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“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.”
