High Hopes

by Jaclyn Jhin

  “You just need to remember to breathe.”

  He stared at me for a moment too long, and I felt stupid for saying anything. Why did I pick now to work on my interpersonal skills?

  He took three deep breaths then said, “You’re right. I do feel better.” He turned to me again. “Really. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” For some reason, maybe because of the wine, I reached over and put my hand on his forearm and gently stroked it.

  His shoulders relaxed as he exhaled, and I dropped my hand back in my lap. I liked how comfortable it felt to touch him. He slowed, obeying the speed signs, maneuvering through traffic, returning to his expert level driving status.

  Back at my dorms, I hoped to delay the inevitable. I knew he was probably going to try to kiss me. I pursed my lips, still tasting the red wine in back of my mouth. We walked up to my door, and I pretended to have a hard time finding my ID card in the clutch.

  “Well, I’m glad I convinced you to come out.”

  “Yeah.” I took off his jacket. “Oh, and thanks.”

  “You can keep it if you want. Give it back to me on our second date.”

  He smirked and realized I had taken a second too long returning to my clutch. He leaned in, putting one finger on the bottom of my chin, tilting my face toward his. I was always afraid I wouldn’t know what to do when I got my first kiss, but he made it easy. It was short, but soft, and I realized I instinctively knew what to do. He smiled as he stepped away, and I felt like I could still feel his lips on mine.

  “Get some sleep, Kelly.” He put his hand on me. “And remember, don’t slack off in your first year.”

  He was almost around the corner when I thought I should probably reply. “Okay. Thanks.”

  But he was already gone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I slipped into my room, prepared to see Melissa right where I left her: on my bed, arms crossed, anxiously waiting. Instead, I walked into blackness. A sliver of moonlight pierced our window blinds, allowing me a glimpse of a blanketed lump atop her bed. Melissa was sound asleep. I closed the heavy door as quietly as I could, flinching when it thudded shut. I realized with a tinge of disappointment just how excited I had been to tell her everything about my date.

  Opening up her clutch, I found my phone, using the light to guide me so I wouldn’t crash into my bed post. I tugged off my cardigan and grabbed a hairband from my nightstand. I changed into a sweatshirt and sweatpants, wishing I could take the smile off my face, too. My cheeks were starting to hurt, and I still felt flushed from the wine. Maybe it was a good thing Melissa was asleep—she would’ve totally made fun of my blushing cheeks.

  As I lowered myself into bed, the dinner and the kiss replayed in my head like a scratched DVD stuck on the same scene. I felt a wave of energy surge through me. I needed to do something. I thought about taking my bike out or going on one of Melissa’s suggested runs through Central Park. Usually being around other people drained me, but Ian made me want to join a flash mob.

  The way I felt right now, there was absolutely no way I could fall asleep. I needed to tell someone about my date, even if they wouldn’t be as receptive as my roommate. I pulled open my phone and clicked on the Skype button. As L.A. was three hours behind New York, I knew Halmuni would still be up, probably watching TV and eating her nightly bowl of edamame. But she was bound to ask me if Ian was Korean. No way to avoid that question. I tapped my fingers on the glass screen as I tried to figure out what to do. Maybe I could just tell her some general details about the date. She didn’t need to know everything. I could skim over the part about Ian being very, very white.

  Rummaging through my nightstand drawer, I pulled out my headphones. Careful not to wake Melissa, I grabbed my ID card and stepped into the hallway.

  As usual, the fluorescent ceiling lights washed out the corridor so brightly it felt like morning. My eyes had grown used to the dark, so I had to squint. Down the hallway, I could hear faint voices and what sounded like a car chase on TV. I didn’t want to risk other people hearing me go on and on about my first date, so I walked into the enclosed stairwell.

  I sat on the first step, looking up at the white walls and painted metal railings. The old building’s heater didn’t work too great in the more remote parts of the building, so I inched my sweatshirt sleeves up around my fingers and pulled my hoodie around my head. Leaning back against the cold grey steps, I stretched my legs out, grateful for the chance to have some space to my own. My voice echoed loudly in here, but I didn’t think anyone with a life would bother eavesdropping in the emergency exit just to hear about my date.

