The Fold (3 page)

“Do you have any plans for summer?” Joyce asked Lynn, trying to keep her mind off her bigger task. Joyce had planned to ask John to sign her yearbook at the end of class.

“I’m taking this accelerated summer science program at Cal Tech,” Lynn said, pushing her glasses up and focusing on the beaker in her hands. Lynn’s hair kept falling into her face, making her look slightly deranged. Joyce wanted to hand her a rubber band to tie back the mess.

“That sounds fun,” Joyce said, watching John cross the room to his desk.

“Are you crazy?” Lynn glanced up from her task. “I think it’s going to be hell, but my guidance counselor thought it would make my apps for college stronger.”

Joyce dropped the paper towel to conceal her embarrassment and bent down to retrieve it.

“I just mean it’ll be fun to meet other people who aren’t from this school,” Joyce said, standing up.

“Yeah, that’s for sure,” Lynn said, her eyes following two guys throwing paper balls at each other. “Hopefully there won’t be as many losers.”

Joyce smiled. She had to give it to Lynn. No matter how bad she might look, Lynn honestly didn’t care what other people thought. She was bent on a specific Ivy League school, and everything she did was to achieve her goal. Her quiet confidence made Joyce wish she could ask for Lynn’s secret formula.

They finished up silently and placed the clean beakers back into the cabinet. Joyce turned around and surveyed the room for John. He was sitting on top of his desk talking to one of his friends. He always had someone who wanted to talk to him. Even though he was Asian, he looked and acted like everyone else. Like someone who belonged in this school, in this
neighborhood, with all these students. Not an immigrant that moved into the area or faked an address to attend one of the best schools in Orangedale. Maybe it was because he was only half Asian and looked like some movie star. Or maybe it was because he knew he had an exotic model mother who probably didn’t cook kimchee ji-geh at home, stinking up the entire house. Joyce wandered back to her desk to retrieve her yearbook. And if John’s mom didn’t cook Korean food, then John’s dad had to get his Korean food fix somehow because Koreans can’t live without their food. The addictive combination of garlic, chili and salt must be imprinted on Koreans from birth. Maybe John’s father came to their restaurant to get his Korean food fix. Would Joyce be able to spot John Ford Kang’s father if she saw him?

Joyce glanced up at the clock. It was time. She pulled more of her hair forward over the zit and took a deep breath. As she walked to his desk, she held the yearbook in front of her like a shield.

She didn’t want to interrupt, so she waited for him to notice. For his friend to stop explaining how to get to this amazing surfing spot down the coast. The bell was going to ring any minute. She cleared her throat. An ear-piercing, sharp alarm sounded.

John jumped off the desk and smacked right into Joyce, sending her reeling backwards and then falling to the floor.

“Oh, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t even see you there.” John reached out to her, offering his hand.

Without thinking, Joyce automatically reached up and grabbed the offered hand. He pulled her up in one graceful arch with a gentle and surprising strength. Joyce stood in front of him. He smiled down at her. She stared up into his eyes. Oh, Joyce thought. Oh, his eyes are amazing. Brown and green and amazing.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Here.” He bent down and grabbed her yearbook off the floor. “Sorry about that,” he said and handed her the yearbook. “That bell just makes me jump sometimes.”

Joyce nodded again.

“Have a good summer,” John said. He paused for a second right before he turned away. And winked.

Joyce gasped. On anyone else, the wink would have been cheesy as all hell. On anyone else, the wink would have been slimy and completely gross. On John Ford Kang, the wink was heartbreaking.

John started to walk away.

Joyce spun around and called out, “Wait!”

John paused.

Joyce raced up to him and thrust the yearbook out in front of her. “Can you sign this?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Okay.” He reached for the yearbook.

Joyce immediately pulled it back and fumbled around for the spot where Gina had signed. She felt her face flaming up. “Let me find a page,” she muttered.

John dropped his backpack to the floor and stood patiently. Joyce found the page with the orange tree and handed it to him. He stared down at Gina’s loopy handwriting.

“Do you have a pen?” he asked.

“Oh. No.” Joyce scanned the desktops and floors. There had to be one somewhere. “You wait. I go find one.” Joyce wanted to bite her tongue off. Why couldn’t she speak properly? What if he thought she was some FOB, fresh off the boat from Korea?

