19

I STARE AT THE CROWD QUEUING TO GET INTO THE BAR, WAITING FORZee to join me for this early Friday evening set, buzzing with nerves and quite possibly the effects of my third energy drink of the evening. In the line before me is a bachelorette party with ten very drunk women who are being processed by the harried-looking doorman, and my right leg is starting to get splintery, although the adrenaline drowns out some of the pain. I'm running through the set under my breath: qualifiers are in three and a half weeks, a couple of weeks after the charity ball, and the young comics that are trying out for the competition—Royce, Vern, and I—are going up at every single comedy or even variety open-mike nights now, no matter the crowd or venue. I can get through a bachelorette party; I've done worse.

"Oh boy," Vern says, appearing with Kumar. He side-eyes the screeching bunch. "This is going to be a wild night."

"I hope I get to do my set without interruptions," I say. "The qualifiers are less than a month away and I need all the practice I can get."

"No one's ever ready," Kumar says sagely. "For stand-up and marriage."

I chuckle. "Is that going on your dating profile?"

Kumar winks and flexes his biceps to our amusement. "No need. I let my sticklike physique in sleeveless tops speak for me."

I giggle.

Vern shakes his head with an affectionate smile as he says, "This boy is a menace to society."

We finally make our way in. Royce is milling by the side of the stage, checking out the lighting. His body language stiffens when he sees me walk up with Vern and Kumar—or maybe it's my imagination.

"Hey," I say, trying to sound casual even as my heart picks up speed for unclear reasons.

"Hey, Agnes. Vern. Kumar." Royce peers around me. "Zee's not here yet?"

"She's on her way," I say, rolling my eyes. "Meaning she's running twenty minutes behind. She told me she wouldn't miss our sets for the world." Also, she had mentioned wanting to run into Vern. Literally.

"You excited?" Vern says to Royce. "I saw you on the list. It's your first fifteen-minute set in a while, right?"

"Yes," Royce says, setting his jaw.

"Is this going to be your set for the qualifiers?"

"I'm not sure yet," Royce says curtly.

"Whatever it is, I look forward to it," I say.

Royce smiles and the recent strangeness between us thaws a little, although it's still there, that new coolness. I don't know what put it there.

"How about you, nervous? It's your first ten-minute set closing the first half?" Royce asks. I nod. "That's an achievement."

"I'm a little nervous, yeah," I say. "Although it might be due to the three cans of dubiously named energy drinks I downed today. I've got a couple of new bits to test about celebrating Father's Day as the child of a single mom—they could swing either way."

"Ooh, I love your mom bits," Kumar says, then colors when he realizes what he's said. "Crap, I mean, sorry, although—"

"If any of you say, That's what she said, our friendship is over," Vern says. He turns to me. "Sorry if my boy Kumar scarred you for life. He isn't house-trained."

Kumar smacks Vern.

"It's okay, I'm already scarred for life with all my mom-related trauma," I say ruefully.

"You mine that gold," Vern says. "At least your trauma is real, not manufactured." He smirks at Royce, who frowns in response.

I flail for a distraction. "You coming to the qualifiers, Kumar? Support us?"

"Absolutely!" Kumar says. "By now I can almost recite ninety percent of your sets, but the great thing is I'm still laughing. That's how good you guys are." He shakes his head. "I really should work on my existing material that gets laughs, but I'm always tempted to try new bits."

"You can and should try new bits, but if you want to get good routines at different lengths, you have to work on building and expanding upon a set that is thematically resonant, and then every time you go onstage you're basically tweaking and refining each line till every word is killer," Royce says.

Vern turns to Royce. "Shouldn't you be preparing new material, though?" he wonders. "Since your last few sets when Agnes was around didn't…go down so well."

"I don't think you need to worry for me. Maybe you should focus on your own material, Goh."

"You're right. I should focus on my own set. Well then, break a leg up there, Taslim," Vern says. Then his expression changes. "Oops," he says, his voice laced with guilt as he turns to me, eyes wide. "Sorry, Agnes. I didn't…It just slipped out."

"Taslim?" Kumar says, mercifully dense.

"Can I speak to you in private?" Royce says in a tight voice.

I nod and follow Royce to a quiet corner in an alcove backstage, my palms slick with sweat.

"You told him?" Royce whisper-shouts. "The one person I…" He palms his face. "Damn it, Agnes."

"I—I didn't!" I say, annoyed that he thought I was the leak and wondering what he had meant to say. "Well, not directly. He figured it out by himself."

"How?"

"Because of our mutual connection to Zee," I mutter.

Royce's eyes flash. "Great. Now he holds this information over me and can deploy it whenever to hurt me."

"What?" My skin flushes with anger. "Vern would never use it….I'll tell him not to. I trust him."

His expression darkens. "How can you be sure of that? What do you know about Vern?"

"I know enough! What do you know about Vern?"

He takes a step closer to me. "I'm trying to look out for you."

"For me—or your own interests?" I challenge.

He makes an exasperated sound and grabs his hair. "Agnes, oh my God, you're killing me."

"Why do you hate Vern so much?" I say, relentless.

"Because he's my biggest and only competition!" Royce almost shouts. "For…for—" He stops himself, his breath irregular and fast.

I swallow. Royce was referring to stand-up and wanted to spare my feelings. "That's good to know." My stomach twists with this new knowledge. I'm not good enough to be his competition, yet again.