  I pressed the button to connect with Halmuni. Even if her name wasn’t listed in all caps with a string of meaningless numbers, it would be hard not to find her. She was my only contact who accidentally took a screenshot of her chest instead of her face for the profile pic.

  Lowering my elbows to my knees, I held the phone up so she could see me better. It rang for a while. I imagined her hurrying to turn off the TV, adjusting her recliner, and stabbing at her phone screen, all while exclaiming Korean curse words.

  Finally, I saw the bottom of her chin. “HI, KELLY!”

  I immediately yanked out an earbud, wincing. “Ow. You don’t need to yell.”

  “WHAT?”

  I slipped out the other earbud for a moment as I turned my phone volume way down. “I said I can hear you just fine. No need to yell.”

  “Okay then,” she still yelled, just a little softer.

  In addition to not understanding how well her voice carried, Halmuni didn’t use her tablet like other people. For some reason, even though I had corrected her repeatedly, she still thought she needed to place her device so the camera shot straight up. This allowed me to see only the bottom part of her chin and up her nostrils as she walked around her kitchen.

  “I make some ramen while we talk.” She put the tablet on the counter, affording me a super view of the kitchen ceiling. Maybe this wasn’t the ideal way to recount the most romantic night of my life, but at this point it would have to do.

  “I see B.B. at church,” said Halumni before I could say anything. I could hear her chopping onions. She liked to add them and eggs to her ramen because it made the dish seem a bit healthier. “He miss you. Say be good girl and call him.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  “How Columbia? You tell me everything.”

  “It’s great. My roommate, Melissa, is a lot of fun and very chatty. I got all the classes that I wanted,” I hesitated a moment, then, “Halmuni, I have something exciting to tell you.”

  I heard her turn on the stovetop, the flame crackling. “Okay, tell Halmuni.”

  “I went on a date tonight.”

  “A date?”

  “Yes.” I readjusted my body on the cold hard step. “With a sweet guy.”

  “See, I tell you! What you do for date?”

  “Well, he took me to an elegant French restaurant. And he was so kind—I mean he pretty much knew everybody. But he never made me feel left out. And he reminded me of dad with his jokes.”

  Halmuni puttered around the kitchen, banging open drawers and sorting through the fridge.

  “I don’t like French food. Why they make dish so complicated? Korean food easy and fast.”

  “French food is delicious. I tried this thing called foie gras, and it melted in my mouth.” I licked my lips just thinking about it.

  “What? Fo Ga? So tell me more about boy. You say he make you laugh?”

  “Yeah.” I chuckled as I remembered one of his pranking stories about switching out his old roommate’s furniture while he was sleeping to make him think he grew giant-sized overnight.

  Halmuni peered over her tablet and smiled, holding up a wooden spoon. “That good.”

  “And he’s very handsome.”

  “Well, of course. Only handsome men for Kelly.”

  “I don’t know if I like this feeling, though, Halmuni,” I said, laughing. “It’s really distracting
. I feel like I can’t think of anything else.”

  “Ah.” Halmuni stirred something loudly in a metal pot. She said something else, but I couldn’t make it out over the racket.

  “Halmuni? Halmuni? I can’t hear you.”

  She dropped the utensils with a sigh and wiped her messy fingers on the top of her blouse, leaving big, oily streaks.

  “I said, that go away. You see.”

  A warm, happy feeling rippled through my stomach. “I don’t know if I want it to go away.”

  “Just wait when he starts to annoy you. You wish you never meet. Just ask me. I know.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  She chuckled like she knew something I didn’t, then propped up the phone so I could see her arm stirring the spoon in her pot. “So what his name?”

  “His name is Ian. Ian William Anderson.” I smiled again just thinking about it. I liked the way it sounded. Regal. Like a senator or a judge. Then my smile evaporated, and my eyes widened. I thought I would be sick. I lowered the phone so she couldn’t see my face. Crap.

