It's Girls Like You, Mickey
Page 15
Sunny got on the Principal’s List, which means she got straight As. Isn’t that nuts? First time in a new country, struggling to speak English, and she makes straight As.
Oh, and Sydney got Best Hair. Can’t disagree with that. The girl’s got good hair.
We walk through Sunny’s door.
“Halmae, dora wasseob nida!” Sun Joo yells.
“What’d you say?” I ask.
“It’s just like ‘I’m back.’ Say like this. Dora.”
“Dora,” I say.
“Wasseob,” she says.
“Wasseob. That’s like ‘What’s up,’ ” I say.
“No, not ‘What’s up.’ Wasseob,” she says.
“Wasseob,” we say.
“Nida,” she says.
“Nida,” I say.
“Dora wasseob nida,” we say together.
“That’s not bad. That’s good. So when you come back after you go out, then you say ‘Dora wasseob nida,’ like, ‘Hey, I’m back,’ ” Sunny says.
Howl-may’s cooking some kind of soup on the stove. She opens the lid to show us the little fishies tumbling around in the bubbles. A big ball of dough is on the countertop. Her hands are powdered white with flour.
“Oh, yum!” I say.
Howl-may says something to Sunny. Then I follow her to her bedroom, where we drop off our backpacks and go to the bathroom to wash our hands. We squeeze in tight together in front of the sink, passing around the bar of soap, lathering up our hands until they’re sudsy and slippery.
Howl-may gives each of us a ball of dough to knead, saying something in Korean.
“What she say?”
“She say to do like this and make soft and make into ball,” Sunny says, kneading her piece. I copy her.
Sunny shows me her lump of dough. It’s perfect like a Ping-Pong ball. I shape mine like hers. We watch Howl-may take a rolling pin and spread out her big dough ball flat and even and smooth.
“Looks like pizza. She ain’t going to throw that up in the air, is she?” I ask.
“No. She going to cut into noodle. See? It’s the knife noodle,” Sunny says.
Howl-may folds the flat dough over five times so it looks like a rolled-up rug, then takes a knife and cuts it into strips until there’s a hill of noodles.
“That’s so neat. So that’s how you make noodles. I always thought they came in a box,” I say.
We do like Howl-may and roll our dough balls flat, fold them over, and cut them into strips. We add ours to her hill of noodles, and she takes the whole pile and drops it into the bubbling broth. Howl-may stirs the pot.
We wait. My mouth waters. No one’s saying nothing ’cause we want noodles in our mouths now.
Howl-may turns around and looks at us waiting there and giggles. She tastes the broth, shakes some powder into it, and stirs. Finally, she fills the first bowl, then a second bowl. Two bowls of knife-noodle soup on a tray. She carries it out to the dining table, and like two hungry strays, we follow her. She sets each bowl down, and we take our seats and dig in, slurping up noodles, which are fat, meaty, bumpy, and chewy. I never had noodles like these. I never had broth like this either, but it tastes so snug it reminds me of home.
I start tearing up.
“What’s matter?” Sunny asks.
“It’s just so good,” I say.
“This one my favorite,” she says.
“Howl-may, go map seum nida,” I say in my best Korean. It means “thank you.”
Laughing and nodding, she says, “You way come.”
I eat. You know how when something’s so good you want to share it so bad? Like it’s a shame not everyone’s in on it? That’s how this noodle soup makes me feel. It’s so good. It tastes like comfort. Like someone’s looking out for you. Like a good night’s rest. Like put your feet up, take a load off, let me take care of you.
I wish Ma could taste it.
I wish Daddy could taste it.
I wish the whole wide world could taste it.
More from the Author
I'm Ok
about the author
Born in Busan, South Korea, Patti Kim immigrated to the United States on Christmas 1974. Convinced at an early age that she was a writer, she scribbled gibberish all over the pages of her mother’s Korean-English dictionary and got in big trouble for it. But that didn’t stop her from writing. The author of I’m Ok, A Cab Called Reliable, and Here I Am, Patti lives with her husband, two daughters, and a ferocious terrier in University Park, Maryland. Visit her at pattikimwrites.com.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Patti-Kim
Little Simon
Simon & Schuster, New York
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS • An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division • 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 • www.SimonandSchuster.com • This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. • Text copyright © 2020 by Patti Kim • Jacket illustration copyright © 2020 by Genevieve Santos • All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. • ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Atheneum logo is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. • For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com. • The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. • Jacket illustrations copyright © 2020 by Genevieve Santos • Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data • Names: Kim, Patti, 1970– author. • Title: It’s girls like you, Mickey / Patti Kim. • Other titles: It is girls like you, Mickey • Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2020. | Audience: Ages 10 up. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: Mickey faces a lot of challenges when starting seventh grade, but an instant connection with new student Sun Joo improves her outlook until Sydney, popular and mean, decides to make Sun Joo her friend. • Identifiers: LCCN 2019043789 | ISBN 9781534443457 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534443471 (eBook) • Subjects: CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. | Popularity—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Korean Americans—Fiction. | Poverty—Fiction. | Single-parent families—Fiction. • Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K5835 It 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 • LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043789