Until I went to my homeroom teacher for an early-leave slip today, I had a fever, a headache, aches in my pelvis and breasts, swelling all over, and I was irritable for no reason. Strangely, once I got the slip, I began to feel better, and by the time I walked out through the school gate, not a single part of my aching body hurt anymore. The pain disappeared as if Jesus had cured a leper. Even my head felt clear. There must be something wrong with the ground our school is built on. Anyway, I really had been sick earlier. I felt a little guilty thinking of my classmates, who were probably tearing their hair out over the math quiz right about now. Besides, sixth period was physics with Mr. Byun Jae-ho, the Human Sleeping Pill. If I hadn't left early today, I might have had to call 119 for an ambulance. So the teachers should be grateful to me. I had voluntarily gone home early and made this neat little recovery. Now that I felt fine again, I might as well make good use of this golden Friday afternoon.
Across the intersection, Sani waved at me from the other side of the crosswalk. I raised my hand slightly, then lowered it. I didn't wave. What a phony. She'd said only this morning that she didn't want to cut class, yet she'd left before me and was already waiting. Sani had been my best friend since our third year of middle school. If you wanted to find me at school, all you had to know was where Sani was. We even went to the bathroom together. During breaks, we were always together. I don't know why, but I felt at ease when I was with Sani. I could give hundreds of reasons, but none of them would explain exactly what there was between us. I just liked her.
Except for the fact that we were both only children, Sani and I had nothing in common. I was a handspan taller than she was, though that didn't make me tall. Sani was small and cute, like a little doll, and boys had confessed their feelings to her several times since middle school. I, on the other hand, had never had a confession, or even a friendly look. I lived with two working parents and got a generous allowance, while Sani had been living alone with her grandmother in an old rental apartment since the year before last. Her parents had divorced when she was young, so she had lived for a while with her dad, for a while with her biological mother, for a while with her father's older brother, and for a while with her father's older sister. She had been passed from house to house like a basketball, yet Sani was always bright and cheerful. Of course, I couldn't tell whether that was how she really felt or just an act. I was the kind of person who got gloomy all day if it rained, so what I envied most was Sani's cheerful nature.
There was exactly one person Sani hated: her biological mother. Sani never called her Mom. She always called her biological mother. Maybe that was why the woman seemed less like a mother than some stranger living far away. From what Sani had written in our private <Gray Notebook>, her biological mother was the kind of woman even Jesus would have trouble getting to repent. While Sani was living on sufferance in relatives' homes, her biological mother never contributed a cent toward raising her. On top of that, after Sani's dad died the year before last, his divorced ex-wife swallowed the entire life-insurance payout herself. As his death drew near, Sani's father's older brother advised him to name Sani's grandmother as the beneficiary. For some reason, Sani's dad ignored the advice. Sani called her own father a complete idiot and was always saying that nobody could beat an idiot. Her biological mother, who saw Sani once every two or three months, seemed to think she'd done her duty as a mother by starting to send a tiny allowance to Sani's account a few months ago.
Sani couldn't afford cram school, but her grades were near the top. She was especially good at math. I, on the other hand, had given up on math early. Life was easier once I gave up. Luckily, I'd seen a news report saying that because the population was shrinking, universities were now having to court students. Somewhere there had to be a university that would take a student like me who'd given up on math, so what was the point of worrying already? First-year high-school grades counted for only twenty percent. And there was still plenty of time before the CSAT. Besides, I was ridiculously lucky. Obviously I couldn't leave everything to luck, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with counting on it a little.
I'd been to Sani's place only once. I'd heard so much about public rental apartments that I'd expected the place to feel a little scary and unsafe, but the complex was surprisingly neat and well kept. Sani's apartment was much smaller than ours, yet it was spotless. It made me wonder whether the shocked look on Sani's face the first time she came to my house had been less about how big our place was than about how messy and dirty it was.
"What excuse did you use? Your teacher gave you the early-leave slip right away?"
Sani asked.
"Period cramps. But once I decided to lie about it, I actually started getting the symptoms. My stomach hurt like crazy, my head was pounding, and my breasts felt like somebody was squeezing them."
I said, linking my arm through Sani's.
"You're a natural. All you have to do is decide, and you can even channel a girl who's having her period."
"Want to go to Hongdae for an iced coffee? It's so hot today. How about Starbucks?"
"I don't like that place."
"Then want to go to our hair salon? I was thinking of getting mine cut before it gets any hotter. By the way, how did you get your early-leave slip?"
