by Jimin Han
I backed away and retraced my steps to walk the long way to my room. The image of Lloyd pawing through the dumpster remained even as I tried to block it out. I made myself focus and called the hospital, and they let me talk to Willa, who was in my mother’s room. She said our mother was sleeping, and Albert was keeping Willa company. “They think maybe tomorrow they might send her home,” Willa said. This was good news at least.
The next morning, I went to the clinic to talk to the nurse again, and I saw Lloyd running past the shantytown. Something clattered out of his hand, but he still ran, and when I came upon it, I saw that it was a can of red spray paint.
Later that day, Daiyu told me that a section of the shantytown, including their house, had been vandalized, along with the statue of Weston’s founder in the quad. Someone had scrawled a line of red across the houses that read “Hypocrites.” Around Theodore Weston’s neck, someone had sprayed red paint in a gory depiction of a beheading.
“Who could have done this?” Daiyu said.
“I don’t know, but Serhan says red paint was stolen from the art studio last night,” Faye offered.
“I’ve never heard of Serhan,” I said.
“Her new boyfriend,” Daiyu said. “He’s Turkish and tells her all these Turkish sayings. He’s so cute.”
“You think everyone is cute,” Heather said.
“He’s a writer—he’s all about fate and romantic sayings,” Faye said.
85
My watch says it’s been only three hours, but it seems like an entire twenty-four have passed. Lloyd stands looking out the window, but to the side. I’d read somewhere that they put snipers on hills to shoot people like him, people who take hostages like this. Lloyd seems to know this too, because he never puts himself in front of the window. All we can do is wait for what happens next. Maybe once we try to leave the building, Sax will have a plan to help us. The drive to the airport is an hour. I wonder if my parents are on their way to Weston by now.
The phone rings again. Lloyd slides over to the phone and nods before holding out the receiver to me. HE WANTS YOU.
Detective Sax speaks in a tone that makes me feel sorry for him. “A shotgun and a handgun are missing from those registered to your father. Are those the weapons in the room with you?”
Everyone in the room can hear, but Lloyd has returned to the window and doesn’t look in my direction. The shotgun is in his hands, and I realize now why it and the handgun looked familiar. “Tell my parents I’m okay,” I reply.
“I’m sorry to tell you, your parents were the victims of gunshot wounds last night,” Sax says.
“What do you mean?” I’m trying to understand the words “victims” and “wounds.” “Are they in the hospital?”
Lloyd snatches the phone out of my hand. THAT’S ENOUGH. And then it hits me, because he won’t look at me, that it was him. He had all night to drive there and back.
YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING HOME. I WAS LOOKING FOR YOU. He spits out those words to the floor, and it’s confirmed.
“Will they make it?” I say in the direction of the phone so Sax can hear me.
Lloyd hangs up the phone. YOUR DAD HAD THE BALLS TO POINT HIS SHOTGUN AT ME. I TOLD HIM THAT WHEN I SHOT HIM BETWEEN THE EYES. JUST TOOK THE GUN RIGHT OUT OF HIS SKINNY ARMS AND SAID, ‘YOU DESERVE TO DIE, FUCKER.’
“My mother? Lloyd, my mother? And my sister? Lloyd?” I’m asking, but he’s returned to the window and he holds back the curtain to look out.
I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO YOUR SISTER. SHE WASN’T HOME.
“But my mother?”
YOU’LL NEVER FORGIVE ME.
86
I can’t tell you if I loved my father enough to mourn him or if it just makes me angry that it was his stupid guns that armed this maniac in my room. But my father didn’t deserve to die this way.
87
“Shh . . . shh, Yoona, shh . . .” Faye’s voice is far away, and I’ve fallen into a hole.
From somewhere above me, Lloyd is stomping his feet. Someone is shrieking, and if I could jump out of the window to get away from that sound, I would.
