Unidentified Suburban Object

by Mike Jung

She’s not okay. You hurt her feelings. Just like I did.

  Did it matter if I was Korean, an alien, or an iguana? If my best friend was out there defending me, even though she was crying because she was alone, did any of that matter?

  I stood up, opened the door to the stall, and stepped out into the bathroom. Lindsay actually jumped in surprise, but Shelley just looked over her shoulder at me with tearstains all the way down her face.

  “Well, that’s just perfect,” she said, sniffling.

  “Oh my god, Chloe, were you in there that whole time??” Lindsay screeched.

  “Obviously,” Shelley said, catching my eye. We almost smiled at each other.

  “I can’t believe you were totally eavesdropping!” Lindsay put her fists on her hips and metronomed her head back and forth between me and Shelley.

  “LINDSAY.” I didn’t yell, I just … spoke with authority. With my fists clenched.

  “Wh-what?” Lindsay said, reverting to her normal self.

  I stared her down for a second, which made her drop her OMG body language and put her hands together in front of her.

  “You don’t have to bow to my mom and dad. Or me. That IS stupid.”

  “O-okay. Sorry?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Now, go away.”

  Lindsay got a sour look on her face and shook her head.

  “You are so rude, Chloe. Fine, I’ll go away and leave you two alone, I hope you’re very happy being all alone together.” She flounced to the door, tried to slam it, realized she couldn’t slam it because it’s one of those hydraulic doors that can’t be slammed, and was gone.

  So, it was just me and Shelley in the girls’ bathroom.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey. I guess you heard that whole mess.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lindsay’s not so bad, you know,” Shelley said. “I mean, she says stupid things, but she’s nice, and she’s actually not stupid.”

  “She just sounds that way sometimes, huh? Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean …”

  Silence in a school bathroom isn’t actually silent, have you ever noticed that? Those bathrooms have all kinds of noises — right then, they included the sound of my own heart, although I might have been the only person hearing that one.

  “I guess I’m just sorry, period,” I said.

  “Yeah, you are.” Shelley wiped her nose with the back of her hand, stared at her hand, then turned around and started washing it.

  “I don’t care if you’re Korean or not, you know.” She turned the water off, grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser, and dried off her hands, all without turning back around to look at me.

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” Finally she turned around, throwing the paper towel in the general direction of the trash can.

  “Yeah.” I looked down at my feet.

  “I mean, the Korean thing was, you know, interesting and all that, and the alien thing is also … interesting, but who really cares?”

  “Well, I KIND OF care. It’s sort of my whole life and everything.”

  Shelley rolled her eyes.

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “How do you know?” Shelley leaned back against the sink, crossed her arms, then crossed her legs at the ankles.

  I took a deep breath.

  “I know because when I lost Snowball at the playground that time you gave me YOUR teddy bear to replace him. That didn’t have anything to do with being Korean.”

  Shelley gave a little snort. “I forgot about Snowball.”

  “I still have her, you know. Butter, that is. Best teddy bear ever.”

  That got a wisp of a smile out of Shelley.

  “I know because when I wanted to run away from home, you came with me without hesitating, even though we only got ten blocks away before we got scared and came back.”

  “Before we were brought back, you mean.”

  When I was seven I got really, really mad at Mom and Dad for getting me a boring old big-girl bed instead of the dragon-shaped bed I really wanted, so when crying for an hour didn’t do anything I decided to head for greener, dragon-friendlier pastures. I didn’t actually have pastures of any kind to run away to, but that didn’t stop me from crawling out the window after dinner with my Aoshima Island backpack full of stuffed animals and books, going to Shelley’s house, and telling her I needed her to run away from home with me. Which she did.

  “At least we got ice cream,” Shelley said.

  “Yeah, but the person at the ice cream place ruined it by calling my dad.”

  “Yeah, but it really was kind of scary,” Shelley said. “Fun and scary.”

  “Remember when Elizabeth Smith pulled down my shorts in soccer practice in third grade?” I said. “You were the only one that didn’t laugh, and you ran out on the field and tried to block people’s view with your sweater. Remember?”

  Shelley didn’t say anything that time — she smiled, a real smile, the old just-for-Chloe smile, and it was suddenly hard to talk because I was starting to cry but I kept going anyway.

  “I know because it’s been awful not talking to you about anything, and I know it’s my own stupid fault for not trusting you but I miss you and I still want us to be best friends and I’m sorry, Shelley, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …”

  Then I was crying for real, so I had to stop talking, but then I felt Shelley put her arms around me and hug me, and she was crying too so I hugged her back, and it was weird to be hugging in the bathroom but I didn’t care. I didn’t care. My best friend. I had my best friend back, and that was the only thing I cared about.

  After Shelley and Chloe’s Awkward but Great Bathroom Reunion it was jarring to just go to lunch like normal, and I realized I had other people to apologize to, namely Ms. Lee. I’d never, ever, ever had to apologize to a teacher before, so yeah, super awkward. Shelley walked me back to the classroom.

  “The door’s closed,” she whispered as we got closer. “Maybe she’s not there.”

  I sighed. “She’s in there.”