"I asked Grandma to text my teacher."
"What did she say?"
"Actually, I have to go to my biological mother's hospital now."
"Why? Is she sick?"
"No. My biological mother hasn't sent me my allowance for three months." Sani's face darkened. "I told Grandma I was going to confront her about taking all of Dad's insurance money and then not even giving me my allowance, so Grandma texted my homeroom teacher. I don't know what she wrote, but my teacher got worried and told me to hurry home. My grandma's hilarious, isn't she?"
"You didn't write anything in the Gray Notebook about your allowance being late. I thought it was supposed to be our secret notebook."
I felt bad for talking about Starbucks and the hair salon without knowing what was going on with Sani, but I was also a little hurt that she'd kept something from me.
"I was too embarrassed to tell you. Sorry." Sani said, tickling me at the waist. "Anyway, I'm going to my biological mother's hospital today and raising hell. That money isn't all hers. Dad meant some of it for me, so why does she get to swallow the whole thing? Having to beg for my allowance every month is so humiliating I could die."
We took the subway and then a bus to the hospital where Sani's biological mother worked. A lot of foreign workers were hospitalized there, and the hospital was especially well known for microsurgery to reattach severed fingers. Sani's biological mother was the head nurse on an inpatient ward. If marriage and childbirth hadn't interrupted her career, she would probably be a head nurse at a big hospital downtown by now, but life hadn't worked out that way. The large clock in the ward lobby read 2:45.
"Good." Sani let out a sigh of relief. "She's the head nurse on the ward, so she starts at seven and gets off at three."
"Want me to go to the nurses' station with you?"
"No. I'll wait in the lobby and make a scene in front of all the patients."
We waited for Sani's biological mother in the hospital lobby. It felt as if every sick worker in the world had gathered there. Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, and Filipino patients spoke among themselves in their own languages, then switched easily into Korean when someone from another country spoke to them. It was a striking contrast to a European dancer I'd once heard about who said that after more than ten years in Seoul, she'd never once felt any need to learn Korean. Every patient seemed to have a hand or arm wrapped in bandages. I tried not to let it get to me, but looking around, I couldn't help feeling gloomy.
Sani's biological mother came down to the lobby at exactly 3:05. Sani strode toward her, waving both arms hard. Startled, her mother could only stammer, "You... why are you here?" She looked like a woman who'd just had some enormous secret exposed. So she'd been pretending to be single. Busted, I thought. Sure enough, Sani's biological mother grabbed her by the wrist and tried to drag her out of the building. Sani struggled and shouted, "Give me my money!" and in the next instant her mother had hauled her away. I slung Sani's bag over my shoulder and ran after them. In front of the ward parking lot, Sani was screaming at her biological mother. I ran over and planted myself behind Sani, hands on my hips, trying to look bold and supportive. Her biological mother took her phone from her handbag, transferred the three months of overdue allowance plus three months in advance into Sani's account, then shoved the confirmation screen under Sani's nose. "There. Happy?" As she walked farther into the parking lot, she muttered, "Everything you do is exactly like your father."
Tears ran down Sani's cheeks. I took her hand and led her to a bench in the shade of a cherry tree. She cried hard for a while, then spat sharply on the ground and stood up.
"Let's go." There were still tears in Sani's eyes, but her voice was strong. "I'll buy you something good."
Something tightened in my chest. The amount on the transfer screen Sani's biological mother had shown her was less than two months of my allowance. If I counted what my parents spent on private tutoring, half a year of Sani's allowance wasn't even close to what I spent in a month.
"Then I want the best tteokbokki in the world."
I said it with an exaggeratedly happy face.
The trip from Sani's biological mother's hospital to Hongdae was long and brutal. We waited forever for the bus to the subway station, and sure enough, when it finally came, it was packed. One passenger complained about how late it was, and the driver explained that the bus ahead had been in a minor accident. The passenger then demanded to know how the bus could still be this late, which made no sense at all. Why blame the driver of the bus behind for an accident involving the one in front? Once we got moving, the same passenger started complaining that the air-conditioning was too weak. He grumbled as if picking fights were his whole purpose in life and managed to make everyone else uncomfortable too. The subway was every bit as crowded. My legs were trembling and I wanted to sit in one of the seats reserved for pregnant women, but there was no way I could do that in my school uniform. What if my picture ended up all over the internet the next day under the headline PREGNANT HIGH-SCHOOL GIRL? These days it was easier to have strangers dig up your identity, strip your life bare, and send everything straight to hell than it was to cut class. Anyway, Friday afternoon on the bus and subway was far too horrible a price for skipping fifth-period math and sixth-period physics.
