12. Noah
12
NOAH
Maybe I should have gone home with Mina over the weekend because she seems to be holding a grudge against me right now. I take her bag from Appa’s car so I can carry it to her room, but she snatches it back from me and starts stomping toward the dorms.
“Is she okay?” I lean down to look through the window at my dad, who’s still sitting in the car. I realise these are the first words I’ve said to him in over a week.
“She’ll be fine. She wanted Eomma to drop her off today but something came up, so I had to,” he explains.
I nod, not sure what else to say to him. He doesn’t seem to know either, his eyes tracking across my face as we silently watch each other. It’s like he’s trying to see if I’ve changed since the last time I saw him a month ago, when school started. I’ve still been avoiding my parents as much as I can, the distance between us only growing the longer I do it.
“You can call me anytime, Adeul,” he says softly, reaching a hand out of the window as if he wants to take mine, but he stops himself. Instead, he grips the door, his fingers tensing.
I wish I could call him, but there’s still something holding me back. There’s that tiny voice in the back of my head that constantly tells me my parents’ separation is my fault. Even now, after not speaking for over a week, I still can’t find the right words to say to him. It feels like whatever I say will just end up hurting both of us.
I step back from the car, straightening as I do so, and he moves his hand to the steering wheel.
“Drive safe,” I tell him, my hand covering the place his has just left. He looks at me one last time before I let go and turn around.
The walk back to my room feels endless, my steps heavy with guilt pressing down on me. I wish this could be easier, that I could look at it the way Mina seems to be.
Logically, I know my parents must have had other issues that they hid from us and that led to their separation. But my brain keeps thinking I was the catalyst that made them pull the plug. It’s no coincidence that Appa left home as soon as we got confirmation from my old school that I wasn’t allowed to return.
I overheard them talking that night, hearing the arguments from both sides about what I’d done. Eomma defended me, saying I was just looking after Mina like she would expect me to. But Appa was different. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about exactly, but he mentioned not wanting a repeat of the past and that they needed to do something before it got any worse. That conversation plays over and over in my mind every time I consider speaking to him, and it always stops me.
Just before I reach the dorm building, I stop walking, tilting my head up to the sky and letting the sun warm my face. Birds chirp from the trees that line the campus, and the distant murmur of students chatting creates a white noise that fills my brain and stops me from thinking.
I enter the building and go to my room, closing the door behind me. The curtains are still drawn, covering the room in darkness with only a thin strip of light coming through. It’s easier to spiral in your own thoughts when there’s no bright lights.
I sit at my desk, looking ahead at the picture of Halabeoji perfectly framed by that thin light. His face smiles back at me, a pink flower in his hands that he holds out toward me behind the camera. He takes pride in his garden, growing flowers for Halmeoni to show his love for her.
He told me that when they first started dating, he would bring flowers for her every day until he found out what her favourite ones were. Once he did, he started growing them. He joked that it was to save money, but really, I know it was because he never wanted to run out of them.
A heavy breath leaves me, my chest tightening as I think of him. I speak to him more than my parents, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. I find myself going to sleep earlier these days. My waking hours are filled with worries and at least in sleep I can get some kind of reprieve. But the eight-hour time difference means we don’t get to talk as much.
I take my phone out of my pocket, opening it to our messages. Every day, I wake up to a good morning text from him with an update on what he’s been up to so far that day. I reply with cute stickers that I know cheer him up and give him only the positive updates that I have, which usually revolve around my grades.
He’s asleep now, and I know that if I message him, he’ll respond when he wakes up. But what can I say to him? How can I tell him I’ve been here for a month and still don’t have any friends? Well, I have Izzy. Explaining whatever kind of relationship I seem to be developing with her sounds even more complicated though.
I lock my phone, placing it down on my desk as my thoughts go to her again. It happens more and more often these days, and every time it does my heart starts pounding in my chest.
I shake the thoughts of her away, standing to open the curtains and let some light in before the sun sets. I crack open the window, and when I glance down at the field between the two dorm buildings, I see her.
She’s gesturing wildly as she talks to her friends, something I’ve noticed a lot when she’s with them. She doesn’t act like that with me though, and I don’t want to wonder why.
I lean closer to the window, my ears straining to hear what she’s saying. My curiosity about her is never-ending, and I know I need to stop wanting to know more about her, but I can’t. Every time I try to avoid thinking about her, I inevitably end up replaying all our interactions.
Friday morning’s confrontation with Ryan played over in my head all weekend. Seeing her after school and realising she felt like she had to go home to escape him annoyed me more than it should have. But seeing her like this, so happy with her friends, gets rid of all those bad feelings.
