by Sarah Suk
“Valerie,” Umma said, pinching her nose like she was already exhausted by this conversation. “Please. What did I tell you about listening when adults are speaking?”
“I’m almost an adult,” I said.
“No. You’re seventeen. What kind of mother would I be if I let you talk back to me, huh? Now stay out of matters you don’t understand.”
I winced, shrinking at Umma’s words. I wanted to run up to my room and disappear, but for Halmeoni’s sake, I would stand my ground. “Well, I think Halmeoni knows what she’s talking about. Not to mention the doctor, who said she was doing fine at her last checkup.” I walked down the rest of the stairs, linking arms with my grandma. “If she wants to go out, you can’t keep her locked up here like a prisoner.”
Halmeoni straightened up, nodding her head. “Like a prisoner,” she repeated.
Umma looked back and forth between the two of us, pressing her lips together. “You two always gang up on me. Umma, the doctor might say you’re fine, but there’s nothing wrong with being extra careful at your age. You’re not as healthy as you once were, no matter what you want to believe. Why must you be so stubborn? And you, Valerie.” She shook her head. “You need to learn how to listen like your sister. Samantha never disrespects me like this.”
With that, she turned on her heel and disappeared into the kitchen, where she started vigorously painting the cabinets again. I scowled, feeling the tips of my ears heat up in anger. Why did Umma always have to compare me to Samantha? This wasn’t even about her. Leave it to Umma to take any opportunity she could to highlight my older sister and make me feel like I was too young to know anything. Fuming, I dug into my fanny pack and tore open a strawberry Hi-Chew. I chewed furiously.
Halmeoni’s wrinkled hand covered mine. “Don’t listen to your mom,” she said gently. “You are doing me a favor. You’re my girl.”
She patted my hand and I smiled back, relaxing a little. Umma might not understand me, but Halmeoni always did. She made me feel like I was fine just as I was.
“How about I go for a walk with you and then we can have a spa day inside?” I suggested. “I’ll dye your hair again.”
“My girl,” Halmeoni said, patting me on the arm. “You know just how to cheer me up.”
And so we did. As I dyed Halmeoni’s hair that evening, with a Korean drama that we’d seen a hundred times already playing on my laptop, I couldn’t help but notice how stooped her shoulders were. She used to be so much taller than me, even just a couple of years ago.
“Halmeoni, you’re shrinking,” I said, trying to keep my voice jokey and light.
“Yah, you silly girl,” she said, swatting me in the arm. “I’m not shrinking. You’re just growing. You’re at a growing age right now. You’ll keep on getting taller for a long, long time, much taller than your halmeoni.”
I smiled. “Yeah, you’re right.”
She stared at the laptop screen, where the couple in the Korean drama was dancing in front of the Eiffel Tower. “What do you think it’s like there?” she asked. “Paris? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go?” Her nose wrinkled in displeasure. “I don’t know why your mom has a fit anytime I talk about going anywhere. She thinks I can’t think for myself anymore.”
I said nothing, dyeing her curls in silence. When Halmeoni had first emigrated from South Korea with her two teenage daughters, she’d had big dreams of exploration. But between raising a family and getting older, she never had a chance to travel the world like she wanted to, even though she was always talking about the endless list of places she longed to see. I thought of the cash in my fanny pack and the rest of the money I’d been saving since my sophomore year. Halmeoni didn’t know it, but I’d been saving all that money so I could take her on a trip of a lifetime. We would go to Paris and visit art museums and eat cheese from charcuterie boards with gochujang, because Halmeoni never went anywhere without a travel-sized tube of her favorite spicy paste.
She deserved to see everything she wanted to, and I would take her there. Umma would disapprove, of course, but like I said, we weren’t her prisoners. How could she hold us back if I was the one funding everything and Halmeoni was healthy enough to go? I was going to make this happen no matter what, and when I did, Umma would finally see that I wasn’t just a child who knew nothing. I was way more capable than she thought I was.
