Authors: Katie M. Stout
Silence reigns in the car, and I find myself unable to look at either of them. I peer out the window, my insides twisting. My brain flashes back to the conversation with Jason, with him holding my arm and my inability to say
anything
. I’m not the kind of girl who gets tongue-tied around boys, not even super hot boys like Jason. Maybe my feelings for him are more than a crush. But that’s crazy. He’s my best friend’s brother, and he annoys me as often as he’s sweet to me.
I glance at his reflection in the rearview mirror, regret growing inside my chest, and I’m unable to stop imagining Jason’s lips touching mine.
The next morning, I accompany the Bae family to church. In Korean. It’s mostly the same as back home, except I have no idea what the pastor’s saying. And everybody says their own individual prayers out loud all at once in near shouts, which is sort of overwhelming. But I get to meet a few of Sophie’s friends, who are all just as sweet as her.
I call Jane when we get back. After an hour-long conversation, in which she tells me all about how Momma’s driving her insane, how her friends all have boyfriends and she doesn’t, and how she wishes she were with me in Seoul, I’m left with tears pooling in my eyes as I hang up. I sit on Sophie’s bed, staring at the silky pink comforter, a dull ache pounding in my chest. Jane’s voice still echoes in my ears, and for the first time, I actually miss home. Maybe not the fights with Momma, or Dad’s indifference, but Nashville, my friends who I’ve ignored for months, and American food.
But Monday brings the first day of shooting for Jason’s drama, and I don’t have time to feel homesick, because Sophie decides we’re accompanying him.
“Na Na is in this show!” Sophie squeals as we file out of the car at the shooting site.
“Who’s Na Na?” I glance around at the neighborhood, which looks like a part of history. Brick buildings line the narrow stone street, with houses behind wooden gates featuring heavy oak knockers. The roofs remind me of Japanese pagodas, and a thin layer of snow coats the tops of the walls separating yards from the road.
“She’s only, like, the biggest new teen actress in Korea,” Sophie says, like I keep up with actresses who speak a language I can’t understand. “And I’m getting her autograph before this is over.”
I laugh as we wander down the street toward the crew setting up in a courtyard. “But aren’t you used to meeting famous people? Your brother is one.”
She waves her hand in dismissal. “We were in the womb together. He doesn’t count.”
We kill time watching crew members set up the camera and lights and all the other equipment they’ll need to start filming, when a girl arrives, her hair so long it almost skims her hips and high heels so tall they look like stilts. She has milky skin and perfectly pink cheeks, the kind of girl that makes your heart ache because you know you’ll never be as beautiful as her. She beams at the crew, and they melt under her attention, basking in her radiance. This must be Na Na.
Sophie squeals next to me and fumbles through her purse as the girl gets closer to us. “I can’t find a pen,” she hisses. “Grace, I can’t find a pen!”
“Is this the only day she’ll be on set?” I ask.
Tilting her head to the side, Sophie shoots me a bemused look. “The only day? She’s the main character. Na Na wouldn’t take a smaller role.”
“The main…” My voice trails off as this fact settles.
I glance at the girl again—her perfectly shaped mouth, the legs that go for miles. She’s going to be playing alongside Jason for an entire TV show season? My heart constricts. What if they
kiss
?
Na Na passes us, and Sophie lets out a soft groan and allows her purse to fall back to her side. She must have resigned herself to getting the autograph another time.
“Sophie!” a voice calls from behind us.
I turn to see Jason heading toward us. My breath catches at the sight of him, dressed in faded jeans and a black leather jacket with scuffed, clunky boots to match. His hair’s more tousled than normal, and he’s wearing earrings.
“Did they pierce your ears?” she asks with a giggle.
He touches one of the studs. “No, they’re fake. Apparently, they make me look more rock ’n’ roll.”
I join Sophie’s laughter. “I don’t know about that.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Are you nervous?” Sophie asks.
Jason scoffs, the arrogance he wore so often when I first met him now returning. He doesn’t even look at me.
He lets out a long-suffering, self-righteous sigh. “Please don’t embarrass me, Sophie.”
“Hey, don’t be a jerk,” I cut in. “She was just trying to be nice.”