  For the first time, Halmuni used the camera correctly. Her face appeared large on the screen, her glasses tapping against the lens. Her drawn-on eyebrows looked like thin diagonal streaks.

  I hurried to change the topic. “Did I tell you he’s super sweet and nice? And fun? He is so fun. In fact, while I was sitting there at dinner, I kept thinking about you and how much you two would get along. And did I tell you he’s in law school, too, and he makes me feel really special—”

  “White.”

  “Yes, but we had such a great time—”

  Behind Halmuni, I could see smoke rising from the pot. For a moment, it looked like steam was literally rising from her head, like in an old cartoon.

  “Halmuni, behind you.”

  She didn’t hear me. Her lips pursed, and her eyes narrowed to slits. “What’d I say about meeting Korean boy? First chance you get you go after white boy.”

  The smoke was really rising now. Whatever she was cooking was burning. “Halmuni!” Now I was the one screaming. “The stove!”

  She turned around. She picked up the pot handle and yelled, “Ah ttu gu!” followed by some more curses, half in Korean, half in English. I heard her still muttering as she poured the pot’s contents into the sink.

  When she returned to the screen, her face was red. I wasn’t sure if it was from the pot’s steam or her own. “You no respect me.”

  “I do respect you.”

  “Then why come you disobey first chance you get?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t even plan on dating him. It was just something that happened.”

  Little beads of sweat trickled down Halmuni’s face. She seemed angrier than I could ever remember seeing her. “I go.”

  “Where?”

  “KFC.” She grabbed her keys from the counter.

  “Can’t we talk about this?”

  “We did talk. You make me burn my food. I’m hungry.”

  “No.” I gripped the phone. Behind me, I heard voices in the hallway. I hoped they weren’t coming to investigate all the yelling. “Please don’t.”

  “Kelly. You not go all way to New York for meet stupid American boy. You went there study.”

  “But—”

  “I told you, white boys trouble. Look what happened to your mom. If she never married, she still be alive. Goodbye, Kelly.”

  The screen went black. I sighed, dropping the phone between my knees. I took my earphones out and put them in the pocket of my sweatshirt. I hugged my knees to chest. My arms covered the letters of my sweatpants that spelled out BRIAN CHU LAW OFFICES.

  Though I used to think B.B.’s self-promotion was a bit over the top, at this moment, I was glad to see the familiar words. It reminded me of home--even if home included a person who was very angry at me right now.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In high school, no one took the first day of school seriously. The teacher usually tried to fill 50 minutes by doing a popcorn reading of the syllabus and reviewing the school’s policy on plagiarism for the fifth time that day. The nicer students pretended to focus while those who were boy and girl crazy secretly scouted out potential hookups—someone they hadn’t seen before or someone who suddenly looked good enough to text and flirt with—not to mention invite to the Winter Formal or Spring Swing.

  At Columbia, however, no professor had time to set expectations. By the first day, you were supposed to already know them. And no one seemed to care about the attractiveness of the person sitting beside them. Instead, we all had eyes for our teacher, the person who would make or break our average with the touch of fingers to keyboard. As if the subjects of a mass hallucination experiment, we stared haplessly back and forth between PowerPoint slides and our laptop screens. I realized within five minutes that every person’s laptop offered a way to transcribe the entire class. The professors not only understand this, they expected it from us. We were supposed to type everything. I sent up a silent prayer of gratitude to B.B. for my laptop—after all, I would have succumbed to carpal tunnel from handwriting notes within days if he hadn’t bought it for me.

  Professor Baker taught this class, Readings in Law & Justice. It was part of Columbia’s core curriculum, and I had jumped at the chance to take something related to the study of law. Now, however, I was not leaping at the opportunity to read a 120-page assignment due in two days.

  “A discussion will follow, and of course you will be graded on participation,” Professor Baker said, returning to her podium.

