by Pete Hautman
“Wait, I didn’t show you what I found!” Roni jumped up and ran after him. She pulled the newspaper articles from her pocket and shoved them at him. “I found the article about the kidnapping. Here’s a picture of Lance Doblemun.”
Brian looked at the photo. “He looks better without the beard, but I still don’t know him.”
“Keep reading. The guy burned his own house down to collect the insurance.”
“How come he’s not in jail, then?”
“He got off on some technicality.”
Brian skimmed the articles and handed the papers back to Roni. “So what? We already knew he was a creep. None of this has anything to do with me.” He started walking away again.
Roni said, “Yeah, but—”
Brian spun around and faced her. “What’s your problem? None of this matters! I don’t want to know any more. Okay, so my parents were wrong not to tell me about my first parents, but now they have. Mystery solved.”
“You’re giving up? I spent my mom’s hard-earned cash to get these stories about what happened to Bryce. Aren’t you even interested?”
“What you don’t seem to get, Miss Shirley Holmes, is that this is my life, not some stupid newspaper article you want to write.” He walked away, skateboard under his arm.
“I’m not giving up,” Roni said.
“Fine.” Brian kept walking.
Roni followed Brian down the long dock to the parking lot, wishing she’d kept one of the pebbles—or a brick—to throw at him. She hoped Lance Doblemun would come running up and kidnap him and drag him off to some cave. Brian would want her on the case then. She watched him drop his skateboard when he reached the parking lot, put one foot on it, and push off. He thought he was so cool. He had no idea how dorky he looked.
What she was really mad about was that she had no idea how to go about finding Bryce Doblemun. He was just a missing kid who happened to look like Brian. Maybe Brian was right—maybe it was over. Brian had learned everything there was to learn about his past, and without her help. Now she was at a dead end. P. Q. Delicata, teenage reporter, had reverted to Roni Delicata, teenage schlump.
It made her furious.
Brian, rolling across the none-too-smooth parking lot, looked as if he would topple at any moment. So far he was staying on his board, holding his arms out for balance, acting as if he were going a million miles an hour down a huge hill when he was only going as fast as most people could walk.
Just then, Roni noticed she wasn’t the only person watching Brian. A woman sitting in a little green car had her eyes fastened on him. Roni decided to try to get a little closer and see if she could get a good look at the woman.
She nonchalantly walked across the parking lot to get a better view. It definitely was not the old orange-haired woman. This woman had long black hair. She appeared to be Asian, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties. The woman watched Brian until he reached the street and turned onto the sidewalk. As soon as he disappeared from view, she pulled out of her parking space and started after him.
Roni yelled, “Hey!” She ran toward the car.
The woman looked at Roni, startled, then tromped on her accelerator and roared out of the parking lot, tires spinning, barely checking to see if any other cars were coming.
Heart pounding, Roni pulled out her trusty notebook and pencil and scrawled down the woman’s license plate number.
21
ojinx-o teegim
The next day, Brian managed to avoid thinking about his adoption, about Lance Doblemun, or about Roni Delicata. He did this by designing two new paper airplanes, then spending a few hours at the skate park trying to learn the ollie kickflip, which looked easy but turned out to be—as near as Brian could tell—impossible. Instead of learning a cool new maneuver, he learned that repeated falls on a concrete surface could result in some truly spectacular bruises. He limped home defeated.
The next morning, he came downstairs with his skateboard ready to try again, but his mother intercepted him.
“Brian! Is that what you’re wearing?”
“Uh…yeah?”
“You have to leave for Korean class in ten minutes!”
“I was just there!”
“That was three days ago. The class meets twice a week.”
“But I—”
“Brian, this is not up for negotiation. Besides, your father has a surprise for you on the way home.”
“What surprise?”
“If we told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
Brian groaned and trudged upstairs to change his clothes.
Once again, Gee Jang was dressed like an exclamation point, right down to the white socks. Brian wondered if there was a way to tell him he looked like a punctuation mark without offending him. Probably not.
“Today,” he said, “we talk about Korean family, and social customs of the street. At end of class we be a Korean lunch table.”
Brian thought of asking him exactly what a Korean lunch table was and why he would want to be one, but he knew he needed to work on his attitude.
Gee Jang went on about Korean familial relationships, and which side of the street to walk on in Seoul, and how to order bulgogi or bibimbop in a Korean restaurant. All of which Brian found supremely uninteresting, since he never planned to go to Korea. Why should he? His mother had dumped him on the steps at a police station. There was no way he could ever find her, not even if he wanted to. Not even if he put Roni Delicata on the case.
Brian looked around at the other students to see if they were as bored as he was. Most of them were taking notes. The blond girl, Molly, listened intently to every word from Gee Jang’s mouth. What was her deal?
They took a break after the first hour. One of the women who worked at the center had laid out a spread of Korean snacks in the lunchroom. All the food was weird. He selected something called ojinx-o teegim because it looked almost normal—sort of like thick rectangular potato chips. Seeing Molly sitting alone at one of the tables, Brian walked over to her, trying unsuccessfully to remember how to say, “May I join you?” in Korean.