  “Okay. Well …” Shelley stood there for a second and we experienced the leftover discombobulation of the previous few days.

  “I’ll meet you in the cafeteria,” I said. “Or in orchestra.”

  “Okay.” Shelley nodded, quickly squeezed my hand, and took off. I took a deep breath, knocked, and cracked open the door. Ms. Lee looked up from a pile of papers on her desk.

  “Oh!” She put down the sheaf of papers in her hands with a rustle and thump. “Chloe, I’m so glad to see you!”

  “You … are?” I’d been sort of shuffling my way into the room, but I totally stopped when she said that.

  “Well, yes.” Ms. Lee leaned on one elbow, put the other hand on her hip, and gave me a one-sided smile. “I’m always concerned when one of my best students starts having academic difficulties. And I’ve had my share of problems with best friends.”

  I blew out a long breath.

  “Things are … you know, still complicated.”

  “At home, you mean, or with Shelley?” Ms. Lee gestured at the chair next to her desk, and as I sat in it she pivoted her chair to face me directly, like she always did.

  “Both, but they’re better,” I said, and I had a flash of sadness at the thought that I’d never be able to really, honestly talk to Ms. Lee about it. “Things are … different.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” Ms. Lee said with a smile.

  “I’m sorry about being such a terrible student lately.” Holy cow, that was hard — I couldn’t even look at Ms. Lee while I said it.

  “You don’t owe any apologies to me, Chloe — I’m honestly more concerned with your well-being than with any individual assignment. You do have some catching up to do, however, and knowing your standards, I suspect we’re both going to be disappointed with your grade on the project.”

  “I know, I know,” I said, looking at the floor. “And I’m not asking for more extra
credit or anything like that — ”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “ — it’s just, I just, I’m … I know I’ve been messing up, is all I want to say. It’s not going to happen anymore.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that too. So you and Shelley … will be able to finish the project together?”

  I managed to look up again. “Yeah. We talked, everything’s okay.”

  As I said it, I thought maybe it was true about everything else. Mom and Dad, not being Korean, being an alien … maybe it would all be fine.

  I learned something about myself over the next couple of weeks: Being really behind on a big school project didn’t just make me mad, it also freaked me out.

  “How do people who leave their work until the last minute do this all the time??” I dropped my pencil and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Playing catch-up with the Model UN project was bad enough all by itself, but I also had to catch up on all of my other schoolwork.

  “Duh, they don’t do it all the time,” Shelley said. “They wait until the last minute, then try to catch up.”

  “That’s not what I mean. How do they stand KNOWING they’ll have to do all of the work at the last minute? It’s so stressful!”

  “Maybe they just don’t think about it. Or care.”

  “I don’t understand that at all,” I grumbled.

  “Me either.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense! Doing everything at the last minute is so much harder …”

  “Geez, Chloe, snap out of it.”

  “I don’t get it — if you wait until the last minute you practically have to study yourself to death to have any chance at an A,” I said.

  “Or if you’re Joel Morrissey, you just take the D instead.” Shelley grinned wickedly.

  I let my hands drop onto the table with a double thunk and stared at them, feeling really hopeless about school for the first time in my life.

  “I can’t do it,” I said quietly.

  “Can’t do what?” Shelley said, fishing a candy bar out of her backpack and tearing it open.

  “Catch up. I’m too far behind.”

  “No ur not,” Shelley mumbled around a mouthful of chocolate and caramel. “Peesh uv cake, lesh get back to — ”

  I threw my pencil down on the desk hard enough to make it bounce, hit the wall, and clatter onto the floor behind the desk, with all the electrical cords and dust bunnies. I lurched out of my chair, sat on the bed next to Shelley, and flopped onto my back.

  “Come on, Chloe.” Shelley poked my shoulder with the eraser end of her pencil. “Miles to go before we sleep and all that.”

  “Oh, very good,” I said in my fake British accent. “Poetry, well done.”

  “Geez, that accent sounds even worse than usual. Get up.”

  “What if …” I had to stop because I knew it was a stupid question.

  “What if what?”

  “What if doing this report is plagiarism?”

  Shelley frowned at me, picked up the messy stack of books and papers on the bed, and plopped them down on my stomach.

  “OOF,” I said, picturing a comic book speech bubble around it in my head. “What are you — ”

  “You know what that pile of stuff on your stomach is?” Shelley said.

  “Heavy?”

  “RESEARCH, CHO! You know, that thing you do when you’re NOT just copying somebody else’s work?”

  “Actually, we could plagiarize this stuff really easily — ”

  “You’re not plagiarizing, so shut up and get back to work.” Shelley smacked the mountain of papers with her hand, which made me go “oof” for real. I pushed the stack onto the bed without messing it up too much — that stuff has to stay in order, you know —and sat up.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said, looking at Shelley with my head tilted back on my neck. That made my neck hurt, so I raised my head back up to a normal position.

  “Doing what?” Shelley didn’t look up from the book she’d started flipping through. “Working, like you’re supposed to be doing?”

  “No — well, yeah, but no. I mean, you know, helping. Me.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Shelley slapped a Post-it onto a page and scribbled a note on it.

