Somewhere Only We Know(29)

I found Lucky watching an older woman light a giant pack of incense. Her delicate hands gripped the sticks firmly as she stuck them into a large gold urn filled with ash. After the incense was properly placed, the woman clasped her hands to her chest and stared into the flames, eventually closing her eyes, her eyelids paper thin and almost translucent.

“What are you going to pray for?” I whispered as I sidled up to Lucky. My phone was ready to capture it, whatever it was.

Her gaze not moving from the old lady, Lucky thought about it for a second.

“I’m not actually praying. I’m being respectful of other cultures,” she whispered.

“So you’re not religious?”

She cut me a glance. “Nope.”

“Even though you’re in church choir?”

A moment passed and we both stared at the lady, the lie hovering over both of us. Finally she said, “I used to be religious. That’s how I started out in church choir. But I do it mostly for the singing now.”

I nodded. “Gotcha.”

The lady left and Lucky lit her bundle of incense—holding the lit match over the ends, expertly lighting them before the flame reached her fingertips.

“Well, if you were the praying type, what would you be praying for?” I asked.

Lucky spread the sticks of incense out in a tray full of ash on an altar facing a golden deity statue. “I guess … I would wish good health for my parents.”

Korean media training at its finest. “Pft. Okay.”

She glared at me. “What!”

“That is complete crap. What would you actually pray for?”

Lucky ignored me, clasping her hands to her chest, like the old lady had done. She closed her eyes while her lips moved, silently offering words to the magical sticks.

I took a photo.

When she opened her eyes I slipped my phone back into my pocket.

“I prayed for an upcoming performance to go well,” she said. “It’s kind of … a big deal.”

Aha. “Why is it a big deal?”

We walked over to a wall full of small drawers—cremated ashes. Lucky’s fingers drifted over the red trim on the square drawer faces, tracing the paintings of radishes on each one.

“If it goes well, then we might make it to this next level of our, um, competition,” she said.

“Oh, cool,” I said. “That’s exciting, right?”

She stared at the drawers intently. “Supposedly. But I can’t seem to get excited about it.”

I looked at her sharply. “Why not? Isn’t it your choir’s big break?”

“That’s what everyone says but maybe I like things the way they are?” she said in such a low voice that I had to strain to hear it.

The incense-thickened air made it hard for me to see, too, and I waved my hand in front of my face. “If you want things to stay the way they are, then why did you pray that it would go well?”

My voice was louder than I meant for it to be and Lucky shushed me before grabbing my sleeve and pulling me over to a quiet spot—an empty area underneath lanterns decked out with red banners and giant incense coils.

I tried to ignore how much I liked the familiarity of the movement.

After glancing around to make sure no one was listening to us, she said in a loud whisper, “I prayed for it to go well because I still want good things for the choir. For everyone else who’s so invested in it.”

I stilled, taken aback by the honesty of that answer. “But what about what you want?”

She contemplated me for a second before countering my question with one of her own. “What do you know about Buddhism?”

“Uh. I know it involves … Buddha?” Where was this coming from?

She laughed, then covered her mouth quickly. “Buddhism is pretty interesting. It’s all about the path to liberation—to be free of things like earthly desires, to be free of craving.” She was fluttering her hands in the air, punctuating the whimsicalness of what she was saying with graceful movements.

“What’s so bad about craving?” I asked with an easy smile. But I was serious.

Her mouth scrunched up slightly, unsure if I was teasing. “Sometimes it clouds your decisions. Like, you’re driven by the wrong things.”

I glanced at her sharply. “What are the ‘right’ things?”

“I don’t know. Um, doing good things for the world? Humanity? Desires not born out of selfishness and ego, but like … something bigger?”

“That sounds super boring,” I said.

She laughed. “Shut up.”

“I’m serious!” I tried to keep my voice down. “Because even if you’re living your life so selflessly, why are you doing it? Isn’t it ultimately to feel good about yourself anyway? So then you come back full circle to this idea of being ‘selfish.’ Like it’s a bad thing.”

“I couldn’t disagree more,” she said, her face tilting up to me, fully visible under her cap. “I don’t think doing good things is selfish. That’s so Cynicism 101.”

That stung. “Thanks.”

She shook her head. “It’s true. Jack, there is actual goodness and badness, you know that, right? Like, there’s a life that is quality and there’s a life that is … empty.”