The Epic Crush of Genie Lo Page 6

  Quentin scanned my room before walking up to my shelves and plucking a book out. He took a seat on the floor in front of me, cross-legged. He could pull a full lotus with ease.

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?” he asked.

  “No,” I said flatly. That was the truth. Compared to some of the girls at school, I was about as spiritual as a Chicken McNugget.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s something that just happens. All creatures live their lives, and then they die. If they’ve built up enough merit through good deeds and conduct, they’re reborn in another time and place, in more fortunate circumstances. If they’ve done evil then they’ll suffer in their next life. They might even end up in Hell.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m immortal,” he said. “I freed myself of the Wheel of Rebirth because I liked being who I was. I didn’t want to have to struggle through who knows how many different versions of myself just to gain standing in the cosmos. I accumulated enough power within my first life to become unstuck in time, like a god.”

  I could hear his words but couldn’t bring myself to allow them any quarter inside my head. How could any of this be true?

  “I’ve seen people come and go over the ages,” said Quentin. “And rarely, very rarely, I see them come back. I knew you in your past life, Genie.”

  He handed me the book. It was the one my mother was talking about. Journey to the West, it said, the big black letters covered by a thick layer of dust. If I had ever read it, it had been ages ago.

  “Here,” he said. “This is the second half of my story.”

  I took it with an air of suspicion even though it had come from my own shelf. “Why is this important?” I said.

  “Because you’re in it.”

  I swallowed my jitters and attempted to pry open the book, but the glossy, child-friendly covers were stuck from years of compression. The sudden crack as they pulled apart rattled me like a gunshot, and I slammed it back shut before any of its contents could leap off the page and melt my face.

  I frisbeed the book to the side. The stiff cardboard backing allowed it to sail through the air and land on my bed.

  “No,” I said. “Nope. All the nope. I’m done. I’m done with tonight.”

  “Genie, you can’t ignore what you’ve seen with your own eyes.”

  Sure I could. “If your parents are fake, then your demon could be fake, and I bet your tail is fake, too,” I said. “Animatronic or something.”

  Quentin looked personally insulted by that last accusation. “You saw my tail. It’s as real as can be.”

  “Prove it.”

  He scowled and untucked his shirt, wiggling on his butt to free up some room around the waist of his pants. I caught a brief glimpse of the muscled crease running down his hip before the smooth skin was blocked by fur. The thick brown rope came loose and stood up behind him.

  “There,” he said. “See?”

  Not good enough. I held my hand out and wagged my fingers, demanding. He looked hesitant but brought it forward anyway, gingerly laying it across my palm.

  This was beyond weird.

  His tail was alive and warm. It wasn’t too gross. In fact, it was strangely comforting to hold. An elongated Tribble. I rubbed the soft, silky fur into criss-cross patterns with my thumb.

  I must have squeezed too hard at some point because Quentin made a strangled noise from deep in his larynx. At the exact same time his mother entered my room.

  “Quentin,” Mrs. Sun said. “It’s getting late. We should be lea—”

  We scrambled to our knees. Quentin wrapped up his tail again, quick as a whip. But the lingering image was still him with part of his shirt undone, and me pulling my hands away from his lap. Not the most innocent diorama.

  “QUENTIN! NI ZAI GAN MA?!?” Mrs. Sun shouted.

  “What has he done now?” roared Mr. Sun from downstairs. “You’re dead once we get home, you hear? Dead!”

  “Whatever it is, it’s okay,” Mom called out.

  Quentin’s mother stormed in and hauled him downstairs like a milk crate while apologizing to me all the while. She was stronger than her delicate build suggested.

  The Suns gave their hurried, mortified thanks to my mother and left, yelling at Quentin all the way. Only the slamming of their car doors silenced the smacks, slaps, and scoldings heaped upon his head. It made me smile to hear such familiar sounds, to the extent that it wasn’t until after they were long gone that I remembered Mr. and Mrs. Sun weren’t real.

