오늘: oneul
Today
Just a normal day here in the Choi household. Me, the seventeen-year-old, who’s never seen a condom in real life, nagging her forty-five-year-old mom to take her prenatal vitamins.
“Mom. Mom. Mom.”
We’re sitting at the tiny kitchen island in our little Tudor house in Dundee, Omaha. As a kid, I always loved how our home resembled a tiny medieval castle, and how you could walk to get an ice-cream cone down the street. But though I’ve only topped out at five feet one inch tall, it’s still gotten cramped. On the countertop, two coffee-making contraptions are fighting for elbow room with the electric teakettle, an air fryer, and a microwave. Not to mention Mom’s pile of office work that rents space next to the cutting board. And it’s only getting worse.
I push the pillbox toward Mom as she slurps iced decaf green tea from a Baby Yoda mug. She’s six months along, but she looks super, hyper preggo, with all the side effects: Tired. Cranky. Eating Hy-Vee cupcakes at the speed of light. She complains about her puffy cheeks and puffy ankles, but mostly, she looks pretty cute. When she waddles around, I secretly laugh (out of affection! I swear!). Her hair is in a bun on her head, the only hairdo she’s ever had since I was squeezed unmercifully into existence seventeen years ago.
“Mm. Thanks, Jane.” Mom gulps down her horse pill and heads for the door. Mornings are often like this. Dad’s gone to work before I make it downstairs. Mom is a human blur, rushing to her job as a research coordinator. And me, left to make my breakfast, clean the dishes, lock up the house.
For years, my parents resisted getting a puppy or a kitten. “We’re too busy!” they’d say. “It would never get any attention!” And so, instead of a cute, uncomplicated puppy, they are having a very complicated human baby. Which is all sorts of strange on all sorts of levels.
I mean, you can leave the puppy at home in a crate for an hour without being arrested. What happened to being too busy? I asked them when they broke the news. Dad had widened his eyes and pursed his lips together. I think he was blushing, too.
“Welp, your mom thought she was going through menopause. I guess her ovaries had a sudden burst of energy.”
“Energy?” I say. “You mean eggs.” I envision Mom’s tired ovaries like little deflated cartoon ovals, with a little egg popping out after a big yawn. Pretty sure that’s an anatomically correct version of the event.
“Uh, yeah. Things just happen sometimes, Jane.” He then changed the subject pretty fast. It’s clear this baby wasn’t exactly a carefully thought out plan.
Mom tugs on her ankle boots at the door. Like everyone in my extended family, we keep our shoes at the door, because ew, who wants to track particles of dog feces and human spit into your home from the dirty world outside?
“Oh. Dad and I were talking last night,” she says, between boot tugs. “I’m not superstitious,
but you know Dad is—”
That’s an understatement. He knocks on wood and avoids ladders and sidewalk cracks. Pretty funny for an IT guy who eats and breathes logic in the form of computers, codes, and complex servers at his medical center job.
“He didn’t want me to jinx anything with this guy,” she says, patting her bulging belly. “But I can’t keep a secret. We have a name!”
“You do?” I’m about to take a bite of microwaved pancake, but I put my fork down. They’ve been talking about names for a while now. Ones like Phillip (“But it means lover of horses. Mom is allergic to horses,” I’d informed them) and Jasper (I knew a Jasper once. He threw chocolate pudding at me in kindergarten, then called me poopy face for a month). I’m not a fan of my own name, Jane. So plain. So ordinary.
I steel myself. “Okay. What’s the name?”
She beams and takes a deep breath. “It’s . . . Franklin.” Her eyes sparkle and she stops tugging on her boots to wait for my reaction.
“Franklin!” I say, my voice parroting her enthusiasm, but I can’t even fake a smile. “It’s . . . different! Wow. Franklin.” I’m trying hard not to show my disappointment. They didn’t discuss this one with me! I know it’s not my call, but c’mon.
Franklin?
“After Benjamin Franklin. He was the subject of Dad’s college thesis.” She smiles widely. “I knew you’d like it! Listen, I’ll be late tonight. We have a huge IRB deadline tomorrow. Dinner is leftovers. Oh! And don’t forget to download your AP Chemistry book. I keep getting notifications for that.”
