I had a whole sleepless night to figure out what to do. I couldn't talk to anyone without proof. But at the same time, I needed to protect myself. I would have to take matters into my own hands.
I was ready when Quentin approached me after school the following day.
"Genie," he said. "Please. Let me expl—moomph!"
"Stay away," I said, mashing the bulb of garlic into his face as hard as I could. I didn't have any crosses or holy water at home. I had to work with what was available.
Quentin slowly picked the cloves out of my hand before popping them into his mouth.
"That's white vampires," he said, chewing and swallowing the raw garlic like a bite of fruit. "If I was a jiangshi you should have brought a mirror."
I wrinkled my nose. "You're going to stink now."
"What, like a Chinese?" He pursed his lips and blew a kiss at me.
Instead of being pungent, his breath was sweet with plum blossoms and coconut. Like his body magically refused to be anything but intensely appealing to me, even on a molecular level.
I tried to swat away his scent before it made me drunk.
"Stop it with the tricks," I said. "I don't know why you and your giant buddy needed to stage a magic show in front of me yesterday, but your act sucks and I never want to see it again."
"Genie, I am telling you, that was a yaoguai."
"Yaoguai don't exist!" I was firm in my conviction, but that hadn't stopped me from looking them up online last night. "They're folk demons, and I bet no one has believed in them for hundreds of years!"
"That's because no one has seen them in hundreds of years. They're not supposed to be walking the earth anymore. Especially not that one." Quentin looked chagrined, as if his disposing of another living being were akin to being caught double-dipping at a party.
"I came to this town because I felt a demonic presence stirring in the human world for the first time in centuries," he said. "I knew modern people weren't equipped to deal with yaoguai, so I hunted down the source myself. I didn't expect to find you of all people here as well."
There were many things I was not okay with in this explanation. The way he said human world like he had been hanging out somewhere else. His loose use of time signifiers. The way he still talked to me as if he knew me intimately.
"So you're only stalking me as an afterthought," I said.
"Yes. I mean no!" Quentin closed his eyes and pinched invisible threads from the air, trying to figure out which ones were connected to the end he wanted.
"Look," he said. "What happened yesterday was impossible."
I was about to violently agree with him in a general sense, but he kept going down a weird path.
"The Demon King of Confusion should not have been up and about," he said, seemingly more concerned about which monster we'd seen, like a fanatic who believed in Bigfoot but was shocked by the Abominable Snowman. "I personally rid the mortal world of him a very long time ago. The fact that he showed up alive means that there's something funny going on here, and until we find out what it is, the two of us have to stick together."
"You are the funny thing that's going on," I said. "You and your ... demons, yaoguai, whatevers. I don't want any part of it. In fact, if you ever trot this horse crap out in front of me or my family again I will make it my life's mission to see you regret it."
I turned away and walked halfway down the block before stopping.
"That wasn't a cue to follow me!" I screamed at Quentin, who was trailing only a few steps behind.
"Well, tough. We're heading to the same place, regardless of whether or not you believe me about yaoguai."
"Oh you have got to be kidding me."
"Yup." He grimaced like a man condemned. "Tonight is when I promised your mother we'd have dinner."
One of the reasons I didn't have friends over for meals very often was because of how seriously my mother took the occasions. Eating at our table was like some kind of blood pact for her. If the get-together went well, you were in. For life. You could sleep in our cupboard if you wanted to and she wouldn't bat an eye.
If you did not hold up your end of the bargain in terms of being good company, or if, god forbid, you flaked, then you were cast into the lake of fire for eternity. Quentin, who must have picked up on Mom's peculiarities in this regard, was right in that we were locked in for one last dance. The Apocalypse couldn't have prevented this dinner.
I could smell food even before entering our driveway—a deep, savory promise of good things to come. My mother must have been at the stove all day. For someone who gives me such a hard time about my weight, you'd think she wouldn't cook so goddamn much.
"Remember," Quentin said as we went inside. "This was your idea."
His parents were already there, sitting at our table. "Pei-Yi," Mom said. "Come and meet the Suns."
Mr. Sun was tall and reedy with wiry hair, most of the resemblance to his son coming from the mischief in his eyes that his banker's suit failed to tamp down. Mrs. Sun was the picture-perfect image of a young taitai. She was a straight-backed beauty resplendent in tasteful fashions, the kind of woman Yunie would turn out to be in a decade or two if she dropped the punk-rock look in favor of European couture.
"Eugenia," said Mr. Sun. "We've heard so much about you."
To their credit, they didn't flinch at my height. Quentin must have warned them that I was a kaiju.
"We're forever in your debt," Mrs. Sun said. "Our boy can be so careless. It was a miracle you were there to save him."
Having seen what I'd seen, I seriously doubted Quentin was in any sort of trouble when I'd first run into him at the park. I wondered if his parents were in on his weirdness. They had to have been aware of his extra limb at least.