  Quentin’s trick must have endowed them with some kind of independent AI, to better serve the illusion. If there was a flaw in their behavior, it was that they hadn’t blamed me for the compromising situation and accused me of corrupting their precious little emperor, like actual Asian parents would have. Or Western ones, for that matter.

  My mother stood next to me in the doorway, looking out into the street.

  “I haven’t had that much fun in a while,” she said quietly. “I was so worried they’d look down on us. But they’re lovely people. Some folks are just good in everything. Luck, character, everything.”

  She looked so relieved that I thought she might cry. I was struck by the fact that she hadn’t talked to anyone besides me in a meaningful way for a very long time. She had no family in California, and her adult connections had been mostly Dad’s friends.

  I put my arm around her shoulders, and we went back inside.

  12

  “So have you tapped that sweet ass yet or what?” Yunie asked me the next day in the school library.

  “Oh come on! We could be talking about literally anything else. Didn’t you win your concours? Doesn’t that make you the best violinist in the state now?”

  “It was only a qualification round,” my best friend said as she doodled over my oxidation-reduction equations. “But yes, I crushed everyone so hard even the woodwinds went home crying. And as my victory prize, I want a full report on whether you’re getting any.”

  “First of all, there is nothing between us. Nothing. Second of all, do you know how ridiculous Quentin and I would look as a couple? It’d be like Boris and Natasha chasing moose and squirrel.”

  A massive grin spread across Yunie’s face. “So he’s bite-size. Doesn’t mean he’s not tasty. Rachel made a run at him. So did Charlotte, Nita, Hyejeong, both Vivians, and Other Eugenia. Greg and Philip, just to touch all the bases. Even Maxine, though that was probably an attempt to screw with you. That girl is a psycho, by the way.”

  “And you?”

  I wasn’t asking her seriously, but she totally took it seriously, putting her hands up. “Sister Code,” she said. “I don’t have dibs. You should have seen the way the two of you looked at each other the first day you met. I could swear you were both glowing like a pair of heat lamps.”

  Yunie got up to go to her next class. I was the only one of us who was supposed to be in the library for study hall; she was just habitually late for everything.

  “By the way,” she whispered into my ear. “I was talking about Androu at first. You’re the one who brought up Quentin.”

  I pushed the lead in on my mechanical pencil so it was less pointy. Then I hurled it at her as she retreated through the door, laughing all the way down the hall.

  As much as I loved her, I was glad to be alone. I needed the peace and quiet to continue my study-bender.

  Tearing through my homework put me at ease like nothing else. It got me ready—or at least readier—to think about what I’d seen recently. By crushing my assignments, it felt like I was putting deposits into the First National Bank of Sanity. Confronting Quentin’s craziness was going to require one gigantic withdrawal.

  I pushed aside my chem papers once I was finished and pulled out a book from my bag without stopping for a break. It was the one from my room. The continued legend of Sun Wukong.

  It felt safer to read it here, in the light of day, away from my home. Just to be sure, though, I moved to the
table in the back alcove, near the last row of shelves. The library may have already been empty, but I still wanted to isolate myself like a responsible bomb technician.

  I was able to get the book all the way open this time. There had to be something in it that would make my life fall back into place . . .

  The Tang Emperor of China, as emperors are wont to do, looked around him one day and decided that everything sucked. His lands were filled with greed, hedonism, and sin. What he needed, he reasoned, was for an ambassador to travel to the West and retrieve the holy scriptures that would bring his people back to right-mindedness.

  The man he found for the task was a pure-hearted monk named Xuanzang. Xuanzang was a learned and earnest man, beautiful and dignified of appearance, talented in both preaching and the arts. He was eager for the monumental task. Unfortunately he was also weak and hopelessly naïve.

  Xuanzang needed a bodyguard. Someone who could handle the vicious bandits and flesh-eating demons that lay in wait on his journey. Someone who needed a difficult quest to atone for defying Heaven.

  It wasn’t a difficult search. The gods had the perfect candidate lying under a rock.