I groan. “I told you, I can’t study with the e-book. I need the real thing.”
“It weighs a hundred pounds!” she says, grabbing her car keys.
“Doesn’t matter. I already have it. The teacher found a used one for a bargain.”
“But my email said—oh, wait.” She peers at her phone and scrolls frenetically with a finger. I can hear the sound, she’s tapping so hard. “Oh. These notifications are two weeks old. Ugh, I hate phones.”
It’s true. Any time she sees me scrolling on an app, she gives it and me a scowl of disapproval. Mom waves goodbye and opens the door. My best friends, Matty Ricci and Bridge Johanssen, are right there, ready to knock,
knuckles in the air like they’ve been caught in the act. Matty’s hair looks like they stuck their finger in a power socket—all spiky and brown. Bridge’s blonde hair is in two little buns.
“Hey! Perfect timing,” Mom chirps. “You can convince Jane to enter the twenty-first century and stop using thousand-pound textbooks.”
“Like these?” Bridge points to her backpack, which is so large she resembles a lumpy Galápagos turtle.
“You guys are a bunch of Luddites!” Mom says, laughing, car keys jingling.
“Did you take your prenatal vitamins?” Matty asks, narrowing their eyes.
“Of course. Oh my god, it’s like having three extra mothers. Bye!”
“Make good choices!” Bridge sings.
“Clearly, too late for that,” Mom hollers from the driveway. She points to her belly and waddle-wiggles into her car.
I shut the door, and Matty settles into a chair next to me in the kitchen. I put my chin on my folded arms, trying not to be too grumpy. The name Franklin is still in the air. Hanging there unpleasantly, like . . . like a sausage.
Franks.
And beans.
And hot dogs.
I frown. I thought maybe they’d pick a Korean family name. Dad’s parents died right after I was born. After coming to the US to start a flower shop business, they went back to Korea as soon as Dad was in college. Mom’s dad died from cancer about ten years ago, and her mom, Halmi, is alive and well and lives only a few hours away in Kansas City, which is where Mom grew up.
Halmi’s getting old, but despite being over eighty, she still has a ton of energy. When Mom got pregnant, my dad sadly mentioned how his parents would never meet my brother. I hardly know anything about my other grandparents. All I have is a photo of them holding me as a baby. This static moment from the past.
“Hey. You okay?” Bridge says, nudging me.
I put on a fake smile. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t lie. You’re pissed that the Huskers lost in
spectacular fashion on Saturday.”
“I’m not fine about that, you’re right.” Matty and Bridge are used to a small rant or victory dance from me based on how the Huskers performed at their last game. Not today, though. I won’t even throw my homemade Faux Pelini plushie around in angst.
Bridge heads to the counter, where she pours herself a cup of coffee, a little bit left over from Dad’s morning pour-over. He and Bridge both inhale coffee like it’s water and get all snooty about bean roasting and Chemexes and whatever. Mom quit coffee since she got pregnant, and caffeine generally turns me and Matty into a hyped-up version of Candace from Phineas and Ferb.
“There’s something else. What’s up?” Matty asks.
I shrug. “We should go.”
After I’ve cleared away the dishes and locked the door, it’s a fifteen-minute walk to Tremont High School. School started second week of August. My cousins in California and New York think it’s hilarious that we start school so early, but we get the last laugh when school’s out in May. We’re only one week in, but Bridge, Matty, and I are already overwhelmed by our classes. I try not to think about my conversation with Mom (Franklin!) and talk about other things, like my AP Chem lab that’s finally starting today, but somehow (Franklin!) I can’t seem to focus. Instead, I just stay quiet and let Bridge and Matty chat. Which is the norm, actually. They’re both so brilliant that it takes a while for me to come up with something worthy to say aloud.
We live close by and have walked to school together almost every day since we met that first morning of freshman year. I discovered Bridge, nervous as heck, puking her breakfast into my front bushes. Matty, who didn’t know Bridge, was wiping vomit off their sneakers, and I timidly invited them in the house to clean up. Matty, Bridge, and I ended up late, all three of us smelling vaguely of stomach acid and maple syrup. Turns out we were all worried that we’d be too weird to blend in with other Tremont kids. We were right. But we also found out that we were all vintage store fanatics and relative technophobes, and have been inseparable ever since.
