Page 80 of Rules for Rule Breaking
“Mom,” Bobby barked. “It doesn’t work that way. I tell people I was born in New Jersey, and they ask me where I’mreallyfrom. Then I tell them my grandparents were born in Korea, and they askme North or South. Sometimes I tell the truth, but sometimes I tell them we’re refugees who swam from Pyongyang to Alaska, and they believe it! And you know what? It doesn’t matter. They end up telling me I’m really tall for an Asian, and they move on. Sometimes they ask me to say something in Korean, and I can’t. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have this face and not be able to say a single word or even name a dish? In second grade, in geography class, my teacher called on me to identify a country by the shape, and I had no idea what it was. Turns out it was South Korea.”
Bobby’s parents kept looking at each other for answers, but neither of them seemed to have any.
“Bobby, it doesn’t matter what people say,” Diana said finally. “You’re responding to their image of you. Ignore it.”
“Mom, I can’t ignore it if it’s literally everyone,” Bobby said, exasperated. “And how can I have my own image if I don’t know our history? Can you tell me why? What did you both run away from? What are you hiding from me?”
Bobby’s mother and father were like strangers to him. He didn’t know at what point their relationship became so fractured. There was an incredible amount of love, but they lacked a closeness. They were like ghosts in his life. Robert Sr. always hid something darker behind his smile, and Diana constantly dodged questions and defused any remotely tense situation. The last personal thing he remembered telling them was that he had a crush on Winter when he was eight. They’d created an environment with strict parent-child boundaries, and he respected his parents for it, but it’d only driven them apart slowly as he learned to resent their fake happiness and the pretense that everything was okay. It was probably the reason he hadn’t noticed Jacqueline pulling away from him for months.
“It seems you’ve been angry for a long time,” Diana said. “Wewant to apologize for not noticing. It’s just that you’re so independent. You push yourself and you never act up, so we’ve always let you make your own decisions. But we made the decision to bring you here and withhold our families from you. You are far more mature than we were when we made these decisions, but it’s no excuse.”
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore,” Bobby said, his hands clasped behind his neck as he stared at the floor. “You both are unhappy, and I hate that I can’t do anything about it, especially with me leaving next year.”
“We’re fine, sweetheart. What are you talking about?” Diana asked.
“You both arenotfine. Did you never notice that your scarves have been knitting themselves?” He shot to his feet. “Look, I’m tired. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Or maybe never. Maybe there’s some room left under our rugs for this one.”
Bobby peeled himself off the couch and zombie-walked upstairs with his parents’ eyes burning a hole in his back. When he was in his room, they immediately started talking about him in hushed voices. He pulled a pillow over his head and did his best to ignore the chatter until he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Winter Park
37. WE WILL NOT TELL ANYONE DETAILS ABOUT OUR TRIP
One Sunday a few weeks after Bobby and Winter had returned, they were supposed to have dinner with the Baes. Winter was ditching it. Instead, she was lounging in the grass at her grandmother’s apartment. She had her eyes closed and her palms turned up toward the sun in an attempt to tan the insides of her arms. Halmeoni was cooking a vegetable-and-tofu soup. Winter could smell the spiciness in the air.
She lay in the grass a while longer until the screen door was suddenly yanked open with a screech and Halmeoni poked her head outside. “What are you doing other than not helping?” she called.
“I’m trying to get a tan so people think I did something interesting with my summer,” Winter replied, turning her head to Halmeoni’s flower box, where the two petunias had wilted and died.
“You did do something interesting.”
She’d let her paper walls down for the briefest of moments before fortifying them with steel. That didn’t count.
Winter got up, dusted off her clothes, and went to the fridge. “What kind of vegetables do you need?”
“Doesn’t matter. All of them.”
“But, like, specifically. What vegetables does this recipe call for?”
Halmeoni sucked her teeth. “You think I’m using a recipe? Theancestors tell me what to put in the pot, and I listen.”
“Okay, but the ancestors aren’t really saying anything to me right now, so can you just tell me what you want?”
Halmeoni stayed silent.
Winter took to going through Halmeoni’s fridge. Most of her dairy products were nearing their expiration date. She stared at the milk jug for a moment before gathering a zucchini, a squash, two carrots, and a cabbage for the soup. Somehow Halmeoni disapproved despite her vague instructions.
Winter lined the vegetables up for slaughter, then systematically sliced them and put them in separate glass bowls, taking extra care with the carrots. Halmeoni unceremoniously dumped everything in a giant pot with the tofu.
“Are you upset with me, Halmeoni?” Winter asked.
She gave the pot a stir and put on the lid. “You have been here for weeks, Soon-hee. School starts tomorrow, and you’ve become lazy.”
“Lazy?Do you not want me here?”
Halmeoni went to wash dishes. “It’s not that. You’re moping, and your long face is starting to annoy me. You’ve been frowning all over my house since you got home. Your face will stay that way.”
“Whatever.”
