The Epic Crush of Genie Lo Read online

  Today I was doing my part to perpetuate the cycle of violence to the next generation. Every so often the library closes to the general public and holds an all-day event for children where older students read aloud to them. The kids get points for how long they last and how many books they sit through, with the winner at the end of the year receiving I don’t remember what. A trip to Great United amusement park maybe.

  The readers, on the other hand, get a big ol’ badge of VOLUNTEERS and GIVES BACK TO THE COMMUNITY.

  Yunie and I have been doing the Read-a-Thon ever since Ketki Pathpati graduated and unofficially passed the torch to us. Technically anyone can help, but it’s sort of our thing now. I only wish we had invented it ourselves—the colleges would have given us a lot more points.

  Mrs. Thompson, the town librarian, was waiting outside the building for me. “You didn’t get my email?” she said. “We had to start half an hour earlier than normal.”

  “I don’t have anything from you,” I said. I’d checked my messages during breakfast.

  Mrs. Thompson smacked her forehead. “I must have sent it to just Yunie.”

  “I’m going to kill that girl. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Thompson. The kids must be bored out of their minds . . .”

  “Actually, they’re doing fine,” she said brightly as we walked inside. “She found a wonderful replacement.”

  “Replacement?” I thought Yunie had been joking before, so I assumed I’d be alone.

  “Right in here,” said Mrs. Thompson.

  I’M GOING TO KILL THAT GIRL, I thought.

  “Ready?” Quentin shouted from underneath the pile of laughing, squealing children. “One, two, three!”

  He rose to his feet, kids clinging to his back, hanging off his biceps, sitting on his shoulders and using his hair as a grip. He made a slight bounce as if to throw them off, but they just shrieked with delight and hung on tighter. He was even stronger than he looked.

  “Raargh!” he play-screamed, slowly spinning around underneath the toddler mountain until he faced me. “Raaaaa . . . oh . . . hello.”

  “He’s been a treasure,” Mrs. Thompson said adoringly. “I’ve never seen them take to anyone so quickly.”

  “Teacher’s here, you little apes,” said Quentin. “Quiet down and get to your spots. Or else I’ll smash your heads open and eat your brains.”

  I thought someone would have an objection to that, but the kids all laughed and scrambled into neat rows at his behest. They plopped down onto musty blankets and cushions on the floor. Some were still talking and shoving each other.

  “Change to stone!” Quentin shouted, wiggling his fingers like he was casting a spell. The children immediately straightened up and closed their mouths in intense concentration, sucking in their cheeks and biting their lips.

  Call me a hypocrite, but I genuinely didn’t want to make a scene here, of all places. I decided to just power through it. Plus the kids really did seem to like him. Kids could smell evil like dogs, right?

  “How did you get them to behave like that?” I whispered as I slid onto the reader’s bench. Yunie and I had never been able to rein them in so quickly.

  “Mind control,” he said. He sat next to me and handed me a book. “You can begin any time now, laoshi.”

  That was a little more respectful than necessary, but whatever. “Father was eating his egg,” I read. “Mother was eating her egg. Gloria was sitting in a high chair and eating her egg, too. Frances was eating bread and jam.”

  “Omnomnom slurp slurp gulp,” said Quentin. “Burp.”

  I was about to glare at him for going off message, but the kids giggled and rolled in their seats.

  “ ‘What a lovely egg,’ said Father.” I read on. “ ‘It is just the thing to start the day off right,’ said Mother. Frances . . . did not eat her egg.”

  Quentin gasped as if the fate of the world rested on that little badger eating that egg. The kids did the same.

  He was like a goofy morning show puppet. I smiled in spite of myself and went on. “Frances sang a little song to it . . .”

  We settled into that rhythm, where I did the word-for-word reading, and Quentin made sound effects, spot-on animal noises, and embellishments that kept everyone awake.

  “HOW hungry was that caterpillar?” he’d shout.

  “VERY!” twenty young voices would respond.