  The Bodhisattva Guanyin made the introductions. She freed Sun Wukong from his mountain prison and ordered him to serve Xuanzang on his trip. The Monkey King refused, forcing Guanyin to place a magic band around his head that would tighten whenever Xuanzang said the words Om Mani Padme Om. If Sun Wukong didn’t want to suffer excruciating pain, he would have to obey his new master to the letter.

  Because it wasn’t enough to be accompanied by the beast who scared the crap out of every god in Heaven, Xuanzang was assigned a few more traveling companions. The gluttonous pig-man Zhu Baijie. Sha Wujing, the repentant sand demon. And the Dragon Prince of the West Sea, who took the form of a horse for Xuanzang to ride. The five adventurers, thusly gathered, set off on their—

  “Holy ballsacks!” I yelped. I dropped the book like I’d been bitten.

  “How far did you get?” Quentin said.

  He was leaning against the end of the nearest shelf, as casually as if he’d been there the whole time, waiting for this moment.

  I ignored that he’d snuck up on me again, just this once. There was a bigger issue at play.

  In the book was an illustration of the group done up in bold lines and bright colors. There was Sun Wukong at the front, dressed in a beggar’s cassock, holding his Ruyi Jingu Bang in one hand and the reins of the Dragon Horse in the other. A scary-looking pig-faced man and a wide-eyed demon monk followed, carrying the luggage. And perched on top of the horse was . . . me.

  The artist had tried to give Xuanzang delicate, beatific features and ended up with a rather girly face. By whatever coincidence, the drawing of Sun Wukong’s old master could have been a rough caricature of sixteen-year-old Eugenia Lo from Santa Firenza, California.

  “That’s who you think I am?” I said to Quentin.

  “That’s who I know you are,” he answered. “My dearest friend. My boon companion. You’ve reincarnated into such a different form, but I’d recognize you anywhere. Your spiritual energies are unmistakable.”

  “Are you sure? If you’re from a long time ago, maybe your memory’s a little fuzzy.”

  “The realms beyond Earth exist on a different time scale,” Quentin said. “Only one day among the gods passes for every human year. To me, you haven’t been gone long. Months, not centuries.”

  “This is just . . . I don’t know.” I took a moment to assemble my words. “You can’t walk up to me and expect me to believe right away that I’m the reincarnation of some legendary monk from a folk tale.”

  “Wait, what?” Quentin squinted at me in confusion.

  “I said you can’t expect me to go, ‘okay, I’m Xuanzang,’ just because you tell me so.”

  Quentin’s mouth opened slowly like the dawning of the sun. His face went from confusion to understanding to horror and then finally to laughter.

  “mmmmphhhhghAHAHAHAHA!” he roared. He nearly toppled over, trying to hold his sides in. “HAHAHAHA!”

  “What the hell is so funny?”

  “You,” Quentin said through his giggles. “You’re not Xuanzang. Xuanzang was meek and mild. A friend to all living things. You think that sounds like you?”

  It did not. But then again I wasn’t the one trying to make a case here.

  “Xuanzang was delicate like a chrysanthemum.” Quentin was getting a kick out of this. “You are so tough you snapped the battleaxe of the Mighty Miracle God like a twig. Xuanzang cried over squashing a mosquito. You, on the other hand, have killed more demons than the Catholic Church.”

  I was starting to get annoyed. “Okay, then who the hell am I supposed to be?” If he thought I was the pig, then this whole deal was off.

  “You’re my weapon,” he said. “You’re the Ruyi Jingu Bang.”

  I punched Quentin as hard as I could in the face.

  13

  I will admit to being an angry person. Certain things I get upset about. Certain things are worth getting upset about.

  But never in my life had I felt as furious as when Quentin called me the Ruyi Jingu Bang.

  The volcanic surge of bile rising in my throat collided with a skull-cleaving headache going in the opposite direction. I was bisected by the pain of my anger. Blinded by it. My vision went.

  The best way I could describe it was like my life’s work had been doused with gasoline and set on fire. I didn’t have a life’s work yet, but that’s how I felt.

