoy, but we keep ourselves out of sight and hopefully also out of mind.

We can’t bear to hide on the roof or behind the greenhouse—too many associations—but we do manage to discover a beautifully awkward bit of space formed between the old brick school, its newer concrete wing, and a cluster of tall AC units grinding away in the heat, loud enough to mask any sound. It is a literal slice of heaven.

On weekends we see movies, hit the taco trucks (Cheese Barrel Grille never again, said Joy), or hang out at Joy’s house and snuggle up by the quartz fire table glittering poolside as the sun sets on the Playa Mesa peninsula.

Openly. With her parents around.

Her parents like me. I think. They’re too formal to really tell.

No one wins a game of Pax Eterna. The jackpot remains untouched.

Q remains single. His object of affection still a mystery.

I see Brit in the hallway, and papers spill out of her binder as I pass.

I catch eyes with Wu, and he misses an easy free throw on the yard.

I feel a little like a poltergeist leaving chaos in my wake.

The college applications either already have flown off or are gassed up and on deck. Already I’m dreading the months of March and April. That is supposedly when the bulk of responses will come in. I’ve heard stories of soul-crushing displays of elation on the feeds by friends, and friends of friends, and people you don’t even know. So-and-so got into your dream school, but you didn’t! Give their post a big smiley, why don’t you?

To hell with that kind of trauma. I’ve already tried brokering a protocol for Social Media Silence for the spring months among the Apeys and the Limbos, but people looked at me like I was a time traveler from the 1800s. So I instead did the next best thing: brokered a protocol with the two most important people in my world, Joy and Q.

We opted for snail mail notifications.

We instructed our parents to hide any and all mail from our eyes.

As a final precaution, we set up email filters to quarantine any errant messages from schools. We did that part together at Cafe Adagio, our laptops arranged in triangle formation, a sort of nerdy blood pact: we do this whole college thing together.

We have the same agreement for test-related emails. Emails like this one, just now:


Dear Test-Taker,



Thank you for taking the SAT on December 1, 2019! We are pleased to inform you your test scores are ready. To view your scores, please click the link below and follow the instructions provided blablablablablabla




I don’t read the rest. I take out my fartphone.

Don’t click the link yet, I say to both Joy and Q.

Wat link, says Joy.

OMC THAT link, says Joy. The C stands for Cthulhu.

Rendezvous at the Consta asap, I say. We shall click together!

But it’s only third period, says Q.

I guess we should wait then, I say.

Shut up, says Q.

As soon as the bell rings, we all speed-walk from our respective classes straight to the Consta in the parking lot. Once we hit the streets, I let the engine zoom.

Q closes his eyes and chants, “Sixteen, sixteen, sixteen.” He means a perfect score of 1600.

Cafe Adagio is near Peninsula College. Cafe Adagio feels cool. The baristas move slow and don’t care if you sit there all day. Flyers and posters cover every inch of the walls. It’s full of students hunched over stickered laptops, no doubt doing beautiful things: writing poetry, modeling physics, composing symphonies. I look at them, and it hits me: I’m going to be one of these college students soon, forging my own path beyond the boundaries of the textbook. Some are intense with focus, others frustrated, others lost in their own creative dreams. They’re putting in time for the long game, because they know it’ll be worth it in the end, and I admire them for it.

The Cafe Adagio password today is straightUpGrindin.