On the subway to Hongdae, I was about to KakaoTalk Mom and tell her I'd eat with Sani before coming home when a message from her arrived first.
"Sweetie, Mom's going to be a little late today."
I answered in a slightly sulky tone.
"Why? Am I eating alone again? Dad said he can't come home this week either."
Dad had been transferred to Naju Innovation City the previous fall, so he came home only every other Friday. Then he spent the whole weekend saying how tired he was, and on Sunday afternoon he took the company bus back to Naju. Dad said that even when the bus was free, riding it for more than four hours was exhausting. I asked why he couldn't take the KTX. He said the train cost a hundred thousand won round trip and taxis were another forty thousand. Two trips home a month would cost 280,000 won, and four would cost 560,000. So I suggested he come home twice a month by KTX and taxi and give me half of the transportation money as extra allowance. Dad said in that case maybe the whole family should just move to Naju Innovation City. That was the end of that. I missed him when he wasn't home, but there was one advantage: I only had to watch Mom and Dad fight twice a month.
"You still have the card Mom gave you, right?"
"Yeah."
"Invite Sani too. Order whatever you want."
"Okay."
"Sweetie, let's go shopping this weekend. I'll buy you some summer clothes."
The words summer clothes suddenly gave me a brilliant idea.
"Mom, listen..."
"What? Did my girl suddenly think of something she wants to do?"
"No."
"Tell me."
"Can Sani and I buy a pair of shorts and a short-sleeved top each at Abbey Road today?"
The little "1" beside my message disappeared, but Mom didn't answer. I got a little nervous, though conversations often stopped in the middle because of her work, so I waited. About twenty minutes later, her reply came.
"Sure. Just one outfit each at Abbey Road. Mom will buy you something nicer tomorrow. Love you, sweetie."
I answered "love you" by dropping an avalanche of emojis on her.
"Yes! Mom says she's going to be late today."
I said it with a grin. I hadn't mentioned the summer clothes yet. "Let's hang around Hongdae and then go to my house. Mom says you can come over and we can order anything we want. What do you think?"
Sani gave a little laugh.
"Sounds good."
While Sani texted her grandmother, I started planning the rest of our day in my head.
As soon as we get to Hongdae, we'll go straight to Abbey Road and buy cool T-shirts and shorts. Stuff these gloomy uniforms into our bags and transform ourselves. Then we'll get Yeopgi Tteokbokki. We'll order Set A, with dumplings, vegetable fritters, and fried seaweed rolls. The Original is way too spicy, so we'll get Mild. Then Sani can eat it too. Sani acts tough, but she's actually soft inside and can't handle spicy food. We should order a separate bowl of fish cakes too. That'll put us over twenty thousand won. What should I do? Right, I'll tell her Mom is paying. If Sani says no, I have to respect her pride, so I'll ask her to buy me a Ryan pen at the Kakao Friends Store. That won't be too much for her. A sweet coffee at Starbucks would be healing, but I don't know why Sani hates the place so much. Maybe it's because the coffee is too expensive? Then I'll tell her we're using Mom's money and try to talk her into it one more time.
When we came out of the subway station, the streets of Hongdae were packed too. People, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, and buses tangled together in the narrow alleys until the whole place looked like chaos. I liked crowded, dirty Hongdae better than our quiet neighborhood.
"If I'd known it would be like this, I would've brought some regular clothes." I slipped the subject in casually. "Our uniforms really stand out, don't they?"
"Then want to buy something for summer at Abbey Road and change?"
"Hey, are you psychic?"
"Psychic?"
"I was KakaoTalking with Mom earlier and got permission to buy summer clothes at Abbey Road. Let's get an outfit each. My mom's buying."
"Really? But still..."
Before Sani could refuse, I linked arms with her and put on a nasal, whiny voice. "We don't have to buy anything expensive. We'll get something cheap. One outfit each, as a souvenir from our expedition to Incheon."
"Garam, you're really kind."
"Sani, don't cry."
"Do you know why I call my dad a complete idiot?"
"Because your biological mother took the insurance money?"
"That too. But because of something he said when he was dying."
"What?"
