Chapter 20
Jiyeon made change for a twenty and watched her current boyfriend chat about life goals with her former boyfriend. The pair sat together in a diner booth as every window filled from pane to pane with sunset hues: peach, rose gold, fiery orange. Would this eventually be normal, too?
Jiyeon smiled at the next person in line, and the next, and the next. The routine was simple, easy, repetitive, but moving to one of the griddles might be a better option. In the kitchen, she wouldn’t have a front row seat while everyone else got to spend more time with Eunjae than she ever did.
At least she had Jeannie, here to help out for the rest of what promised to be a hectic weekend. She came over to stand behind the counter during a lull, glowering at Arthur. “So he’s the one getting a date night instead of you?”
“Uh-huh. And he even brought his scrapbook.”
“Not the scrapbook,” Jeannie groaned. “Are you serious?”
“Just the first volume. He’s got four now.”
“No! I’m tired just thinking about that. Why’s Arthur always so… Arthur?”
“Hmm. 'Cause he’s Arthur? That’s my best guess.”
“Okay, but why? Like who told him he has to be this way? I’ll never understand.”
In addition to two different planners and his trusty calendar app, Arthur maintained an exhaustive list of personal goals.
He kept this list in his head, but it also existed as a scrapbook, the pages crammed with accomplishments.
This ponderous tome had existed since before Jiyeon even met him; she remembered Arthur bringing it to class for a project when they were in seventh grade, the year he transferred from private school to public.
Nobody ever made a peep about the scrapbook situation, even if they thought it was a bit odd.
Arthur was friendly, athletic, a go-getter.
Plus, he enjoyed something akin to celebrity status.
Driving into the city, you might see his father, Arthur Senior, grinning down at you from a billboard advertising the Hong & Hong law firm.
In the foreground, two knights went head to head in a medieval joust, locked on a collision course.
TURN THAT CRASH INTO A CROWN — CALL KING ARTHUR TODAY.
If you called 555-ARTHUR, you could hire Lemon Grove’s premier personal injury lawyers.
If you called Arthur Hong, Jr. on his blue flip phone, you could get yourself invited for dinner, or video games, or a random pool party.
He was popular from the moment he showed up, but not even his burgeoning social calendar could derail him from that list of goals, the many quests he aimed to complete.
Because there was always a quest, with Arthur.
Somewhere to be, something to achieve, someone to help.
Right now he was on a mission to dictate his entire autobiography in one sitting.
Eunjae listened with genuine fascination.
He paged through the scrapbook, asking questions, examining class photos and timeworn articles about the high school debate team.
Twice, Arthur had summoned Jiyeon to confirm the details on an anecdote or provide the name to go with a face.
If she wasn’t in the room, he’d text her.
Emmie, where did we go for that field trip in junior year? Hey Emmie, come here for a sec.
Emmie, Emmie, Emmie. Between Arthur and the multiple daily emails from Eric, she was ready to stick her phone under a tractor wheel, climb into the seat, and throw the whole thing in reverse. There were tractors aplenty in Monroe. It could be arranged.
The third time he called her over, several members of Apollo had joined in, waiting for the van. Ezra hovered on the periphery, neither joining the group nor straying from it. He inched closer when Arthur pointed to the scrapbook and said, “Emmie, look. Remember this?”
It was a picture taken near the end of their last year in middle school.
With everyone lined up alphabetically by last name, Jiyeon and Arthur should’ve had Shannah Henderson standing between them, but she was absent that day.
They posed together, holding artwork in black frames.
Arthur was two weeks shy of saying goodbye to his braces for good.
Jiyeon had embraced a short haircut, the shortest haircut of her life thus far, and she’d ironed all the waves out.
“Sure, I remember,” she replied, with a wry smile for her younger self. “I kept my hair like that for a month, and then I realized it made me look too much like Janie.”
“Who’s Janie?”
“Their sister,” said Eunjae. “We’ve never gotten to meet her.”