"You two are just in time," Mom said. "Dinner's ready."
The table was decked out with more food than my entire volleyball team could have eaten in two sittings. Red wine chicken. Steamed white radish with conpoy. Misua swimming in broth.
"Wait a sec," I said, tilting my head at Quentin. "He's a vegetarian."
"It's all mock meat," my mother said proudly. "It took me a few tries."
Of course she would kill herself over an attempt to impress. The Suns were everything she wanted our family to be. Rich. Refined. Whole. Quentin's parents even had British accents when they spoke in English, like they'd learned in an overseas grammar school or owned property in London. If there was one group of people my mother idolized more than the wealthy, it was the British.
"This looks absolutely delicious," said Mr. Sun.
He was not wrong. Mom was a spectacular cook. But I already knew that very little of this dinner was going to be touched. Mr. and Mrs. Sun were too genteel to finish the massive quantities that had been prepared, and if I had anything more than a "ladylike" serving in front of guests, my mother would have lasered me to death with her eyes.
Quentin alone had license to eat. He began chowing down with delight, scarfing the mouthwatering grub as fast as he could.
Over the course of the conversation I learned that his dad worked in international shipping and logistics, coming up with new route calculations based on incidents like storms and pirates. And his mom ran her family's charitable foundation, which spread basic technology like flashlights and cell phones to undeveloped areas around the world.
Now both of those jobs were actually really, really cool. I'd gone into this dinner eager to harness my class resentment and write Quentin's parents off as useless gentry, but both of them were genuinely interesting. I could have coasted on them talking shop all night.
Instead of going on about themselves, though, his parents kept turning the conversation back to me. I hated talking about myself to other people. It was why I had such a difficult time with my application essays.
But what really caused my gears to lock up was the way, whether through prior research or on-the-fly Holmesian deduction, they continually managed to avoid bringing up my dad. Not even a question about where I got my height from, since it clearly wasn't maternal. Their collective inquiries left a father-shaped hole in the conversation, like snow falling around a hot spot. I would have felt less on edge and defensive had they not been going out of their way to be tactful.
"So Genie," said Mr. Sun. "What are your plans for the future? What do you want to do with your life?"
"I don't know yet," I said, with what I hoped was a demure smile. "I guess one of the reasons why I study as much as I do is to keep my options open."
There. A better answer than screaming I just wanna be somebody! like a chorus member from a forties musical.
"Do you have a favorite subject?" Mrs. Sun asked. "Sometimes that can be a big life hint."
Jeez, let it go already. "I like them all about the same."
"Really?" said Quentin. "Rutsuo told me you once got pretty excited about computer science."
"That was an elective that didn't count for credit," I said. "And I only jumped on the table to celebrate because my code for a binomial heap finally compiled after fifteen tries."
"Passion's passion," said Mr. Sun. "Ever thought about being a programmer?"
I had. And no.
We lived in the epicenter of the tech industry. I'd paid enough attention to the news to know that all the good programming careers were concentrated right here in the Bay Area, not even fifty miles from where we were sitting. I wasn't going to work my ass off only to end up right back where I started in life, within shouting distance of my mother.
I racked my brain for a more polite way of saying that I felt zero obligations to the place where I grew up. Santa Firenza wasn't a quaint bucolic suburb where happy families were grown from the rich earth. Santa Firenza was a blacktopped hellscape of bubble tea shops and strip-mall nail salons, where feral children worshipped professional video-game streamers. The major cultural contribution of this part of the country was recording yourself dancing alongside your car while it rolled forward with no one driving it.
"Well, I'm sure that once you decide what you want, you'll get it," Mrs. Sun said in response to my silence. "You have so much determination for someone so young."
"She's always been like that, even as a baby," said Mom. "She used to watch the educational shows with the puppets and get the questions for the kids right. But then there would be a joke for the adults that she couldn't have possibly understood, and she'd get so angry that she'd missed something. That she didn't get a 'perfect score.' She was such an angry little girl."
"It's not like you got the Masterpiece Theatre references inside Sesame Street either," I snapped. "I remember asking you to explain them, and you never could."
The only person to smell the change in the wind was Quentin, who glanced up at me while chewing a mouthful of noodles.
"There was also the time you cracked that boy's rib for pushing Yunie into a tree," Mom said. "The only reason you didn't get suspended was because he was so embarrassed he wouldn't admit the two of you got into a fight. You should have seen yourself standing up to the principal, saying over and over that you did hit him and you deserved your proper punishment. The teachers didn't know what to make of it."
"Ah, so she has a sense of justice," Mrs. Sun said admiringly. "If only our boy were the same way. He was such a little delinquent when he was young."
