This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,109

the love seat, newspaper in his hand, while my mother watches house porn, aka HGTV, aka swooning over lifestyles she’ll never be able to afford. It’s her one pleasure at the end of a work day, and I hate to ruin it.

“Xiao Jia?” She’s shocked to turn around and see me setting down my helmet. “Ni hui zai nali?”

“Duibuqi, Mama,” I say. “Will was in the emergency room. I was too distracted to send you a text.” It’s kind of the truth?

“Ai yo!” My mom’s mini-scream wakes my dad up, and he snorts and startles, his newspaper falling to the floor. “Baba, ni tingdao mayo? Nege Will, ta qu jizhenshi. Xiao Jia, shenme yang?”

“He passed out. He was totally unconscious.”

My mom’s eyes open wide, almost a parody of horror. My dad makes a loud “tsk tsk,” and I use this sympathetic opening, because it’s the only thing I’ve got to work with. “Mom, Dad, I’m going to try to go over there during lunchtime and maybe bring some dumplings for Will. I know you’ll be busy with the restaurant”—in fact, I planned on it—“but I think I should go support him. Obviously, he’s taking the day off tomorrow.”

“Of course, of course!” My mom starts babbling about how she’ll also make Will her special medicinal soup and goes to our kitchen to rummage for goji berries and red dates.

Which leaves me with my dad, who glares at me once, then leans down to pick up his newspaper and starts to read.

I go up to my room and send Will an e-mail saying that I am sorry, so sorry for acting so weird tonight and giving him a heads-up that I’ll drop by for lunch tomorrow. After I send it, I catch sight of the e-mail I ignored from earlier, the one with the video clips that started this whole mess. It’s the least I can do to actually watch them. But before I can open them up, my laptop pings with a message from Priya.

Just FYI, here’s what I’ve done so far with the videos. I think it’ll really draw some customers in. It’s honestly one of my favorite pieces ever.

That’s when I remember that I didn’t actually tell Priya that my dad is ready to give up the restaurant.

My mouse arrow hovers over the link that Priya sent for almost a full minute before I finally click on it. It takes me to Priya’s Vimeo channel, where the thumbnail image for her video comes up—it’s a close-up of Amah’s liver-spotted hands holding one of her picture-perfect pot stickers. It’s the background that catches my eye—I’m in it; I recognize the hot pink of one of my favorite T-shirts. The focus of the shot isn’t me, it’s the dumpling, so you can only see my head from the nose down, but you can see most of my smile, and that I’m angled toward my left, where there’s another, darker set of flour-covered hands, and another fragment of a smile.

This is going to hurt, I think as I click on the play button.

This Is My Brain on History

WILL

The day after my panic attack, my father gets permission to work from home so he can babysit me.

“I’ll be fine by myself,” I insist. “You don’t need to take time off.”

“I should drive you to Dr. Rifkin’s this morning,” he says. “Just in case.”

I huff in frustration. “I don’t get panic attacks when I’m alone in the car,” I say.

“I get it. I still want to come. Aren’t I allowed to get some quality time with my son?”

The funny thing is, I actually believe him. Unlike my mother, he usually doesn’t have an ulterior motive other than just spending time with me.

Except that this time he does.

We’ve just left our neighborhood when my father starts up. “I feel like we haven’t really had much time to just talk lately, Will.”

The thing is, my father did a lot of stuff with us growing up—he took me to movies and baseball games and kiddie water parks where he was the long-suffering father who sunscreened up and did double-person tube rides with me when I was too afraid to go on them alone. He was a participatory dad in every sense of the word, and he was the one who really diagnosed my anxiety and got me into therapy. But it’s been years since I’ve confided in him. I have Dr. Rifkin for that, and it’s a good thing, too, because there are a lot of things