1
Several months ago
“I believe you,” Yunie said.
I ground my knuckles into my eyes. This wasn’t going how I’d imagined.
“I—I don’t think you’re listening,” I said. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m the reincarnation of a legendary weapon once owned by Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.”
“I’ve heard of him, Genie. You don’t have to recap Journey to the West for the umpteenth time. Not all of us suck at being Asian as much as you.”
Yunie and I were having a heart-to-heart in the most secure location I could think of when it came to our friendship: the basement rec room of her house. As kids, we’d ousted her father from his mahogany-walled man cave to hold countless sleepovers here, next to piles of outdated golf clubs and liquor cabinets we had no thought of pilfering. As we got older, we stopped hanging out here, preferring to meet aboveground in the light of day. But I thought I needed the emotional backdrop for a confession as weighty as this one. I wasn’t prepared for her treating it like she’d gotten my favorite color wrong for seven years.
“Quentin is Sun Wukong!” I cried. “The guy in our class! He’s him!”
“I believe you said that multiple times.”
I nearly pulled my hair out with one yank. “Demons, Chinese demons called yaoguai—they’re real! They’re wandering the Bay Area as we speak! You know the Boddhisatva Guanyin? I’ve met her. We saved the lives of everyone in the city!”
Yunie looked up at me with her calm doe eyes, as placid as could be. “That sounds like something you would do.”
I’d reached my breaking point. I didn’t want to have to do this.
Before I cut loose, I looked around for anything fragile nearby. Her basement was spacious and floored in fluffy, sound-muting carpet. As long as I kept away from the giant TV mounted on the wall I’d be okay.
I took a deep breath, feeling oddly naked in front of my best friend. “Grow,” I said to myself.
I had been practicing this with Quentin and had gained some semblance of control over how big I got. So instead of shooting through every single story of Yunie’s house and bursting through the roof like a xenomorph, I “merely” changed to about ten feet in height. Enough to make me hunch forward under the basement ceiling.
Yunie shrieked and scrambled backward until the sofa took her legs out from under her. She clambered over the cushions and fell to the floor behind the back with a bruising thud. For a moment I was scared she’d knocked herself out, but then she peeked over the edge, taking cover from my massiveness.
Her eyes were so wide they were mostly whites. “GENIE, WHAT THE FU—”
“Ha!” I pointed a finger the length of a pencil at her, my voice booming an octave lower. “You didn’t really believe me before! You were lying!”
“I believed that what you were describing was real to YOU!” Yunie screamed. “If you told me you saw gods and demons, then of course I would believe that’s what you were genuinely seeing! Genie, what the hell is this!?”
I could tell that forcing her to look upon my perspective-breaking size for too long would make her panic. I was putting her through an experience like the first time I saw magical shenanigans, when I was attacked by the yaoguai named Hunshimowang.
I shrank down to normal size but did it too quickly. Dizziness like a bout of low blood pressure forced me to sit down on the floor. As soon as she saw me collapse with my head between my knees, Yunie’s switch flipped into protective mode.
She leaped over the couch to my side, grabbed a nearby blanket, and wrapped my shoulders with it like she’d been waiting for me at the finish line of a marathon. I breathed in and out, regaining my senses.
“Don’t push yourself too hard,” she said, sensing how much the effort had taken out of me. She stroked my back, trying to generate as much comforting friction as possible. “I believe you. I’ll always believe you.”
I knew she was telling the truth. Yunie would accept a new reality simply because I was the one laying down how it was. I didn’t deserve a person who trusted me so thoroughly, who was so completely on my side.
It should have been me trying to steady her. I started to tear up.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have told you from the beginning instead of blowing you off and being distant. I was trying to protect you. I wanted to keep you as far away from this nonsense as possible.”
Yunie sniffled a bit, the closest I had ever heard her come to crying. I knew if I looked her in the eyes right now I’d start to bawl uncontrollably. I kept my face pointed downward to maintain a controlled drip on the floor.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Thinking that you were sick of me, maybe? Making you feel so beholden? Of course you’re going to have your own important stuff going on. Your own secrets, too. I can’t be part of every single aspect of your life.”
I wasn’t sure whether I felt absolved or heartbroken to hear her say that. But once again, Yunie was speaking the truth. In the long run, clinging too hard to each other would only end in sadness.
Right now, though, we could hug it out as much as we wanted. I squeezed her to my side, my friend’s slight stature making her easy to embrace with a single, normal arm. “You’re okay with all the . . . you know . . . demons?”
“Oh hell, no. I am completely weirded out by the demons. And the gods, too; I don’t even want to think about that. I mean, ew. Are they watching us? Can a god see straight down into my room? Or my brain? Are they reading my thoughts right now?”
I laughed and a tear went up my nose, the salt burning. I’d never grilled Guanyin over the particulars, mostly because I still needed my rational side to function. Yunie was taking the same approach—only faster and better, as I should have expected from her.
She tapped the side of her head. “Your mumbo-jumbo is going straight into the vault of horrible things that don’t exist, right between my stage fright and Australian spiders. Don’t feel obligated to bring me into Chinese Narnia or whatever.”
That was absolutely fine by me. Perfect even. My original plan of keeping Yunie safe through distance was still a go, only I didn’t have to lie to her anymore.
There was one rem
aining problem, though, a magical, rock-hard lump that would be impossible to dislodge from our normal lives.
“Quentin is going to be around for a while,” I said.
“Eh, he’s allowed to stay.” Yunie leaned against me and sighed, trying to digest what his existence meant. “Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, huh?” she said. “You know what’s funny? I originally thought the reason you didn’t have time to hang out anymore was because you and he were hooking up after school. Guess I was wrong. You didn’t fall for each other.”
Ah, hell.
I didn’t say anything fast enough. Yunie must have detected a subtle temperature change in my body, because she pushed me away so she could stare at my face.
“No!” she said, her grin swelling like the crest of an oncoming wave. “Yes?”
Each additional moment I kept silent was another rev of her engine. She brightened and brightened until finally I nodded ever so slightly.