by Sarah Suk
Lisa stared. “You use your mom’s lip balm?”
“What? No!” I was really sweaty now. “It’s a new line of lip balm from this K-pop group. My mom advertises for them.” I scuttled across the floor like a crab, snatching up the lip balm tubes as I talked.
“Wait, hold up,” Lisa said, looking closer at the lip balm in her hand. A bunch of her friends were watching us, probably wondering what on earth was going on. Obviously, this conversation was no longer about lunch. Her eyes widened. “Oh my God. This is Crown Tiger, isn’t it?”
At the mention of Crown Tiger, all her friends gasped and came running toward us.
“Wait, what? What about Crown Tiger?” A pink-haired flute player rushed over, nearly tripping over her own feet.
“Is that their new lip-balm line?” one of the percussion players gasped. “Those literally just launched in Korea and sold out in ten minutes.”
“I can’t believe you have a whole bag of them!” Lisa said.
“Are they for sale?” the pink-haired girl asked eagerly. She was already pulling out her sequined wallet. “I’ll give you ten bucks for one.”
Before I knew what was happening, everyone else was pulling out their wallets too. I was too stunned to say anything. Actually, they’re free, I should have said. Just take it. But instead I held out the bag, totally lost for words as they snatched lip balm from my arms and stuffed my hands with ten-dollar bills, running around the band room, screaming, “I got Crown Tiger’s lip balm!” Two girls were viciously fighting over the Namkyu corn-dog mint flavor.
“You’re so cool, Wes,” Lisa said, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe your mom works with Crown Tiger!”
I gulped. I’m not cool. I’m the opposite of cool. I looked down at my hand. Cool or not, I’d gotten one hundred dollars richer in the span of five minutes. How did that happen?
* * *
“How was school, son?”
How was school indeed. I was still trying to wrap my mind around what had happened in band class. I’d been so flustered that I’d immediately fled after the lip-balm sale, dodging Lisa’s lunch invitation. I sat through the rest of my classes wondering why I’d let my classmates pay for something that was meant to be free. Should I find all of them and refund their money? But that would involve explaining the situation to them. I didn’t like this at all.
Dad spun around in his computer chair. He’s a software developer who works from home, but he always dresses as if he’s about to go to an important business lunch. He was wearing a crisp blue dress shirt tucked into a pair of freshly ironed slacks, his hair combed neatly back, his glasses sitting perfectly on the bridge of his nose. People say I’m the spitting image of my dad. I can see it. I definitely get my height and bad eyesight from him, but that’s about where the similarities end.
“School was fine,” I said.
“Math and science going well?”
“As well as ever.”
Dad nodded in approval, adjusting his glasses. “We’ll have to get started on your college applications soon. I’ve added a couple schools to our list for you to consider.”
I said nothing. To my dad, music was a hobby, not a career. He wanted me to study science and become a doctor, his personal dream that got sidetracked when he married my mom and had a kid. It was like he believed that his dreams were just another gene that got passed down to me.
“Son?” Dad prodded. “Did you hear me?”
“Hmm? Right. Yeah.”
Dad frowned. “You’re getting spacey. Don’t zone out now that you’re a senior. This is the most important year.” He tapped his temple. “A man has to stay clear-headed to strive for excellence, right?”
“Right. Excellence.” For a second, I thought about saying what I really wanted to say. That maybe excellence for me was music and maybe the best thing I could possibly do would be to follow the dream I’d had since I first picked up a saxophone when I was seven years old. Heart hammering, I opened my mouth to speak. “Listen, Dad, I—”
But before I could say anything more, his phone dinged with a Kakao message. He looked at the screen and pursed his lips before glancing back at me.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Oh, just your uncle,” he said. He was trying to sound casual, but I could already see the stress lines forming between his eyebrows. “It’s okay, I’ll reply later. You and I were in the middle of a conversation.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, nothing urgent. He’s just being stubborn again, like always.” He laughed, strained. “You know how Uncle Hojin is.”