John reached down to his backpack. “No worries. I have one in my pack.”

It felt like hours as Joyce stood there and watched John open his pack and extract a blue pen and then reach for the yearbook. It was another lifetime watching
him carefully think about what to say and then quickly jot it down. Joyce stood in her place and gazed up at him. At his firm muscled shoulders as he leaned over the yearbook. At his long slender fingers grasping the pen. Joyce marveled at the way his dark lashes curled at the edges. Perfect.

John glanced up, sensing her eyes on him, and Joyce jerked her eyes down. She nervously reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears, but remembered to stop herself just before she revealed too much.

“Here,” he said and closed the book before handing it back to her. “I didn’t get a yearbook this year or I’d have you sign mine,” he said apologetically. “I mean, fifty dollars for a yearbook seems extreme.”

“Yeah, my mom made me get one,” Joyce lied, her voice high and shrill.

Stupid, she berated herself. Here she was having her first real conversation with John and all she could come up with was that her mother made her? What about her jokes? Her cool line about summer? This wasn’t going the way she had planned.

John shoved his pen into the front pocket of his backpack. “See you around,” he said and gave her a nod before he turned to go.

“See you,” she called after him.

He raised his hand in acknowledgement and stepped out to the hallway, disappearing into the crowd.

Joyce stood in the middle of the silent empty classroom, staring out the door. Had that really happened? Did she just talk to John Ford Kang? She stared down at the yearbook in her hands. It hadn’t been executed with the suave sure lines that she had planned, and he wasn’t going to see her clever note, but at least she had taken the first step. John knew who she was now.

Joyce had even touched his hand. She sniffed her palm, hoping his scent had rubbed off on her. There was only a lingering sour trace of her nervous sweat. She thought about the color of his eyes. His beautiful, gorgeous, brown-green eyes. A loopy grin spread across her face as the realization slowly spread through her body. She did it. She really did it! A giddiness made her want to whoop out loud, stretch her arms to the skies and dance like some crazy in the park. John Ford Kang had signed her yearbook!

She wanted to shout it from the center of the quad. John Ford Kang signed my yearbook! She bit down on the webbing of skin between her thumb and forefinger to keep from yelling. Carefully, she cracked open
the yearbook. She flipped the pages until she found his writing.

Joyce closed her eyes. Every pore of her skin stung with shame and embarrassment. Joyce covered her face with her hands in humiliation. Lynn. He thought I was Lynn. Lynn. Joyce peeked to check again. There was no doubt.
Hey Lynn.
She couldn’t stop staring at the name. Lynn. Lynn Song. Lynn Song. The ugliest girl in school.

joyce
rode her bike to her parents’ Korean restaurant in downtown Orangedale. She took her time, wiping away the tears and forcing her mind to focus on anything besides the memory of Lynn’s name. As Joyce passed by the Quick Change Oil garage, she waved at a few of the guys standing outside, dirty oil rags hanging from their back pockets. Some of the crew liked to eat lunch at her parents’ place, putting money down on who could eat the most chili paste.

Jorge waved and called out, “Hey, Joyce, what time does Helen’s shift start?”

Another guy let loose a wolf whistle at the mention of Helen’s name.

As Joyce waved and pedaled away, Jorge called after
her, “Tell your sister I’m still waiting for an answer to my marriage proposal.”

A block later, she passed a convenience store parking lot packed with middle school students celebrating the beginning of vacation with slushies and candy. Joyce longed for a chocolate bar, but the thought of listening to all those excited voices forced her to pass. A longing for the simpler days of middle school unleashed another set of tears.

Helen and Joyce had both been forced to start over at new schools after Joyce’s family had bought the restaurant in the zip code that would allow their children to attend some of the best schools in Los Angeles County. For two whole glorious years, Joyce went to the middle school where no one knew about Helen Park. Joyce had been herself, and that had been good enough. It was only after Joyce entered high school that the comparisons started up again.

When Joyce first started at Orangedale High, she had joined the same clubs and played softball, just like Helen. With each introduction, Joyce was asked if she was really Helen’s sister, as though she might be the one confused. The more Helen tried to include Joyce, the worse Joyce felt. Eventually, Joyce realized there
was no point in torturing herself and dropped out of everything. If Helen had asked a boy to sign her yearbook, he would have never gotten her name confused with anyone else.

