"Well, this is fucking bullshit," Cheng2 announces, shoving his history textbook across the table.
"'In November 1950 hordes of Chinese "volunteers" fell upon his rashly overextended lines and hurled the U.N. forces reeling back down the peninsula,'" Henry reads. He looks up. "Are you saying hordes of Chinese, quote unquote, volunteers didn't hurl the U.N. down the peninsula?" He grins but Cheng2 doesn't seem to find it funny. He taps his pencil against the table- always a flurry of motion, that one- and scowls at the text.
"I'm saying they're teaching yellow peril in an AP American history book and that is bullshit."
Koh leans over to look at Cheng2's textbook. "You know, the Koreans write way worse stuff in their textbooks."
"Our textbooks," SickSteve corrects from behind a chemistry tome.
"No way," Koh says, switching to Korean as he tends to do when he has something intelligent to say. "You're Canadian. Diaspora doesn't get to co-opt the terms of citizens."
"Boy, I was born in Iksan-"
"Stop it, you two," Henry says and they fall silent. The argument isn't forgotten, SickSteve and Koh are still glaring at each other, but it will stay for now. Henry turns to Cheng2. "We could start a petition for new textbooks. Ones that don't rely on sinophobia to support American interference in a region for primarily strategic reasons."
Cheng2 smiles.
"I'd like that," he says. "A lot."
"So what are you?" Kavinsky asks. This is their second meeting. Earlier today, Swan passed Henry a note telling him to meet Kavinsky behind Whitman House during third period.
Kavinsky laughs when Henry says he's half-Chinese, half-Korean.
"No," Kavinsky says, running a finger up Henry's arm. "What are you?"
Henry Cheng's first kiss was with a girl named Minhee on a warm Vancouver afternoon. His first kiss with a boy involves Kavinsky shoving him against a brick wall and shoving his tongue down Henry's throat.
Henry doesn't like it.
Not the first time, when he shoves Kavinsky off him.
Not the second, when Kavinsky laughs at Henry's disgust and calls him pussy, pathetic, a wannabe valedictorian.
"I am more powerful than you know," he tells Kavinsky the third time, clenching his fists. Kavinsky's on the ground where Henry shoved him, sitting up on his elbows and looking at Henry not with anger but with interest. RoboBee's just outside, awaiting Henry's commands. It wouldn't be fast enough if Kavinsky tried anything but Kavinsky doesn't know that. "In terms of power, we are equals. This is not happening. Do you understand me?"
They stare at each other. It's a battle of wills but Henry isn't backing down. He can't back down, not from someone like this, not when he's been up against worse and prevailed.
A full minute passes.
Then Kavinsky grins, lazy and slow, and says, "Yeah. I think I do."
Kavinsky isn't the only player on the field.
In Singer's Falls there lives a man. He is very much like Seondeok, a collector of impossible things and magical items. A family man, he has several sons, two of whom attend Aglionby Academy.
Henry has only ever had the one interaction with his mother's business associates. Since those fateful days, she has kept him from her work. He used to think she meant to protect him. Now he can only assume it took her this long to find a use for him.
Henry did not know any of this until his first October in Virginia when a sophomore named Declan Lynch clapped him on the shoulder and asked him to take a walk with him. As this was not a particularly unusual occurence at Aglionby Academy for Upstanding Young White Men, Henry thought nothing of it. Declan was a force of nature, a boy born for politics, the face of a campaign, the genius intellect behind an American posterboy. He commands a room, garners respect, and has a dazzling smile. He is beholden to no one. He is everything Henry admires in a man.
"Give me your phone number," Declan says and Henry is so starstruck he doesn't realize Declan is speaking through his teeth.
"Excuse me?"
"Your phone number, Cheng. Give it to me."
"Wh-" Henry rattles it off. Declan punches it into his phone.
"I'll call you," he says and walks away without an explanation.
The warm, fuzzy feeling Henry decides to call admiration follows him for the next two days. Gradually, it's replaced by confusion and worry as Declan doesn't call or text or even talk to Henry again.
Then, almost a week later, he receives a text from an unknown local number.