  It worked. It was a lot more raucous than normal, but a lot more fun. We almost didn’t want to break for lunch.

  The librarians herded the kids toward the pizzas that served as the bribe to get them here in the first place. The picnic tables outside the library were reserved for the readers, to give them a moment’s peace.

  Quentin sat down at the far end of the table from me as I took out my lunch. He glanced at the distance between us as if to say, See? What you wanted.

  “Your friend asked me to help her, and her alone,” he said. “She didn’t tell me you’d be here.”

  I believed him. Only because I knew how much Yunie delighted in trolling me at every possible opportunity.

  I noticed he was empty-handed. “You didn’t bring any food? This is an all-day thing.”

  “I didn’t think to. I’ll be fine.”

  Yeah, right. He could play tough all he wanted, but I saw him give a long look at the fruit I’d packed.

  “Here,” I said, handing it over. “Just take it.”

  “Thanks!” He held up the gift for a brief moment with both hands like a monk accepting alms. “Peaches are my favorite food in the universe. But this one looks different?”

  He took a nibble and his eyes grew as big as plates.

  “It’s a peach hybrid,” I said. “Crossed with a plum or apricot or something. You like it?”

  “It’s amazing!” he mumbled through massive bites, trying to keep the juice from dribbling far and wide.

  I watched him eat, completely absorbed in his treat. It was cute. If he had a tail, it would’ve been wagging like a puppy’s.

  I decided that small talk was acceptable. “You handled Mike and his gang pretty well,” I said. “Where did you learn wushu?”

  “Didn’t,” said Quentin. “Never took a single lesson in fighting.”

  “Oh? What about babysitting? You’re a natural at that, too?”

  “I’ve got a lot of little cousins and nieces and nephews back home that I used to take care of. I like kids. I was happy to volunteer for this.”

  He shifted the peach stone into his cheek like a gumball and stared accusingly at me. “From what I could gather from your friend, however, the two of you are only doing this to gain access to a magical kingdom called Harvard.”

  “Pfft. Yale would also suffice.”

  He didn’t appreciate the joke. In fact, he grew downright serious.

  “It seems to me that you are jumping through many hoops to please some petty bureaucratic gatekeepers,” he said.

  I laughed. I’d never heard the admissions process described like that before.

  “That’s how the system works,” I said. “You think I care about my grades just because? You think I enjoy working on my essays for their own sake?”

  His naïveté was strange. A transfer student from the mainland shouldn’t have been this clueless. Most of them were only here in the first place to improve their shot at a top-tier school.

  “I’m doing this because I don’t want to be poor,” I said. “I don’t want to stay in this town. I want to move forward in life, and that means college. The more prestigious the better.”

  I wadded up my paper bag and chucked it into the recycling bin. “If you’re a taizidang like my mother thinks you are, then you wouldn’t understand. You probably had everything handed to you.”

  He looked disappointed in my response.

  “I hope you have better luck with the system than I did,” he said.

  Quentin had a troubled, faraway look on his face, like he was remembering his own long-ago ordeal in academia. He must have gone to one of
those cram-factories where they spanked you with abacuses. Maybe that was how his English seemed to be improving at an exponential rate.

  I sighed. “You want half of my sandwich? It’s ham and Swiss.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I’m a vegetarian.”

  We went way over our allotted time. At the close of the Read-a-Thon, there was a whole crowd of parents just as enthralled as the kids they’d come to pick up.

  “George didn’t say a word,” I read. “He felt quite trembly. He knew something tremendous had taken place that morning. For a few brief moments, he had touched with the very tips of his fingers the edge of a magic world.”

  “The End,” said Quentin. Somehow the difficulty level of the books had risen over the course of the day. The two of us got up and took a bow at Mrs. Thompson’s insistence while everyone clapped.

  The room began to clear out slowly, the adults lingering to chitchat with each other and the children running around to enjoy their last moments of freedom.