I’d prove it.
Monday / September 16
The following Monday, I was still mulling over Umma and Halmeoni’s never-ending argument while I waited for my customers. I leaned against my locker, chewing on a green-apple Hi-Chew, the best flavor for thinking. I didn’t understand why Umma couldn’t see how trapped she was making Halmeoni feel. Besides, everyone knew that fresh air was good for your health. Why wouldn’t Umma want that for Halmeoni?
I looked at the time. Ten seconds until the final bell. I put my thoughts on hold and got into business mode. Three, two, one.
The lineup arrived but felt shorter than usual as I sold face masks and cleansers. Maybe people were held up in class? Or maybe there had been a field trip today. By the time school emptied out, I stared at the products in my locker. There were still a few things left. Usually, I would have sold out by now.
“Valerie!” a voice called down the hall. Kristy came jogging toward me. “Sorry I’m late. Do you have anything left?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, half closing my locker so Kristy couldn’t see inside. “Barely anything, though.” I didn’t want people to think V&C was losing its touch, especially not Kristy. Once Kristy knew something, it wasn’t long before the entire school knew too.
“Oh good,” she said. “I’ll take one of the peach lily masks.”
“Just one?” Strange. Kristy was usually a serial shopper.
“Yeah. You know Wes Jung, the new kid? Turns out his mom works for a huge entertainment company in Korea.” Her eyes widened as she spoke. “He was selling Crown Tiger lip balm in band class, and I spent half my week’s allowance on it.”
My jaw tightened. “What? What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know Crown Tiger? They’re only the biggest K-pop boy band around.”
“No, not that. What do you mean he was selling lip balm?”
“Oh yeah! Crown Tiger’s new lip-balm line. They’re all sold out everywhere else, but Wes had a bunch from his mom, and he was selling them. He literally made a hundred bucks like this.” She snapped her fingers. “Natalie and Amelia were fighting over all the flavors. I swear, those girls are out to kill each other.”
Natalie and Amelia? They were my regular customers, and they’d been noticeably missing from the line today. “Do you know if they’ll be coming by the locker today?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure they spent all their money with Wes,” Kristy said. “If he keeps this up, he won’t just be the hottest guy in our grade. He’ll be the richest.” She peered over my shoulder. “So, where’s Charlie today?”
I clenched my teeth. Wes Jung. I didn’t have any classes with him, but maybe it was time I met this new kid. Someone had to teach him that there was only room for one K-beauty business around here.
CHAPTER TWO WES
Monday / September 16
Breakfast was always the same. A bowl of white rice with a package of dried seaweed. Sometimes, if I was feeling fancy, I would add extra things. When we lived in Seoul, it was mostly Spam with kimchi. Then we moved to Tokyo and I experimented with different kinds of fish. Salmon, tuna, mackerel. I would have made my way through the whole sea if we’d stayed. But of course we left, and Los Angeles brought around a strong hot-sauce phase. Now, in the Pacific Northwest, I was all about the avocado. Maybe with a touch of soy sauce.
It was nice to have a routine. Something good that stayed consistent when everything else felt like it was in constant motion.
I sat at the jade marble island in the kitchen, slicing up an avocado as Mom whirled around like a tornado in a power
suit, already late for the hundred and one things that were on her to-do list for the day.
“Good morning,” she said, kissing me on the side of the face as she breezed past me on her way to the freezer. She grabbed a bag of frozen berries and poured them into the Vitamix for her morning smoothie.
“Morning, Mom,” I said, adjusting my glasses. They always went askew when she kissed me on the cheek. “Long time no see.”
She shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Wes. I’ve been so busy with work since we moved here.” She didn’t stop moving the whole time she spoke, throwing coconut milk and Greek yogurt into the Vitamix with sharp staccato movements. Her voice rose as she flipped on the blender. “There’s been a lot going on with Crown Tiger’s new merch release.”
