Page 18 of Rules for Rule Breaking
“She wants to go into political journalism.”
“I’m not Tucker Carlson. She doesn’t have to argue with me.”
Bobby looked at his best friend sideways. He felt like arguing with him right then, but he was right. He sighed. “It’s hard to explain, but Winter... I don’t know. Everything seems so easy for her, while I work my ass off. We get the same grades, and I’ve never even seen her study. And she goes around speaking Korean, throwing it in my face that I can’t. My parents are completely obsessed with her.She’s the perfect Korean daughter.”
His parents had never attempted to teach him even a word of Korean. Every time he asked, they told him they didn’t remember how to speak the language. He figured they wanted him to assimilate, but they didn’t know how much shame it caused him, especially seeing how they celebrated Winter for doing the exact thing they’d refused to teach him. It was all very confusing. And being the dutiful son he was, he didn’t want his parents to feel like they failed him in any way, so he kept the shame to himself.
Kai shook his head. “Look, man. The only culture my parents shared with me is fufu and Sunday service. It’s not your fault,” he said, and Bobby laughed. That wasn’t necessarily true, but Bobby appreciated his friend’s attempt at trying to console him. “But why don’t you tell her you’re trying to teach yourself Korean?”
“No, I can’t. That’d be humiliating.”
“I can’t read or write Korean, but I’m pretty sure those little hieroglyphs in that notebook of yours are wrong. You’re going to mess around and summon a spirit. Winter is the perfect person to help. I don’t see why you hate her so much.”
“I don’t hate her. She hates me.”
“Whatever, Bae. I’ll never understand you two.” Kai handed over his vape. “Here.”
Bobby took it and rolled it around in his fingers. “If I smoke this, will I understand some of the crazy shit you say better?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
Bobby pressed the button and inhaled deeply. He thought it’d be more pomp and circumstance if he ever gave it a go. He thought a SWAT team would descend from the ceiling and take him away. It was something for other people, like Kai, who looked natural and at ease when they did it. Not for someone like him who was incapable of relaxing or stepping a toe out of line. But it was shockingly easy... and tasty. Kai didn’t typically do it in front of him. He figured now he had means and motive. Bobby took another hit before Kai took the vape from him.
Bobby fixated on the ceiling where some light peeked over the top of the curtains. There was the shadow of a tree branch in it, and every time the tree shook, the light flickered. The ceiling suddenly felt closer, and he reached out to touch it, immediately feeling foolish when he grasped only air.
“You know when you lose your train of thought?” Kai asked.
“Yeah?” Bobby was surprised by the sound of his own voice.
“Where do you think it goes?”
Bobby wanted to explain neural processes, but his own weren’t working, so all he could manage to say was “To the giant rail yard in the sky.”
Kai nodded slowly. “Word.”
Bobby wasn’t sure if he was feeling anything, but things did seem slower. At that moment, Bobby felt there was something else even smaller than the smallest unit of time, wedged between the nano- and milliseconds, pushing against them, forcing him to be more present. That something was him. A person was only entitled to a few perfect moments in their lifetime, and Bobby, with his bestfriend at his side, felt that this was one of them. Maybe doing “bad” things, as long as no one was getting hurt, was okay sometimes. He felt more at peace with his decision to allow Winter to come along on his trip.
He moved his head from side to side, and his vision lagged like an old cartridge video game. Kai laughed, and it startled Bobby. He almost didn’t recognize his best friend’s face. He’d never gazed so intently and deliberately at him. He looked back to the spot of light on the ceiling, and it had transformed into a peachy glow. As a matter of fact, everything seemed to be tinged in pink—heightened. It was beautiful, ethereal. It was almost too much to handle, so Bobby did what he always did when he was overwhelmed—he cried.
“Let it out, Bae,” Kai said.
Bobby sat up and shook his head. “I’ve made a mistake. I don’t think I like this.”
“Mistakes are all part of the process. Just breathe.” Kai took Bobby’s hands in his own and massaged the pressure points with his thumbs. “Do you need me to find your medication?”
“No, I don’t have any.”
“Just count with me, then.”
They slowly counted to thirty together, taking deep breaths between each number. Bobby calmed down somewhere around nineteen, but Kai’s baritone voice was hypnotic in his altered state.
“You’re okay,” Kai said. “You hungry?”
“Kind of,” Bobby replied, wiping his face with his shirt.
“Want to get vegan burritos?”
“No... but yes.”