And there it was. Uncle Hojin is Dad’s younger brother and was my very first saxophone teacher back in Korea. He and Dad had both played music when they were kids, but for Dad it was just a childhood hobby. For Uncle Hojin, it was a lifeline. “Smartest kid in our whole family,” Dad always said when he talked about his brother. “So much potential. He could’ve been anything, but instead he chose to be a musician.”
He’d say the word “musician” like it was the most disappointing word in the world. And I guess to Dad it was. It was no secret that Uncle Hojin struggled to make ends meet. Dad was constantly trying to send him money and help him out, but Uncle Hojin always refused, which stressed Dad out to no end. Probably all the more because their parents had passed away when they were pretty young, so Dad felt like it was his responsibility to take care of his younger brother. I never even got to meet my grandparents on Dad’s side. I wonder if they were musical too.
“Anyway, what were you going to say?” Dad said.
“I… was just going to say that I’ve been having some problems with my saxophone. Air leaks, I think. The pads might be wearing out, so I probably have to get it repaired.”
Kakao! Dad’s phone dinged again, and he glanced at the screen, his eyes skimming the message before looking back up at me. “Doesn’t your school do free rentals? Let’s just rent one for you for the rest of the year instead of wasting money fixing that old sax. You’ll only be playing it for a little while longer anyway, since you won’t have time for it in college.”
Under his confident gaze, I felt myself lock up inside. Any courage I had mustered earlier to try to speak my mind was gone. His phone dinged again.
“You should reply,” I said. “I need to go study now anyway.”
Dad nodded, already reaching for his phone. “Okay, yeah. Study hard so you don’t end up like your uncle, got it?” He laughed like he was joking, even though we both knew he wasn’t. “Let me know if you have any homework questions. I’m always here for you.”
Always here for me except in the ways I needed him to be.
* * *
That night, I scrolled through the internet, looking at all the music schools I had bookmarked. For the longest time, I hadn’t even considered music school as a real option. I knew I loved music and that I wanted to play it for the rest of my life, but it wasn’t until recently, when the future had started becoming more tangible, that I’d realized there was no way I could pursue anything else. Even if it meant totally disappointing my parents. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that if I chose a field I had zero interest in when I knew so clearly what my passions were, I’d regret it for the rest of my life—and, worse, be trapped forever doing something I hated.
This was tricky, though. Mom and Dad had been saving for my college tuition since I was a kid. I was seriously grateful for that, but I knew there was no way they’d use that tuition money for a music school. I’d have to pave my own way. I imagined telling them as much and felt my hands go clammy. Ah. Well. I could cross the telling-parents bridge when I got there. No need to think about it now.
I’d have to see if it was financially possible first. Maybe if I got a part-time job? Though Dad wasn’t a big fan of the idea of me working while I was in high school. He always told me to focus on my studies for now, and, really, what did I need money for anyway? Still. Maybe I could work secretly. Or convince him that I actu
ally really needed a part-time job for work experience. Colleges love work experience. And I could apply for financial aid.
Let’s see… The most urgent thing I had to pay for were application fees, which were due in December for the schools I was looking at. Then the enrollment and housing deposits in May. Oh, and I had to get my saxophone fixed ASAP. Maybe it was sentimental, but I couldn’t just ditch my saxophone for a rental. Not after everything we’d been through together.
I pulled up my phone calculator, adding up how much I needed for one school. The application, enrollment and housing deposits, and repair fees would come up to around… two thousand dollars. Wow. I flipped my phone facedown and dropped my head on the desk.
This was going to be harder than I thought.
“Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy,” Uncle Hojin used to say during our saxophone lessons. He’d point to his forehead with a twinkle in his eye. “Just look at my wrinkles! All these wrinkles are a sign of something I worked hard for. A fair trade-off, I think.”
