I arrived home in a daze, trying to figure out what to do.
Mom wasn't going to be any help in this situation. I passed her in the kitchen without a word. That little slight would probably snowball into a future screaming match between us at a time yet to be determined.
I climbed the stairs to my room. Once I got there I sank into my desk chair, my head in my hands.
Taptaptap.
I could have tried to call the cops again on our landline, but what was I going to say? That my classmate fought with some kind of runaway circus experiment, killed him in cold blood, and that I helped? That I had no evidence any of this happened, because the victim self-liquefied somehow?
Taptaptaptap.
The bigger problem was Quentin. I didn't know if I was next on his list of people to murder, or if he had a list, or if he was trying to initiate me into his gang. I mean, if he'd just stop knocking on my window for one second, I could think straight—
Taptaptaptaptaptap.
I fell out of my chair. Quentin hovered outside the glass with a pleading look on his face. The worst part was that in my current state I couldn't even remember if we had a tree there for him to stand on.
He slid the window up and clambered inside. "Silence," he said.
"Mom!" I shouted, crawling backward on my butt. "Help!"
"This isn't what you think! Let me explain." He got down on his knees to look at me on my level. It was more terrifying than reassuring.
"Mom!" She was just downstairs. Why wasn't she answering?
Quentin began kowtowing in submission, knocking his skull against the floor. It only added to the commotion in my room.
"Please," he said. "I'm not a danger to you, and I can prove it. Give me a chance. If you don't like what you hear, you can do as you will. You can even take my head if you wish."
"I don't want your head!" I said. "What is it with you and murder? You killed a man back there!"
"That wasn't a human being. That was a demon. A yaoguai. If the two of us weren't there to stop him, he could have slain this entire town!"
I was going to tell him that was stupid, but remembering the man in black's hulking form and monstrous visage made me seize up in post-traumatic fear. He could very well have been right on that point.
Quentin sensed my hesitation. "And I didn't kill him in the sense you're thinking of. I only sent his evil spirit back to Diyu, where it belonged."
"Diyu? You mean Chinese Hell? That doesn't make any sense!"
"It will once I tell you my real name!"
So he'd been operating under a false identity this whole time to boot? Wonderful. I couldn't wait to see how much deeper he was going to dig this hole.
"Go ahead," I said, groping behind me for any heavy, hard object I could find to clock him with. "Tell me your real name and we'll see if that makes it all better."
Quentin took a deep breath.
"My true name," he said, " ... is SUN WUKONG."
A cold wind passed through the open window, rustling my loose papers like tumbleweed.
"I have no idea who that is," I said.
Quentin was still trying to cement his "look at me being serious" face. It took him a few seconds to realize I wasn't flipping out over whoever he was.
"The Sun Wukong," he said, scooping the air with his fingers. "Sun Wukong the Monkey King."
"I said, I don't know who that is."
His jaw dropped. Thankfully his teeth were still normal-size.
"You're Chinese and you don't know me?" he sputtered. "That's like an American child not knowing Batman!"
"You're Chinese Batman?"
"No! I'm stronger than Batman, and more important, like—like. Tian na, how do you not know who I am!?"
I didn't know why he expected me to recognize him. He couldn't have been a big-time actor or singer from overseas. I never followed mainland pop culture, but a lot of the other people at school did; word would have gotten around if we had a celebrity in our midst.
Plus that was a weird stage name. Monkey King? Was that what passed for sexy among the kids these days?
Quentin let go of his temples and began unbuttoning his shirt.
"What are you doing, you perv?" I shut my eyes and bicycle-kicked the empty air between us.
When he didn't say anything I glanced between my fingers to make sure he was keeping his distance, and oh my god I shouldn't have looked.
I wasn't sure how anyone could get muscles like that without eating meat. He had the kind of body-fat percentage where he could have done it for a living.
"See?" he said, brandishing his tanned, professional-grade torso at me.
"Like that means anything!" I said, throwing my elbow back over my face. "So you've got abs. Big deal. I've got abs."
"Not my body, you dolt! My tail! Look at my tail!"
With great reluctance, great reluctance I tell you, I ran my gaze down his stomach. The last two cans of his rippling eight-pack were partly covered by a fur belt running around his waist. I thought it was just a weird fashion statement until it twitched and pulled away from his body, unraveling behind him.
Quentin, it would appear, had a monkey's tail.
I gaped at the fuzzy appendage dancing in the air.
"Go see a doctor," I said, holding out my finger between us. "Have your weird mutation somewhere other than my room. Somewhere other than my life."
Quentin seemed moderately disappointed with the way this conversation had gone, like he had the right to expect better than a raging dumpster fire. He got up and put his shirt back on but neglected to button it up.
"You've been through a lot today," he said, using the same tone as a country gentleman who recognized that his lady's corset was too tight. "I suppose I shouldn't have sprung this on you all at once."
"Get out."
He smiled gravely at me. "Take some time to think. We can pick up where we left off tomorrow."
I found a stapler and threw it at his head.
"Pei-Yi!" shouted my mother. She clomped up the stairs. "Where are you?"
Dear god, finally. I didn't care how bad it would look to have an undressed boy with an abnormal pelvis in my room. I just needed not to be alone with him anymore.
My mom threw open the door to my room without knocking, her usual practice. She stood over me, judgment raining down from her birdlike frame. Her square, ageless face was a carved-in-marble ode to perpetual indignation.
"What are you doing on the floor?" she said to me. "You look like a city bum."
I glanced back to see Quentin gone.
He must have jumped out the window. I popped up and stepped to the sill, leaning into the air to look around. Not a trace of him anywhere.
"What's the matter?" my mother snapped. "You sick?"
I pulled my body back inside and bumped my head against the window hard enough to make the glass rattle, but the pain was inconsequential right now. "No, I ... I just needed some fresh air."
She squinted at me. "Are you pregnant?"
"What!? No! Why would you even think that?"
"Well then if you're not sick and you're not pregnant then ANSWER ME WHEN I CALL YOUR NAME!"
Mom began screaming at me since she'd apparently been telling me to come down for the last five minutes and not ignoring me asking her to come up. This kind of crazy I could take. I almost sobbed with relief, her banshee song as soothing and familiar as a lullaby.