Resorting to English, he said, “Can I sit here?”
“Sure!” Molly smiled at him. She had a mischievous, troublemaking smile that appealed to him.
“What have you got there?” she asked.
“Ojinx-o teegim,” said Brian, mangling the pronunciation.
“I got the p’ajon,” she said. “Onion pancake squares.”
Brian made a face.
“They’re good,” she said.
“I guess, if you like onion.” Brian watched her take a bite, then asked, “So what part of Korea are you from?”
Molly laughed. “I’m here for my brother,” she said. “My family just adopted a two-year-old boy from Seoul. I decided to learn everything I could about Korea so when he gets older I can teach him about where he came from. How about you?”
“I got dumped on the steps of the police station in Taegu City.”
“Really? I was a foundling, too! My parents adopted me from Romania.”
“Cool,” said Brian, although there wasn’t anything cool about being dumped. He picked up one of his chips and started to put it in his mouth.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Molly said.
Brian lowered the chip and stared at her.
“I like you with the shorter hair,” she said.
“Um…I think maybe you think I’m somebody else,” he said.
She peered at him closely. “Really?”
“Seriously, where do you think you know me from?”
“The Korean Cultural Center? In St. Paul?”
Brian shook his head. “I’ve never been there.”
“Wow,” Molly said. “You look just like him. Except for the hair. And he had an earring.”
Brian felt his heart starting to race.
“What was his name?”
“Dak-Ho. What’s your name?”
“Brian.”
/> “What’s your Korean name?”
“Bok-Soo. What about this guy’s American name? The one who looks like me.”
“Billy.”
“Billy,” said Brian thoughtfully. He put the chip he had been holding into his mouth and bit down. Whatever it was, it was not a potato chip. It had the texture of a rubber band, and it tasted fishy. Brian didn’t want to spit it out in front of Molly, so he forced himself to chew and swallow. It wasn’t easy. Once he got it down, he looked at the other chips on his plate, then at Molly, who had an impish grin on her face.
“What did I just eat?” he asked.
“Ojinx-o teegim means ‘fried squid finger food,’” Molly said. She laughed at Brian’s expression, then pushed her plate toward him. “Have some onion pancake,” she said. “It’ll wash away the taste.”
It took Roni two days to get Officer Garth Spall alone. Every time she saw him, he was with his partner, George Firth. George Firth, a veteran of the Bloodwater Police Department, knew Roni too well. If she asked him for a favor, he would, first, refuse to do it, and second, probably mention it to Nick. Garth Spall—younger, less experienced, and several dozen points lower in the IQ department—would be more cooperative.
She finally caught Garth alone in his squad car in the alley behind Bratten’s Café and Bakery, working his way through a bag of donuts. He was a tall, athletic young man with overdeveloped muscles and a weakness for raised glazed donuts. Roni walked up to the passenger window and looked in at him. He was staring dreamily off into the distance while shoving a donut into his maw. She rapped on the glass.
Garth jumped so hard he hit his head on the roof of the car. His hand went immediately to his belt, fumbling with the strap on his holster.
“Garth! It’s just me! Roni!” she shouted through the glass, preparing to dive for cover. Garth Spall had never shot anyone, but he was notoriously quick to wave his gun around—which was why police chief Grant Hoff rarely let him go out on his own.
Garth recognized Roni and relaxed. Roni opened the door and climbed into the squad car. “Hi! How’s it going?”
He looked at her suspiciously.
Roni pulled out her notebook. “I’m writing an article about Bloodwater’s finest. I was wondering if I could interview you. You know—straight from the mouths of the men on the front line? Since you’re the youngest and most physically powerful member of the department, I thought I’d start with you.”
Garth stared at her. He may have been thinking, but she didn’t wait to find out.
“After all, you’re the department’s future. The police force is aging. Another ten years and you’ll have Grant Hoff’s job.” She gave him her most sincere fake smile and pointed at his face. “You have icing on your chin.”
Garth wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Chief Hoff says don’t talk to reporters.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t talking about me,” Roni said. “I mean, it’s just the high school newspaper.”
“I don’t know…”
“Hey!” Roni turned her attention to the computer mounted on the center console between them. “I bet you can find out all kinds of cool stuff on here. Am I on it?”
“You?”
“Yeah. Am I on your master criminal database?”
“I don’t know. Have you committed any crimes recently?”
“Nothing serious,” Roni said. “I bet if you know somebody’s name and address and license number, you can find out all kinds of stuff.” She reached toward the keyboard. Garth slapped her hand away.
“Ouch! Police brutality!”
Garth looked alarmed.
Roni laughed. “Just kidding. So, when you pull somebody over for speeding or something, do you look them up on the computer?”
“If I don’t know them.”
“How do you do it?”
“I just enter in their license number. It tells me if the car is stolen, and who it belongs to, and stuff like that. It’s easy.”