His gaze flicks to me, then to the crew members carrying camera equipment who walk past us, a coldness swallowing his eyes. And I know he’s shutting me out like he used to. The realization steals the rest of my words.
“I’ve got to be on set,” he says. “I’ll see you later, Sophie.” He focuses on his sister. “Do
not
get in the way.”
He turns, still not acknowledging me. I chafe at the slight, anger growing. Why is he acting like this?
Smirking, I wait until he’s maybe a couple hundred feet down the road, then shout with fake sincerity, “Good luck, Jason! You’ll do great!”
He whips around, shock clear on his face. Then he turns his head to each side, like he’s gauging everyone else’s reactions. But when they go about their business, he doesn’t react, just turns back around and keeps walking. Except, even at this distance, I can see the new tension in his shoulders.
He joins the others, and I watch him talk to Na Na. Really, how can she wear such a short skirt in the winter? She’s going to get frostbite.
My brain still grapples with Jason’s personality shift. He was so nice before today. What’s changed?
Then it hits me—before, we were always with his family. Nobody else was around. He didn’t need to impress anyone. But here, there are people he works with, people who could either hurt or help his career. And for whatever reason, I’m in his way. I’m an embarrassment.
My cheeks flame at the thought, and I try to cover my swirling emotions with a heaping portion of anger. But the shame settles in my gut and crawls through me, pounding like a dull drumbeat in my chest.
I pull out my phone to text Jane, but my thumb hovers above the keypad. Why does his slight hurt so much? Why do I care? It shouldn’t bother me this much.
But it does.
Because maybe—maybe!—I like him. More than as my best friend’s brother. More than as a friend. More than a little crush.
I’ve only had one real boyfriend—Isaac. And that didn’t turn out so well. But I’ve always had a thing for guys who sing, play an instrument, or, in Isaac’s case, DJ.
Not that I need someone telling me musicians are fickle and high maintenance. Nathan’s revolving door of girlfriends taught me that, and Jason wouldn’t be any better, with all his drama.
Not that I want to date Jason. I
can’t
like him, not more than just as an innocent little crush because he’s cute and kinda fun to hang out with sometimes. I do
not
like Jason Bae.
Much.
* * *
“Where’s Na Na?” Sophie cranes her neck around me, searching the faces of every person that passes us.
I sigh. “I don’t know.”
Sophie insisted we go with Jason to the photo shoot for the drama, even though I’ve been here for over a week now and haven’t really seen any of Seoul besides the places the show is filming. Every morning, I ask Sophie what we’re doing, and it’s always the same: “Whatever Jason’s doing.” Not that he sees fit to tell us in advance what that may be.
And whenever he goes to a party, which might actually be fun, Sophie and I are conspicuously not invited. He and Na Na go together, like they’re dating or something. And if he “forgets” to introduce me to someone again, I’m going to scream. You’d think he might be polite and try to keep me in the loop, but then again, this is Jason we’re talking about—politeness isn’t really his strength.
“You don’t have to be so snippy,” Sophie says.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
She pouts, slumping into a chair along the far wall opposite the set. “I still don’t have her autograph.”
“And whose fault is that?” I tease, laughing. “We’ve seen her a million times, and you’ve never had the guts to ask her for it. Even
I’ve
said more words to her than you have.”
She wrinkles her nose, slouching her shoulders even more. “That’s not fair. Jason introduced you to her. He should have introduced
me
—I’m his sister.”
“You weren’t there.”
“Because I was in the bathroom!”
What I don’t tell Sophie is that Jason didn’t introduce me—Na Na sought me out. I was lingering in the catering tent between takes a few days ago when she came up beside me and pretended to choose between a croissant and a banana.
“Your name is Grace,” she said in Korean.
“Ye.”
I nodded.
She then spouted a flurry of Korean words at me so fast, all I could do was stare at her blankly, my brain failing to keep up with the translating. When she’d finished her monologue, she watched me with her nose scrunched and disdain in her eyes.
“You don’t understand,” she finally said in English, after an uncomfortable amount of silence. “You live in Korea, but you can’t speak Korean.”
“I’m learn—”
“You’re so American,” she interrupted, and my eyebrows shot up.