Joyce turned into a strip mall and rode down the empty alley at the back of the building. As she approached the back door to the restaurant, Joyce could hear the sound of pots clanging and loud Korean music drifting out from the screen door. Joyce hopped off her bike and ran her hands over her face to clear any trace of her crying. With a deep breath, she pushed open the screen door. The pungent odor of chili, onions and garlic immediately saturated her senses.

“Hi,” she called out as she parked her bike in the storage room, next to the sacks of rice.

“Joyce,” her mother called.

“Yes, Uhmma?” Joyce walked into the kitchen.

Uhmma and Mrs. Lee, Gina’s mother, were sitting on large overturned white buckets, peeling onions. Their kerchiefs held back their hair, and they both wore matching red and blue aprons with the restaurant name, Arirang, across the front.

“Apa filled all the saltshakers already. Set them on the table after you eat.” Uhmma stood up and set
the paring knife on the counter. She walked over and stared intently into Joyce’s face.

“How was school?”

Joyce shrugged, unable to meet her mother’s eyes, focusing her entire being on keeping the waterworks under control.

“Something is wrong? I had a bad dream about you last night.” Uhmma claimed to have special psychic abilities, a sixth sense that could tell when her daughters were in trouble. Uhmma’s eyes zeroed in on Joyce’s temple. “What did you do to your face?”

Joyce stepped away. “Nothing!”

Uhmma followed Joyce around the kitchen and finally caught her at the rice cooker. She pulled back Joyce’s hair.

“Ai-ya, Joyce.” Uhmma clucked her tongue. “Why do you always pick? Leave it alone and it will go away faster.”

“No, it won’t,” Joyce muttered and continued to scoop rice into her bowl to fix herself some bi-bim bop. Uhmma returned to her makeshift stool and started talking to Mrs. Lee loudly. “Joyce thinks she is the only one who suffers from pimples. I tell her not to pick, but does she listen? Was I not a teenager once?”

“I used to have pimples that covered all my face and
even my back!” Mrs. Lee said. She quickly peeled the onion and dropped it into a large stainless-steel bowl. “Eugenia takes after her father with her skin. Still so clear, like when she was a baby.”

Joyce spooned vegetables, some meat and a dollop of chili paste on top of her rice from a prep counter loaded with various containers of Korean banchan like marinated vegetables and appetizers.

Mrs. Lee continued, “Eugenia only got my body and round face. She is always dieting and trying to suck in her cheeks.” Mrs. Lee laughed and showed Uhmma.

Joyce ignored Uhmma and Mrs. Lee making fun of their daughters. She walked out of the kitchen and stepped into the front dining room. Behind the register counter, Apa was sitting on a stool and reading a book that he had been toting around for weeks now, taking it out whenever he had a chance. Joyce had never seen him this intrigued by a book before and tried to ask him what it was about since she couldn’t decipher the Korean characters. “Good mystery,” was all Apa would say.

“Hi, Apa,” Joyce said and stirred her chili paste into the rice.

Apa looked up from his book and smiled. “How was your last day of school?”

“Fine,” she said and leaned her back against the counter. She looked around for Andy; Uhmma usually picked him up and brought him to the restaurant.

“Where’s Andy?” Joyce asked.

“He is at the basketball courts at school with some friends.”

“What?” Joyce straightened up. “How come I had to come to work, and Andy didn’t?”

Apa shook his head and returned to his book. “Ai, Joyce, he is still a little boy. Let him enjoy some free time.”

“What about my free time?”

“Tomorrow. You can be off tomorrow.”

“All day?” Joyce brightened.

Apa sighed. “I need some help at dinner.”

Joyce knew she shouldn’t complain, but helping out at the restaurant was really starting to become a drag. Su Yon, their former waitress, had left without any notice over a month ago. Her leaving had placed a hardship on everyone, especially Helen and Joyce, as they filled in with extra shifts. But no one complained about the former helper who had become a part of the family and Helen’s best friend. The restaurant felt so empty without Su Yon’s joking banter and considerate gestures. Su Yon had not explained why she was leaving, only came
in one day in tears telling them that she was moving away. They had all assumed it had something to do with her controlling mother. There was a small help-wanted sign in the window, but no one had answered that sign or any of the ads they had placed in the Korean newspapers.