Hello, I Love You (31 page)

From Korea, with love,

Grace

The graduation ceremony takes a lot longer than I thought it would. There’re only fifty kids graduating—the smallest senior class the school has ever had. But after the third speech, I’m beginning to think an American public school graduation, where there are five hundred seniors, would be faster.

I’m the last person to walk across the stage, and when I take the diploma from the principal, it’s like he’s handing me my future. My entire life stretches out before me, choices I face now and ones I won’t know about for years. I can be the obedient child and go home like Momma wants. It would be the easy choice, to go back to Tennessee, attend Vanderbilt, maybe work at Dad’s label after I graduate.

Or I could take a risk.

I came to Korea to escape. I ran here, and somehow, I ended up loving this country and its people. And I don’t want to run anymore. Does that mean I have to go home to face my past? Or can I face it here? Can I be happy in Asia? Can I really start over?

I want to try.

*   *   *

“I know what you’re feeling right now.” Jane recrosses her legs, shifts in her seat, picks up her soda cup and sets it back down again. “So don’t pretend like there’s nothing going on.”

I swirl the dregs of my coffee, unable to take my eyes off the inside of my mug—safer than actually meeting Jane’s gaze. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She huffs. “Don’t be ridiculous, Gracie.”

But she doesn’t continue. I’ve never seen her this agitated, this at a loss for words. After the postgraduation lunch with Momma, Jane said she wanted to go for coffee in Incheon, just us. Which means me drinking coffee and her sipping caffeine-free soda from a straw she’s chewed into submission, because Jane on caffeine is a scary thing.

“Everything went wrong after Nathan died,” she whispers suddenly, and her voice sends a chill rippling down my back.

Jane catches my gaze and holds it with her hazel eyes. Eyes that look so much like Nathan’s, it’s like my brother staring back at me again.

I jerk my head away and stare out the window at the busy street with its sidewalks full of people. But it feels like my heart is cracking, little pieces of it chipping away. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t—

“Grace.” Jane reaches across the table and grabs my hand.

Tears pool in my eyes.

“Why did you move here?”

I clear my throat, giving myself time to get a better hold on the emotions twisting up my insides. “I guess I just … needed to get away.”

Her lips quiver. “Because of Nathan?”

I nod.

She sighs and lets go of my hand so she can sit back in her chair. “You’re being dumb.”

My eyes widen, and I’m momentarily shocked enough to forget the grief threatening to shatter me.
“What?”

She shakes her head. “You’ve always taken things too hard. You think everything’s your fault. News flash—it’s not.”

“What are—” My voice falters. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you need to stop blaming yourself for Nathan’s death, because it wasn’t your fault,” she says almost flippantly, like she’s telling me to stop whining about not getting the Christmas present I wanted. “I don’t know how you got it into your head that you were somehow responsible for Nathan, but that’s just insane.”

Jane levels me with a hard stare, and I realize I’ve never seen her this serious. There’s a new maturity to her that she’s never shown me before.

“You didn’t kill Nathan,” she says. “He killed himself. And if you had some responsibility in his death, then so do the rest of us. Because we’re a family, and we take care of each other. Obviously, we didn’t—” Her voice catches, and she has to start again. “We didn’t do a good job of taking care of him. But that’s on
all
of us, not just you.”

She swallows hard. Emotion builds in my own throat. She frowns, licks her lips. “It hurt my feelings when you left.” She crosses her arms, shifting in her seat. “I mean, I know why you did. I get it—you wanted to get away from everybody. But you left us all jacked up. Do you know what that did to Mom and Dad? They’d just lost Nathan, and then you left, too.” Her voice drops to little more than a murmur. “There were a few times I thought Mom was going to lose it. You have no idea.”

“Jane, I’m sorry—”

“No.” Her eyes harden. “Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. I just want you to understand. You think we all blame you for Nathan’s death, but that’s not true.
You’re
the one who blames yourself.”

“But at the funeral, Momma said—”

“We all said things we didn’t mean that day,” she interrupts. “We were grieving.”

I still am—grieving. But I can’t say that. I can’t tell her how much pain I’ve carried around with me for months. She doesn’t understand. She didn’t know Nathan the way I did. She was too young.