My nose crashes against the glass, and I recoil, lifting my hand to it. I didn’t realise how close I’d gotten to the window; how desperate I was to hear just a glimpse of how her weekend went. I take my aching nose as a sign to shift my focus to my homework instead of the girl consuming all my thoughts.
* * *
The hallways are busy as they usually are on Monday mornings. Everyone drags their feet as if making the journey to homeroom slower can delay the whole day.
I shuffle through the crowds to get to the classroom, and you’d think after a few weeks that people would be tired of staring at me, but I guess not. Eyes follow me as I make my way toward the door barely a few feet ahead of me. Whispers behind hand-covered mouths sound like a relentless hum now, a constant background noise that I’m starting to get used to.
I sigh, keeping my head down until there’s a tug on my arm. I look to my side and it’s Izzy, a crease between her brows as her hand lingers on my upper arm. I hope she doesn’t feel the goosebumps rising on my skin.
“Can I talk to you?” Her eyes shift quickly to the people around us. “In private?”
“Of course,” I tell her, worry starting to clog my throat because she has that same expression on her face from Friday morning. If Ryan has been bothering her again, we need to do something about it.
Her hand is still on my arm as she guides me away from the classroom and down an empty corridor. No one else is around, and I stop walking a millisecond after she does. She steps in front of me but doesn’t look at me. Her hand is still on my arm, and I don’t want her to let go.
“Is everything okay?” I ask her, shuffling forward slightly so I’m closer to her. She still hasn’t said a word, and I’m worried about why this conversation has to happen away from everyone else.
“People have been talking,” she finally says, keeping her gaze focused downwards.
Izzy lets go of my arm, and I miss the weight of it immediately. I resist the urge to press my hand against where hers just was. My eyes lower to her hand and I see her fiddling with the bottom of her skirt, still avoiding looking at me.
“They’ve been doing that from the start,” I say, confusion setting in because this isn’t anything new.
“No, I mean...” she stammers for a second, finally lifting her head and I mirror her, but she looks up at the ceiling instead.
She locks her fingers together, tugging her lips between her teeth as she searches for whatever she has to say. I end up focusing too much on that and forgetting why we’re even here in the first place. Now it’s my turn not to look at her.
“I mean, there’s rumours about us,” she continues.
“Us?” I try not to think too much about how nice the word sounds coming from her.
“I don’t know, I guess everyone saw what happened on Friday morning. And them someone saw us after school when I was waiting to go home.” She finally faces me properly, and something in her green eyes has my heart pounding. “People think we’re together.”
“Together like…?” Her words aren’t making sense to me. Or maybe I’m struggling to understand what she’s saying because I’m too focused on how pretty she is.
“Like going out together,” she blurts out, spinning away from me and letting out a frustrated sound.
“Oh,” is all I can say.
Even though I know we don’t have that relationship, my throat goes dry at just the thought.
“I’m sorry, it’s all my fault.” She turns back to me, a loose strand of hair falling in front of her left eye. She tucks it behind her ear and I’m glad she did it before I made a fool of myself. “I found out this morning that Ryan has been making it worse because he told his friends what happened at the gym that day.”
The day she told him that she liked me.
“Don’t worry,” I reassure her. She’s clearly stressed about this; her tone and the way she won’t look at me make that obvious. “Everyone has their own stories about me anyway, so this is just another one to add to it. Are you okay, though?”
My concern for her outweighs anything I can feel for myself in this situation. It’s been obvious since day one that no one really likes me, but Izzy's popular as far as I can tell. Everyone seems to like her, so this rumour is more damaging to her than me. It’s not good for her to be associated with me and all the bad rumours attached to me since the first week.
And that’s exactly why I need to get rid of whatever feelings I seem to be developing for her. Why I can’t focus too much on the fact that I actually very much like the idea of us being together.
“I’m fine,” she says. The quick smile she gives me, so unlike any I’ve seen from her before, tells me she’s lying.
The warning bell rings, letting us know there’s only five minutes left until homeroom starts.
“Can we talk more at lunch?” Izzy asks, and I nod. “There’s a classroom in the science block that no one uses.”
She tells me how to get to it, and I commit the directions to memory. Izzy steps to the side of me to walk past, but she stops right next to me. I turn my head to look down at her, and her eyes catch on mine, some unreadable expression on them.
My head tilts unconsciously, my curiosity growing. I open my mouth to say something, but she stops me.
“Later,” she says quietly before she walks away from me, leaving my heart and brain both running faster than I can keep up with.