29 Dates

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “I guess my mom’s friend’s friend knows someone you know?” Dave grinned and slid into the other side of the booth.

  “No, that can’t be possible. I’m set up through this professional matchmaker, Ms. Moon. I had to send in an application to even be considered as a client and everything. It’s not like a friend-of-a-friend scenario.”

  “Wait, Ms. Moon? That’s the friend’s friend that my mom mentioned.” Dave laughed. “I bet she was just trying to be chill so I wouldn’t freak out or get weird about working with some matchmaking service.”

  “I guess you’re a lot more plugged in to the Korean community than I thought.” Jisu smiled. “Also, unlucky numbers are totally a thing. If you want to be a real Korean, you have to indulge in a bit of superstition.”

  “So what—does that still make me your unlucky seon then?” Dave asked.

  Jisu laughed. She’d never felt luckier in her entire life.

  MARCH 28, SAN FRANCISCO

  DATE NO. 29

  NAME: Kang Daehyun aka Dave

  * * *

  INTERESTS:

  Debate, Environmental Science, Lacrosse, Soccer

  * * *

  ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

  Soccer Team Captain,

  Early Acceptance to Harvard

  * * *

  Jisu: You’re technically my thirtieth seon. Because Austin counts as one, too, somewhere between seon fifteen and twenty.

  DAVE: Can we not talk about that guy?

  Jisu: And you know what number thirty is, right?

  DAVE: What?

  Jisu: It’s considered the luckiest number in Korea.

  DAVE: Really?

  Jisu: No! I just made that up. Wow, you really don’t know anything about Korean culture.

  DAVE: Oh, here we go again with that. I’m very Korean, you know. I even have a Korean name.

  Jisu: Really? What is it?

  DAVE: Okay, we’re gonna start this seon all over.

  Jisu: Hey, I’m Jisu.

  DAVE: I’m Daehyun.

  Jisu: Korean name! But you’re born and raised here?

  DAVE: Yup, and you moved from Seoul not that long ago?

  Jisu: Yeah, my parents were obsessed with me getting into an American Ivy League school and decided it would be a good idea for me to become a last-minute exchange student and sent me across the Pacific to San Francisco. And here we are now.

  DAVE: I’m not even going to try to relate. My parents want me to go to a good college and all that, but I can’t imagine moving to a whole new country.

  Jisu: It hasn’t been the easiest. But I’ve met people along the way who’ve made it worth it.

  DAVE: This is gonna sound silly, but I actually feel a little nervous right now.

  Jisu: For real? It’s like we’re just hanging out!

  DAVE: I know, but it’s my first seon. Even just saying that makes it sound official and formal. And you’re making me nervous. I even asked some friends for dating tips.

  Jisu: And what did they tell you?

  DAVE: That kindness is underrated. And common likes and dislikes are key. Heavy emphasis on the common dislikes. So, you’ve been on a lot of seons, both here and in Seoul?

  Jisu: Yeah, but none of them have worked out...clearly. I did meet some cool guys and I’m actually friends with some of them. But there was never really that chemistry with anyone, you know? I love meeting new people, but I’m kind of over seons, to be honest.

  DAVE: I bet the right guy could be the end of all seons for you. You seem to know what you want.

  Jisu: What do you want? What are you trying to get out of these seons?

  DAVE: Actually, I have a girlfriend, which might really screw me up in the long run if I keep sneaking out. I’m only going on these dates to appease my mother. She kinda hates my girlfriend.

  Jisu: Oh, that’s too bad. I actually thought this might go somewhere.

  DAVE: Well, it was nice knowing ya, Jees.

  Jisu: Did you just call me Jees? You know, I hate nicknames. Especially when someone you just met assigns you one.

  DAVE: Wait—for real? I’ve been calling you Jees forever, like since the first day we met. Why didn’t you tell me?

  Jisu: Because I ended up liking it! I still don’t like nicknames, but you can still call me Jees. No one else. Just you.