“He was my idol,” I whisper. “Why did he do it? I still don’t understand.”

She shrugs. “Who knows? He was messed up, Grace. Do you not remember the mean things he said about Mom when he was drunk, the way he and Dad fought all the time? He wasn’t a saint, you know.”

Anger sparks. “He was our brother!”

“And you’re my sister,” she challenges. “And I’m not letting you feel bad about yourself the rest of your life. I don’t care if you go to Vanderbilt or spend the rest of your life here, but whatever you choose, do it for you, not because you’re trying to get away from Nathan’s ghost.”

The tears escape my eyes now, trickle down my cheeks. I swipe at them, but more keep coming until my nose is running and my shoulders are shaking and I’m a wet, snotty mess in the middle of the caf
é
.

Jane clears her throat, her nose wrinkling. “You look disgusting right now.”

But her eyes are shiny, and I know what she doesn’t say—that when she says we’re a family, she means it; that she loves me and that she wants me to be happy.

I wipe my nose with a napkin, and we leave the restaurant. When we get out on the sidewalk, I throw my arms around Jane and pull her into a hug.

I squeeze her tight against me. “Thanks, little sis.”

She pats my back awkwardly, then when I keep holding on, tries to push me away. “Okay, okay, enough hugging!”

I let go with a laugh, and we make our way toward the hotel. Nothing has really changed since before our conversation—Nathan’s still dead, my mother is still impossible to get along with, and Dad still treats work like it’s more important than his family, which is probably the reason he didn’t come to graduation—but I don’t feel the same.

“What are you going to tell Mom?” Jane asks as we ride the elevator up to their floor.

“I don’t know yet. But I know I can’t go back to Tennessee.”

She stares hard at the floor. “Are you going to live with Sophie?”

“Maybe.” I punch her shoulder. “But there’s no way she’ll be nearly as cool a housemate as my little sister.”

Jane’s lips curl into a smile as the elevator doors slide open.

She pauses outside her room.

“I’m going to miss you,” she says. “Keep sending me letters, okay?”

My eyes sting with tears again. “Always.”

“And make sure you say good things about me to Yoon Jae. I could use a sexy Korean in my life.” Her smile turns wry, but it’s forced.

I swing my arm to hit her on the back of the head, but she dodges my hand and pushes open the door. She pops her head back out, and I think I see a tear running into her mouth.

“I love you, Gracie.”

My chest tightens, but I can’t stop smiling. “I love you, too.”

*   *   *

I see Jane and Momma off to the airport a couple days later. Momma and I spent hours going around and around about whether I had to go back home. But all it took was a simple explanation to get her to listen.

“I’m not ready to go home yet,” I said. “It reminds me too much of Nathan, and I can’t be there right now. I’m sorry.”

She stared at me a long time, but there was no criticism in her eyes this time. All she did was nod. No declaration of blessing or promises to support me no matter what I decided.

But it was enough.

She didn’t even mention the article plastered all over the Internet about Nathan Cross’s sister being to blame for his death,
à
la reporter Kevin. There’s no way she didn’t see it. She just exercised self-control for once.

And in that moment, I realized something: Relationships may be messy and I may not be able to calculate them like an algebra equation, but they’re worth it. And what Momma and I have is worth trying to save, as fragile as it is. Maybe we can be friends one day, maybe not. But I want to try.

I wave at Jane as she follows Momma into the security line. She points to the tall boy in front of her, then throws me a thumbs-up and pretends to swoon. I chuckle, the sting of missing her already settling in.

But I’m not sad. I guess I should be. It’s going to be a long time before I see my family again. But I’m not.

Jason and Jane were right—Nathan’s death wasn’t my fault, and I need to stop thinking it was. I did what I could, and I’ve been carrying around a lot of guilt for too long. It still hurts, this pain that lingers, but it’s not the crippling sort of pain it once was, just a residual ache. And that I can handle.

A calm assurance fills me, and a smile forms on my lips. For the first time since Nathan’s death, I feel a sliver of freedom. I’m done hiding who I am, where I come from. I’m ready to start again. To be me.

No more running.