“No worries,” I said, speaking loudly over the whir of the Vitamix. Her sorry expression made me feel instantly guilty. The city might be new to me, but my mom’s hectic work schedule was as familiar as ever. I should be used to it. No point in making her feel bad about it.
“Tell me how you’re liking the new school,” Mom prompted, nearly shouting to be heard. “Has it been exciting making new friends?”
I stuck the blade of the knife into the avocado pit with a swift thwack. Exciting. That wasn’t exactly the word I would use. Exciting was nailing the climax of a saxophone solo. It was hearing a live jazz band and feeling the music come alive inside me. It wasn’t starting a new school for the fourth time in ten years. I had just been starting to fit in at my last school in LA when I was whisked away yet again. Now I was at Crescent Brook High with no friends to my name. Hmm. Exciting? Not quite.
“Mmm,” I said in lieu of a real answer. Traveling was just part of Mom’s job in the Korean entertainment industry. When you were in charge of marketing and promoting K-pop stars to an international audience, it often required you to, well, go international. It was what it was, and I didn’t want to upset her by telling the truth.
The blender stopped, and she poured her smoothie into a glass tumbler, eyeing me the whole time. “Remember, if you’re not liking this school, we can always send you to private school.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly. When we’d first moved here, right before the start of my senior year, my parents had wanted to send me to a small private school with a specialized math program, but I’d opted for the local public school instead, saying that it was a better option for me to meet more people. That was a lie. Really, I chose it because it had a more popular music program. My parents didn’t know it, but I was planning on going to college for music, and I wanted the best musical experience I could get in the last year of high school leading up to it.
Speaking of which, I was going to be late for band class if I didn’t hurry up. I wolfed down the rest of my breakfast and reached for my saxophone case.
“Wait, before you go!” Mom lowered her smoothie and lifted a small shopping bag from the kitchen table. “I got these for you. There’s enough for you to share with your new friends!”
I peered into the bag and pulled out a tube of lip balm illustrated with a cartoon white tiger wearing a sweater vest. There were four other designs: an orange tiger wearing sunglasses, a blue tiger wearing a hanbok, a black tiger on a surfboard, and a silver tiger eating a corn dog. “Uh, what is this?”
“It’s Crown Tiger’s new merch line,” she said excitedly. “Five members, five flavors of lip balm!”
Crown Tiger was the latest K-pop boy band Mom was promoting. I tried not to get any more sucked into her work life than I already was, but I knew that Crown Tiger was pretty big these days. They were dominating music charts all over the world. Hence their own lip-balm line. My forehead scrunched, holding up the one with the silver tiger. “And this one is corn dog–scented?”
“No, it’s mint. That’s Namkyu’s scent. He’s just known for loving corn dogs.”
Right. Of course.
She stuffed my backpack with the shopping bag full of lip balm. This was another thing I could always rely on: Mom packing my bag with advertising materials to hand out at school under the guise of helping me make new friends. Classic Mom move.
“You’ll be so popular,” she gushed. “All the kids your age love Crown Tiger.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was no way I was going to hand out lip balm at my new school to my nonexistent friends. So instead I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and grabbed my saxophone case, jogging out the door before she could slip anything else into my pockets.
* * *
“You’re new, right?”
I looked up from the music stand, pausing from putting a new reed in my saxophone. A freckled girl with pretty red hair smiled back at me.
“I’m Lisa Carol. First name, last name, not a two-word first name.” She laughed. Her laugh sounded like a chorus of bells. “Sorry, people always get confused.”
“Um.” I fumbled with the reed. Blame it on all the moving, but I could get weirdly awkward around new people. Not that I didn’t have social skills. I just didn’t know where they were half the time. “Hi. I’m Wes. Wes Jung.”
“Cool,” Lisa said. “Well, welcome to Crescent Brook High, Wes Jung. Let me know if you have any questions about anything, especially anything band-related. I’ve had Mr. Reyes since freshman year.” She tilted her head to the side, her red waterfall hair spilling over her shoulder. “I play the clarinet. Maybe you noticed?”
