Free Frankly in Love by David Yoon Page B

miraculously become over the last ninety minutes up in Joy’s room.
    It works.
    “Ahhhh,” say the parents.
    “What?” I say, all innocent.
    “Eat,” says Mom.
    “Eat, eat,” says Joy’s mom, fussing with Sternos under ornate silver pans.
    “You want wine?” says Dad.
    This is when I know they’re falling for the plan. Wine?
    We grab some food. Dinner’s French food done all Korean-style, meaning in the form of a buffet and in quantities that are way, way too much. I pile my plate. Joy piles hers. When we get to the last buffet pan, I see that Dad is waiting for us.
    He escorts us over to the kids’ table and hustles out chairs for us, like a swarthy maître d’ from Middle Earth, and we sit. The kids’ table is usually larger than this. There are usually more Limbos. This table is meant for only two. We sit facing the adults; the adults sit facing us. It’s like a sweetheart table at a goddamn wedding.
    It’s silent for a moment. Then someone—Mrs. Song, fiddling with her giant Korea-only phone/tablet thing—abruptly puts on an adult contemporary rock song: some insipid string of croony cliches.
    Meanwhile Dad pours the wine all the way to the rim of our glasses as if it were orange juice and we were six.
    I never knew I could feel this way / The clouds are breaking it’s a brand-new day
    Joy is vibrating, like she’s itching to flip the table. “Oh man oh man, I can’t do this.”
    “Stay strong,” I whisper.
    We both crack up.
    The parents freeze and gaze at us with these big, dumb happy-donkey smiles. Then they all catch themselves and clumsily resume their adult conversation, like drunks trying to be sly.
    It’s excruciating, but it’s working . So it’s a sweet pain.
    “Let’s toast,” I say. “I hear booze can help.”
    We can’t lift our glasses—they’re too full—so we duck our heads and sip and immediately regret it, because damn, who seriously drinks wine straight up like that without at least mixing it with Sprite or something? Alcohol, I don’t get you.
    “Hey,” whispers Joy. “Watch this.”
    “What?”
    “Just look at me for a three-count.”
    I look into her eyes for three seconds, and out of my right ear I can hear the grown-ups’ table fall dead silent.
    “Now look at the grown-ups’ table.”
    I do, and so does she, and the drunks pretend to chatter again.
    “Look back at me,” says Joy.
    And I do. I always assumed her eyes were black for some reason. But they’re not. They’re a deep hazel. I find myself wondering if they would be big enough to meet Mom’sludicrous size requirements. Her upper eyelids have that little double fold to them: that ssangkkeopul so coveted by Koreans they’ll risk cosmetic surgery to get it.
    I don’t have ssangkkeopul. Does that mean I should be envious?
    Eh, whatever. I like my eyes. They’re black, by the way, like the soul of an ultra-rare level twelve chaotic evil antipaladin.
    “Huh,” I say. “I never noticed you have ssangkkeopul.”
    Joy attempts to look at her own eyelids, which is funny. “They went like this after puberty for some reason. Mom says they make me look tired.” She blinks, tugs her eyelids flat.
    “Stop doing that, dude. It’s like Chinese-Japanese-look-at-these-dirty-knees.”
    “Jesus, that shit.”
    “Sorry to remind you.”
    Chinese-Japanese-look-at-these-dirty-knees was a racist song white kids used to sing to kids like us when we were little. It was always accompanied by the pulling of the eyelids, to make things extra ching-chong.
    “Anyway,” I say. “Your eyes look nice just the way they are.”
    Joy just starts laughing her full-on Joy laugh, eekeekeek-honk-eekeekeek, because two things are happening right now: the grown-ups’ table is as dead silent as fascinated meerkats, and the music playing is actually singing the words:
    You’re beautiful just the way you are / Girl, you know you’re a shining star
    “Ah, fuck,” I say, and laugh too.
    “Look back on three,”