Cheng, meet me at Nino's tonight. 7 pm.
Henry goes. He is giddy, overwhelmed by excitement. Declan Lynch texted him. Declan Lynch wants something from him.
As it turns out, Declan Lynch wants nothing from him. When he sees Henry, he shoves a package at his chest and tells him, "Give that to your mother." When Henry moves to protest, to ask what is going on, Declan asks, "Do you have a form of transportation? I'd prefer to meet somewhere less populated," as though this wasn't his idea.
Henry's respect for Declan all but disappears that day. Because, it turns out, Declan does answer to someone. He is the oldest of Niall Lynch's sons and Niall Lynch's sons are only as loved as they are unique, not useful. Henry comes to see only the crushing despair of Declan's existence, how, even at sixteen, he is already aware of his place in the world and how little his ambitions matter.
Now, every once in a while, Henry will get a set of instructions from Declan. Go here or go there; come alone. There's always a time frame. Usually it's soon and Henry will get on his bike and yell out that he's going for a ride and that will be that, no one will ask questions.
He'll ride out to wherever Declan wants him to go because Declan doesn't ask for things unless they need to be asked for.
"Give this to your mother," he'll say, handing Henry a slim package.
Or
"I can't get her that item she wants."
Or
"There are complications with the shipment."
He never gives an explanation for why Henry's a mediary this time instead of a buffer.
When Declan's getting ready to graduate and Henry's got a year more, Declan stops asking him to go places. He doesn't have time to drive out, he says, just swing by the dorm.
What he means is he can't leave Henrietta for the time it would take to have a simple conversation.
Henry doesn't much mind. On the surface, Declan is someone he looks up to. He'd like a little of that polish and charm, fake as it might be, to rub off on him.
So he goes and five minute conversations turn into half hour-, then hour-long ones. Henry finds he genuinely enjoys Declan's company, if only because he's able to vent all the injustices the world's rained down on him, up to and including being one of his mother's instruments. Declan understands. Niall Lynch might be gone but Declan was never the favorite for all he was the hardest working and the one who had to carry the burden.
"I don't know why," Henry confides in him one afternoon, "it's me and not John who had to come here."
"Don't you?" Declan asks, raising an eyebrow, and Henry does. He understands it just like he understands being handed RoboBee and being thrust into magical Henrietta with no protection.
There's an expendable child in every family. There's a child who can be expected to work and work and work, giving their all because, at the end of the day, they just want to be loved, too, even if they aren't special, even if they aren't talented, even if they're nothing more than the lowest sum of their parents' genes.
Henry knows, in some deep, hidden part of himself, that he isn't something more.
It's okay. He'll just find people who are. He'll surround himself with them, wrap them around him until their moreness rubs off on him, until he, too, is worth noticing.
"Ryang, did you just take a picture of your lunch?"
Ryang guiltily lowers his camera. His camera. It's 2012 and he's lugging an actual, goddamn camera around. A Sony Alpha A65, he will tell you, if you ask (no one asks), with a 24.3 megapixel APS-C sized sensor and 10 fps shooting. Henry has no idea what any of that means, nor does he care to know.
"No?" Ryang says.
"Oh, my God," Cheng2 says, "he totally did."
"Ooh, let me see," Koh says. A beat later. "It's meatloaf."
"It's art!"
"Meatloaf."
Rutherford can't stop laughing.
Henry smiles at their antics. How he wishes he could be as carefree as them. Instead, Seondeok has learned of his newfound acquaintance with Kavinsky. She wants him to explore it. She won't tell him why, of course, only that it would be best for Henry to grow closer to Kavinsky rather than watch from afar. It almost sounds as if she is praising him for taking initiative. Almost.
Tomorrow, he will go to Kavinsky's. They will play a game of words and Henry will leave having learned nothing. Seondeok will ask for a report and he will have nothing to give her, only the suspicion that Kavinsky has connections Henry doesn't know how to trace and doesn't want to.
Today, Henry will pretend he is normal. He will sit and he will listen to his followers fool around and wish he, too, had such an easy life.