Starry Eyes(96)

“Good morning,” Sunny says brightly. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like the dead.”

“Excellent,” she says, getting up to head around the kitchen counter. “How about some sustenance?”

“Yes, please. I’m starving.”

Mac squints at me. “You haven’t developed any new allergies to eggs or pork, have you?”

“As long as no one’s cooking shrimp scampi, I’m all good.”

“Ugh,” Mac says, pretending to be exasperated. “Will I ever live that down?”

“Bad shrimp,” Sunny calls out cheerfully from behind the stove.

I exhale deeply and take a seat next to Mac. “I’ve missed you guys.”

“We’ve missed you too,” she assures me, bumping her shoulder against mine.

Sunny brings me a plate piled with eggs, bacon, and toast, and I help myself to the pot of coffee that’s sitting on the table. “Any word from Lennon this morning?” I ask, hopeful. I charged my phone overnight, but there were no messages from him.

Mac lifts her coffee cup. “Avani said she’d text when they were leaving today. I told her to let him know you’re here with us.”

I’m glad, but I also feel left out and unconnected from him. It’s weird to be on the other end of the no-phone-service problem. I liked it better when I was the one without reception.

I’m not sure what it is about civilization, but now that I’m here, the nagging urge to stay connected has returned. If I can’t have him in front of me, I need him to be a text away.

Resisting the urge to double-triple-quadruple-check my phone, I instead answer Sunny and Mac’s questions about the trip. They’re curious, asking questions, and I tell them a lot of things . . . but not everything. I get the feeling they know exactly what Lennon and I have been doing in the woods; they’re smiling a lot, and it’s making me a little uncomfortable, so I just focus on the life-and-death parts of the trip, not the sexlaxation parts. The doorbell rings as I’m telling them about the lightning storm, and when Sunny answers it, she talks to someone for a moment and then calls me quietly into the hallway.

“It’s for you,” she whispers.

I glance down the front hall toward their cracked front door. “Is it my mom?”

She shakes her head. “Go on. It’ll be fine. And we’re steps away if you need us.”

With trepidation, I shuffle to the door and open it. The face staring back at me is familiar, yet unexpected: a handsome Korean man in his fifties with short hair that’s gray along the temples, black in the back.

“Grandpa Sam?” I say, utterly confused.

“Zorie,” he says, enunciating carefully. Then he launches into a string of incomprehensible sentences that sound urgent and decisive.

“You know I don’t understand Korean,” I tell him. I can say hello (Annyeong-haseyo) and please (juseyo) and a few choice words that my mom uses when the man who owns Pizza Delight tries to overcharge us for extra toppings. Occasionally, I can figure out what the actors in my mom’s favorite K-dramas are saying after we’ve binged several episodes in a row, but that’s about it.

Grandpa Sam, on the other hand, understands most English. He just doesn’t speak it well. He says “okay” and “yes” and “no,” but he doesn’t bother with much of anything else, which is why emojis are his preferred way of communicating with me.

Right now, he lifts his head and mutters to the sky. Then he sighs heavily and motions for me to come with him. “Okay?” he says.

“Okay, hold on.” I run back into the house and get my stuff, and when Mac asks what’s going on, I tell her, “I have no freaking idea.”

They tell me everything will be fine, and I head outside where Grandpa Sam is waiting. He silently guides me across the cul-de-sac, one gentle hand on my back. He’s still talking to me in Korean, but now he sounds less upset. He’s trying to assure me of something, but when I see my mom sitting in the backseat of his shiny Audi sedan, parked in front of our apartment, I have a horrible feeling.

“What’s going on?” I ask. Mom is looking the other way. Is she avoiding me? What about her promises last night? She said she wouldn’t leave.

Grandpa Sam points to our front door and gives me a command in Korean, then says, “Okay?”

“No, I don’t want to stay here,” I tell him, desperate. “Take me with you.”

“Yes,” he says, vexation in his voice.

“What do you mean, ‘yes’? Yes, I can come? Yes what?”

Before he can give me another one of his exasperated rants, the front door of our apartment swings open to a torrent of swear words that I do understand. Only, they’re coming from the mouth of my tiny Korean grandmother, which makes them sound so much worse—mostly creative combinations involving animals.

Esther Moon never swears. She never yells, either, so I know we’re in uncharted territory now. She has Andromeda on her leash, and smoothly transitions from anger to murmuring baby talk at my dog in order to coax her down the front stairs. I’m not sure who’s having more trouble navigating them: the old husky, or the woman in stiletto heels and a designer skirt that fits like a glove.

My grandfather calls out to her, and she lifts her head. “Zorie! Thank God. Pack a bag and say goodbye to your fly-covered dog turd of a father.”