I Believe in a Thing Called Love

by Maurene Goo

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  To anyone who has fallen in love with love through K dramas

  PROLOGUE

  When I was seven, I thought I moved a pencil with my mind.

  I heard this story about a man who taught himself how to see through objects so that he could cheat at card games. The idea was that if he reached a state of complete concentration and focus, he could do things with his mind that normal humans were incapable of, like levitate, walk on coals, and move objects. All of which he learned to do. The very first thing he tried, however, was staring at an object for hours to make it move.

  So, late one afternoon, I cleared off my desk and placed a rabbit-patterned pink mechanical pencil on the pristine, flat surface.

  I shut my bedroom door and closed all my curtains, shrouding the room in darkness as the sun started to set. I sat at my desk and stared at the pencil. Willing it to move.

  I stared and stared. For what felt like hours. When my dad knocked on my door I shrieked, “I need privacy!” and kept my eyes on the pencil. He grumbled from the other side but eventually shuffled away.

  When it was dinnertime, he pounded on the door and said that I needed to eat. “Privacy pause!” he hollered.

  My mouth was parched and I was starving, but I kept my eyes fixed on the rabbit patterns on that pencil and told my dad to leave the food outside my door.

  Instead, he opened the door and popped his head in. “Desi?” he called out.

  “Appa, I am trying to do something very important here,” I said.

  A normal dad would probably have demanded an explanation from his seven-year-old daughter. Showed some mild curiosity as to why she was holed up in her bedroom staring at a pencil for hours.

  But this was my dad. And his daughter happened to be me. So he shrugged and went to make me a tray of fish, rice, and beef radish soup, which he carried to my desk. Careful not to disturb the pencil.

  I smelled the food and felt faint. But I wouldn’t let myself move my eyes from the pencil.

  “Um, Appa…?”

  Without a word, my dad scooped up some rice, dipped it into the soup, and brought the spoon to my mouth. I ate it in one big bite. Next, he took the chopsticks and fed me some of the fish. I nibbled it. He brought a glass of water to my lips and I gulped it gratefully.

  When I had finished most of the food, my dad patted my back and made his way out with tray in hand. Before closing the door behind him he said, “Don’t stay up too late.”

  Refueled, and my brain feeling stronger than ever, I continued to stare at that pencil.

  So what then? Well, I swear on my life, to this very day, that this thing happened: That pencil moved. It was the slightest of movements—probably not discernible to anyone except me, but the second I saw that pink pencil roll ever so slightly toward me and then come to a stop, I shrieked. I jumped out of my seat and pulled at my hair in disbelief. I ran around in circles and did a little dance. And then I face-planted into my bed and fell asleep.

  I tried the trick with a few other objects—an eraser that smelled like a strawberry, a ballerina cake topper, a single pine nut. But no dice. Despite that, for years after, I believed I could move things with my mind. I secretly knew that I existed in this very special little sphere where magical things happened. Stuff that doesn’t happen to normal humans, but rather to a select group of exceptional people.

  This childhood belief in my powerful brain faded over time. I wasn’t necessarily shaken out of it, or doused with the frigidity of the cold, hard truth of how unmagical real life was. I just eased out of that stage of my life.

  But I never lost the belief that you could will something just by sticking to it, by being unwavering. By keeping your eyes on the prize. And by doing that, there was nothing you couldn’t control about your own life.

  This was a crazy-powerful tool to have at your disposal when you were seven years old and had just lost your mother. My memories of the time right after my mom’s death have grown hazy, but they always involve a version of my dad that only existed in those months. A shadow of himself—someone who put me to bed, made dinner, and gave me the same amount of attention. But when he thought I wasn’t looking, he was someone who sat in a chair for hours in the dark. Someone who watered my mom’s geraniums at three a.m., who kept her alarm set at six a.m. even though he didn’t have to be awake until an hour later. Someone who stared at an empty bowl for five minutes every morning—waiting for my mom’s patented simultaneous-cereal-and-milk pouring. She always timed it exactly right so that the cornflakes and milk finished filling up the bowl at exactly the same time.

  Then one day I overheard my aunt speaking in hushed tones to my uncle in our kitchen. “Time will heal all wounds.”

  And so I decided to speed up the process.

  I broke my dad’s alarm clock and tearfully showed him the pieces. It took him weeks to replace it, and when he did, he had it only set to seven a.m. Every morning I made sure his cereal was ready for him before he could sit and just stare at an empty bowl. And while he ate, I watered the geraniums.

  Then my old dad returned. He put my mom’s wedding band in a small porcelain dish and lovingly dusted all the photos of her around the house—and we moved on. The shadows under my dad’s eyes faded and the geraniums flourished, climbing across our garage door.

  Time, schmime. Desi Lee heals all wounds.

  You just needed a plan, to take action. It’s how I convinced my dad to let me raise geese in our backyard, how I saved our underfunded middle school library from closure, how I overcame a fear of heights by bungee jumping on my sixteenth birthday (with only a little pee escaping me), and how I became number one in my class year after year. I believed, and still believe, that you can build your dreams brick by brick. That you can accomplish anything with persistence.

  Even falling in love.