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Someone to Love by Melissa de la Cruz.

  Author’s Note

  I first learned about seon (matchmaking) blind dates through my best friend from college who is Korean and whose parents set her up on several of these dates. She later married a great guy she met at a bar, on her own, and her parents couldn’t be happier. While most seon dates are between college and post-collegiate couples, I thought it would be fun to set a YA novel within this traditional dating structure. However, in setting the seon practice in high school, as an author of fiction, I’ve taken some liberties with this practice. The story is not meant to be representative of the South Korean or Korean-American experience with a matchmaker, but a lighthearted romantic comedy set in a culture I am lucky enough to feel part of through my friends and family. Any mistakes or misunderstandings in the text are mine alone.

  My dear sister-in-law, Christina Jiyoung Hwang, inspired this novel due to her own personal history of immigrating to the United States from South Korea, alone, as an international student when she was just a freshman in high school. Christina has been a sounding board and an enthusiastic supporter of this novel from the beginning, and I thank her for her generosity, good humor and keen eye for inconsistencies.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to everyone at Inkyard Press, especially my wonderful editor, Natashya Wilson. Thank you to my 3Arts family: Richard Abate and Rachel Kim. Thank you to all my friends and family, especially all the DLCs: Mom, Aina, Steve, Nicholas, Joseph, Chit, Christina, Seba and Marie; and my Korean sistahs, Carol Koh Evans and Jennie Kim (and her mom, JJ Kim, who’s kind of like my mom, too!). Thanks to Mike and Mattie for putting up with all my deadlines. Love to all my loyal readers.

  Someone to Love

  by Melissa de la Cruz

  o n e

  “It’s not that I’m rebelling. It’s that I’m just

  trying to find another way.”

  —Edie Sedgwick

  The stall door won’t shut all the way.

  What the hell kind of bathroom doors does our school have?

  The kind with crooked doors that don’t always latch. The kind you don’t want to get caught in. Not with your head above the toilet. Not when you’re kneeling on the floor, puking your guts out. Not with a fifth of vodka—which I desperately need right now.

  Shouldn’t the stalls all lock?

  Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m done.

  I wipe my mouth and take a stick of gum from my purse and unwrap the shiny paper. It makes me think of Andy Warhol’s famous art factory, all wrapped in silvery aluminum foil and pulsing with artists and conversation. I can see Edie Sedgwick’s haunting face. Her platinum pixie. Smoky circles around her eyes. Dangling earrings. That megawatt smile. She may have been one of Andy Warhol’s superstars—those grimy, glamorous muses—but Edie was his angel too. An angel wearing a leotard and fur coat, hiding in the backs of limousines and dingy clubs. Skinny as hell.

  I’d rather be in New York. Studying art. Living in my own art factory. Get out of this sunshiny, swimming pool state. I crumple the paper into a ball, toss it into the wastebasket near the door and head for the sinks. I turn on the faucet. Pump soap onto my hands. Scrub. Scrub. Stare at the water slipping down the drain. Don’t look up.

  I hate mirrors. Glass is dangerous. Water is dangerous. Windows are dangerous. Anything that reflects myself back at me is a threat. A punishment.

  Welcome to my Monday morning. It’s Eastlake P
rep’s yearbook photo day. Yeah. That Eastlake Prep—the one with the five-figure tuition and super-fancy alumni. Famous people have gone here, and famous people send their kids here.

  It’s the end of September—we’re already a month into school—but I can’t seem to get into the swing of school. And I also can’t show up at photo day with frizzy hair and a pimple on my chin. As much as I hate taking them, I know the power of a class photo. Thirty years from now, when everyone has moved away and no one is following each other on social media anymore, people are going to pull out their yearbook and look at you. That’s what you’ll be to them forever.

  Do you want to be the girl with the greasy forehead? Or the bad bangs?

  No. I didn’t think so.