She glanced at the Danish on my plate, her lips curling in a mocking smile. “Maybe you should choose something with fewer calories. Jason needs to be seen with pretty girls around him.”
She didn’t need to say
like me,
because her tone implied it.
Even now, anger burns through me at the memory. Ever since that conversation, she’s made a point of catching my eye while she’s talking to Jason, casually touching his arm or leaning closer to him while holding eye contact with me. It’s enough to make me want to throw a truckload of Danishes at her face.
A small crowd of people head in from an adjoining room, and I spot Jason and Na Na among them. Both have been styled to perfection, Na Na in a gorgeous silver sequined dress that shows off her thin legs and Jason with a pair of tattered hipster jeans and a T-shirt that hugs his shoulders. They look perfect together.
Sophie perks at Na Na’s entrance but remains rooted in her seat, even when the other girl lingers by the snack table. I wait for Sophie to jump up and make her move, but she never does. I stifle a sigh. Am I going to have to get the autograph for her? If so, she better give me a gigantic Christmas present.
The shoot drags on and on. And on. Reality television makes photo shoots seem glamorous and fun. Maybe they are if you’re the one being photographed. But once you’ve watched one, you’ve watched them all. And this one is even less entertaining, because I have to see Jason cuddled up to Na Na in a variety of poses. It’s sort of nauseating.
When I think about our almost-moment at the market the Saturday after I arrived, I almost laugh. I thought Jason would be nicer now that we’re on his home turf. False. He’s turned into a bigger douche than he was at school.
Sophie’s attention wavers and she retreats to her cell, but I can’t tear my eyes off the couple in front of the camera. Na Na laughs and simpers, pouts and smiles, on the photographer’s command. She’s a natural, obviously. Beside her, Jason struggles to appear casual, but she has enough charisma for both of them.
“If you’re not going to get your autograph, why don’t we leave now?” I ask Sophie, forcing a lightness into my tone that I don’t feel. “I’m sort of hungry. Let’s go grab lunch.”
“We rode with Jason,” Sophie says. “We have to wait until he’s done.”
I swallow a groan. I rifle through my purse, searching for any
won
that I could use to pay for a cab or bus. If I have to sit here one second longer, I’m going to scream. Each snap of the camera shoots another jolt of irritation through me.
At the bottom of my bag, I find a few coins.
“We could take the bus.” I hold up the
won
. “Why don’t we go shopping or something?”
Sophie hesitates. “But I want to get my autograph…”
“We’ll have tons of opportunities later,” I say, pulling out my used-car-salesman voice. “We’ve been to practically every day of shooting thus far.”
She shakes her head. “They’re going to Busan tomorrow, about six or seven hours south, so we can’t watch anymore.”
Jason’s going to Busan? I glance at him, but he’s got his arms wrapped around Na Na from behind and rests his chin on her shoulder. He grins at the camera, and my stomach turns.
I confronted him a few days ago about being a jerk, but he denied everything. Like he can’t see that he’s using me and Sophie—wants us close by in case he needs something, in case we could be useful, but far enough away that we don’t cramp his style. But every time I ask Sophie if we can do something on our own, she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see the way he’s ignoring us, like she’s immune to his annoyingness. I guess if you share genes with someone, you get used to their idiosyncrasies.
It takes every ounce of self-restraint I have to swallow the sharp words threatening to explode from my mouth. Sophie hasn’t done anything wrong, and I can’t vent my frustration on her just because she’s the closest to my blast radius. She’s not the one who’s hanging all over Na Na in front of an entire photography team. Or the one who’s been basically ignoring me since the drama started filming.
So I rein in my inner diva and say as evenly as possible, “Well, I’ll just go alone, then.” I throw my purse over my shoulder. “I know you want to get that autograph. You just hang out here until you get it, then you can meet me somewhere.”
Her eyes get wide. “But you don’t know where you’re going.”
I wave off her concern. “I’ll ask.”
“You don’t speak Korean.”
I shrug. “Most everyone here speaks English. At least enough to give me directions.”
She jumps to her feet and grabs my hand. “What if you get lost?”
Now I laugh. “Then I’ll call you.”