TAEYEON CALLS MY name as I am heading up the walkway to New Clairmont. I turn and she's running at me, wearing a black pajama pants and a black singlet, with that blond hair. Weirdly, she looks like a Jung. Her hair's longer now. Her skin's fairer.

          Taeyeon. My Taengoo.

          Is she going to be my Taeyeon?

          She stops in front of me, breathing hard. Her hair messy, bedhead. The jaw of her lines higlighted by the light and she seems, I don't know, ier, more attractive than she would wearing a bikini.

          "Minho said you were down at the tiny beach," she pants. "I looked for you there first."

          "Did you just wake up?"

          She rubs the back of her neck. Looks down at what she's wearing. "Kind of. I wanted to catch you."

          "How come?"

          "Let's go to the perimeter."

          We head there and walk the way we did as children, Taeyeon in front and me behind. We crest a low hill, the curve back behind the staff building to where the Vineyard harbor comes into view near the boathouse. She looks so familliar, yet so different. Even from behind. The hair. Taller, too. And she definitely has gotten slimmer. The way she walks. Still, a little bit tomboy-ish but different.

          Taeyeon turns so suddenly I nearly run into her, and before I can step back her arms are around me. She pushed her body against mine and buries her face in my neck. I wrap my bare arms around her torso, the insides of my wrists against her spine. She is warm.

          "I didn't get to hug you yesterday," Taeyeon whispers. "Everyone hugged you but me."

          Touching her is familiar and unfamiliar.

          We have been here before.

          Also we have never been here before.

          For a moment,

          or for minutes,

          for hours, possibly,

          I am simply happy, here with Taeyeon's body beneath my hands. The sound of the waves and her breath in my ear. Glad that she wants to be near me.

          "Do you remember when we came down here together?" she asks into my neck. "The time we went out on that flat rock?"

           I step away. Because I don't remember.

         I hate my ing hacked-up mind, how sick I am all the time, how damaged I've become. I hate that I've lost my looks and failed school and quit sports and singing and am cruel to my mother. I hate how I still want her after two years.

          Maybe Taeyeon wants to be with me. Maybe. But more likely she's just looking for me to tell her she did nothing wrong when she left me two summers ago. She'd like me to tell her that I'm not mad. That she's been nothing but great.

          But how can I forgive her when I don't even know exactly what she's done to me?

          "No," I answer. "It must have slipped my mind."

          "We were---You and I, we---It was an important moment."

          "Whatever," I say. "I don't remember it. And obviously nothing that happened between us was particularly important in the long run, was it?"

          She looks at her hands. "Okay. Sorry. That was extremely suboptimal of me just now. Are you angry?"

          "Of course I'm angry," I say. "Two years of disappearance. Never calling and not writing back and making everything worse by not dealing. Now you're all, Ooh, I thought I'd never see you again and holding my hand and Everyone hugs you but me and probably with the physical state you're in right now, the hair, the jawline and all, one-per-third perimeter walking with me. It's severely suboptimal, Taeyeon. If that's the word you want to use."

          Her face falls. "It sounds awful when you put it that way."

          "Yeah? Well, that's how I see it."

          She rubs her hand on her hair. Combing the golden-blond hair through her slender fingers. "I'm handling eveything badly," she says. "What would you say if I asked you to start over?"

          "God, Taeyeon."

          "What?"

          "Just ask. Don't ask what I'd say if you did ask."

          "Okay, I'm asking. Can we start over? Please, Sica? Let's start over after lunch. It'll be awesome. I'll make amusing remarks and you'll laugh. I'd die to hear you laugh. Then, we'll go troll hunting. We'll be happy to see each other. You'll think I'm great, I promise."

          "But promises are meant to be broken, Taeyeon ah."

          "No, this time I swear on my life. I'll make everything worth it."

          "That's a big promise."

          "Okay, maybe not great, but at least I won't be suboptimal."

          "Why say suboptimal? Why not say what you really are? Thoughtless and confusing and manipulative?"

          "God," Taeyeon jumps up and down in agitation. "Jessica! I really need to just start over. This is going down from suboptimal to total crap." She jumps and kick her legs out like an angry little boy.

          The jumping makes me smile. "Okay," I tell her. "Start over. After lunch."

          "All right," she says, and stops jumping. "After lunch."

          We stare at each other for a moment.

          All I see is beautiful disaster. Those lips, those eyes, that dramatic nose, and of course, the hair. Her jawline. Her shoulders. Her figure. The tense-ness on her forehead. The sincerity in her brown eyes. The silent thoughts.

          And I think. What would she see? My pale skin. The closed windows of my eyes. The soul-less being. My messy hair and bone-like structure. The dark train of thoughts. The tiredness. The emptiness. She wouldn't see me as that beautiful girl she once said I was. Not anymore.  

          "I'm going to run away now," says Taeyeon. "Don't take it personally."

          "Okay."

          "It's better for the starting over if I run. Because walking will just be awkward."

          "I said okay."

          "Okay, then."

          She pecks my right cheek and runs.

Suboptimal means less than optimal level or standard or quality.