“Jane? Did you hear what I said?” Bridge says, nudging me.
“Huh?”
“I said I love your collar!”
ly I found at Goodwill and trimmed it with a vintage pearl button.
“Very Andie Walsh. She would approve,” Matty says.
Bridge and Matty know I’m over-obsessed with the movie Pretty in Pink. Yes, I know John Hughes made major problematic movies, with some awful character and script choices. And yes, I have never forgiven him for the whole Long Duk Dong and rapey fiasco that was Sixteen Candles. But I can’t help myself. Andie’s styles in PiP, as I call it, are so choice.
Matty gets it. They dress like Duckie most days of the week, complete with wing tip shoes, trousers, a buttoned-down shirt, and a jacket with a lapel pin. Sometimes the hair’s all spiky, like it is today, and sometimes it’s a sleek pixie cut. And Bridge’s style is rather indescribable: 1980s punk rock meets 2018 hipster meets extremely sad clown? Like I said, hard to explain. Today she’s wearing black lace-up boots to her knees, a faded rainbow cutoff tee, and a black mourning hat with a tiny veil circa the 1880s. Her hair is in two space buns today, but she’s also done Stevie Nicks waves. Bridge’s glasses are huge and square, and she’s always pushing them back up her nose.
Now that we’re juniors, we get teased a hell of a lot less, but it still hurts. I love how I dress. I love fussing over details like lace embellishments and itty-bitty cameo pins. They’re tiny treasures that I covet, like a crow seeking shiny pretty things. Anyway, there’s no question that Matty, Bridge, and I cling together because we know the truth, without saying it out loud. We don’t quite belong here. Which is fine since we have each other.
“Hey. I have to tell you about this incredible scene in Stairway to Heaven,” Matty says. “So Song-Joo goes blah blah blah.”
Blah blah blah is not actually what they said, but Matty does this every school morning. They are super obsessed with K-dramas and spend at least an hour or more every night watching new episodes of whatever is their fave of the moment.
“And then the VHS stopped forty minutes in! It went all fuzzy! I think someone held a magnet over it or something.” Matty kicks a rock.
“Matty. You could just stream them online. No VHS tapes. No visiting the Korean grocer to rent them every week,” Bridge says.
“But I love the VHS tapes! The sound of that tape ker-chunking into the machine is the sound of approaching happiness.”
“It’s the sound of imminent tape failure, but I get it,” Bridge says.
“Plus, I like supporting Mr. Kim’s business. You know what he called me the other day? Chakhan yeoja!” Matty beams at me.
I stare blankly. No idea what that means. It sounds like yoga . . . but I’m sure Mr. Kim wasn’t telling Matty that they were kick-ass at yoga. Matty pauses for a moment of suspense. “It means good girl. Isn’t that sweet?”
“But you’re not a girl,” I say, showing my teeth in apprehension.
“That’s not the point!” Matty says.
Bridge practically yells, “Hey! That is sweet!” She’s got one earbud in, one earbud out. It’s loud enough that you can hear a K-pop song emanating from the loose earbud. This is how I know she loves us. Otherwise, she shuts out the world. Kind of like how I’d like to selectively shut out the name Franklin from my brain. And visions of hot dogs.
We round a corner and come face-to-face with Tremont High, a building that’s half beige Lego brick and half classical building with marble pillars. A real-life bronze sculpture of three enormous bison graces a circle of grass by the front entrance. The teachers are constantly telling the kids not to climb them, for safety. And at least once a year, a student gets suspended for posting a selfie doing some sexual act with those poor bison. Stuff like that makes me shy away from social media. Those images burn into your retinas and leave a permanent stain.
But even today, nothing can distract me from my brother’s future name. I must sigh, because Matty nudges me.
“Jane?” Matty says.
“Huh?”
They both stop walking and stare at me.
“Out with it,” Bridge says. “You’re all zoned out. Something is bothering you.”