I still had his email scrawled on the back of some sheet music he’d given me. “Contact me anytime,” he’d said. “Really, anytime. I love getting email, but no one ever emails me, not even your dad.” Even with messenger apps like KakaoTalk and video-chatting apps, Uncle Hojin and I mostly stayed in touch through email. It was kind of our thing: writing long updates to each other, attaching music links that we thought the other would like, not replying for months, and then picking up right where we left off with a video of an amazing busker we saw on the street. But with all the moving I’d been doing, our emails had slowly tapered out. We hadn’t spoken in years, except for the occasional hello during his phone calls with Dad.
I found myself pulling out the folded piece of sheet music now, creased from years of bouncing from country to country. I chewed my lip and opened up a new email draft on my computer.
Subject: Annyeonghaseyo
Dear Uncle Hojin,
Hello! It’s been a long time since we talked (really talked, not just hello) and even longer since we’ve seen each other in person. I think the last time was in middle school, and now I’m nearly a high school graduate. Well, almost. Graduation is in the spring, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do after.…
I know this is out of the blue, but you’re the only person I know who went into music after school, and I think I want to do the same. Actually, I know I do. It’s the only thing I love enough to even imagine pursuing. But my dad thinks I’ll be making a huge mistake if I do. I guess I just wanted to ask—have you ever regretted your decision?
It’s kind of funny that we’ve never talked about this before even though we talked so much about music. But I feel like you would understand. Writing to you makes me feel less alone, like I’m not the only person in the world who’s felt this way. Maybe you even had these exact same thoughts when you were my age.
I stared at the screen. What would Dad say if he found out I’d tried to contact his brother, saying these kinds of things? He would probably flip out. But he never had to know.
Hope you are well, I added at the end. Then, before I could think too much about it, I hit send: a call for help into cyberspace.
Tuesday / September 17
The next morning, I dragged my feet to school. I’d decided I would return everybody’s money, which meant I had to hunt them all down and explain the mistake I’d made. I was not looking forward to that.
When I turned the corner to my locker, though, I found two people already standing in front of it. One was a girl in an oversized corduroy jacket, a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. I didn’t recognize her, but there was something about the way she stood, shoulders back, posture straight, emanating confidence, that made me feel like I should. The other was a boy in my math class: Charlie Song. He was wearing a basketball jersey and had a backpack slung over one shoulder. They were talking in low voices. When Charlie saw me, he abruptly stopped speaking and nudged the girl in the side. Her eyes locked on mine as I approached, sharp and appraising, making my palms sweat.
I hesitated. They were standing directly in front of my locker. “Sorry. Excuse me…”
I shuffled to the left. They moved to their right, blocking me. I moved to the right and they shadowed me, blocking me again.
“What’s up?” I asked in alarm.
“Wes Jung, right? Second row, calculus?” Charlie said, giving me a quick once-over. “You probably know me already. I’m Charlie Song. This is my cousin, Valerie Kwon.”
My eyes shifted to Valerie. I smiled cautiously. She stared back, raising an eyebrow. The smile slipped off my face.
“We know about your lip-balm sales,” she said, cutting straight to the chase.
I sucked in my breath. Shit. How did they find out that the lip balm was actually supposed to be free? Were they the school’s FBI going undercover as teens or something?
“I can explain,” I said.
“Actually, I’ll do the explaining,” she said. She pointed back and forth between Charlie and herself. “See us? We’re V&C K-BEAUTY. We sell Korean beauty products at this school. I heard you’ve been selling lip balm, and I’m going to have to ask you to stop. You’re new here, so I’ll assume you didn’t mean anything by it, but you’re kind of stealing our customers.”
I blinked. Well, that was unexpected.
“I… um, what do you mean?” Real smooth, Wes. Why did my tongue always stop working in situations like this?
“It’s a small school,” she said, shrugging her shoulders like What can you do? “There’s no room for two of us. And we’re not interested in sharing our profits. You get what I mean?”