  Professor Baker was the one-woman show we paid thousands of dollars to see. Her lecture hall was designed like a small theater with all the chairs positioned on an incline facing a massive flat screen. I was used to doing Socratic circles in high school—essentially formal discussions in which the teacher asked open-ended questions, scribbling check marks every time someone participated. Always the shy student, I skated by with the bare minimum amount of talking. Unfortunately, I couldn’t expect such a non-participatory approach to save me in college. Even if I tried to dominate the conversation, though, I’d barely pass. Professor Baker and the other professors weren’t satisfied unless you spilled your guts.

  Nervousness made my shoulders ache with tension. If only I could just read and write without having to talking to anyone—

  “... And 10 percent of your grade will come from the group project at the end of the term,” she said, deflating me further.

  Rubbing my neck to ease the strain, I stared up at Professor Baker. Lanky with long arms and legs, strands of curly brown hair fell past her navy blue fitted blazer. Her lips were thin and her chin was hard and pointy, complementing her coldly intelligent green eyes. I read her bio before attending her class.

  It was no joke. Page after page listed cases she won, degrees earned, firms she was a partner in. Though she intimidated me with the curtness of her questions, cutting right to the core of a topic, she also intrigued me. I wondered if I could ever follow in her footsteps someday, not just instructing others, but performing in the courtroom, litigating. For a few seconds, the luxury of dreaming about my future allowed me to forget about transferring to another class that didn’t require group discussions.

  Suddenly, a notification flew past the right side of my screen. IAN ANDERSON. Another text. I hated my reaction to seeing his name, the excitement. Now, whenever an e-notification popped up with a course email or a reminder about my low bank balance, my heart leapt with hopes it was him.

  “Hey, how’s your day so far? :)”

  Right after I finished Skyping with a less-than-enthusiastic Halmuni, I was glad Ian had texted me, thanking me for giving him a chance. I had texted right back, matching his number of smiley faces even as Halmuni’s words ate at me. Her disapproval had always been the toughest to bear. I was here to study—everything I had worked for brought me to this class, even if that meant participating in dreaded class discussions. I X’d out of the notification, r
eturning to type every word from Professor Baker’s mouth.

  “Don’t expect grade curves. Unless they happen to fall against you,” she smirked. A couple of students shifted uneasily in their seats. All of us here were former AP students, high achievers. We were used to gaming the academic system. We were just beginning to understand how easy we had had it. Now, things were about to change.

  As my fingers pushed on, pounding out word after word, page after page of notes, I kept waiting for a bell to ring or the morning announcements to segment the day. This wasn’t really a conscious thought, but rather something in back of my mind. After a while, I realized how stupid I was behaving. High school was over. The old rules no longer applied. If I wanted to, I could walk out without a bathroom pass or the teacher’s permission. Nothing was keeping me here, except for the cold inertia of wanting to do right by my new teacher. All those years of schooling must have burned that desire into me.

  Near the end of the hour, Professor Baker flipped to a slide listing our homework assignment, then motioned to the door. “See you all Thursday.”

  Everyone started packing up their stuff, shoving MacBooks into bags and slipping on jackets. A few of the bolder ones dared to mumble about the “insane reading” assignment.

  Next to me an Indian girl with heavy eyeliner chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, shit. I was warned freshman year sucked.”

  “Uh huh.” I carefully placed the books I needed to read first in my backpack.

  “Some of us are going to that coffee shop around the corner. Maybe plan for the group project. You wanna come?”

  “Oh.” I swung my backpack over my shoulders. “Thanks, but I usually kind of like to study alone.”

  She flashed me a smile. This one projected warmth. “Well, we’re kinda getting to know each other today.”

  “That’s okay. I’d better start reading.”

  Even as I said the words I knew they were the wrong thing to say.

  “Okay, no worries.” She shrugged. “See you Thursday.”

  Then she caught up with a couple guys in the row farthest from me. Somehow already the best of friends, they hugged her, exiting together. With a sense of inevitability, I knew the social part of college would be a lot like high school. Once again, I planned to keep my head down. Like Halmuni said, I came here to succeed.