  “How soon can we have you two back?” Mrs. Thompson said with a smile. “After today’s performance, I’d be willing to make this an every week thing.”

  An adorable little cherub tugged at Quentin’s trouser leg.

  “Where’s the pretty girl?” the kid said to him. “You should read with the pretty girl instead of her.”

  “Beth!” Mrs. Thompson gasped. “Your mother’s calling. Get along now.” She shooed the towheaded child away from the awkward-bomb she’d just dropped.

  Yunie and I spent so much time together it was only natural that people would refer to us as a pair. And no one thinks she’s gorgeous more so than me. She’s petite, slender—the natural beauty.

  Which means I’m the . . . not.

  If she’s the small one then I’m the big one. If she’s the friendly one who’s on good terms with everyone, then I’m the rough one with a sharp tongue and bad temper. If she’s the attractive one, then, well, it’s pretty obvious what’s left over.

  “Yeah . . . so, uh . . . this was a one-time arrangement,” said Quentin.

  “Aw,” Mrs. Thompson said. “But the two of you have such good . . .” She waved her index fingers crisscross at him and me.

  “Comedic contrast?” There was way too much edge in my voice. “Yeah, we’re a regular Laurel and Hardy. I’ll see you next month.”

  I spun on my heel and went out the back of the library, avoiding the crush of parents and children in the front lobby.

  7

  I didn’t hear footsteps as I began the walk back to my house, or see a shadow trailing mine, but I spoke anyway.

  “Are you going to tell me I was rude?” I said. “That I shouldn’t have spoken to an adult like that?”

  Inside I was kicking myself. I was rude. Mrs. Thompson didn’t deserve any guff from me. She was like Mrs. Claus and Maria von Trapp put together.

  “I’m not going to tell you anything,” Quentin said from behind. “Except that you’re going the long way.”

  I turned to face him. “Okay, how much of a stalker are you that you know more than one way to my—”

  Standing behind Quentin, perfectly and unnaturally stock still, was a huge man.

  The hugest one I’d ever seen. He had to have been at least eight feet tall.

  He was wearing a suit made out of silk so black it looked like human hair. His bulging eyes didn’t seem to point in the same direction, and there was something crooked about his massive arms, almost as if they had an extra joint he was hiding.

  Quentin noticed my surprise and glanced behind him. In the blink of an eye he was by my side, shoving me away from the stranger.

  “Ho, little one,” the giant said to him. “You’ve gone soft to let me sneak up on you. What happened to that famous vision of yours?”

  “Hunshimowang!” Quentin shouted. “So it was you I sensed lurking about this town! How did your sorry ass get out of Hell?”

  “Oh, wouldn’t you like to find out?” the man in black said with a laugh. “Let’s call it ‘good behavior.’ What really matters is that I, Hunshimowang, the Demon King of Confusion, am finally back in the world of the living.” He fanned the air toward his egg-size nostrils and breathed in appreciatively.

  Oh god oh god. Yunie was right. Quentin was a gangster and this was some Tong friend of his from prison. I fumbled for my phone to call someone, anyone, but the sweat pouring out of my palms cost me crucial seconds.

  “Mmm, is that the smell of human child?” said the man. “After I kill you I’m going to have to follow the trail back and have myself a celebratory meal. It’s been ages since I’ve tasted flesh of any kind.”

  “You make one move toward her and I’ll feed you your own liver!” Quentin snapped.

  “Always such concern for mortals.” One of the man’s eyes, just the one, swiveled toward me, and he licked a strand of drool off his lips with a tongue as thick and knotted as a two-by-four. His nauseating appearance and bizarre threats robbed me of the ability to respond quickly. Maybe I could have gotten over my confusion, and maybe I could have powered through my fear, but not both together.

  “I notice you haven’t told the girl to run yet,” he said to Quentin. “Could it be that you’re scared to face me without her? Surely you haven’t become that weak?”

  Quentin bristled. “You don’t know who she is! And I don’t need anybody’s help to beat you to death a second time!”