  “I’m not saying I’ve been mean to you or anything, but I’ve … you know …”

  “Are you talking about how you’ve been totally mean to me?”

  I fought off the urge to slap myself in the face. “Yeah, that.”

  Shelley finally closed the book and looked at me. She reached behind me, grabbed my pillow (I had to stop myself from tumbling backward), tucked it behind her, and leaned back. This time she stared straight at the wall on the opposite side of the room, where my Tiger Rabbit poster was before I tore it down. I missed my Tiger Rabbit poster.

  “Do you remember Jill Hardy’s birthday party in third grade?” Shelley said.

  “Uhhh … kind of. Oh, right, yeah. The dress.”

  Shelley fiddled with the knobs on her watch, twisting her wrist back and forth.

  “Right, the dress.”

  “They weren’t even all that pretty,” I said. “The collars were stupid.”

  “I LIKED that dress,” Shelley said, looking at me with her head tilted sideways, and I wanted to hear what she had to say, so I clamped both hands over my mouth.

  “That’s better.” Shelley stared me down for a second longer — just making sure, I guess — then leaned her head back against the wall.

  “My POINT is, Jill liked the dress too, which made sense since she was the one wearing it, and when she spilled grape juice on it and blamed me, which made her mom yell at me too, everyone sat there and watched except you.”

  I smiled at the memory. “You know, I didn’t care that we weren’t ever allowed to go back there. And it was worth being grounded just to see the look on Mrs. Hardy’s dumb face.”

  Shelley turned her head and looked at me — she wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t have her scary zombie face on either. “She was so not used to kids yelling back at her. You yelled at somebody’s mom for me.”

  I looked back at Shelley and smiled. It was a slow, broken-feeling smile, like only some parts of my face were working right. “Well, duh, yeah.”

  “Remember when you taught me how to make origami frogs?”

  “I just demonstrated it; you figured the rest out yourself.”

  “No, you taught me. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you getting all conceited about it.” Shelley’s smile got a little bigger as she said that, and a tiny ball of warmth came to life inside my chest.

  “Your mom was so mad,” I said, remembering the paper scraps all over the floor of Shelley’s living room. “We made a lot of those frogs.”

  “HUNDREDS of frogs,” Shelley said. “Mom actually found some in the refrigerator.”

  We giggled at the same time, and I suddenly realized how much I missed that.

  Shelley turned away and looked at the empty spot on the wall again.

  “You totally kept me from losing it when my dad got sick,” she said in a quiet voice. “My mom was so out of it, remember?”

  I did remember. The winter Shelley’s dad had open-heart surgery was the worst. Shelley spent a lot of time crying. I went to the hospital once with Mom and Dad, and it was scary seeing Mr. Drake with all those tubes coming out of him like that.

  “It was fun having you stay over here so much,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was. I mean, no, my dad being in the hospital wasn’t fun, but you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You’re my best friend,” Shelley said. “I don’t care if you’re Korean or if you’re from a planet in the Oort cloud or whatever.”

  “The Oort cloud’s too cold to support life,” I said, sounding a little croaky because of the lump that was forming in my throat.

  “Oh, look who’s the big Oort cloud expert just because she’s an ALIEN now.”

  I
snort-laughed.

  “It would be cool if you guys had a spaceship in a secret cave under your garage, though.”

  “Under the greenhouse would be better,” I said. “You know, so the ship’s advanced technology could be used to secretly maintain the glow-in-the-dark fish habitat.”

  “Ooh, maybe we should — ”

  “Too late, I already looked. No secret doors.”

  We giggled, and then I sighed.

  “Making Korean food was fun,” I said.

  “We can still do it, can’t we?”

  “Yeah, but it won’t be the same. It’ll be … it won’t be real the way it was before.”

  “I guess not. I bet you it’ll still be fun, though. As long as we do it together, anyway. And your dad won’t have to lie to us about how his mom made it exactly the same way back in Korea, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re my best friend. I’m your best friend. DEAL with it, Cho.”

  “Didn’t we just have this conversation?” I said.

  “It’s a good conversation. I don’t mind having it again.”

  Shelley stood up, looked down at me, and held out her hand. I looked at it for a second, then put my non-Korean, space alien hand in it. Shelley grinned, a toothy, fierce, radiant grin.

  “I’m helping you, not doing it for you,” she said. “Got it?”

  I grinned back. “Got it.”

  Shelley nodded, then pulled me to my feet.

  “Let’s get to work.”

  In the latest chapter of Chloe Cho’s Adventures in New, Humiliating Experiences in Life, the day of our final Model UN presentation arrived way too fast. Shelley and I worked our butts off — I had, like, no butt left from doing so much work — but we just ran out of time, so when we walked into class that day I felt a totally unfamiliar mix of embarrassment and fear.

  “We’re so screwed,” I said as we took our seats at the front of the class. I felt like a giant spotlight was on me up there, and I wondered if that was the feeling that made the burnouts and losers sit in the back of the room. It was new to me. Ironic hooray, another new experience!

  “Yeah,” Shelley said. “But at least we’re not F-minus screwed, you know?”

  “How do you know?”