It’s hard to keep anything from them. Timid Jane might be a constant in their life, but my quietness can mean I’m excited, stressed, or thoughtful. Somehow they know the difference. Like the time I admitted that I had a huge crush on this guy, Edward Liu, who transferred to Tremont a year ago. Whenever I
saw him the hallways, I’d freeze up and my face would contort into a grimace/grin. I looked like I’d been struck with a nasty bout of appendicitis. They cracked the secret in less than two pseudo-appendicitis episodes.
“Okay,” I say, sighing. “My parents picked out a name for my baby brother. I don’t like it. It’s . . . Franklin.”
Matty and Bridge both stick out their bottom lips, thinking. Mulling over the name. Their eyebrows, all four of them, go up at the same time. And then they waggle their heads left and right. Not a good sign.
“See?” I say.
“It’s not that bad,” Matty says. “It could be worse.”
“Ooh. Instead, maybe they could pick Jin!” Bridge says. “Or Sehun!”
I don’t know those names, but I am 100 percent sure they belong to hot K-pop stars.
“I think it’s a done deal,” I say. “Anyway. We’re going to be late.”
The front doors of the high school are open and clusters of kids funnel through the front door. Matty and Bridge pass me, but I stand there, hesitating.
I can’t put my finger on why I had such a visceral reaction to my brother’s name. Why it’s still bothering me. And even if I could help pick a name—something more authentic—I wouldn’t know where to start.
Well, that’s not true. I wouldn’t pick something as forgettable as Jane. I mean, nobody knows my name.
“Hey. Are you Jane Choi?”
민망하다: minmanghada
Embarrassing
I turn around in surprise.
Edward Liu stands behind me, almost a head taller than me, wearing a hoodie, a cross-body bag splitting his perfect torso on the diagonal. He’s got floppy, inky hair, deep, dark eyes, and cheekbones that could slice bread. Long, tapered fingers hook onto his bag strap. I’ll bet he can and does play the piano.
My heart starts to liquefy.
I’m in shock that he knows my name. I heard our art teacher say that he was going to apply for art colleges, in animation and illustration, like Parsons and RISD (which I had to look up and now know is pronounced “Risdee”). It means someday he’ll be making all the content that every kid in the world will be inhaling on their iPhones. So utterly cool. His family is of Taiwanese origin and he reportedly speaks fluent Mandarin and French. Being trilingual is mind-blowing given we live a state whose unsaid motto is “If it’s fancy, it’s got cheese on it. And if it’s super fancy, it’s also got bacon bits.”
All this whizzes through my brain as I stare blankly at him.
His beautiful mouth turns down at my lack of response. “You are Jane Choi, right?” His head tilts sideways a few degrees, and I can tell he’s looking at my lace collar with a trace of confusion. Like he saw it in his grandma’s china cabinet and is wondering how I stole it. And why I’m now wearing it.
“Oh!” I blurt out. Oh my god, Jane. Speak. Speak any language. “Uhhh, yes. Sorry. Yes, I’m Jane.”
He sighs, as if disappointed at my answer. “Right. I’m Edward Liu.”
I know, I scream inside, but instead I manage to utter, “Hi.”
“I think we’re AP Chem lab partners.” He starts walking into school and I fall into step next to him, though it takes three of my steps for every two of his.
“We are?” I must have missed the email message about it. How dare I miss possibly the most important email of my life?
“Yeah. Last-minute schedule change. I switched out of AP Stats. I’ve got a college counseling meeting then, so I’m going to be late. Would you mind taking notes until I get there?”
I need to calm down. He’s going to be my lab partner! God, Jane. Don’t be yourself. Be chill for once.
“Sure. No problem,” I say, trying not to sound like I’m doing internal backflips of joy.
“Okay. Thanks.” The side of his mouth squinches, almost like the beginning of a smile. I open my mouth to finish this on a good note. An apology for blanking out before? A “see ya later”? But before anything worthy comes to mind, he disappears into a sea of students.
Wow, I finally get a chance to speak to Edward and I performed as admirably as a ten-year-old. Way to impress, Jane. Edward turns the corner thirty feet away, glancing over his shoulder—only to see me standing there. Staring at him. I turn on my heel quickly, my cheeks burning hot as an inferno, and head to my locker.
I barely remember anything from advisement and my English Lit class. My mind is full of Edward, and it’s near
impossible to concentrate. Chem lab is second period. I practically run there, even though I know he’s going to be late.
