Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(71)

I try to reply, but my throat sticks. I clear it.

“Okay,” I say.

We kiss again. The mighty blue hand is taking us somewhere—we don’t know where, it’s terrifying, but here we go. My hand discovers the skin just beneath her shirt—a place I have touched before, but now that there is only bare skin, it feels totally new. She accepts my touch as a kind of permission to touch me back. Suddenly her hands are gripping every part of my torso with an urgent but delicate probing.

I suddenly hate Joy’s shirt. She hates mine, too. Off they go. I already know where the clasp of her bra is, and undo that. Joy elbows the horn once—toot—and we giggle.

“Does this thing go back?” she says, meaning the seat.

“It does,” I say, and reach down to press a button.

The leather seat inches back slowly, oh my god for an eternity does it recline, and makes a long fart sound along the way. It is the best fart for the moment. We crack up and cover our mouths with wonder: are we really going to do this?

We are.

We do.





chapter 26


the bad joke




Bing-bong.

Bing-bong.

It’s just Dad, working the floor near the entrance with a mop.

Bing-bong.

The trio of flies square-dance above me.

It’s hot. Southern California always skips spring for summer. The chocolate is in the walk-in cooler.

I’m wearing an outfit of warm blacks: orange-black pants, brown-black Kraftwerk tee. I pick at my wristbands, also all warm black.

On the surface, it looks like nothing has changed. I am Frank, The Store is still hot, Dad is mopping as usual.

But in reality, everything has changed. It’s hot because the world wants to remind me: one day soon it will be summer, school will end, and we’ll all go to college. Me. Q.

Joy.

I don’t want to think about that just yet.

And Dad: hidden beneath Dad’s usual work tee shirt is a small round scar as smooth and shiny as a drop of tan paint. You couldn’t guess the guy recently survived a gunshot.

And me?

I once read some graphic novel where the hero lost his virginity and was disappointed to find that he felt the same the next day. Boys, he figured, weren’t like girls. They didn’t have hymens to break. There was no physical evidence of the event. The next day the hero felt nothing but anticlimax.

What a stupid graphic novel that was. It got everything wrong.

Because if you cut and pry me open right now, you will discover my insides sparkling like a geode across every spectrum imaginable. Look closer and you will see whole cities of crystal teeming with tiny minions of living light all pulsing in chromatic order—ROYGBIV—as they deliver their novae along my limbs.

Novae, nova, Latin for new, newly born stars.

I lean on the counter and grin like an idiot.

Inside me, everything has changed.

I take out my fartphone and message Q.

I lost it, old bean.

Your mind? says Q.

Last night, I say.

There’s a pause, then a hailstorm of openmouthed surprise faces.

How do you feel? says Q. Can you fly?

Let me see, I say. Nope, not yet.

“Aigu,” says Dad, thumping his back with a fist.

“You need to let me do that,” I say.

“I am okay,” says Dad.

I glance down at the cash register. The paper ticker tape is streaked with pink, which means it’s running out.

“Dad, can you change the register tape?” I say. “I don’t know how.”

“Okay,” says Dad. “I doing.”

While he fiddles with the register and a new roll of tape, I grab his mop on the sly. When Dad finally looks up, the whole floor is gleaming.

“Frankie-ya,” says Dad with a chuckle. “Don’t mopping!”

It’s too late—I’m already wringing out the mop in the bucket and taking it out back to dump the gray water. Dad peers at the floor tiles, the corners, the edges, then at me.

“Anyway you doing good job,” he says.

This is Dad’s way of saying thank you, so I say, “You’re welcome.”

There’s a flurry of customers—waves, they always come in waves—including Charles, who gives me yet another tiny scroll to study. I unroll it. There is a penis, a sperm, an egg, and then an embryo in a sac. It says FROM WATER INTO WATER INTO WATER

BACK TO WATER AGAIN


First of all, what’s with dudes drawing penises? Stop drawing penises so much, dudes. Otherwise, I’m surprised to find myself understanding this scroll. I think. Maybe. Humans are mostly water. Water of different kinds: blood, bile, saliva, blablabla. Those waters mix with other waters, and out of that comes life. It’s a miracle and a mystery.

Water is life; lack of water is lack of life. It makes me think of the windward and leeward slopes of a mountain. The windward side will trap precious moisture, and the leeward side will be forever deprived of it, creating a lush green slope on one side and a barren gray one on the other, separated only by a thin, sharp ridge. Bugs born on the leeward side know only struggle. Bugs born on the windward side, only bounty.

Immigrant metaphor incoming. Say you’re born into a war-torn country. You cross a border—which could even be invisible, not even a thin sharp ridge to define it—and suddenly you may find yourself on the windward side: a safe, clean, modern society.