IT’S YOUR FAULT. YOU SAID YOU’D BE THERE. I WENT TO LAKEBURG TO TELL YOU WHAT SERENA TOLD ME. I HAD EVIDENCE THAT JAESUNG IS ALIVE. AND I WANTED TO TELL YOU. I WANTED YOU TO KNOW.
88
The fatigue fell like a heavy blanket over me at six each night without fail. I’d just gotten into bed with the folder the nurse had given me at the clinic. I’d been avoiding it, but now was the time. I had to see how I had to prepare. It took all my energy to force myself to open that folder. And then, just as I took out one of the forms inside, there was a knock on my door. I thought for a second it was Heather inviting me to the dining hall. I covered the folder with a blanket and opened the door.
Lloyd stood before me. He looked as if he hadn’t showered in days. His shoulders were slumped, his face unshaven. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the last time I’d seen him, the same striped shirt and jeans. He probably didn’t have many shirts or jeans in that backpack of his. I had never seen him use the laundry machines while he’d stayed with me.
“I have to talk to you,” he said.
“Can’t it be by phone?” I replied.
“I tried calling you, but it rang busy, and I got worried.”
“I was talking to Willa.”
“How’s your mom?”
“Fine.” I was surprised at how little I wanted to share with him and how little I cared about anything to do with him.
“Willa and your mom, they don’t like me,” he said.
“I’ve got a ton to do for my classes.”
“Your dad say something to you about me? What about Willa? She was glaring at me in the waiting room as if she thinks I made your mom sick. She does, doesn’t she? She thinks I did something to her?”
“No one’s even thinking about you,” I said and started closing the door.
He put his hand on the doorframe so I couldn’t close it without smashing his fingers. “I called, Yoona. I just picked up the phone and called collect. Jaesung’s father believes me. He’s calling his brother in Korea about it. He sounded like he really appreciated what I said. He said it made sense.” Lloyd’s face was full of hope, and I wanted to believe him, but I knew he was lying.
“What evidence did you give him?” I said instead.
“He’d never heard the whole thing from me before. He said he was sorry about that. He wants to help me, and I think I got through to him. We didn’t need evidence—I mean, I was an eyewitness to the whole conspiracy. I wasn’t knocked out. I saw the whole thing with my eyes. I was there. They didn’t count on that. And I don’t care if they’re following me. Let them. I’ve got Jaesung’s father on my side now, and they can’t follow everybody I tell. That’s my plan: to tell everybody and not keep it secret. They can’t shut me up. See, that’s the part they were counting on, that I’d keep it a secret, but why should I? You get it?”
“He’s going to look into it? What else did he say?”
“Can’t I come in and talk about this? We had such a long conversation. I’m sitting in the phone booth at the library, and I was there until it closed, so it was really a long time. He left at one point and said he’d put the phone down, but he was still there, just had to take care of something, and I should keep talking because what I said was important, and it was good to have someone really take me seriously for once, you know?”
“I can’t listen to this anymore. Did you spray-paint the shantytown houses?”
“Look, it was a lot of information. I get that. He was taking notes, he said. You know, so he wouldn’t forget anything. He wanted all my information and yours. He wanted my address and my parents’ phone number—so it would be an official report. We’d file it together—a lawsuit, an official complaint about the accident.”
“A lawsuit?”
“Yes, don’t you see? We’re getting lawyers involved. That’s what we’re doing, and he’s got the mone
y to do it, and now we’ll bring out the big guns to show them what they’re dealing with. And if it’s money they want in exchange for Jaesung, now they can get it. Jaesung’s father said he’ll pay anything to get Jaesung back, and I said I’d help him with that, and you would too. They just need to know we’d do it for real and hurry about getting him back. What do you think they’re doing to him, Yoona?”
He was pounding on the frame of the door as he spoke, and it was unnerving me. It reminded me of the way my father would start his arguments, asking questions but not looking for answers. In fact, answers increased his rage. “I have to go,” I said firmly and closed the door halfway.
He swayed from the door in dejection. “I can’t believe you still don’t believe me,” he said. Then he leaned against the wall opposite my door and slid to a sitting position on the floor facing me and buried his face in his arms.
