Iron Will of Genie Lo Excerpt

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 As kids, we’d ousted her father from his mahogany-walled man cave to hold countless sleepovers here, next to piles of outdated golf clubs and liquor cabinets we had no thought of pilfering.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.