Royce winces. "Oh, I didn't mean…Shit. Everything is coming out wrong," he says. "There's just so much…Vern is my…goddamn it." Royce takes another step toward me with a pleading expression, but all I can think about is how I'll never be good enough, even here, even at my best, for Royce to treat me as competition.

"Let's talk after our sets," I say brusquely. I whirl around and head back to where Vern and Kumar were, but only Vern is left. Now I'm fired up again. I'll show him competition.

"Here you are," Vern says. "I'm so, so sorry for my slip of tongue…I hope I didn't get you in too much trouble."

I shake my head. "It's fine; you didn't mean to."

"Was Royce being condescending to you?" Vern asks, his face full of concern. "He's very dismissive of me, as you've seen for yourself."

"He's nice to me. Most of the time."

"But does he treat you like an equal?"

I struggle to keep my face impassive. "He is very caring" is what I manage to say.

Vern studies me. "You have gotten closer to him in spite of what I said."

I look at Royce, now seated at the comics' booth near the stage and talking animatedly to Milly, who's showrunning tonight, and Zee, who had just arrived. "He's…he's okay once you get past the packaging."

Vern frowns. "Oh my God, Agnes—you like him."

"It's not like that," I say, and I'm not sure if it's in response to Vern or to my own internal debate. "We're just friends." I'm not so foolish, no naive, to fall for someone like Royce Taslim. We're barely friends as it is, and now that I know he doesn't even consider me a worthy adversary in comedy, the one level playing field we're on, I should be yeeted into the sun if I did fall for him. Because to Royce, I'm just a charity case he's entertaining, and that's all I'll ever be to him.

"Sure you are," Vern says lightly. "Just friends." He shrugs. "Look, I don't blame you, whatever your feelings. It's easy to be seduced by their lifestyles. I mean, they are spoiled rich kids, buying their way through life."

"Stop it," I say. "My friends aren't like that."

Zee chooses that moment to head to the comics' booth with what appears to be two supersize tubs of gourmet popcorn, and everyone cheers."The manager made an exception for me regarding outside food," she can be heard saying over the general din.

"Okay, fine, they're rich. So what? That doesn't automatically make them bad."

"I never said that." Vern shakes his head, like he's disappointed in me. "I'm more concerned about you. It's okay to like these people, but I want you to take care of yourself, to just…hold some of you back. Don't forget your place. Once you start thinking you're like them, that's when you're going to be disappointed. Because when push comes to shove, they'll always look after their own."

There's a funny taste in my mouth and I swallow. "That sounds like a terrible way to see the world."

"It's the smart way to see the world, Agnes," Vern says in a low voice. "It's how you avoid getting hurt, giving yourself to the wrong people." He gestures at Zee. "You won't ever be enough for them because of what you lack, but you are—to me."

We fall silent. My heart is sick with a dull weight. I don't want Vern, who is a friend, to hate my school friends. If only he knew them like I do, like they know me, like they accept me—

I start at the realization that there were so many things about myself that I couldn't share with Zalifah and so many things about Royce's life that I couldn't even comprehend.

"Let's change the subject," Vern says. "I want you to be in the right headspace for your set. Think happy thoughts. Think of the both of us tearing through New York in March, eating street food and watching stand-up, because you know"—he winks, knowing how superstitious I am—"maybe we won the national lottery and needed to spend all our money."

I laugh. "Okay, player." The finals of the comedy, if we made it, would be held in March, during spring break.

"I heard from Gina a couple of days ago that both of you are performing at a school function."

I blink. "Yeah. It's a charity gala." Recalling my promise to Zee, I power on. "Wanna come as my plus one? You'll have free food, and we'll dance after. It'll be fun, I promise. We'll have to suit up, of course. It's black-tie." A little shiver of excitement courses through me: Zalifah and I have plans to wear matching tuxedoes—I found something in my size on an online thrift site in a shimmery midnight-blue fabric and bought it on a whim. We're going to look so good.

Vern shakes his head. "Nah, it's okay. I mean, I'd love to hang out with you, but I don't want to put on a penguin suit and pretend to belong."

The underlying meaning of his words cut me. "That's too bad."

"Enjoy the gala," Vern says. "Call me when you need a palate cleanse." Then someone makes a sign at Vern to get ready for his opening set and he heads off.

I ace my set and head home without staying for Royce's in a state of turmoil. Vern has a very binary way of looking at the world. Even if he doesn't intend to, he makes me feel like I'm a fraud, some kind of traitor or fool for liking Zee or Royce. Yet if Vern's the only one who truly knows me, who understands where I come from, who has demonstrated that he cares for me, maybe I should listen to him. Maybe Vern knows best.

A message lights up my screen. It's Royce.

Royce:You home?

Me:Yup

Royce:Your set was great

Me:Thnx

I can't help my dead-end, one-worded replies, now that I know how I feel about him—and how he feels about me. I have to hold myself back.

Royce:So I've some explaining to do about why I've been acting strangely around you and I'd rather do it in person. Are you ok to meet tomorrow afternoon?

Me:I guess

Royce:How about my place? We'll study after, if you want. Kill two birds with one stone

Smart move, mister, appealing to my deepest Chinese instincts by issuing that idiom. Against my better judgment, I agree.