Was she flirting with me? Maybe she was. I was terrible at flirting. I tried to think of something interesting to say. I could not.
“Clarinet is neat,” I said blankly. I blinked at her through my glasses and she blinked back.
“Okay, then.” She smiled brightly. “You know where to find me.”
With a wave, she disappeared to the clarinet section. Her friends immediately began to giggle, nudging her teasingly and raising their eyebrows suggestively in my direction. I turned away, but my cheeks were growing warmer by the second. I knew what those looks meant. I’d always heard people whispering behind me in the halls: “He’s so handsome. He looks like a model! And his glasses are so stylish.”
It’s not that I was completely oblivious. When I looked in the mirror, I could see, objectively, why people would call me handsome. I’m tall and broad-shouldered, and I’d gotten enough compliments about my face to know that there was something appealing there. The problem was that I didn’t know what to do with any of it. I felt like people expected me to be some cool guy who could charm Lisa with a single word and make her swoon into her clarinet seat. Honestly, I wished I were that guy too. But most of the time, I just felt painfully awkward in my own skin.
I wasn’t immune to the whispers that followed me. It was definitely flattering, but it was also equal parts panic-inducing. I could never figure out a way to be myself. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure who myself was.
“Warm-up scales, everybody, warm-up scales!” Mr. Reyes said, entering the room with a Venti Starbucks cup in his hand. The yellow polka dots on his socks, visible beneath the high cuff of his pants, were in the shape of little suns. “This room is far too quiet.”
I brought my saxophone to my lips. Correction: I did know who I was. At least, when I played music I did. I blew into the mouthpiece and felt a familiar warm buzz rush through me. When I play the saxophone, I’m creative. Free. Wild. There’s nothing I love more. Throughout all the moves, music had been my constant companion. It was the one thing that kept me grounded when it felt like everything else was up in the air, the thing that felt like home when home was always a question mark.
Just one year, I told myself. Just one more year of high school, and then I’ll be off to music school, where I can enjoy this every minute of every day. I can start building my career as a musician and feel like my best self all the time, doing what I love. Music is my refuge, the place where I feel simultaneously most safe and most alive. I can’t imagine doing anything else. Not only that, but I’d finally be able to stay in one city at one school wi
th one community. No more uprooting.
I began my warm-up scales, feeling my shoulders relax as soon as I started playing. Or at least they started to relax. A few minutes in and some of my notes weren’t playing as smooth as they used to. It took double the air to get the sound out, if I could get it out at all. Uh-oh. This had been happening here and there over the past couple of days—having to use more air or press harder on the keys to get the sound out—but the problem was definitely getting worse. I’d have to get it checked out.
In the meantime, I played what I could. Even with the saxophone issue, I was blissfully in my happy zone for the hour of class, bobbing my head to the How to Train Your Dragon score we were practicing. Apparently, Mr. Reyes loved movie soundtracks, which meant that 90 percent of our song list came from the big screen. I didn’t mind. In fact, I loved it. I secretly hoped that one day I might play in a professional orchestra for a movie soundtrack.
At the end of class, Lisa the clarinet player reappeared at my music stand. I froze, my fingers slipping on the clasps of my saxophone case. Why was she here again? I felt the back of my neck get sweaty the way it does when I get nervous.
“Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to have lunch together later?” She hugged her clarinet case to her chest and smiled. She had even, sparkly teeth. I was entranced by them. She would be great for dentistry ads. Her brow furrowed at my non-response. “Um, Wes?”
“Huh? Oh. Sorry. Yeah, lunch.” I fumbled with my case, accidentally swinging it into my music stand and tipping the stand onto Lisa. “Oh God, sorry!” I lunged for the stand, only to kick my backpack over. Tubes of lip balm spilled out, tumbling across the floor like a synchronized gymnastics routine.
“No worries,” Lisa laughed. She picked up a lip balm. “Is this yours?”
“Um, no, they’re my mom’s.”