Emergency Contact

by Mary H.K. Choi

In four days Penny would be off to college and the opinions of these micro-regionally famous people would no longer matter.

Some geishas beguiled their clients with dance and artful conversation like in Memoirs of a Geisha, a novel Penny adored until she discovered some rando white guy had written it.

Penny despised “baby” as a thing for a grown adult woman to be called. It was so prescriptive. Like dressing sexy for Halloween.

Ever since he was a kid, Sam loved to cook and bake, whipping up increasingly complicated dishes, making substitutions wherever necessary, which was often, since his mom rarely bought groceries and he was alone a lot.

Some guys wouldn’t call baking or the ability to make a Pikachu foam cappuccino topper particularly manly pursuits, but Sam wasn’t just any guy. He didn’t concern himself with how fist-pumping frat dudes with crippling masculinity issues and no necks spent their time.

Penny suspected a performative aspect to her mom’s crying. Comparable to YouTubers sobbing during heavily edited confessional vlogs, Celeste bawled lustily during the semifinals of reality singing competitions and any movie involving animals. Penny would rather eat a pound of hair than reveal her true emotions.

“Isn’t it fabulous?” Penny enthused, reaching for the tube in her bag. “Too Thot to Trot?” she read off the sticker on the bottom. Christ, she felt as if saying makeup names out loud set women’s rights back several decades.

Penny arranged everything exactly the way that made sense. TP was hung in the correct direction (“over” obviously; “under” was for murderers).

Dad jokes were Penny’s favorite. (You didn’t need to be Freud to figure that one out.)

Penny believed with her whole heart that there were moments—crucial instances—that defined who someone was going to be. There were clues or signs, and you didn’t want to miss them.

Instead she’d spend time preparing for her future, living in books until the exciting part of her life would begin. Things would matter then. In fact, everything would be different.

You wrote it exactly as you would for a guy, but you made pain thresholds higher since girls have to put up with more in the world and give them more empathy, which makes everything riskier.

Think hard about where your inspiration is coming from. Are you writing stereotypes? Tropes? Are you fetishizing the otherness? Whose ideas are you spreading? Really consider how you transmit certain optics over others. Think about how much power that is.”

Marriage was useless anyway. Nothing more than a bogus contract to ensure all parties wound up disappointed.

When it came to perspiration, Penny had a problem. Not that she stank of BO or anything. It’s that from March to around October she was invariably damp.

Hell really was other people.

She wondered if the rest of early adulthood would be like this—avoiding roommates, getting ripped off for bad fusion food, and the peculiar loneliness of being smothered by people she didn’t want to spend time with.

He glared at her before realizing—inappropriately—that she was kind of cute when she made eye contact. Cute enough that he was bummed out that she was watching him die on the street.

“You had a goddamned panic attack,” she said, turning away from him again. “The sweatiness, the heart-attack feeling. Oh my God!” She slapped the bottom of the steering wheel with her left hand. “It’s obvious. And you didn’t eat today. Caffeine. So dumb!”

Honestly, between the panic attack and the pregnant ex-girlfriend, if Sam were making a movie out of his own life, Penny would watch the hell out of it.

“Sorry. I promise I will. I’ll get some food and go straight home and into bed. And I will call you because you are now my official emergency contact.” Sam turned to go.

Whatever. He tried not to dwell on the school’s resemblance to a prison and the sort of life that dictated a need for a vending machine in the hall filled with plastic-wrapped sandwiches

Only two types of people developed photos in those days, broke art kids and old weirdos.

Penny wondered if she was nervous and promptly yawned. Just as she cried when she was mad, she needed a nap when faced with anxiety. It wasn’t that she was disinterested. It’s that she became overwhelmed, went into overdrive, and shut down.

The way his eyes lit up as she opened the door sent a small wave of revulsion through her.

He’d since learned most DJs or comedians or musicians were artists by the grace of their parents’ financial support.

You know how you can make a sound on a piano Anyone with fingers can do it Intuitive You hit keys they make noise Writing and reading then rewriting and then

editing is how you make a melody It’s the same for everyone It’s not about raw talent Or having such a big ego that you think what you have to say is so important Or who your parents are And what they do It’s the practice of it Doing it until you’re good

Do you call yourself a writer? Ew no Why ew? I feel like a fraud Yeah imposter syndrome

A big deal writer who looks like me And sometimes when I write I imagine the hero as white Like automatically How fucked is that

Penny never looked the way she thought she did in her head, like how your recorded voice sounds positively vile when you hear it out loud.

Sam had been happy then. He hadn’t been thinking about Lorraine at all. He hadn’t been worried or angry. His brain wasn’t gnawing on his one thousand failings or the people in his life he’d disappointed most. He was simply enjoying how the person he liked best—the one who usually lived inside his phone—walked over to ask for almond milk.

Two wackjobs with mom issues don’t make a right.

To where if she found a way to make it uncomfortable with her world-famous talent for doing exactly that, she would be depressed forever.

Real life might be dazzling for other people. Those girls on the Instagram Explore page visiting Disneyland with the loves of their lives. Or else making out in cars with their hair whipping wildly in the wind. None of Penny’s memories were tangible.

“I’m so ready,” Jude confirmed. “I’m from a broken home and ready to make some mistakes.”

In the chick flicks Penny watched with her mom, there was usually a big to-do about getting ready for a night out. The makeover montage where the ugly duckling removes her glasses and pulls her hair down and is suddenly movie-star gorgeous. It was total baloney, yet Penny secretly loved the reveal as much as Celeste.

Mallory’s neatly organized battalions of designer shoes would have earned an appreciative whistle from Imelda Marcos, the kleptocrat wife of the former president of the Philippines who had hoarded three thousand pairs of shoes while her people starved.

Ugh, why do people go to these things? There was no biological imperative for it. Was there any other species on earth that prized popularity the way people did?

Did lemurs hang around preening in a never-ending competition of pretending to be over it? Humans were gross.

“You can be with the same person for a long time and have it be fine and meet someone else who instantly makes you see that it’s broken,”

I’m happy to know you exist. And even though I feel like I screwed things up, I thought I’d let you know. And to remind you that I exist also. I hope you’ve been good. You good? Let me know.

“Do you think I’m broken?”

Sam couldn’t believe a brain as animated and complex as Penny’s had to conk up against that question. It hurt his heart. “No,” he said. “I don’t think you’re broken.”

“You know why I called?” asked Sam. “Why?” “Because I don’t want you to punish me for knowing too much,” he said. “What do you mean?” “Don’t, like, go away because you told me things,” he said. “Don’t decide things are weird.”

“I know,” he said. “Let’s both not is what I’m saying. Don’t drag the entire me folder into the desktop trash can so you hear the paper-rustling sound.” “You can’t ask me that. The paper-rustling sound is too satisfying.” “Just don’t be weird with me. And I promise not to be weird with you.”

Sam walked backward into the middle of the room so he could capture as much of Bastian’s paintings in the frame. This moment felt important. A story he’d be telling someone someday in the future when Bastian was known by everyone and no longer remembered him.

“What kind of question is that? It’s fucking art, man,” he said, scowling. “You don’t choose it. It chooses you. If you waste that chance, your talent dies. That’s when you start dying along with it.”

“It’s probably me,” Penny agreed, and suddenly needed a nap. It was astounding the ways in which her body reacted to confrontation.

“You know what I do that helps?” Apparently Mallory wasn’t done dispensing gems. “I imagine how my mom would feel if she could overhear the mean shit I said about her. It makes me say way less mean shit, which makes me think way less mean shit. It works.”