  CHAPTER 1

  If you thought of life as a series of nostalgic images arranged in a slo-mo montage, you’d miss a lot of the tedious bits. In between the fuzzy images of blowing out birthday candles and first kisses would be a whole lot of sitting on your sofa watching TV. Or doing homework. Or learning how to create the perfect beach wave for your hair with a flatiron.

  Or in my case, overseeing yet another school event. Like the fall carnival.

  Add to that, some vomit.

  I gingerly tapped Andy Mason’s back as he hurled into a recycling bin. This was definitely one of those poignant scenes that would not make it into my life montage.

  “All good?” I asked the six-feet-four tennis team captain as he straightened up. He wiped his mouth gingerly and nodded.

  “Thanks, Des,” he said sheepishly.

  “No problem, but maybe don’t go on the Brain Melter three times in a row?”

  It was a Saturday night in late November and the Monte Vista High School fall carnival was in full swing on our campus—a sprawling
state-of-the-art modern architectural wonder built on an Orange County seaside bluff.

  Andy staggered off, passing by my best friend, Fiona Mendoza. She steered clear of him, wrinkling her nose. “A barfer?” she asked, wearing slouchy sweatpants, a crisp men’s shirt, hiking sandals, and a lightning-bolt-patterned scarf. Her heavily lined amber eyes were staring at me, blinking slowly and deliberately. She would have looked like a Mexican American Disney princess if it weren’t for the fact that she dressed like a hobo with a mean makeup collection.

  “It’s always the huge guys that have delicate little stomachs,” I said.

  “Lucky you.” She winked.

  I snorted. “Yeah, you love huge guys.” Fiona, in fact, loved tiny girls.

  My snort morphed into a hacking cough, and I bent over from the sheer force of it. When I straightened up Fiona was holding a thermos. “Your dad asked me to bring this to you,” she said.

  There were two cold-and-flu pills taped to the lid and I smiled when I saw the Post-it attached. My dad’s scrawled handwriting read: Eat a lot even if you feel like shitty! There were black smudges on everything, the signature of a car mechanic.

  I opened the thermos and the aroma of salty seaweed soup wafted out. “Mm, thanks Fi.”

  “You’re welcome but why the hell are you here? Don’t you have, like, the black lung?” she asked as we walked over to a bench and sat down.

  “Because, hello, I’m in charge of it. Also, black lung is now commonly known as pneumonia. So no, I don’t have that.”

  “You’re in charge of everything. No offense, Desi, but this is just the lame-ass school carnival.” Fiona draped herself across the bench. “Couldn’t some underling in the student government have handled this?”

  “Who? My hapless veep, Jordan?” Jordan was my vice president and was voted in primarily because of his hair. “He would have shown up tomorrow. No way. I didn’t spend weeks planning this so that someone could mess up the Monte Vista carnival rep.”

  Fiona stared at me, letting the dorkiness of that statement settle between us. When I had been duly punished, she spoke. “Des, you need to chill. It’s senior year, calm down already.” Fiona’s entire body punctuated that point—sitting cross-legged on the bench, one arm propped up on the armrest, her chin resting on it.

  I took a sip of my soup before responding. “Have I been accepted into Stanford yet?”

  Fiona straightened up then, pointing a long, glittery fingernail at me. “No! No. Once you turn that application in, I don’t want to hear that word for the rest of the year.” She paused dramatically. “Actually, never again for my entire life.”

  “Well, too bad!” I popped the pills into my mouth and downed some water.

  She stared at me again, her gaze unnerving and a little scary. “Des, you’re like a sure thing. If a nerd-Mother-Teresa-Miss-Teen-America like you doesn’t get into that school, who will?”

  I coughed again, a phlegmy rattle that harkened the end of days. Fiona visibly recoiled from me.

  I pounded my chest before speaking. “Do you know how many kids look just like me on paper? A 4.25 GPA, student body president, varsity sports, perfect SAT score, one billion hours of community service?”

  Fiona’s expression slackened at this familiar refrain. “Well, isn’t that why you requested an interview?” Her voice was on the edge of boredom as she eyed a group of girls walking by us. My best friend since second grade, Fiona had had the Desi Lee Stanford dream ballad memorized since I started belting it at the age of ten.

  “Yeah, but the interview’s in February, a month after I turn in my application. It’s making me nervous now that the early action application deadline’s actually passed,” I muttered.

  “Des, we’ve talked about this a million times. You wanted to do regular decision, better odds and all that?”

  I poked at my soup. “Yeah, I know.”

  “So don’t sweat it, okay?” Fiona patted my arm.

  After I finished my soup Fiona bailed to go find our friend Wes Mansour. I roamed the carnival again—making sure the boys’ junior varsity baseball team wasn’t giving away all the plushie prizes to cute girls and keeping people from rioting while in the never-ending line for the soft-serve ice cream truck. I was headed toward the restrooms when I ran into a few juniors whom I recognized—a well-groomed boyish bunch with impeccable T-shirts and expensive kicks.

  “Hey, boss. How’s it going?” one of them asked me, all sparkly eyes and charm. The kind of guy born with a fedora jauntily perched on his head.