"He said everybody has a Buddha or Jesus inside their heart, and an evil spirit too. When you meet someone, you're supposed to make a relationship with the good part of them. But then he said he'd spent his whole life using his own evil spirit to meet everyone else's evil spirit, so he'd lived in hell. Don't you think it's stupid for a grown man to figure that out only when he's dying? You're only seventeen and you already know all that. My dad really was a complete idiot."
I didn't answer. I just squeezed her arm tighter against mine. With her tears gone, Sani and I marched toward Abbey Road. It wasn't even sale season, but the store was so crowded there was barely room to stand. Sani chose a short-sleeved checked shirt and yellow shorts, and somehow the already cute little thing looked even cuter. Walking around Hongdae dressed like that, she was going to have college guys lining up for her phone number. I chose a white crew-neck shirt and orange shorts. We stuffed our uniforms into our bags and stepped out of Abbey Road in our regular clothes.
I kept worrying that the crew neck made my neck look ridiculously long, but Sani said it was fine, so I decided to stop thinking about it. On the way to get tteokbokki, two college guys asked Sani for her number. Probably because of the crew-neck shirt, nobody asked for mine. I told Sani she ought to save herself the trouble and make a name tag with her phone number on it and wear it on her chest. She said that was a fantastic idea and promised she would definitely do it once she was in college. She smiled brightly. Before I knew it, her smile had spread to my face too. Laughing together, we roamed the streets of Hongdae.
* * *
For the past several days, Garam had been filling the <Gray Notebook> with every kind of wheedling she could come up with, begging me to cut Friday afternoon classes and go hang out in Hongdae. Garam was ruled by the weather. No depressing rain, no gloomy wind, warm sunlight pouring down—and immediately her heart started fluttering and she wanted to go somewhere. Fine dust and yellow dust had been so bad that spring that even the early heat felt like a blessing. Garam never got time to herself on weekends because of her parents. Her dad, who came home once every two weeks, carried Garam around as if she belonged in his pocket, while her mom, an executive at an advertising agency, packed all the mothering she couldn't do during the week into Saturday and Sunday. Lucky bitch. Fifth period was math, my favorite subject, but sixth period was physics and, seriously, forget it. A few days earlier, Mr. Byun Jae-ho had cited some survey saying fifty-six percent of high-school students would be willing to commit a crime and go to prison if they could get a billion won out of it, then lectured us forever as if we were all criminals in training. I couldn't stand people who believed the world would stop turning if they ever quit nagging. Why did adults even conduct garbage surveys like that? Instead of setting an example by showing us that selling your conscience for a billion won was wrong, they seemed to be sneering, See? You kids are no better than anyone else. People who thought getting older automatically made them adults were the worst. Age was something time handed you for free. Treating it like a medal earned on a battlefield was ridiculous.
Fine. I would cut afternoon classes. Not that it was only because of Garam. The truth was, my biological mother hadn't sent my allowance for three months. She wouldn't answer my calls or reply to my texts. I had survived this week by raiding the jar of coins in my drawer, but by next week I would be completely broke. It was filthy and humiliating, but I had no choice except to go find my biological mother and demand the money. You could only live off Garam so many times before your soul started evaporating. Why hadn't my idiot father listened to my uncle and changed the insurance beneficiary to Grandma? My biological mother had enough of a conscience to promise my uncle that she would personally take care of my allowance, but promises were all they ever were. She had never once sent it on time. She paid only after I called or texted to ask. Was there any excuse more convenient than I've been busy?
Maybe I should get a part-time job? No. Absolutely not. I wasn't throwing away blood-red chunks of my life for a few coins of spending money. I was going to college. A good college. Going all in on the CSAT suited both our finances and my personality better than trying to win through school records and holistic admissions. I would rather die than smile sweetly and suck up to people. Two and a half more years. That was all I had to endure. I would get into college on a full scholarship and go my own way where everyone could see me. Imagine my uncle, his wife, and my older female cousin's faces when I showed them my acceptance letter. My cousin always acted friendly in front of the adults and did every rotten thing she could think of behind their backs. In the end I couldn't stand her anymore, so I left my uncle's house and moved in with Grandma.
My older female cousin had started college that year, at one of those universities whose name I could hear five times and still forget. I couldn't understand why anybody would bother going to a school that would probably shut down in a few years because it couldn't find enough freshmen. If I got into the university I had my eye on, the whole family would probably collapse from strokes. I absolutely could not tell my father's older sister, who wore XXL. She might really have another one. She'd had a minor stroke two years earlier, after my gamer cousin blew several million won on game items and then lost more than ten million won gambling online. How much money even was ten million won?