  He snatched my phone out of my grasp before I could hit the second 1 of 911.

  “I’m sorry, Genie,” Quentin said, crushing it to glass and metal splinters with a single squeeze. “But we can’t involve anyone else.”

  The man in black grinned. And grinned. And kept grinning. His smile parted his face and sliced toward his ears, exposing a mouth that went nearly all the way around his head like a crocodile’s.

  Quentin snarled, his flawless looks contorting into a mask of rage. I could see his canines bared, much longer than they should have been. He gave me a hard push to the side, sending me through the air. I landed on the grass as he launched himself at the giant.

  The force from their collision nearly popped my eardrums. Quentin was telling the truth before. Whatever he and the man in black were doing, it wasn’t wushu. They attacked each other like rabid animals, clawing and biting as much as they punched and kicked.

  I scrabbled backward on my heels and hands, trying to get away from the radius of their malice. My heart hadn’t beat in the last minute. I was looking at two people trying to kill each other. The sight was an infection that I couldn’t allow to reach me.

  I heard a sharp wooden crack across the street like a tree had split and fallen, and suddenly Quentin was gone from sight. He must have been thrown off into the distance.

  The giant yawned in pain and rolled his shoulders before turning his attention to me. He walked over and crouched down, slamming his hands against the ground on either side of me, blotting out the sun above.

  “It’s strange, meeting you for the first time under these circumstances,” he said, his foul, raw-meat breath descending over me. “Let’s see if I can get a taste of you without cracking my teeth.”

  His saliva spattered against my cheek. I shut my eyes, screamed my lungs out, and kicked him as hard as I could.

  It felt like I completely whiffed, which should have been impossible given how big he was. But the stench abated. I looked up to see an expression of complete shock on the man’s face as he backpedaled away, a foot-size chunk missing from his flank. Black goo dripped from the wound onto the sidewalk.

  He and I must have shared the same bewilderment at that moment. Look buddy, I’m as confused as you.

  “Don’t touch her!” Quentin roared, taking advantage of his opponent’s distraction to make his flying reentry. He dropped from the sky onto the man’s platform-like shoulders and the two of them spiraled away into the street.

  Despite their injuries, the fight wasn’t over by a long shot. The giant managed to get Quentin at
both arms’ length and smashed him into the ground repeatedly like he was trying to open a coconut. I thought Quentin was dead from the first impact alone, but his legs snaked out and wrapped around the man’s neck. He pulled the man’s head into his abdomen and began strangling him with his whole body, all while being bounced against the pavement so hard I could see an outline of his shoulders on the ground where they blew away the dust.

  The giant kept ramming Quentin into the earth, but his strength started to flag, especially since he was still bleeding heavily from his side. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground like a chain-sawed oak. Quentin maintained the chokehold until the man in black stopped moving, and then some.

  Finally he scooted out from under his opponent. Then, without hesitating, Quentin clambered onto the man’s back and grasped his chin and the top of his head.

  “Wait, no!” I shrieked once I realized what he was going to do.

  With a twist of his arms, he broke the man’s neck.

  Quentin looked up at me, breathing heavily.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “No,” I whispered. “No no no.”

  “Genie, please,” he said, reaching toward me. “I can explain—”

  I wasn’t listening. I was too busy staring at what was happening to the giant’s corpse.

  It was dissolving. Into the air. The dead man’s body suddenly resembled a still-wet painting dunked into a tank of water, the colors and hues that made up his existence bleeding away into a surrounding liquid.

  His body silently burst into a great splash of ink. Spouting swirls of his former mass chased each other in all directions like calligraphy strokes until they faded into invisibility.

  Nothing remained of him. Even his blood, including the half that had been splattered all over Quentin, was gone.

  Quentin waved his hand over where the body had been. “I, uh, can explain that, too.”

  No he couldn’t.

  I didn’t waste another word. I just ran, and ran, and ran.

  8

  I arrived home in a daze, trying to figure out what to do.