Page 51 of XOXO

“You definitely have two out of three.” She narrows her eyes, and I say, “Kidding, kidding.”

“Is this what I’ve been missing out on all this time?” But she says it with a curve to her lips, so that I know she’s okay with my teasing. “But let’s talk aboutyourdancing. I don’t think you’re going to pass the class, at the rate you’re going.”

“Iknow,” I groan. “I’m a cellist. We’re a sedentary breed.”

“You just need a little practice.” She bites her lip, watching me. Then says, “Later tonight, do you want to get out of here?”

I frown. “Won’t the facilities be closed?”

“You’re talking to the daughter of the CEO of Joah Entertainment. My mother owns thirty percent of the shares for this school.”

“What are you saying? I’m just a peon. You need to speak my language.”

“I have a key.”

It’s less that she has a key and more that she knows the code to the electronic lock on the door. Entering the dance studio, we drop our bags to the floor. Before leaving the dorms around ten, we changed into workout clothes and packed two tote bags full of snacks because, as Sori ominously predicts, “we’re going to need fuel.”

She switches on only one of the lights. Luckily this studio faces the back of the school, not the quad, making it less likely a security guard might notice our presence.

“Is this where you go in the mornings?” I ask, taking a seat on the floor and spreading my legs out to stretch.

“Yeah, I practice here for an hour, then go to the gym before washing up before class.”

That all sounds awful to me, but impressive.

After stretching, she brings her phone over to the wall, hooking it up to the sound system. “Let’s go through the whole choreography.”

Sori’s clearly a skilled dancer because I only have to do the whole thing once for her to figure out the steps. She then proceeds to demonstrate how it’s supposed to be done, and it’s a wonder to watch her, especially during the more powerful parts, like when she’s krumping.

“Concentrate!” she yells, catching me gaping at her in the mirror.

After an hour, I’m sweating from all my pores and ready to pull every single strand of hair off my head. “I suck at this.”

“Stop being so hard on yourself,” she says, raising her waterbottle to her mouth. “Your body has to memorize the steps before it will actually look good to others. You’re trying too hard to learn it all at once. Isolate the movements. Don’t tell me you were a master at cello when you first started.”

“I wasn’t awful,” I mumble to myself.

“No one is judging you here,” she says, ignoring me. “Just remember that I heard you play the cello. I acknowledge you’re amazing at it. But this is my specialty, and I’m trying to help you.”

I stare at her. Like really look at her. “You’re good at this.”

Now it’s her turn to blush. “I like... helping people. I had this dream, when I first started high school.... I wanted to be called ‘seonbae.’” She must see that I don’t know the term because she explains, “‘Seonbae’ is what underclassmen use to address upperclassmen. I wanted one of the younger students to call out to me Sori-seonbae and ask for my help.” She curls her hair around her finger. “Embarrassing, right?”

I have this sudden urge to hug her. She’sadorable.Of course Nathaniel couldn’t help falling for her.

“That’s so... pure,” I gush.

She laughs, and then says, seriously, “From the top?”

By the time midnight rolls around, I’m actually kind of getting the hang of the choreography. It’s like my body has gone through the movements so many times that I don’t have to think about what comes next. After I finally nail a tricky bit of footwork, Sori calls for another break and we bust out the snacks. Vitamin water and crunchy rice bars for Sori, shrimpcrackers and Gatorade for me.

After eating, we lay down on our backs in the middle of the studio, look up at the ceiling, and just talk. I tell her about my life growing up in LA with my mom and dad, about how they both worked food service jobs while my mom went through law school. Then how a few years after the karaoke bar opened, he got the diagnosis. I skip over the hard years, when he was in the hospital, and fast forward to my plans for the future—college in New York City, complete independence.

Sori tells me about her life growing up in the affluential neighborhood of Apgujeong, how she’s an only child too. That besides her mother being the CEO of Joah, her father is a politician, which meant that a lot of her friends were either children of chaebol families or kids from school whose parents forced them to befriend her.

How a couple of years back her father had had a highly publicized affair, which resulted in her so-called friends turning their backs on her. It was an awful, exhausting time, and the person who was there for her, who was her rock through it all, was Nathaniel.

She smiles as she recounts her impression of him at their first meeting, both thirteen years old. She thought he was a punk and a troublemaker. For years they teased and tried to one-up each other.

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