  The spotless surface reflects my double. I smooth my hands over my long dirty-blond hair and examine my skin, slightly jaundiced under the bathroom’s unflattering fluorescent light. The problem with mirrors is that they show me only what’s already there. It’s I who has to see the potential, who has to see how much more there is to lose. How much smaller I can be. How much closer to perfection.

  Speaking of perfection: Zach Park.

  He’s gorgeous. Thick dark hair tousled like he’s been lounging on the beach all day. Wide green eyes with teardrop curves that seriously make me want to stop everything and get lost in them for an eternity. I’ve had a low-key crush on him since the end of freshman year when he transferred here from a Korean private school.

  I had only one class with him—the last semester of first-year English—but I doubt he remembers me. I mostly drew pictures of other people in the class on my notes to avoid looking at him too much, even though I was always listening to him. He was so well-spoken and mature. So different from the other teenage boys who seemed to be interested only in playing video games or whatever party they were planning for the weekend.

  Zach actually liked talking about ideas. Whenever the teacher called on him, he would say something insightful that I’d never thought about before, and I loved when he volunteered to act out scenes from the books the class was discussing, because Zach would bring them to life. It was like whatever character he was playing had stepped off the page into the classroom and was standing in front of you.

  Not that I ever really talked to him.

  Today’s the day. Maybe.

  I just have to pull it together for the camera, in front of all the other junior and senior girls with their immaculate hair and carefully coordinated outfits, in front of Zach and his perfect jawline and forearms. Even thinking about all of them staring at me, wondering who the loser is who wandered into their perfect midst, is enough to make me want to skip school and never come back.

  I screwed things up enough my freshman year. I was dating this guy—Ollie Barrios—who was a really popular junior basketball player. I’d just lost a lot of weight and he was my first boyfriend. It felt amazing to be noticed. To be wanted—no, desired—by someone. I should have seen the red flags though. Ollie was always telling me what I should wear or who should be my friends. He’d even choose my food at restaurants.

  I ended up gaining some of the weight back during the first few months of school, and Ollie dumped me. We were leaving from my house to go to the homecoming dance. Ollie stopped me before I could get in the car. “We’re not going,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, thinking maybe Ollie made other plans.

  “That dress makes you look like a stuffed sausage.”

  “I—I can go change,” I stammered.

  God. I was so stupid. That would have just been putting lipstick on a pig.

  “How much weight have you gained? Ten? Fifteen pounds?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  My skin was crawling. I wanted to escape my body.

  “Don’t you keep track? Most girls weigh themselves every day.”

  “I’ll start eating better. Exercising,” I pleaded with him.

  “Whatever, Liv. You obviously don’t care about yourself.”

  He left me crying on the doorstep.

  Ollie spread his version of the story around the entire school. He said our relationship wasn’t working out because he was an athlete and I wasn’t “disciplined” enough, which was obviously code for eating too much and not exercising enough. Everyone looked at me like I was the biggest loser. But Ollie was right. I was a fat cow. I immediately went on a revenge diet. I started fasting for days at a time, but then I would get so hungry that I’d binge and eat way more than any normal person should—pasta, burritos, ice cream, whatever was available—and feel so guilty about bingeing that I’d puke everything up.

  I’ll never let myself gain weight again.

  I’m a yo-yo girl. What goes down must come back up.

  I’ve been keeping myself from bingeing pretty well the past couple of months, but I still have to purge. I hate the feeling of being full. It makes me nauseous.

  I smash the gum between my teeth, partly to cover the acrid smell, but mostly to give my mouth something to do. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. I try to push away the thoughts. I’m stronger than my hunger. I take a cleansing breath to clear my head.

  One.

  Food is disgusting. It never made you happy.

  I exhale slowly. My breath is my mantra. My focus.

  You are not a slave to your hunger.

  Two.

  I’m finally ready to take on this torturous rite of passage.

  I leave the bathroom and am walking around the corner of Decker Hall when a guy staring down at his phone runs into me, nearly knocking me over.

  “What the hell?!” I say, then I realize I know him, a smile forming on my lips.