This was news to Kazu, who sputtered that he had no clue there was a third Han sibling. And she was the eldest? And she lived in Spain? What? Jeers and booing all around.
Arthur spoke over the din, a long-suffering look on his face. “Yeah, but tell them why your hair is short. Wait ‘til you hear this, guys.”
They clamored for the story. A camera floated over, then another. She shrugged and gave them an honest answer. “Arthur said he liked my hair, so I cut it.”
“Woooooowwwwww.”
“Scary,” Jungwoo commented in Korean, punctuating with a nervous laugh.
“See? This is what I’ve been dealing with. How long have we known each other, Emms? Eleven years? Twelve? She’s broken my heart so many times. I’ve lost count, to tell you the truth.” He jabbed a finger at the members. “So if you’re getting any ideas, don’t.”
As one, Apollo turned to the camera. In perfect chorus, they said, “We belong to our fans.”
A certain teenager proclaimed this to be creepy. At the register, Jeannie was fuming. “There was more! Tell them!”
“Arthur said he liked my hair and I should never cut it, so I cut it.”
Max paused in the middle of clearing a nearby table. His scowl could’ve been the inspiration for any gargoyle perched on the spires of Notre Dame. “Why were you going around telling her what to do?”
“Hey, I was fourteen. What did I know?”
Ezra rolled his eyes. “I’m fourteen and I’ve never been dumb enough to tell a girl what her hair should look like.”
“Yikes,” said Kazu.
“Embarrassing,” muttered Kei.
Ever the peacemaker, Eunjae tried to redirect the conversation by asking about the artwork. “You drew houses. Was this an art class?”
“No,” Jiyeon answered. “Eighth graders were required to do a service project, so we decided to help renovate the rec room at Golden Grove. It’s a retirement community. They send a bus to Wanna Waffle once a week for bingo and brunch.”
“It was cheaper if we painted the art ourselves instead of buying it,” Arthur put in.
Their teacher had written the prompt on the board: East, west, home is best. She'd asked them to think about the difference between a house and a home.
Golden Grove was a place of residence, but was that enough for it to be home in the truest sense?
They'd read The House on Mango Street and Bridge to Terabithia, books about staying home and leaving home and everything in between.
Was home a physical place? Was it in your head, or maybe in your heart?
After some debate, the students had voiced their wish to turn that rec room into a happy, comforting space. Something that evoked the homes their new friends at the retirement community had left behind. A house was not the same as a home. On this, they could agree.
Some classmates drew mansions and others drew castles.
Her friend Sylvia drew a houseboat. Instructed to draw a place that felt like home, Jiyeon went with…
a plain old house. Four walls and a roof, some windows and a door.
Straightforward, practical. Overly simple compared to Arthur's three-story townhouse with its neat hedges and rooftop garden, and he made sure to tell her so.
But she'd never understood the appeal of stairs, and why did your garden need to be on the roof?
Gardens grew just fine on the ground, too.
If she had a garden, or if Dad had a garden, that's where it would go.
Joey would grow all kinds of things, Jiyeon reasoned at the time, but this was her drawing, so she added flowers.
And a tree, throwing its long shadow on the grass.
On its branches, she built a treehouse for Denny.
Well, it was more of an observation deck.
A lookout. Her brother had new binoculars, real ones, and he'd love being up there.
For Mom, a real driveway and a new car, bright red, super fast. She sketched out a lawn that had enough room for Janie to turn as many cartwheels as she wanted. The latest phase was gymnastics.
For herself, Jiyeon borrowed her favorite thing about Miss Gloria's salon: the door.
It used to be yellow. Although they'd painted it a different color the year before, because the landlord insisted, it was always going to be yellow in Jiyeon's memory.
That's how it looked when she came to get her hair cut for the very first time.
That's how it still looked, in her heart. She didn’t want to copy it exactly, though.
To make it her own, Jiyeon colored it orange.
Oh, goodness. Arthur had plunged her into the past again.