“Show me.”
“First I have to pull somebody over.”
“Can’t you just make up a number? You know, so I get it right in my article.”
“I don’t know…”
“Let’s pretend. This little green car goes screaming past you, a hundred miles an hour. You hit the siren and go after them—”
“Hot pursuit. We call it hot pursuit.”
“Hot pursuit. Got it.” Roni wrote it down in her notebook. “So you’re catching up to them—”
“I’m calling it in on the radio, just in case it’s, you know, like a bank robbery.”
“Right.” The last bank robbery in Bloodwater had taken place before Roni was born. “Anyway, you pull them over, and—”
“I type in their license number.”
As his hand moved toward the keyboard, Roni rattled off the license number of the Asian woman’s car. Garth typed it in and waited. A few seconds later, he said, “Green Hyundai Sonata. Registered to Kyung-Soon Kim. St. Paul address.” He turned the screen so Roni could see.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s amazing.” She wrote down the name and address in her notebook.
“No criminal record,” Garth said.
Roni smiled. “I wonder why she was in such a hurry.”
“I didn’t even know those Hyundais could go that fast,” Garth Spall said.
22
an old friend
Brian’s dad was waiting at the curb when class let out. Brian said good-bye in Korean to Molly, then ran down the steps to the car.
“How was your class today, son?” asked Mr. Bain.
“It was choun. That means ‘good’ in Korean—I think. How was your Mensa meeting?”
Mr. Bain laughed. “Like always—a room full of extremely intelligent, socially inept adults attempting to interact with one another. It’s rather like being in a room full of extraterrestrials.” He put the car in gear and pulled onto the street.
“What do you talk about?” Brian asked.
“Today we talked about intelligence in annelids.”
Brian knew what annelids were—his dad had written several books about them. “You talked about worms?”
“Yes. It was my turn to deliver the weekly presentation.” He frowned. “It was not as well received as I had hoped.”
“Speaking of worms, I had squid for lunch,” Brian said.
“Squid are not worms. Squid are mollusks, as are octopuses and oysters.”
“Oh. Hey, Dad, is it possible that I have a twin?”
“Twin? Oh. I see. You are wondering about your doppelganger, the boy who was abducted.”
“This girl from class says that she knows a kid who looks exactly like me.”
“I suppose it’s possible that you have a twin, but I think it’s highly unlikely. As you know, you were a foundling. You were not more than a week or two old, and you were alone. I can’t imagine why, if a woman had given birth to a set of twins, she would abandon one child and not the other.”
“Do you trust the records they gave you?”
“The Korean adoption services are very precise and rigorous about such things, son. They would have no reason to deceive us.”
“But if I did have a twin…”
“It would be quite a coincidence—especially if you were adopted separately—for you to both end up in the same part of America, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.…Hey, you know that Korean coin I have?”
“The ten won piece. Yes.”
“Where did I get it?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Bain. “You’ve had it as long as I can remember. I assume you got it from the Samuelses.”
“Is it valuable?” Brian asked.
His father smiled. “In Seoul you might be able to buy a small piece of candy with it.” He turned off the highway onto a bumpy dirt road.
“Where are we going?”
“To see some old friends, Jack and Theresa Hanke. You’ve never met them.”
“Is
this the surprise?”
“I suppose it is.” They followed the road for about a mile, cornfields on either side, then turned into a driveway that led to a small farm. Chickens scattered as they pulled up to the freshly painted white farmhouse. A gray-haired man wearing brown coveralls waved from the open doorway of the barn. Three orange cats, their tails held high, came trotting toward them.
Brian and his dad got out of the car. The rich, organic aroma of the farm swept over them. It was strong, but it smelled good. The banging of a screen door caught his attention. A woman stepped out from the house, accompanied by a small, pale-brown terrier. The dog ran straight up to Brian, sniffed his leg, then backed up a few steps and began barking and wagging his tail vigorously.
The man, Jack Hanke, let loose a laugh that sounded like someone banging on a steel barrel. “I think he remembers you, boy!”
The dog would not stop barking.
“Sniffer?” Brian said.
The dog was wagging his tail so hard his whole rear end was shaking. Jack Hanke laughed some more, and his wife, Theresa, joined in. Brian looked at his father. Were those tears in his eyes? Must be his allergies acting up.
“What should I do?” Brian said.
Jack Hanke said, “Hold out your arms.”
Brian held out his arms. Sniffer sprang through the air into his embrace.
If Brian didn’t want to unravel the mystery of his own life, that was fine with Roni. She would do it herself. She would find out who Kyung-Soon Kim was, and why she was interested in Brian, and she would find out what the orange-haired lady wanted, and…and what? She slumped in her chair and stared at her computer. It just wasn’t as much fun to solve a mystery without her sidekick.
Roni reread the articles she’d downloaded from the Star Tribune. There wasn’t a lot of information. Then she noticed a quote from Vera Doblemun’s mother: