Made in Korea

by Sarah Suk

  Oh my God. That definitely hadn’t been there the year before. Heart racing, I tried to pull away from the lockers, but I was stuck. I looked down. Oh shit. Shit shit shit. My fishnet stockings were caught in the sticky string of lights and cobwebs. I grasped at the lights, desperately trying to untangle them from my leg, but the more I wrestled, the more my stockings started to rip. Frustration bubbled up in my throat. This can’t be how the race ends.

  Suddenly, Wes was kneeling in front of me, his hands gently untangling the lights from my stockings. His brow was furrowed, his glasses hitching up at the wrinkle in his nose as he concentrated, taking care not to rip my stockings any more than I already had. I stood frozen to the spot as his fingers brushed against my leg, finally freeing me from the string of cobwebbed lights.

  He looked up at me, a question in the air. I knew what he was asking without him saying it out loud. I could see it in his eyes, in the way he was still kneeling in front of me instead of bolting for the band room.

  Are we still at war?

  For a moment, I considered extending my hand and helping him up. After seeing his sales at the market, I knew I had the better business. He wasn’t a threat anymore. And there was something about the way he’d stopped to free me, the way his fingers had brushed against my skin and made my breath catch in my throat, the way he was looking at me right now with such hope and seriousness and genuine anticipation, that made me want to say, All right, the war is over. Good game, Wes Jung.

  But then I heard footsteps coming down the hall and I felt something stronger. The desire to win. To nail in my victory and prove that I was really the best.

  “I thought you were competition,” I said. “But I guess I was wrong.”

  I pushed past him and ran to the band room. I heard him leap up, chase after me. But it was too late. I had already won.

  * * *

  “Valerie, you’re the best!” Charlie cheered as I held up my Haunted House Race cash prize. “I knew you would win!”

  I grinned triumphantly.

  “Congratulations, Valerie,” Pauline said from the next table over. “Looks like you won fair and square. I suppose Wes owes you some advertising now.”

  I tried to ignore the twinge of guilt I felt at her words. It was like Pauline knew what had happened in the haunted house. But why should I feel guilty? It was fair and square. Nobody had asked Wes to stop and help me. He could have won. “Thanks,” I said.

  Charlie glanced awkwardly at Pauline and turned away, shoving his hands in his pockets. Pauline quickly looked away as well, busying herself with the table. I looked between the two of them. Okay, weird. This had definitely not been the vibe when I left.

  “What happened?” I whispered to Charlie.

  “Um, I’ll tell you later,” he said. He glanced up and nodded at someone behind me. “For now, you should cash in your win.”

  I turned around to see Wes walking toward us, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The guilt in me grew larger. He looked so innocent. I pushed down the feeling, fumbling in my pockets for a mango Hi-Chew. My celebration flavor. Maybe the taste of celebrating would help push the guilt away.

  “So I believe you owe me some advertisement, Wes Jung,” I said, slipping the mango Hi-Chew into my mouth.

  He gave me a steady look and my heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t quite read the expression on his face. Disbelief? Anger? Was he going to call me out in front of everyone at the market?

  Instead he nodded. “Of course. We shook on it.” He held my gaze like he was seeing something new about me, but it wasn’t anger in his eyes. It was intrigue. “I’ll do whatever you say.”

  My stomach flipped. Was it the guilt again or something different, something to do with the way Wes was looking at me?

  “Time for you to pay up, then,” I said too loudly, trying to distract myself from whatever it was I was feeling. I grabbed a red lipstick from my table. “How attached are you to your shirt?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You want my shirt? Um. I mean. Okay. Sure. But what am I going to wear?”

  I walked up to Wes, closing the distance between us. He was so tall I only came up to his shoulders, which meant I was eye level with his chest. Perfect. “Don’t worry,” I said, popping the cap off the lipstick and twisting it up. “You can keep it on.” I leaned in to write on his shirt. I felt his breath hitch, but he didn’t move away. In big, bold letters across his chest, I spelled out V&C K-BEAUTY, stepping back to review my handiwork when I was done.

