Chapter 42
I missed it.
Grace didn’t know how long she’d sat at her computer. The screen had gone to a screen saver and then black.
At least she couldn’t see the alerts reminding her about the interview.
Followed by emails asking if she was still able to log on.
And a final one saying that the interviewers had to log off her session in order to conduct the next interview.
She’d missed it.
She’d missed her chance to get into the program.
This can’t be happening.
Her life had become a jumble, like trying to fit pieces from two different puzzles together. And mangling them all in the process.
I can’t feel my fingers, she thought, forcing them to release the desk that she’d been gripping hard enough to turn her knuckles white. Spindly needle pricks raced through her numb hands.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything. She felt like her body had filled with concrete and it was slowly hardening. The sludge of it filling her skull, dulling her brain.
“Grace?”
The sound of Hae’s voice in the doorway barely broke through the crowd of thoughts churning in her head.
Yuhwa had long ago left. Grace had started to cook dinner when her heart had dropped with realization.
That had been twenty minutes ago, and she could hear the faucet downstairs, still left on filling a pot for pasta.
“Grace, what are you doing?” Hae asked.
She didn’t reply.
He approached her, still looking pale, but she couldn’t focus on that.
“I missed it.”
“What?”
“My interview. I missed it.”
“Oh.”
Saying the words aloud triggered something in her. A swarm picked up in her chest, stinging her lungs and heart, until they each swelled to three times their size, taking up every crevice in her chest. Pushing against each other so neither could expand.
She doubled over in her chair, trying to catch her breath and failing.
“Hey, try to just breathe,” Hae said.
“I—I can’t. I m-missed it!” She wailed the words now.
Tears burned at the back of her eyes as she hyperventilated, kaleidoscoping her vision.
“Grace, come on.” Hae knelt, spinning her chair so she faced him instead of the blank computer screen. He searched in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled paper bag. The same one from the carnival.
“Here, use this.”
He shoved the bag into Grace’s hands, but they wouldn’t close around the paper, and it fell to the floor at her feet.
Hae picked it up, holding it to her face himself, cupping the back of her neck to keep it in place.
“Breathe,” Hae instructed.
And she did. Breathing in the tepid air from the bag so hard that it crumpled into itself around her lips. The faint smell of stale peanuts filled her nostrils. Slowly the attack passed.
Her chest ached. Her body felt heavy. It was a special kind of exhaustion that came from finally releasing all the pressure inside. It left Grace limp and weak, like a stretched-out balloon after it loses all its air.
“You missed it because of me,” Hae said.
She wanted to agree. To blame this awful mistake on him. But she could see how worn out he still looked.
“Just say it,” Hae urged her.
Grace shook her head, trying to ignore the swell of frustration and acidic bile rising in her throat. “I just need to be by myself.”
“I’ll leave if you just tell me.”
Grace felt the words pressing against her teeth. Wanting to be free. But she knew it wouldn’t solve anything.
She felt like something inside her was on the verge of breaking. “Please,” she whispered. “I just want to be alone.”
“I know, but you need to let it all out first. You can’t keep feelings this big bottled up.”
She felt some of her control fissure at his continued insistence. Why couldn’t he see that she was about to break and was embarrassed that he was going to witness one of her lowest moments, again. But he kept watching her, with those knowing golden eyes. And finally she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Fine!” She sprang up and pushed him back a step. “I’m pissed at you. You came into my life and turned it upside down. And now everything I’ve been working for, for years, is down the drain! It was all for nothing. I’m going to be nothing.”
“Good, that’s good.”
Grace pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, trying to keep the burn of tears at bay. “Good? You’re glad that I feel like total crap?”
“I’m glad that you’re admitting that you feel like crap.”
“Just leave me alone.” She dropped into the chair again, all the more exhausted from the burst of anger. “You’re going to leave eventually anyway, so why not just get a head start now?”
“Grace, I don’t—”
“Just go, okay? You said you’d go.”
Hae lingered, clearly torn. And Grace just let her head fall into her arms on the desk. A signal that she was done talking.
“You told me that I’m not nothing even if I lost my initial purpose,” Hae said. “How come you can say that to me and not to yourself?”
Then he left her stewing in the emotions that she could no longer seal tightly away.
How dare he force her to feel these things?
This wasn’t how she lived her life. She was a meticulous planner—she anticipated problems. And never, ever failed. Because she was her mother’s daughter, and failure wasn’t an option for them.
Except, you’re nothing like her. It’s all been an act. You’re a total fake.
She shook her head, rejecting the voice, but it kept buzzing in her ear. Telling her that anything she had succeeded in up to this point was probably because of Halmeoni. She’d always helped Grace study and kept the house running. It hadn’t even been a year, and everything was falling apart.
You’re a disappointment.
“Shut up!” she spat to the voice in her head, grabbing her phone from the nightstand.
But there was no one to call. No way to fix this.
She noticed a little red notification on her messages and opened the text from Teens.
Scratching Post. 8:00PM.
“Screw it,” Grace said, rushing out.