Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(78)

There is jeong, though: that time spent wordlessly bonding. So I begin to calculate our time spent together. A few minutes each evening. Sundays at The Store for the last couple summers. I do some rough numbers.

It adds up to about three hundred hours. A baker’s dozen of days.

Who is this man who was my dad?

Is, Frank. He’s not dead yet.

But he will be.

Panic seizes me again. I breathe faster and faster. I press into the pillow to muffle the sound of my cries, and wonder at the cold mystery of it all: cold as a statue ruin in the moonlight whose meaning has long been lost. Dad—this man whose house I live in—contains clues about myself. There are things I do and say and like and excel at that might have their origins in him somewhere, but I’ll never know now.

I am panicking because I realize I’ve been desperate to know Dad my whole life. I learned a long time ago that such a hope was impossible with an impenetrable statue ruin like him. So I gave up. Moreover, I pretended I didn’t care if I never knew him. I pretended I was okay living as a Limbo, belonging nowhere, a son without even the most basic connection to the man who fathered him.

But it turns out I care very much. I cared this whole time.

And now that there’s an end coming, I now know that the eternal mystery of Dad will forever remain precisely that: an eternal mystery.

Should I have worked at The Store with him more?

Should I have learned Korean better?

Should I have tried harder?

And finally:

Did I make Dad happy?

It takes me hours to sleep.

When I do, I have a vivid, insane dream.

I am in a vast pulsating forest of moist black trees. They are all strung up with red pinlights. It must be a new moon, because I can’t find any white disk in the sky, 0.22 inches in diameter or otherwise, sun or moon. The ground is spongy. It rises and falls slowly.

This forest is not contained by the finite boundaries of Dad’s lungs. This forest is endless, and I wander for hours and days and weeks searching for an exit. I try my best to not touch the trees. They will stain me with their wet black. After hours and days and weeks of searching, I am marked here and there with dark lines of their muck, and still remain trapped as ever.

I am alone this time. There’s no Brit in a futuristic yellow dress. There’s no Joy peering at me through a hole far above. Just me.

Finally I realize something. This forest is the way it is because there is no love here. Who would accept such a revolting place? This lack of love is the key. I’m sure of it. As a test, I approach a tree, take a deep breath, and wrap my arms around the trunk.

The bark is lukewarm and slimy and acrid like medicine. I close my eyes and hug harder. I feel branches begin to move around me. From all sides they come, increasing their embrace as I tighten mine. Soon, I’m covered in black limbs. They smother me with their awful warmth.

All at once, the trees pull away. I can’t lift my feet. I’m rooted in the spongy ground. I am covered head to toe with tarry goo. My chest begins to glow with a point of red light. It’s my heart, and it’s the brightest red pinlight in this whole place. I am now a black tree in the exact center of the black forest.

I blink. Suddenly the muck has evaporated to leave the trees dry and gray and clean. I look down: I am now clean, too.

I blink again, and a sun has begun to rise.

Blink: The trees have color now and are laden with brilliant green leaves.

Blink: They’ve parted to form a tunnel of foliage leading to an exit. The forest is letting me go. I walk out onto a rolling meadow full of people and picnics and kids running games on warmed earth that beats with each spirited step.

Blink, and it’s morning in my bedroom.

I am awake.





you



own-your-way



you must



be going





chapter 28


hi irony




I am awake.

The stupid sun is dancing its beams through the tree outside my bedroom window, all chipper and shit. It feels late. How long have I been sleeping? I check my alarm clock—a vintage analog folding compact model, no bedside fartphones for me—and see it’s almost eleven thirty.

I am a teenager. We are supposed to sleep the crap out of our beds. But eleven thirty seems excessive, even to me.

I get up. I shower until I’m red. I need a haircut. When I comb out my wet hair, it’s long enough to tie together with one of Hanna’s old hair bands. I leave it that way—why not—and change into my summer outfit: cargo shorts, Front 242 tank, wrist elastics, all in a rainbow of blacks of different hues.

Summer outfit.

Summer is almost here.

It’s 85 degrees, and this being Southern California it’ll stay that way until it’s time for school to start again. But when school starts again, I won’t be here anymore. None of us will. We’ll all be somewhere else, depending on the will of the admissions gods.

Buzz-buzz.

You okay? says Joy.

Just woke up, I say. Rough night.

What the hell happened? says Joy. Do our families suddenly hate each other or something?

It’s that, but it’s also not that.

Yubs? says Joy.

I sit up. It’s simplicated, I say. I’ll tell you all about it in person.