I wake up at 7 a.m. and take a shower. I wash my hair and condition it - combing it out into that glossy, curly mass I used to be proud of at one point - that my Papi was always so proud of - and Andrew was too, for no good reason.

When I don’t tie it up it reaches to my knees - but that’s not saying much, given my height. 

I remind myself of a Bratz doll. A pocket Rapunzel.

Heading to my closet, I pick something actually nice to wear - 

Evergreen sweater - black leather skirt-

Because I’m cool - I am absolutely unbothered by what Kattar said last night. 

…Totally fine.

But more than that, I don’t want Drew to be worried.

Today I put on earrings - I paint my fingernails - I convince myself to eat breakfast on the first try and get out of the kitchen without even the beginning of a meltdown.

Without that drink, I so desperately want, right now.

And I don’t wince when I retrieve my dead phone from where I left it in the living room - I don’t imagine that the crack on the screen is my double-breaking broken heart- just keep on smiling like a toy -

Because if you keep making that face it’ll get stuck like that.

Or so I’ve heard.

By the time I meet up with Kat, I’ve managed to do that almost-forget magic trick - the one where you rethink the same thing until you’ve wrung the emotions out of it - convincing yourself feeling is the same thing as overreacting.

Maybe he’s doing the same thing.

He looks more like a painting than a person when I come in. 

He’s awake today - in theory anyway - not in that walking-dead drowsy state from last evening - but he’s staring into the floor like he has x-ray vision and every other inch of his face is inscrutable stone.

Something should probably be said here.

But if you don’t have anything good to say, hold your tongue.

I’ve never been a good judge of what anyone needs to hear-

And maybe that’s why he’s spent so much of our lives keeping things from me.

As I stand awkwardly by the front door, my hand raises itself involuntarily - and I’d reach out -

To him-

Or to grab his bag from where it’s sitting by the sofa.

But I don’t think he wants either.

Any more reminders…

Or me.

*

The parking lot of the restaurant is more or less empty. 

Not surprising, since I’ve never intentionally eaten organic a day in my life, and I think the same is probably true for most people.

Not for Mrs. Moon of course. Mrs. Moon shops at Whole Foods. She buys organic locally sourced cage-free everything. But besides her and Kattar, most people just plug their gullet with whatever will keep their stomach tanks off “E” if they can get it down without literal, immediate death. 

Any more effort than that is more than I’ve ever been able to muster.

I’m eating. Be proud of me.

Andrew is parked by the front door, sitting on the hood of a cobalt-colored rental, and the minute I lay eyes on him slipping down to the pavement to come and greet me-

It feels like a car crash.

The shadow…

All my attempts to appear put together yeet themselves off the edge of Sanity-

I hear our grandmother’s voice in my own quavering tone as I raise my hand almost breathlessly and touch my little brother’s shoulder towering over my head.

“I completely forgot how much taller than me you are now…”

He smiles wordlessly as he puts one heavy, calloused hand on my hair, with something like a laugh rippling through his frame.

“Everyone is taller than you, sis.”

A breath seems to pass through his hand and into me.

He’s breathing.

And that’s enough for me.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, I know,” I shake my head scowling with feigned annoyance, removing Andrew’s work-weathered hand with my fragile one, resting the other on one cold handle of Kat’s chair.

Jinho, who had been sitting in the driver’s seat on his phone, has locked the car now and comes over to greet me and Kat with a bow that catches us off guard. 

I see Kat redden up to his ears but Andrew just laughs, sounding a bit like Dad as he claps Jinho on the shoulder, beaming like the sun.

“This is Jinho. Jinho, my big sister, Alicia, and her friend Kattar.”

Jinho smiles amiably, and his eyes squint into the same sort of reclining crescent moon I've seen on Kattar’s face a thousand times - but with a subtle teasing spark that immediately sets Andrew shaking his head with a playfully suspicious air.

“I know who she is,” Jinho sort of half-laughs, “It would be impossible not to when you have so many pictures of her everywhere around the house. And she had better know me,” this with a quick glance toward Andrew that looks like a dare. “You guys should fire your photographers though, not one of them made her look so…” 

He pauses suddenly and looks at Andrew, “Como se dice ‘bella?’ No me recuerdo.”

But before Andrew can reply Jinho finishes his own statement.

“Cute…no-pretty. Lo siento,” he actually laughs now, putting both his hands to his face in a childish way that surprises me, given the strong language I’ve heard from him on other occasions, “We’ve spent all day dealing with paperwork to renew our permit and the English part of my brain is…”

Rather than completing the thought he motions with both hands as if to signify ‘kaput,’ and Andrew feels the need to explain.

“These are the struggles of a trilingual brain. I feel the same way whenever we have long conversations in Korean. But we could switch languages if you like. You and Kattar are both Korean so-” 

But before he even finishes the statement I see Kattar’s face darken, like someone turned out the lights.

“I’m not Korean,” he says quickly with a slight bitterness in his tone that catches me off guard, even as he keeps smiling until his eyes disappear. “It’s just in the eyes. I don’t speak Korean and we don’t have any Korean traditions. My mother is Mexican, and I'm Mexican-American.”

Jinho’s eyebrows furrow just the tiniest bit with surprise and bewilderment - maybe even a little pang of hurt, like Kattar’s words are a personal attack. I can’t really blame him, though he says nothing, simply glancing at Andrew, who smiles with acute discomfort, offering quickly:

“W-well, is Spanish still alive?”

“Spanish is good,” Jinho replies with equal rapidity.

“Alright then. Let’s do Spanish.”

The conversation changes tongues like the flipping of a switch, but I admit, even if I wasn’t out of practice I wouldn’t have comprehended most of it. My mind is ringing - or beeping with an anxious alarm - but exactly what it’s trying to warn me about is beyond me.

My stomach churns, raging in this cage like a ship in a bottle.

I think-

There’s something disturbing about the way Kattar threw ‘Korean’ to the wind.

I feel nauseated like I just watched him sever his body from the waist down and toss his legs into the sea.

And something in his face tells me that it’s every bit as painful as that sounds.