  “Go on, then,” I said, capping the lipstick. “The carnival’s your catwalk.”

  For a second he stared at me, stunned. He was blushing furiously, but he quickly cleared his throat, regaining composure. He flashed me a quick smile and turned to Pauline.

  “Pauline,” he said. “You okay to keep watching the table?”

  She nodded, a flicker of amusement in her eyes. “Of course.”

  He nodded back and, with a swish of his cape, walked into the carnival with my lipstick on his chest.

  * * *

  That night, after Charlie dropped me off, I tiptoed into the house, careful not to wake anyone. The Halloween Market ribbon was pinned to the front of my red velvet dress. I felt good, high off the adrenaline of everything that had happened. I couldn’t wait to show Halmeoni. Umma and Appa would be sleeping already, but I knew she would be waiting up for me. She always did on Halloween. I’d go straight up to her room, right after I scoured the leftover candy basket.

  “You’re home late,” a voice said as soon as I walked into the kitchen. My heart nearly leaped into my throat. I flicked on the lights to reveal Samantha standing at the table, digging through the basket of Halloween candy, a black blanket scarf draped over her shoulders and a witch’s hat tucked under the crook of her arm.

  “You scared me,” I said. “What are you doing in the dark?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” She waved a mini box of Skittles. “I was handing these out to trick-or-treaters all night. Now it’s my turn.”

  I peered into the basket. “Are there any Kit Kats left?”

  “Duh. Halloween tradition. I save you the Kit Kats and in return—”

  “—you get all the sour candies.” I grinned as she tossed me a Kit Kat. “Thanks.”

  She glanced at the ribbon on my chest. “What’s that?”

  I looked down at the ribbon, smoothing it out. “V&C K-BEAUTY won the Halloween Market ribbon again.”

  “Cute,” she said, already turning back to the candy basket.

  My smile slipped a little. Cute. Samantha wasn’t as flippant as Umma about my business, but she still saw it as a cute side hobby. Suddenly the ribbon didn’t feel so special anymore. In fact, it felt a bit childish.

  Samantha sifted through the candy, looking wistful. “I kind of wish I’d gotten to do that at least once during high school. I never went to those Halloween Markets.”

  “Oh yeah.” This was true. In all my childhood memories of Halloween, Samantha was at home handing out candy while Charlie and I went trick-or-treating. I always wondered why she never went to the Halloween Market with her friends instead. “Why didn’t you?”

  She shrugged. “Someone had to stay home and help Umma and Appa with the candy. You know how many trick-or-treaters we get around here.”

  Ever-dutiful Samantha. I sighed. “You should have said no at least once. The market is fun. It’s part of the high school experience.” Come to think of it, weren’t Halloween parties part of the college experience? Only Samantha would opt out of that to come home and help Umma and Appa hand out candy instead. She really hasn’t changed one bit.

  She stared at me for a while, not saying anything.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing. It’s just… it must be nice,” she said finally, “to be the youngest child. So carefree.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

  “Never mind.” She shrugged, snapping out of whatever weird melancho
lic state she was in. She grinned instead, hugging her blanket scarf around her shoulders. “Thanks for letting me borrow this, by the way. It was perfect for my costume.”

  “I thought that looked familiar! When did I say you could borrow it?”

  “Never, but it looks better on me anyway, don’t you think?” She grinned and popped a sour candy into her mouth before waltzing out of the kitchen. “Good night.”

  I rolled my eyes and smiled, heading up as well to get ready for bed. I washed the makeup off my face and changed into my Pompompurin pajamas before padding into Halmeoni’s room. The lights were still on, but she was already dozing on the floor. Halmeoni likes to sleep on a blanket on the floor like she did back in Korea instead of on a bed. I used to insist on sleeping on the floor with her when I was a kid. Sometimes I still do.

  I switched off the lights and curled up on the floor next to Halmeoni, tugging the blanket over both our bodies and snuggling against her. Her eyes flickered open, adjusting to the moonlight.