  It’s Sam. We’ve been best friends since elementary school.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I was looking for you... You left class early.”

  “Obviously.” I roll my eyes and make a sarcastic face at him. “I had to prep. Don’t wanna turn out wretched in my yearbook photo.” I look down at my simple, sleeveless black dress. The color suddenly seems so wrong. “What was I thinking? I look like a vampire. And not even the cool kind.”

  “Oh please,” Sam says, laughing as he puts his arm around my shoulder. “You look great.”

  “Greatly appalling,” I say. “Do we have to do this?”

  I twist around to look into his deep blue eyes, trying to plead with him to cut class with me, but Sam doesn’t cut class. He actually likes school. He’s really smart—I’m sure he’s going to be a genius-level scientist someday—and handsome in that geeky, still-needs-to-fill-out kind of way, but there’s no way I’m ever going to tell him that.

  “Why even bother asking?” Sam says.

  “Fine,” I say, moving his arm off my shoulder. “You can at least walk me over to the shark tank. And button your shirt.” I don’t even wait for him. I start doing it myself.

  Just like when we were kids. They don’t go anymore, but Sam’s parents used to take me sailing with him and his older brother, James, on the weekends. I remember standing on the deck, the boat going full speed, the wind whipping my hair back and forth across my face, feeling weightless and completely free from the prison of my own body. Sam may not be the best at dressing up for yearbook photos, but he seemed so confident on those sailing trips. The way he handled the ropes so deftly, how he steered the boat with ease. I envied him, because Sam was the master of his own destiny on the water.

  I miss those days.

  “They’re yearbook photos. Who cares? We’re all just going to stuff them in our closets anyway,” Sam says.

  “Wrong,” I say. “Yearbook photos are like diamonds. They’re forever.”

  “Actually you’re wrong,” he says. “The whole concept of a yearbook is obsolete. Everyone blasts their lives on social media now, so what’s the motivation to rummage through some old book?”

 
He takes over buttoning his shirt when I get up to his neck.

  “Have you not seen the awful yearbook photos of celebrities on the internet? Just because they’re not on social media to start with doesn’t mean they won’t end up there.”

  A tie hangs limply from his pocket. “Do you know how to tie that?” I ask.

  “I watched a tutorial,” Sam says. “It can’t be that hard.”

  I laugh.

  We must look like a couple, but everyone knows we aren’t together. I love Sam. We always sit next to each other in classes because our names are so close. Sam Bailey. Olivia Blakely. He’s super smart and will probably do something exceptional someday, like work on a giant particle accelerator. He’s also the most loyal guy I know.

  He’s had a crush on a few girls over the years, but neither of us has been that lucky in love.

  “We better get going,” I say, continuing on my way. “I want to be early.”

  I start thinking about Zach. Again.

  If only he knew that I exist. And that I’m totally in love with him.

  He’s always off and on with Cristina Rossi. God. That girl. Model gorgeous. And, since this is Los Angeles, she actually is a model. She even appeared half-naked for a Calvin Klein underwear campaign on a billboard next to the Chateau Marmont this summer. They both look like works of art. Ms. Day, my studio art teacher, might call them “aesthetically pleasing.” Well-proportioned. Shapely. Statuesque.

  Sam pulls the tie out of his pocket. He tries to tie it as he walks. It’s as defiant as his unruly hair. He can’t manage a Windsor knot to save his life.

  “How ’bout just ditch the tie?” I say.

  “Help me out, Liv. You’ve known how to tie these since the fourth grade.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see a guy with brown, slicked-back hair and a gray suit striding across the quad like he owns the school. Jackson Conti. He’s a mass of muscle and has the confidence to match. We sat near each other in biology sophomore year, but I haven’t hung out with him outside of school or talked to him much since then. I hear he’s planning an event with Zach, who happens to be his best friend, in Marina del Rey on a 148-foot yacht that belongs to Sean Clark, an up-and-coming action movie star.