Mrs. Bartholomew, the chemistry teacher, is sitting at her desk. Students fill the seats behind long black laboratory tables. Plastic molecules hang from the ceiling every few feet. The walls are covered in chemistry posters with cartoon molecules joyfully interacting in ways that are as nonsexual as possible.
“Ah, JaneChoi.” For some reason, Mrs. Bartholomew always says my name like it’s one word. She did that last year too, in physics. It makes my name sound like a sneeze. “Your seat is there.” She gestures to the back of the classroom. I have plenty of time to calm down before Edward shows up, but the next thing I know, he sweeps through the door, looking around. He nods to Mrs. Bartholomew, then sees me and heads to our table.
The Jane for this Edward.
So, side note. It just so happens that my mom named me after her favorite book of all time, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Whose love interest is an Edward. And Edward Liu most likely does not have a secret wife hidden in an attic! Through careful eavesdropping, I know that he goes by Edward. He refuses to go by the shorter moniker Ed. Because anybody can be an Ed. Ed will get underage kids beer. Ed will slash your tires. Ed doesn’t know which fork to use at a fancy dinner.
He’s no Ed. He’s Edward.
“Ed, you can sit with your partner, Jane,” Mrs. Bartholomew says.
“It’s Edward.”
These words are spoken simultaneously by yours truly and Edward Liu. Unlike me, Edward doesn’t turn a shade of apple red. In fact, he seems irritated by my correction. Several classmates chuckle.
Also of note, random people have hinted that Edward and I ought to be a couple since we are two of the few East Asians at our high school. Clearly, we are obligated to breed with one another.
I beg my crimson face to cool the eff down. Edward takes out his laptop, but he pulls his stool away from mine. Like, way over. I am disappointed that he is too far away for me to sniff his hair. I’ll bet it smells like mint. Or mandarin oranges. Or smoked kielbasa. I’ll take kielbasa, too.
“Jane? The checklist?”
coat, and other stuff.
“Right. Checklist.” I smile and briefly shake my head to get my focus back on. He doesn’t smile back. I’ve noticed, from a distance, that he seems to be quite moody. It’s weird to see it in such close proximity. Perhaps he doesn’t want a clueless junior as a lab partner.
For the next half hour, we listen to Mrs. Bartholomew talk about the expectations of the lab and the write-ups, and then we watch a long video on OSHA safety stuff. It’s boring but actually relaxes me.
Edward grumbles, “Every year there’s a new acronym to add to the red tape.”
“OSHA isn’t just made up. It’s been around since 1970,” I say automatically, before realizing I sound like a mom lecturing her kid. I did a report on it two years ago, so I know more about work safety history than pretty much all other seventeen-year-olds.
“Oh. Really?” Edward’s bad mood melts a tiny bit. His eyebrows go up and he leans in, waiting to hear more. I give a cautious glance to Mrs. Bartholomew. Her head has tilted back in her chair, eyes shut.
I whisper, “Yeah. Ever hear of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911?”
He shakes his head and leans in even closer. A waft of cedar hits me. So that’s what his hair smells like. I should like to make a nest in it like a little woodland creature.
“About a hundred and fifty workers jumped out of a burning factory to their death because the supervisors locked the stairwells and exits,” I explain.
“What the hell . . . why?”
“To keep them from taking too many work breaks.”
“Holy crap,” he whispers back.
I spread my fingers toward the OSHA video, now droning on about chemical splashes and protective eyewear. “Hence OSHA exists. To protect workers and keep workplaces safe. Took a long time.”
“Huh. Where was that factory?”
“New York City,” I whisper.
“Damn. I had no idea.” He’s lost in thought for a minute, then bites his lip and turns to me. Oh, that I should be that lip. “Can I ask you a random non-chemistry question?”
I look at him, surprised. “Sure.” Whatever it is, the answer is yes. It is always yes.
“Where’s your family from?”
My eyes meet his for a brief second. It’s funny, I get a version of that question all the time from people. But usually, it’s the where are you from question that means, what are you? When I respond with, “I was born in Kansas City,” they always follow up with, “But where are you really from?”
Inevitably, I give them what they want because I am too tired to teach them how annoying their question is. ...
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