"Now look at him," said Mr. Sun. "He pretends to be good but it's all an act. He thinks he has us fooled."
I did look at Quentin, who was busy slurping the last of his soup. He didn't seem at all bothered by his parents' put-downs. In fact, he gave me a little wink over the edge of his bowl.
"I also hear that you're the star of the volleyball team," Mrs. Sun said to me. "Their secret weapon. Have you always been stronger than other people?"
"Yes," said my mother. "She's always been big."
Oh boy. The gates were open.
"Oh, I meant in an athletic sense," said Mrs. Sun. "Skill-wise. Good gongfu at sports."
The distinction was lost on my mother. All those words meant the same thing to her. Masculine. Ungirly. Wrong.
"She's always towered over the other girls," Mom said. "The boys, too. I don't know where she got it from."
"Oh yeah, like my height is under my control," I responded. "There was a button you press to grow taller and I got greedy and hit it too many times."
"Maybe it was my fault," she added, turning martyr mode on. "Maybe I fed you too much."
"Okay, the implications of that are horrifying." I raised my voice like I'd done a thousand times before. "You're going to say you should have done the reverse and starved me into a proper size?"
"Why are you getting so upset?" Mom said. "I'm just saying life would be easier for you if you weren't ..." She waved her hand.
"Thank you!" I practically shouted. Okay, I was flat-out shouting. "I well and truly did not know that before you said it this very moment!"
"I think Genie's beautiful," Quentin said.
The air went out of the room before I could use it to finish exploding. Everyone turned to look at him.
"I think Genie is beautiful," he repeated. "Glorious. Perfection incarnate. Sometimes all I can think about is getting my hands on her."
"Quentin!" shouted Mrs. Sun. "You awful, horrible boy!"
Mr. Sun smacked Quentin in the back of the head so hard his nose hit the bottom of his empty bowl. "Apologize to Genie and her mother right now!" he demanded.
"No," said Quentin. "I meant it."
His parents each grabbed an ear of his and did their best to twist it off.
"Ow! Okay! Sorry! I meant that I like her! Not in the bad sense! I mean I want to become her friend! I used the wrong words!"
"Sure you did, you terrible brat," Mrs. Sun hissed. She turned to us, crimson. "I am so, so sorry."
My mother was stunned. Torn. While that display by Quentin was definitely improper by her delicate standards, she also had wedding bells chiming in her ears. The sum of all her fears had just been lifted from her shoulders.
"Oh, it's all right," she murmured. "Boys."
I could only stare. At everything and everyone. This was a car accident, and now burning clowns were spilling out of the wreckage.
"Who's Sun Wukong?" I blurted out.
I had absolutely no idea why I said that. But that was anything but this, and therefore preferable.
"Sun Wukong," I said again, talking as fast as I could. "Quentin mentioned him earlier at school and I didn't get the reference. Everyone knows I hate it when I don't get a reference. Who is he?"
My mother frowned at me and my one-wheeled segue. "You want to know? Now?"
"Yes," I insisted. "Let me go to the bathroom first, and then when I come back I want to hear the whole story."
My outburst was bizarre enough to kill the momentum of the other competing outbursts. While everyone was still confused, I stood up and marched out of the room.
I hadn't even filled my hands with water to splash my face when Quentin appeared behind me in the mirror.
"Gah!" The running faucet masked my strangled scream. "What is wrong with you? This is a bathroom!"
"You left the door open," he said.
I could have sworn I heard his voice twice, the second time coming faintly from the dining table. It must have been my mind deciding to peace out of this dinner, because if not, Quentin was casually violating time and space again.
"Who's Sun Wukong?" he repeated in a mocking tone. "Smooth."
"You don't get to criticize after what you did!"
"I was trying to ... how does it go? 'Have your back?' "
"Your English is perfectly fine," I snapped. "Or at least good enough to make your point without being lewd."
"I'll work on it. Anyway, the situation is turning out perfectly."
That was in contention for the dumbest comment made tonight. "In what possible way?"
Quentin reached behind me and turned the faucet off. "You'll hear the story of Sun Wukong from someone else, so you'll know I'm not making it up."
Before I could question his logic, he slipped out the bathroom door.
When I came back to the table, Mr. Sun was unwrapping a gift. It was a huge urn of horridly expensive baijiu, big enough to toast the entire Communist Party. It probably cost more than our car.
"The legend of Sun Wukong can get pretty long," he said. "We should hear it over a drink." He winked at me, willing to run with the diversion I'd handed him. Bless his heart.
Mr. Sun poured us all a bit, even me and Quentin after getting a nod from my mom. I took a single tiny sip and felt it etch a trail down my throat like battery acid.
"All right, so Sun Wukong," I said. "What gives?"
"I tried telling you these stories at bedtime when you were young," said Mom. "You never wanted to listen back then. But here goes ..."