In the present, he’d moved on to describing the house he planned to buy before he turned thirty.
But Eunjae glanced up from the scrapbook to smile at her, and it wasn't the smile he used when others were around, so careful and polite. It was the smile she knew.
“I like your house,” he said, only for Jiyeon to hear.
She smiled back at him. “Thanks. I like it too.”
“Here, on the windowsill. Apple pie?”
“That's what windowsills are for."
"You're right."
The warmth of that moment was short-lived. His brothers were debating where to eat, a discussion that inevitably drew Eunjae into its chaotic orbit. Arthur had produced his curated list of local restaurants, ranked and annotated. As for Ezra, he drifted away, feigning boredom.
He aimed his phone at the light fixture hanging over the register.
“It’s a Sputnik lamp,” he remarked, when Jiyeon attempted small talk.
“That’s what those are called, with the arms sticking out like that.
I looked it up and it’s pretty old.” Then he opened the Instagram app, intending to post the photo.
“Instagram,” she murmured. “I didn’t know you had an account.”
“I made it yesterday.”
“You’re kinda young for it, aren’t you?”
“You just have to be thirteen,” Ezra replied. “I’ve been fourteen since April.”
“Hmm.”
“I followed you. Did you see?”
She checked. Sure enough, there was the new follower notification, buried in Emma Han’s standard avalanche of likes, comments, and tags.
Jiyeon went to Ezra’s profile. The last line in his bio read, Managed by Mum @l.goldsmith.
She went over the words two more times. Then she switched over to see what he’d posted so far: a carousel of photos from the past two weeks on set, innocuous, mostly buildings around downtown Monroe.
“Mum says it’ll be good to have social media,” said Ezra, “so people can get to know me.”
It’s not good, her brain screamed in protest. But freaking out was the best way to put an end to this conversation, so she managed a wan smile. “You like scenery, huh? So does Eunjae. Never has any people in his posts.”
“I saw that. I didn’t follow him, though. He wouldn’t follow me back.” He gripped the back of a chair, knuckles briefly showing white. “Apollo’s only following each other. ”
Followers. That number had skyrocketed into the thousands and his account was less than a day old.
It made her feel sicker than ever. “You have a good eye,” she said, trying to stay calm, trying not to think about all the pitfalls waiting for someone so young on an app like this. “Do you like taking pictures?”
“You mean like Eunjae does?” Ezra shook his head.
“I’m not that serious about it. It’s his thing, not mine.
” He shifted from one foot to the other, two spots of bright color blooming on his cheeks.
“I didn’t want to mention him. In my profile, I mean.
Mum told me I had to say that Ari from Apollo was my brother, or else nobody would care about me, and I figured she was right.
I’m not… It’s not because I’m trying to copy him or whatever. ”
“Sure. I get that. Believe it or not, I only started posting on Instagram ‘cause of my sister. Janie had the account first. Then she got bored and moved on, but I stuck around.” The admission tasted bittersweet, the way talking about Janie often did.
“Nobody remembers that this used to be her thing. I never thought it would be mine, either.”
“I want something that’s mine,” Ezra said then, something fierce burning behind every syllable, something that struck a chord in her heart — a familiar tone, a note that echoed, ringing like the high, piercing chime of a bell.
Jiyeon knew that wish. She understood it much too well.
And she wanted to stop Eunjae from leaving, she had to tell him what she’d just figured out, but there was no need to look for him at all.
He’d overheard, and he was here, expression etched with revulsion and cold fury.
“Mum let you do this? What was she thinking?” There was no disguising the raw emotion in his tone. It shocked Arthur into silence. Brothers froze where they stood, alarm written large across each of their faces. Jiyeon reached for Eunjae’s arm, a foolish move, caught by the cameras.
“Delete this. You’re too young, you’ve got no clue what you’re getting into.”
“I’m keeping it,” Ezra shot back. He lifted his chin, hands curled into fists. “You can’t stop me.”