  “My girl, you’re home,” she said. “How was the Halloween Market?”

  I held up the Halloween Market ribbon. “Jjajan! Your granddaughter won this again for the best business at the market.”

  She gasped, fully awake now. “Aigoo, my girl is so smart!” She patted my cheeks with both her hands. “I’m so proud of you. You must show your parents tomorrow.”

  My smile slipped a notch, remembering Samantha’s earlier comment. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. It’s not that important. It’s not even a real prize, really.”

  “Ridiculous,” Halmeoni said. “What’s more real than all your hard work? You won this because you deserve it.” She smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Now, tell me more about your night. Did you make new friends?”

  Halmeoni was always asking if I was making friends, even in my senior year of high school. My cheeks warmed at the thought of Wes freeing my stockings and me writing with lipstick on his shirt. Friends? Maybe more like enemies.

  “Um… kind of,” I said.

  “Good, good,” she said. “It’s important for you to make friends at this age. Charlie’s a good boy, but you need more than just your cousin, hmm?”

  I smiled in response, choosing to say nothing. Halmeoni didn’t know this, but I didn’t really have that many friends at school. I had a lot of customers, though. It wasn’t quite the same, but I didn’t mind. There would be time to make friends later. Right now I had to focus on my sales.

  Maybe she had a point that I needed more than Charlie, but I already had her. Wasn’t that enough?

  “Can I sleep here with you tonight, Halmeoni?” I whispered.

  “Of course,” she said, already falling back asleep.

  I closed my eyes. The last thing I thought of was Wes, the heat of his palm pressed against mine as we shook on the race.

  CHAPTER SIX WES

  Friday / November 1

  “So, how are you feeling about last night?”

  Pauline looked at me as she pulled out a sandwich from her fish-patterned lunch bag, a teasing grin on her face. We were sitting out in the courtyard for lunch, right next to where the Halloween Market had been the night before. My face warmed at the memory of Valerie uncapping her lipstick and writing on my shirt. As soon as I’d gone home last night, I’d unbuttoned my shirt in the bathroom and tried to wash out the lipstick stain, but it was there to stay for good.

  I guess I owe Dad a new shirt now.

  “To be honest, I’m not sure,” I said, unwrapping the chicken burger I got from the cafeteria. “Valerie is… something. It was probably not the smartest thing to take a bet against her, huh?”

  Valerie Kwon. She wasn’t exactly the warmest person I’d ever met. Pretty much the opposite, really. A part of me was stung by the way she’d screwed me over in the haunted house. I’d replayed that moment over and over in my mind, wondering if I should have seen it coming, if I’d made a mistake stopping to help her. If the roles had been reversed, I was almost certain she wouldn’t have stopped for me. She would have kept on running, never losing sight of her goal. I’d known it from the moment we met. She was a scary girl.

  But another part of me was weirdly impressed. She’d challenged me to that Haunted House Race like she already knew she would win, before betting me anything. From the sales to the race to claiming her prize, she’d basically steamrolled over me. I didn’t stand a chance. It was embarrassing, but more than that, it was sobering. I’d always known that I wasn’t the most confident guy, but standing next to Valerie made me realize just how unconfident I really was.

  “Well, smart or not, you only grow by taking risks, right?” Pauline said as if reading my thoughts. “Though I was meaning to ask you, what happened in the haunted house? The vibe was kind of weird between you two afterward.”

  Uh… I suddenly became very interested in my chicken burger, which was really not very interesting at all. That was a good question. Other than Valerie betraying me, there was that one other thing that happened in the haunted house. That thing I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since. I couldn’t even really say what “that thing” was exactly, but it was whatever I was feeling when I was kneeling in front of Valerie, fingers light against her stockinged legs, our eyes fixed on each other, a moment of suspension where suddenly we were the only two people in the world and my heart was a beating crescendo in my ears.