  “Genie,” Quentin said from a million miles away. I could barely hear him.

  “Genie,” he said again, tapping me on my wrists. “Let up a bit.”

  He was coming in garbled, on helium. The lights gradually turned back on.

  I had bodily thrown him onto the table. My hands were wrapped around his neck. I was strangling him so hard that I could feel my fingernails beginning to bend.

  “Please stop doing that,” he coughed. “You’re one of the few things in the universe that can hurt me.”

  “Good.” I squeezed harder.

  I couldn’t explain why I was behaving this way. Calling me the Ruyi Jingu Bang should have meant nothing. It should have been a non sequitur, like walking up to a stranger and saying, “Hello my good fellow, did you know you are a 1976 Volkswagen Beetle?” I was overreacting in a way that lent credence to a zero-percent scenario.

  Quentin managed to loosen my grip on his throat enough for his face to return to its normal color. “Can we talk about this?”

  He slid off the table and got back to his feet. I only let him go because I didn’t want to give my impending speech to a corpse. He wanted to talk? Sure. I was going to go Supreme Court on his ass and hammer home an articulate, lengthy, and logical rebuttal to his claim of me being the reincarnated Ruyi Jingu Bang.

  “I hate you,” I said instead.

  I poked my finger into his chest as hard as my joints would take.

  “I hate you,” I said again. That was all I was capable of, it seemed.

  He slowly put his hands up and began backing away. “Why?”

  I wouldn’t let him get away so easily. “Because,” I said. “I don’t need a reason. People don’t need a reason to hate things. And I am people.”

  I kept jabbing him over and over as he retreated, trying to drive home the message like a spear point.

  “I am a human person,” I snarled. “I am not the Ruyi Jingu Bang. I am not a freaking stick, do you hear me?”

  “Um, Genie,” Quentin said, looking down awkwardly.

  I hadn’t noticed that I’d been continuously poking Quentin in the chest from where I stood, even though he’d now backed all the way across the room.

  My arm had stretched out to follow him. My arm was twenty feet long.

  There’s a moment when you realize that you’ve never been truly scared before. It wasn’t when I’d met Quentin, and it wasn’t when I’d been introduced to the Demon King of Confusion. Those times wer
e apparently just practice.

  “AAAAAAAAA!” I screamed. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Quentin screamed back. “Put it back before someone sees us!”

  I was too terrified to move my elongated arm for fear that it would shatter under its own ridiculous proportions. “It’s too big!” I said, waving at it with my other hand. “Make it smaller! Make it go down!”

  “I can’t! You have to do it yourself!”

  “I don’t know how!”

  By now footsteps were coming down the hall toward us. I could hear teachers’ voices. If they sounded upset now, they hadn’t seen anything yet.

  Quentin realized I wasn’t going to do much other than hyperventilate. He ran over and grabbed me by the waist. Then he rolled up the window behind us and jumped straight out of it. I could feel my arm accommodating his trajectory by bending in places where I didn’t have joints.

  I saw nothing but cloudless blue sky as Quentin hauled me up the sheer brick side of the building. It didn’t fully register that he was dangling me two stories off the ground as he scampered up the school walls. I had, believe it or not, even worse things to worry about.

  The ascent was over in a split second. Quentin reached the roof and unceremoniously dumped me onto the asphalt. We were safely out of sight for the moment.

  I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to look at my arm trailing away like the streamer on a bike handle.

  “I can’t be stuck like this!” I wailed. Visions of having to gnaw it off like a jackal in a trap flooded my brain.

  Quentin knelt before me and put his hands on my trembling shoulders.

  “You’re not going to be stuck,” he said, his voice low and reassuring in my ears. “You are the most powerful thing on Earth short of a god. You can do absolutely anything. So believe me when I say you can certainly change your arm back to normal.”

  He held me firmly, the way you’d brace someone trying to pop a dislocated joint back into place. “Just relax and breathe,” he said. “It’ll happen as you will it.”