Chapter Twenty-six

I get home from the airport and find Sophie packing up clothes in one of her suitcases. Panic jolts through me.

“Sophie, what are you doing?” I ask, fear lacing my voice. “They’re not kicking us off campus until for another two weeks.”

She glances at the wad of clothes in her hand, then at me, and laughs. “I’m not leaving right now. I just wanted to get a head start on packing up.”

A gigantic wave of relief floods me, but it dissipates when I realize just how soon this will all be over. Two weeks. Then what am I going to do with my life?

My visa runs out in a month and it’s renewable, but the school’s going to kick me out in two weeks. I could ask Sophie if I could stay with her in Seoul, but we haven’t talked as much since I started hanging out more with Jason.

I sit down on the edge of my bed, tucking my head so it doesn’t hit the top bunk. “So how’s Tae Hwa?” I ask, realizing we haven’t talked much about her personal life in a while.

“Fine,” she says.

But there’s something off in her voice.

“Are you guys okay?”

Her eyes narrow at me. “He said we shouldn’t date. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Sophie—”

“It’s not a big deal,” she assures me, returning to her packing.

I wait a moment, letting the issue of her and Tae Hwa drop. I won’t push it if she doesn’t want to talk about it. But we need to clear the air.

“Sophie, can we talk for a second?”

She stops folding clothes and forces a smile. “Yeah, what’s up?”

I bite the inside of my cheek, searching for the best way to start this conversation. “I just want to apologize. I feel like I sorta ditched you after I started hanging out with Jason more.”

She shrugs, despite the tightness around her eyes. “It’s not a big deal. You guys got close, that’s all.”

“But I feel like I have to explain what happened.” My voice drops to an embarrassed murmur. “Especially after you walked in on us the other night.”

She cracks a smile. “I know you guys didn’t sleep together, like, in
that
way. Jason is way too conservative to do anything like that. I was just making a joke the next morning.”

I get to my feet, no longer able to sit still. “I know, but I don’t want you to be mad at me. It almost felt like we were choosing sides when the band broke up, like you were Team Tae Hwa and I was Team Jason or something, but I didn’t want it to be that way. It almost felt like you didn’t like me hanging out with your brother.”

Sophie forces a humorless laugh. “Why would I not like that?”

“I don’t know.”

We just look at each other for a moment, then she sighs. “It’s dumb.”

“You can tell me, anyway.”

She sits on top of her desk, beside a pile of T-shirts, and stares at her hands, which she holds in her lap. “Jason and I are twins, so we’ve been really close since we were little. We were all each other had when we lived in New York. But then we moved back to Seoul, and it seemed like Jason sort of outgrew me.” Her bottom lip quivers. “So when he decided to come to Ganghwa Island to get away from the music business, I came, too. I was hoping that we could reconnect again. But then he met you.”

My insides twist, half in remorse for helping pull Jason away from Sophie, but half in expectance of what she’ll say next. She thinks Jason saw me as important enough to keep him from hanging out with his sister? I can’t decide how I feel about that—honored or concerned.

“At first, it was okay,” she continues. “Although it bothered me that he didn’t seem to like you.”

I chuckle, thinking back to when Jason and I barely knew each other. The dislike was mutual.

She catches my gaze, sadness filling hers, and I sober.

“Then you guys started hanging out a lot,” she says, “and he didn’t have time for me. That’s normal, I guess. I mean, I hung out with Tae Hwa a lot. It was natural for Jason to find someone else to spend time with, and I’m glad it’s you—I like you a lot, Grace.” She pauses. “I guess I’m just not sure what to do now, facing losing him.”

“But you’re not losing him! Just because he and I are friends doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to spend time with you anymore.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. It’s different now. I never had to compete with a girlfriend. It’s weird.”

Heat burns the tips of my ears. “I’m not his girlfriend.”

“Yet. I’ve seen the way you guys look at each other.”

We fall silent, and my mind struggles to wrap around that word—
yet.

“I should have sided with him during the band’s breakup. He needed someone to back him up, and I didn’t.” Tears pool in Sophie’s eyes, and she laughs them off even as one slips down her cheek. “But I was too distracted by Tae Hwa to even consider my own brother, my
twin
.”