My two cousins were so evenly matched in stupidity that ranking them was almost impossible, but the girl was slightly stupider. At least the boy knew he was an idiot. She didn't even know that. The two of them hated each other so much that whenever they met, they tore each other to pieces. Sadly, out of all the nonsense they said, the things they said about each other were the only truths.
Once I decided to cut afternoon classes, I got my early-leave slip and waited for Garam at the intersection in front of school. About ten minutes later I saw her and waved my arm high in the air. Garam merely lifted her hand a few inches and lowered it again. Such a phony. Then she came over and wrapped her arm tightly around mine, which was cute. The second she saw me, she started chattering excitedly about Starbucks in Hongdae and going to a hair salon. Garam knew what my situation was, so she always paid for me too. It wasn't that I particularly envied those Starbucks planners she collected every year, but someday I wanted to own one of those things myself and say to her, Here. You take this. Still, no planner in the world mattered to me as much as the <Gray Notebook>. I wrote maybe eighty-seven percent of the truth in it. Without that notebook, I might have gone crazy. Garam and I had started writing one line at a time in the autumn of our third year of middle school, and now there wasn't a blank page left. Garam was always accusing me of hiding too much from the <Gray Notebook>, but she did exactly the same thing. Last summer, in the parking lot, Garam's mom... No. I'm not telling that. I had no intention of blabbing about something Garam herself had chosen not to write in the notebook. Anyway, Garam probably wrote about eighty-seven percent of the truth too. Maybe it was better not to reveal the rest. If my idiot father and my biological mother had taught me anything, it was that nothing was more terrifying than the whole truth. Maybe people were able to keep a comfortable distance from one another because of a reasonable amount of pretending. Without pretending, there would be no saving face. And without that, the space between people would become a vacuum, with nothing to slow down the hurt as it traveled from one person to another. Maybe Garam and I could stand straight beside each other without casting shadows over one another because of that thirteen percent of empty space between us. I was a little surprised when Garam insisted on following me all the way to the hospital in Incheon where my biological mother worked. At first I told her I would go alone and that she could wait for me at Starbucks in Hongdae. Garam sulked so badly that there was no way I could leave her behind. So we changed from subway to bus and set off on our expedition to distant Incheon. It had been almost six months since I had last seen my biological mother. She disliked me because she said I looked like Dad. I disliked her right back. Her reason for disliking me was flimsy. Mine was perfectly decent and justified. Only an idiot treated people well when they hated you. In the hospital, when Dad was dying, he had talked about good hearts and evil spirits as though he had suddenly become Buddha or Jesus, but he had missed everything that actually mattered. I had lived for a while with Dad, for a while with my biological mother, for a while with my uncle, for a while with my aunt, and now for a while with Grandma. If all that had taught me one thing, it was the absolute and unchanging truth that you treat people the way they treat you. I would make a scene, get my allowance, and walk away without looking back. And I would not cry.
On the crowded subway, Garam put in her earbuds and listened to music. I wished she would study a little harder. Sure, only twenty percent of our first-year grades counted, but sometimes Garam seemed less like a first-year high-school student than a fourth-year middle-school student. She was so relaxed that I wondered whether she knew people said your ranking on the first practice exam of high school tended to follow you all the way to the CSAT. If we wanted to stay close after high school, it would be better if we got into universities that were somewhere near the same level. Still, Garam was my favorite person in the world. She was nothing like me. I was dry and brittle, like a pile of old hay. They said the human body was mostly water, but my body and mind had been suffering through a drought for years. I didn't even want to imagine what I would have become if I hadn't met someone like Garam, who was more like a river.
It took an hour and a half to reach the hospital where my biological mother worked. She was head nurse on an inpatient ward now, but she'd worked in outpatient care before. Before she got married, people said she had been famous for being good in the "surgery room." She always called the operating room the surgery room. She had first met Dad at the hospital when he was admitted after a minor traffic accident. Even now, whenever she thought about it, she got furious and kept saying, "I must've been a crazy bitch to fall in love with a fake patient." Dad had died at forty-three. According to the relatives, he was incompetent and had more than a little con man in him. Apparently he'd even gone through quite a lot of money from my biological mother's family.
