Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(95)

“You finished it,” I say with awe.

Q waggles his glasses. “Last night.”

From his backpack, Q draws forth his big spiral Dungeons & Dragons campaign notebook. It’s titled The Evasive Cambith of ?P’Qatlalteiaq: Totec’s Return. It has skulls and pentagrams and everything. I don’t know how he can possibly top the demigods and gem-swapping drama of our last campaign, but now I’m curious.

“Totec the mage gets resurrected?” I say. “Is Paul playing, too?”

Q nods. “He should’ve been here ten minutes ago, in fact. Where is Paul? I brought back Totec for that motherfucker.”

We wait and wait before deciding that, in the interest of the limited time we have remaining together, we should just go ahead and get started. I play both my paladin and Paul’s mage simultaneously, switching bullshit Middle English accents as necessary. On paper we are the biggest losers in Palomino High School history. Two boys launching their summer vacations with a lonely game of Dungeons & Dragons.

But we don’t care. Within minutes we’re laughing, conspiring, cheering, groaning.

Thank you, Q.

“You eating melon,” hollers Mom, scaring the shit out of both of us, and brings in a plate of honeydew wedges.

Thank you, Mom.

We do this for weeks.

I post pictures of our figurines locked in battle. I also post my ankle, which has traded in its brace for a simpler bandage. More melon. Q’s intense dungeon master stare. Dad, finally eating something bigger than a piece of toast. I get my handful of pity likes from my two dozen followers. Whatever. I’m too busy to really care.

One day three curséd valkyries ambush my character while I’m reconnoitering a shattered keep on my own, and my character doesn’t even get the chance to counterattack. I die alone, in this unnamed ruin.

I topple my figurine.

Q rights it again. He scrambles to ad-lib.

“Oh, uh, behold, I am the last surviving spirit protector of this ancient castle,” sings Q. “I am known as—as Barbra the Good and Lawful, and I hereby reward the justness of your soul.”

“What are you doing?” I say.

“I’m bringing you back to life,” says Q.

“Can you do that?”

“The dungeon master can do whatever he wants,” says Q. “And I say you’re back.”

He’s smiling so big at me that I can’t help but smile.

“Barbra?” I say.

Q doubles down. “Barbra the Good and Lawful.”

“If you say so,” I say.





chapter 35


champagne from champagne




Night. I’m in my bed alone, thinking about Paris.

The Songs went on an impromptu two-week vacation to Paris and beyond, because (a) they’re loaded and (b) it gets Joy far, far away from me. Does that sound egotistical? Does that sound crazy?

There are pictures of Joy squinting in the sunlight with her little brother, Ben, before all the usual sights: the Eiffel Tower, the Sacré-C?ur, and so on. Wheels of friggin’ cheese. Friggin’ baguettes in bike baskets.

Joy looks gorgeous, photo filters be damned. And lost. And resigned.

Like, like, like, like, why not. I can pretend they’re kisses she can’t feel.

One night I post a picture of the demented little scroll crazy-man Charles gave me at The Store months and months ago, which I still have. I focus in on the drawing of the nude man and woman and the vaginal ouroboros and all that.

Joy comments with a little blue heart.

I guess that’s gonna have to be enough.

Days later. Q and I have another rip-roaring all-day dungeon-crawling session. Minutes after he packs up and leaves for the evening, the doorbell rings.

Dad shuffles into the room, sleepy and perplexed. “Who is?”

“Maybe Q forget something,” says Mom.

I look around. “Oh crap, his dice.”

I’m talking about Q’s velvet bag of seventy-dollar dice, hand carved from glistering opalite stone. That’s ten dollars per die, nerds. Q loves these stupid dice. I hoist the bag and give it to Mom.

“So heavy,” she says.

When she gets to the door, I hear murmurs in Korean.

Korean?

I see Dad shuffle over. The Korean gets louder, more formal.

So I get up to see what the commotion’s all about. It takes a second—my ankle is still tender—but there they are, all standing around our shoe-cluttered foyer.

The Songs.

“Whoa,” I say at the sight of Joy’s dad. He’s wearing a sweater around his shoulders. He is totally that guy who returns from Europe and is flustered that everything’s just as ding-dang American as he left it.

There’s Joy’s mom and little brother, Ben, pressed together by the astonished bucking infant cowboy figurine.

And there’s Joy. She’s wearing a Cheese Barrel Grille polo shirt. Where the hell did she score such an artifact?

I laugh aloud, then want to cry, because an insufferably maudlin part of me wants to believe she wore the shirt for me to say, I will always love you.

You know what? Fuck it. That is why she wore the shirt. That’s what I’m going to believe right now. Why else would she, of all days, of all places, for me of all people?