“You can’t stay here,” I said.
“That’s what you think.”
I closed the door to my room without another word.
I chucked the folder under my bed, turned out the light, and went to sleep. My watch said it was six forty-five. I woke to complete darkness. It was nearly ten o’clock. There were voices in the hall as people returned to their rooms. A few girls passed by when I opened my door. I heard one of them say, “Sorry,” and saw her veer away, and then I saw beyond their feet that Lloyd was still camped out exactly where I’d left him. I shut and locked the door behind me before walking to the bathroom. When I returned, I stepped back over him, and he grabbed my foot. “Let go or I’ll scream,” I told him.
“You’re going to regret this,” he said.
Joanna came down the hall. “What’s going on here?” she said.
Lloyd released my foot, and I shook my head at Joanna and escaped into my room. I heard her say something to him but couldn’t make out the words, and then she must have continued down the hall.
89
Please stop that high-pitched sound. Is it Heather who’s making that noise? Because Faye is beside me in this hole, holding me down in this room, when really the air outside is where I want to be. Winds. We loved the winds in Korea, didn’t we, Jaesung? All I’ve ever done is try to keep my mother safe, and after all those years with my father, the illness in the hospital, when things were looking better for her, I bring this lunatic into her life. I wanted something for me, for once, for me. I wanted to love you, and this is what I did to my mother. Selfish, stupid, selfish, stupid, selfish, stupid. I take it back now. I wish I’d never met you. I wish I’d never met you and Lloyd. A hundred fists pummel my chest, with each crushing blow a shriek says, My fault, my fault, my fault.
90
It was Joanna who called me to her room the next afternoon. A man and a woman were in her doorway. Joanna ushered them into the hallway, where she made the introductions. “The dean’s office notified Mr. and Mrs. Kang about the report I submitted yesterday with your complaint. Apparently, the Kangs had called the school asking for information about their son.” The woman looked to be my mother’s age but with thick foundation and powder. She was wearing a pink Chanel suit with pink pumps, as if dressed for a garden wedding. There was a corsage of pink roses and baby’s breath on her lapel. The man hovered even though he didn’t tower over her. It was his bent posture that made him seem to be looming. He had a thick, full head of wavy white hair.
“You’re a friend of Lloyd’s?” He nodded as if it would will me to nod in affirmation, which I felt compelled to do.
“We have to see him right away,” he continued.
A group of boys and girls walked by, and we had to step aside for them. They were curious. I could tell by their stares. One of them was Daiyu, who ducked between two girls when our eyes met. I didn’t understand why she didn’t stop.
“I don’t know where he is, I’m sorry,” I said and saw them look at each other.
“How do you know our son?” Lloyd’s father said.
“Where did you see him last?” the woman asked, and murmured to the man to wait.
“We have the word out to everybody to be on the lookout. We’ll find him,” Joanna said.
“I’ve told him to go back to New York,” I said. “He probably will.” I felt as though I had to reassure them somehow. I’d raised the alarm, but maybe he was driving back at this very moment. Lloyd’s parents were whispering to each other. I saw Joanna peek at her wristwatch.
His mother finally turned to me, raising her hand to stop her husband from speaking. “The best thing to do if you see him is to call us.” She searched in her bag, found an empty envelope, ripped it into two pieces, and wrote a number on each part. She handed one to me and the other to Joanna. “We’ve given our number to the dean’s office too. Please call us as soon as you hear. We’re at Creek Inn downtown.”
Lloyd’s father spoke. “We need to get him home.”
“In Korea we hoped he’d make new friends,” his mother said.
“What happened in the accident?” I said.
Lloyd’s parents looked at each other again.
“I know he was in a car, and Jaesung was in a different one, ahead of Lloyd’s, and Lloyd’s car was hit by another car,” I finished and waited.
Lloyd’s father studied his feet and said, “He keeps saying that the boy, Jaesung, was in another car, but there was only one car. Somehow Lloyd must have been thrown from it, because the car was on fire by the time the fire trucks came.”