According to my uncle's wife, who was about as rational and neutral as anyone in our family got, I shouldn't curse my biological mother too much for taking Dad's life-insurance money. Maybe Dad had wanted the payout to settle what he owed her. When I lived with my uncle's family, his wife had asked me to call her Mom, and I hadn't particularly minded. She really had tried hard to act like one, and because of her I had managed not to go off the rails. Sometimes I preferred their house, with at least the atmosphere of a proper family, to Grandma's, where absolutely everything belonged in another century. My uncle's wife was my last emergency exit. When I truly had nowhere else to turn, I called her. She never asked why. She just sent me the money I needed. It was never much, but exactly three times in my life I had received secret emergency money from her.
At 3:05, my biological mother came down to the lobby. I took one deep breath and charged toward her, but my heart was pounding so hard that no words came out. She seemed startled too. She stammered and tried to lead me outside. I fought against her and yelled, "Give me my money!" She dragged me out of the building in seconds. I screamed with everything I had for her to give me my money. At that moment, I couldn't see anything else. I had reached the point where there was nothing left to lose. I knew Garam was beside me, but I wasn't ashamed. She had seen me in worse states than this plenty of times. And yet I hadn't become a bad kid. I hadn't turned into someone who blamed everybody else because of what had happened to me. If anything, I hated being pitied, so I made sure nobody noticed anything. Teachers spent all their time on the troublemakers and paid no attention to ordinary kids. I wanted to be an ordinary kid who needed no attention, and I had worked harder than anyone to become one. But right then, I felt that if I didn't let everything explode, I would be a loser forever. I was only seventeen, but I knew better than anyone that when you swallow anger at the moment you ought to be angry, you pay several times the price later.
My biological mother dragged me as far as the parking lot, pulled out her phone, and sent me six months' allowance, including everything she owed me. I had won. I didn't cry. Then she walked deeper into the parking lot and said, "Everything you do is exactly like your father." The tears came anyway. I clenched my fists and fought desperately not to make a sound. Then Garam took my hand, and I couldn't hold it in anymore. After I cried it out, instead of feeling drained, I felt a fighting spirit for life rise through my whole body. I wiped my tears and promised myself that even when hopeless things happened, even when nothing went the way I wanted, I would never sink into self-pity. I spat hard on the ground with all my strength and got up from the bench.
On the bus and subway to Hongdae, Garam kept grinning at her phone as though something wonderful had happened. We had waited more than twenty minutes for the bus under the blazing sun, and the subway was packed, but she never showed the slightest sign that she was tired. It actually made me feel guilty. When Garam happily announced that her mom had given her permission to spend the evening with me, I decided that for today, I would just let Garam have whatever she wanted.
Garam will say it's been ages since she came to Hongdae and want to go buy clothes at Abbey Road. This time I'll beat her to it. Last year's summer clothes are too small anyway, so I need something new. At Yeopgi Tteokbokki, I'll order the Original today instead of Mild, because that's what Garam likes. It's pretty spicy, but if I scrape off some of the sauce, I can handle it. I already said I would buy the tteokbokki, but Garam will obviously use her mom as an excuse and try to pay. Fine. I'll let her. Then at the Kakao Friends Store, I'll buy us our second <Gray Notebook> as a present. I bet even Garam hasn't thought of that. And I'll do that Starbucks healing thing she loves so much with her too.
I sat there thinking about all this, feeling ridiculously happy, and before I knew it we had reached Hongdae Station. Exactly as I expected, the moment we came out of the station, Garam casually brought up regular clothes. Following my plan, I got there first and suggested we go to Abbey Road for summer clothes. Then Garam said she had already gotten permission from her mom and wanted to buy mine too. My nose stung and tears sprang into my eyes. Garam linked arms with me and called it a souvenir from our expedition to Incheon, even finding a way to protect my pride. Suddenly I thought of my idiot father and told her his stupid philosophy about the Buddha or Jesus inside people, and the evil spirit inside them too. Garam said nothing. She only squeezed my arm tighter. That was the signal she gave when she agreed with me completely.
Dressed in the great new summer clothes we'd bought at Abbey Road, Garam and I marched through Hongdae to attack the tteokbokki place. It was Friday afternoon and the streets were a sea of people. Everyone pushed forward and backward, bumping shoulders.
"Garam, your shoelace is undone."
I crouched down and tied her shoelace.
"Garam, your period..."
Before I could finish, Garam shouted.
"Wow! Thank God."
All day, we'd both felt a little guilty about cutting class with a fake period as our excuse. At last, we could hold our heads up again. Well, not that high...