  The sound of a bouncing ball jolted me out of my thoughts. I looked up from my burger to see Charlie jogging out to the basketball court with a group of guys, all laughing and passing the ball back and forth.

  “Speaking of weird vibes, maybe I should ask you what happened with Charlie while I was in the haunted house,” I said, eager to change the subject. “It seemed like you two were getting along pretty well before I left. What happened?”

  The corners of her lips turned down in a frown. “Oh. Yeah. I don’t know. It started out okay. But then, just out of the blue, he asked me if I had a crush on you. I said, ‘What? No. We’re friends.’ And he got real awkward after that, like he didn’t know how to continue the conversation. He kept opening his mouth and closing it without saying anything. Exactly like a goldfish.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. We used to be friends a long time ago. That fact-sharing thing was something we used to do all the time. Talking with him again at the market felt like we were picking up right where we left off, but…” She trailed off and glanced at me, embarrassed. “Sorry. Am I oversharing?”

  “No, no, go on,” I encouraged her. Truthfully, I was curious about her relationship with Charlie, especially after his weird Q&A with me in calculus class.

  “So… in sophomore year, Charlie and I were paired together to work on a science project at the aquarium. It was a scavenger hunt, where we had to go around and take notes on different animals. That’s how the fact-sharing game started, actually. We’d run around the aquarium and yell things to each other like, ‘Did you know that seahorses have no teeth and no stomach?’ It was a lot of fun.”

  She traced an absentminded finger over the fish on her lunch bag. “He was actually the one who encouraged me to get more into marine biology. I’ve always loved science, and I thought one day I would become a scientist. But while we were eating lunch by the otter tank, he said to me, ‘I’ve never seen someone get as excited about the ocean as you. I feel like it’s your calling or something.’ And that really stuck with me, you know? It was one of those things that should have been so obvious, but I didn’t realize it until he said it.”

  I nodded. I could understand that feeling of realizing something that had been right in front of your face the whole time. It was how I felt about music school.

  “So what happened?” I asked. “What changed?”

  “Well, one day I overheard Charlie and Valerie talking in the hallway. Charlie was telling Valerie that he was going to meet me for a study hangout and that she could join us if she wanted to. And Valerie replied, ‘Why would I hang out with her? She
never even shops with us.’ ”

  I winced. “Oh. Awkward.” What a thing to overhear about yourself.

  “Yeah. And after that, you know what happened? Charlie texted me and said he couldn’t make it to our hangout. He said something came up with the business. I kind of got the feeling that he bailed because of what Valerie had said, and, I don’t know, it made me feel weird. I didn’t want to assume, but then after that, there was this awkwardness between us that wasn’t there before. It was like he didn’t know how to be around me anymore. So I started distancing myself, and we just… drifted. Hence, present day.”

  “I think maybe he might like you,” I said carefully, thinking again of our conversation in calculus class. It was pretty painfully obvious that Charlie had a thing for Pauline. Even I could tell, and I was new.

  “What?” Her brow furrowed like she was considering a tricky science experiment. “But we’ve barely spoken in years. He doesn’t even know me that well anymore. How can you like someone you don’t know?”

  “He might not know you that well yet, but I think the fact that he wants to get to know you more says something,” I said. Valerie flashed through my mind, all Minnie Mouse ears and fishnet stockings. I nearly choked on my burger, coughing on a huge piece of lettuce. Why was she still in my head?

  Pauline pounded me on the back. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded, tears squeezing out the corners of my eyes. “Yep, all good,” I rasped.

  She passed me my water bottle and I took it gratefully.

  “We should probably talk strategy for our sales,” she said as I chugged down the water, trying to get Valerie out of my mind. “We didn’t do too well at the Halloween Market. Do you have a plan?”

  A plan? Good question. Another thing that had become painfully obvious at the market: Valerie knew how to sell. She was a real businesswoman, and I was just a guy with some beauty products and no plan. If I wanted to meet the application deadline and, more urgently, fix my saxophone, I had to step up my game. It was getting harder and harder to play with my old sax in class.