She cocked her head to the side and looked up at me, her gaze unwavering. This close, I could smell the faint scent of some kind of strawberry candy on her lips. Unlike the sharp intensity in her eyes, her lips looked soft and gentle. She had a pretty mouth. I wondered what it would look like to see her smile.
“Hello?” She waved her hand in front of my face, making my eyes dart back to hers. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Um. Yes.” I swallowed hard. When I didn’t say anything more, her pretty mouth turned down in a scowl. Pretty and also scary as hell. I was even sweatier than I had been yesterday. What was she talking about anyway? Stealing her customers? No room for two of us? My brain was working double time, trying to piece together what she was saying.
“So?” she said.
“So…”
She sighed. “Do you get what I mean?”
“Oh. Right.” I nodded rapidly. “Yes. Got it.” I definitely didn’t, but it seemed safer to agree.
We stared at each other. I held my breath as she surveyed me, calculating, like she was trying to gauge how honest I was being. She must have been satisfied by what she saw, because she finally gave me one curt nod back, breaking eye contact. “Okay. Good.” Then she turned on her heel and walked down the hall.
“Smart move,” Charlie said. “You don’t want to get on her bad side.” He clapped a sympathetic hand on my shoulder before disappearing after Valerie.
I leaned against my locker and put a hand over my chest, letting out a breath. My heart was hammering. It felt like I had just had a near-death experience.
One part of my brain was relieved to have escaped Valerie’s glare alive. The other part was turning over something she had said: “We’re not interested in sharing our profits.”
I thought of the hundred dollars that had come so easily into my hands yesterday. The students at Crescent Brook High were hungry buyers, there was no doubt about that. Not to mention there were a lot of K-pop fans. And, clearly, they had some extra spending money if V&C K-BEAUTY could be successful. How much did V&C make, exactly? Enough that they had a stable market.
Enough to help me fix my saxophone and pay my application fees?
“Excuse me,” a voice said. I turned my head. A girl who had the locker next to me stood beside me, books in her arms. I tried to recall her na
me. Pauline Lim. We were in the same biology class. We’d played Two Truths and a Lie as an icebreaker, and her two truths were that she was half-Korean, half-Irish, and that she was an aspiring marine biologist. Her lie was that she was allergic to kiwis. “I’m really allergic to arugula,” she’d said.
In the same moment, I also realized I was leaning against her locker. “Sorry,” I said, sliding out of the way.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. As she dialed the combination, I couldn’t shake the thought of Valerie. Her words tumbled around inside my head.
“Hey,” I said to Pauline. She looked up. “What do you know about V&C K-BEAUTY?”
CHAPTER THREE VALERIE
Saturday / September 28
The smell of sizzling pajeon wafted in the air as I walked into the kitchen, wearing my Pompompurin pajamas. I yawned and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. The kitchen was way too busy for a Saturday morning. Charlie stood over the frying pan in a red-checkered apron, whistling along to his Chill Rap Spotify playlist, while Samantha, who came home every weekend from college, was mixing pajeon batter in a big glass bowl. Don’t people know that Saturday mornings are for sleeping in?
“Hi,” Charlie said, expertly flipping the scallion pancake in his frying pan.
“Hi.” I looked him up and down. “You look like a picnic table.”
“Wow. Good morning to you, too.”
“Not exactly morning anymore,” Samantha teased. A few wisps of hair fell out of her ponytail and into her face like they always did, probably because she used the same stretched-out spiral hair ties that she bought in bulk at the beginning of the year and wore until they snapped. “It’s nearly noon.”
“It’s eleven forty-seven a.m.,” I said. “And ‘a.m.’ still means morning, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Growing up, Samantha and I fought all the time over stuff like who got the last Yakult drink or who got to choose which movie to watch. Physical fights, where we’d bite each other’s arms and sit on each other until the other person couldn’t breathe. You know, sister stuff. We don’t fight like that anymore, but God knows she loves to drag me any chance she gets. It’s like she gets actual joy from annoying me. And, okay, maybe I get a little bit of joy from annoying her too. Maybe. Just a little.