A buzzing sound began in my brain.
Lloyd’s father was still talking, still looking at his feet. “Lloyd called this boy’s father two nights ago. That’s how we knew he was up here. He told him that he had evidence that Jaesung was alive. Jaesung’s father called us because he said Lloyd sounded confused. Said erratic nonsense things. Mr. Kim was very kind. The man’s son has died, and he still has time to call me and apologize. It’s all my fault for sending Lloyd to Korea. I knew the protests were happening. It wasn’t—”
“We had to get him away from that girl from high school,” Lloyd’s mother said, a plea in her eyes.
“What girl?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t even mention her anymore. High school friend, that’s all. Now all he talks about is Jaesung. Everything is about Jaesung. My poor son.”
“Jaesung’s father is sure he was in the same car?” I hardly recognized my voice. It was so small. It suddenly came crashing down on me. You were gone, gone, gone, and now you felt gone too. There was nothing I felt out there that was your life somewhere. There was emptiness in the pit of my stomach, emptiness and a buzzing, an unbearable persistent buzzing, as if a lightbulb above us were about to be extinguished.
“I’ve got to go,” I said and didn’t look to see their response. I’d known Lloyd’s assessment of your father’s response was off. It was too good to be true, too easy. You don’t call up someone’s father after he believes he saw his son’s charred body and tell him that that was a mistake, that someone is fooling everyone.
Where could you be? I broke out in a cold sweat, this time the flu for certain. I crawled into bed.
91
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH HER? IS SHE HURT? IS THE BABY OKAY? Lloyd is shouting and stomping around with his hands in his hair. Where are the guns?
Faye whispers, “Please, Yoona, please be quiet.” She has her arms around me. Lloyd stands above us. “You’ve got to give her a minute,” Faye says to him.
And that’s when I realize what I have to do. The baby doesn’t exist. Not now. It’s up to me. If it wasn’t for that report, Lloyd wouldn’t know about it. But it helps me now. You help me now. This dream of Lloyd’s. Even from this summer, our night together, from that I have this small possibility of saving Heather’s and Faye’s lives. I get to my feet.
92
Willa and I weren’t allowed to have toys when we were children, but we could read as many books as we wanted. We were taken to the library and allowed to check out as ma
ny books as we could carry. Books were enough for Willa, but I wanted dolls. My father’s chess set waited on the coffee table in the living room for me to play pretend with each night. The king and queen were my dolls. I moved them around the board, pretending they were two feuding families or a school yard full of children. My father insisted I learn chess if I was going to handle the pieces. I hated the game, especially the end game. It had to be to the death. That’s the part I hated. The goal of the game was to kill. I squirmed in my seat at that part. In school I won tournaments against children older than I was. And then I quit. And I never played chess or pretended with the chess pieces again.
You and I never played chess or talked about it. I wonder if you knew the game. In chess, particularly effective in the end game, you can pin a piece to the king. Even the queen, the most powerful piece on the board, cannot move away if it means her king will be in check. A bishop or a rook, worth fewer points, can sacrifice itself, swap its death for the queen’s death.
93
I woke from a deep sleep to knocking. Daiyu was at my door. “Oh, Yoona,” she said. It was quiet in the hall, and from the hall window, I could see it was late, because it was very dark outside. Faye and Heather were with her.
“Go ahead,” Heather said.
“What’s going on?” I rubbed my eyes. “Don’t come too close, it’s the flu,” I murmured, but Daiyu didn’t answer.
Heather spoke. “Daiyu told Lloyd that you called his parents and that they’re here on campus, and he got really mad and said he was going to crash his car because he’s never going back to New York with them.”
Daiyu looked down at her sneakered feet.
“I’m sorry, Yoona. He asked me if I’d seen you, and I told him no at first, but then he said I was lying, so I had to tell him I’d seen you with his parents. They were his parents, weren’t they? Lloyd looks just like his father except for the white hair.”