  I felt their eyes on me and my cheeks flushed. “Um, good. Have fun!” I waved at them with awkward jazz hands before walking away. For God’s sake. Have fun! Who was I—their mom? I was mentally kicking myself when someone grabbed me from behind.

  “Yeah, what’s up, boss?” The teasing voice was inches from my ear. Wes. Thick black hair set back into a kind of modern, perfectly mussed pompadour, the most immaculately smooth brown skin, and sleepy eyes always weighed down by his outrageous eyelashes. Girls loved him. Yes, my two best friends were these sexy people who reminded me of my own unsexiness on a daily basis.

  I spun around and smacked his arm.

  Wes clutched it and winced. “Use your words!” he barked. Fiona was behind him, holding a giant plastic bag full of pink cotton candy. I scowled at both of them but before I could respond, another coughing fit struck.

  “Ew, Des,” Wes said, covering his nose with his T-shirt collar. “I’ve got a huge game next week and if I get sick, I’ll kill you.” Like me, Wes was also a nerd jock. His sport of choice was basketball, his science of choice physics, his geekery of choice comics and Settlers of Catan. He once held the number one ranking online for three months until he got beaten by an eight-year-old girl from Brazil.

  “It’s good to get exposed to germs, you know,” I said, and cleared my throat violently. Both Wes and Fiona made faces.

  “Spare us, Dr. Desi,” Wes grumbled.

  “Oh, I’m just getting started. Shall I start my lecture on the future of fecal transplants?”

  Wes closed his eyes dramatically. “I’d like to go one week without having to hear about the merits of freaking gut bacteria.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. But you guys will all be thanking me later when I’m a doctor curing seasonal allergies with fecal transplants.”

  “God!” Fiona tossed the rest of her cotton candy into a trash can.

  I waited for more complaints but instead I got silence. And strange expressions. Fiona and Wes were looking behind me. I turned around and stared into a very large chest.

  “What are fecal transplants?” a low voice asked.

  I looked up. Oh, Lord.

  Max Peralta. Six feet two inches of hot, hot … freshman. Then I heard snickering behind me. When Fi and Wes had found out that my first-week-of-school crush had turned out to be a ninth grader—well, it was the best day ever.

  “Oh, uh nothing. Hey, hi!” I said, my voice already at a weird level of dog-hearing-only pitch. Desi, do NOT speak until you can freaking control your voice.

  He smiled, teeth white against tan, sun-kissed skin. Howww in God’s name was this a freshman?

  “Hey, so good job with the carnival, Desi.”

  I blushed, deeply. “Thanks, Max.” All right, you’ve got this. Just keep your expression cool, relax your shoulders, keep your natural eager-beaver instinct in check!

  He looked down at his feet for a second, then cocked his head up with a smile. Dang.

  “Um, I was wondering … Are you busy after this?” he asked.

  My voice caught in my throat. I cleared it. NO squeaky voice! “After … the carnival?”

  “Yeah, do you have to, I don’t know, clean up or something?”

  My ears started to burn, and I could feel the friend eyeballs on me. “Nope, no cleaning. I’m free.” Wait, was I encouraging this? He was cute, no doubt … but still a freshman.

  It was like he read my mind. Keeping his eyes on mine, he asked,
“I know you probably don’t date freshmen…?”

  Ha-ha-ha: “date.”

  But he was right. He was a freshman. I was a senior. So I tried to muster a kind rejection. But instead, I felt a cough coming on. I put my hand to my chest and shut my mouth tight—no, this was NOT the time.

  But there are just some things that have a force of their own.

  So I coughed. Really hard.

  And that phlegm that had been rattling in my chest all day?

  Landed right on the front of his crisp, striped shirt.

  CHAPTER 2

  Wanting to kill myself was too mild a description.

  I felt a familiar paralysis set in and covered my mouth with my hands, staring at the glob on the navy and red stripes. Those stripes would be forever burned into my memory. Thick blue stripes with thin red ones in between. A pretty nice shirt, really.

  “Ugh … is that?” I heard Max, but I still couldn’t bring myself to look at his face. Only saw him stretch his shirt out and make a disgusted sound.

  Finally, I let out a feeble, “Sorry, I’m sick.”

  “It’s … okay. Um, okay I’m just going to…” And then he scurried off into the crowd.

  I threw the hood of my jacket over my head and turned to Fiona, screaming into her shoulder.

  She petted my head awkwardly. “Wow, that was an epic flailure, even for you. I mean, wow,” she said. Wes was too busy laugh-crying to say anything.

  Flailure. The clever word Wes had come up with for when I failed at flirting. Get it? Flirt + failure = flailure. Birthed during freshman year, when the shy and sweet Harry Chen, whom I had tutored in English exhaustively for a year because I was in love with him, confessed that he had a crush on our English teacher. Our male English teacher.

  But even before that incident, I had always flailed. Every time I tried talking to a guy. Every time a guy talked to me or showed any inkling of interest. It always went wrong. It didn’t make sense; in all other parts of my life I was the Together Girl. Stanford-Bound Girl. It was the one thing that I couldn’t ever seem to get a handle on.