Read Online Frankly in Love by David Yoon - Free Book Online

understands English fine, you know, he just sucks at speaking it,” I say quietly. “You don’t have to talk slow or anything.”
    Brit looks slightly horrified. “Did I? Oh god, I didn’t even notice.”
    “You’re good,” I say.
    “I’m that person.”
    “You’re good, really,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye I see Dad mop his way farther toward the back of the store. I find her eyes, smile into them. “Hey, I’m really happy to see you.”
    She brightens. I’m itching to touch her. I can tell she’s itching to touch me, too. It’s ridiculous. “Can you take a break or something?” she says. “We could go for a walk.”
    I shake my head, probably a nanosecond too quickly. “I don’t know if we should. I mean, not around this neighborhood.”
    Does that sound terrible? Fuck, it sounds terrible.
    But it’s true. One lap around the block for her would be a fool’s parade. Same for me, too, but everyone knows I’m Frank Sr.’s kid, even if I don’t remember who they all are, because I’m here so infrequently, which somehow makes me feel kind of like a dick.
    “Oh,” says Brit Means with quiet surprise, as if remembering the existence of a world outside Playa Mesa.
    “Hey,” I say.
    “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re busy, and I’m keeping them waiting anyway.”
    She glances outside. Them? She means her parents. Waiting, in a car parked just outside. They must have stopped by on their way back from their trip. Of course. Why else would they be out here, an hour away from Playa Mesa?
    There’s a chunk . Dad’s vanished into the walk-in cooler. I sneak a kiss on Brit’s cheek.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow at school, okay?” I say. “Okay?”
    “Okay,” says Brit, and trails those fingertips of hers along the back of my pinky before leaving.
    Bing-bong, and she’s gone. My floating feet touch ground again.
    There are too many worlds in my head—Palomino High School, The Store, the Gathering—all with their own confusing laws of nature, gravitational strengths, and speeds of light, and really all I want to do is reach escape velocity, bust out into space, and form my own planet tweaked just how I want it.
    Planet Frank. Invitation only.
    I take out my phone. Miss you already.
    Brit begins to write something back. She takes a long, long time. But in the end, all she says is:
    Me too.

chapter 8
i propose to joy
    A week goes by, and it’s time for another monthly Gathering. Dad drives, as a kind of up-front compensation for the likely fact that Mom will have to drive his drunk ass home from the Gathering tonight. In the back seat I feel something in my front pocket: the tiny paper scroll, the one crazy-man Charles handed me at The Store on Sunday.
    I unscroll it. It is a photocopy of many handwritten words, all traveling in a spiral toward a central drawing of a naked man, woman, and fetus inscribed in a triangle, circle, square, and finally a pentagon. It feels vaguely astrological. Vaguely satanic. The words don’t help, either:
The Sept of Man inscribes the Septs of Wo-Man and Child in a tri-planar Möbius tetramid resting upon the Present plane. The fourth plane is Fear, the fifth plane is Hope, the sixth plane is AbsoluteSolitude. The seventh plane encompasses all planes and is therefor Known as the Infinite Realm of the Vaginal Ouroboros.
    And on and on.
    My mind is blown, but not in any kind of good way.
    “Mom,” I say. “Have you ever read these things?”
    Mom glances up from her phone. “I never read. Charles, he crazy.”
    “You keeping paper,” says Dad. “Maybe true things he writing.”
    “Sure,” I say.
    Then Mom-n-Dad fall silent again, thinking their thoughts.
    I want to take a picture of the scroll and send it to Brit, but then I’d have to use the flash, and then there would be questions, and then I just kinda give up on the whole idea.
    I roll the scroll back up and pocket it. I make a mental note to show it to Brit later.
    If this were a movie, now