Taeyeon? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?

MINHO TOLD ME about the New York boyfriend that evening. His name was Jace. Minho had even met him since he lives in New York, like Taeyeon does, but downtown with Carrie and Ed, while Taeyeon lives uptown with her mom. Minho said Jace was a singer and wore black clothes. A lot like Taeyeon does.

          Tiffany's brother, Sooyoung, told me Jace had sent Taeyeon a packet of homemade brownies. So apparently he cooks too. Yoona and Yuri told me Taeyeon had pictures of him in her phone. 

          Taeyeon didn't mention him at all, but she had trouble meeting my eyes.

          That first night, I cried and bit my fingers and drank wine I snuck from the Clairmont pantry. I spun violently into the sky, raging and banging stars from their moorings, swirling and vomiting.

          I hit my fist into the wall of the shower. I washed off the shame and anger in cold, cold water. Then I shivered in my bed like the abandoned dog that I was, my skin shaking over my bones.

           The next morning, and every day thereafter, I acted normal. I tilted my well-sculptured chin high.

           We sailed and made bonfires. I won the tennis tournament.

           We made vats ice cream and lay in the sun.

           One night, the four of us ate a picnic down on the tiny beach. Steamed clams, potatoes, and sweet corn. The staff made it. I didn't know their names.

          Minho and Tiffany carried the food down in metal roasting pans. We ate around the flames of our bonfire, dripping butter onto the sand. Then Taeyeon made triple-decker s'mores for all of us. I looked at her hands in the firelight, sliding marshmallows onto a long stick. Where once she'd had our names written, now she had taken to writing the titles of books she wanted to read.

          That night, on the left: Being and. On the right: Nothingness. I had writing on my hands, too. A quotation I liked. On the left: Live in. On the right: today. 

          "Want to know what I'm thinking about?" Taeyeon asked.

          "Yes," I said.

          "No," said Minho.

          "I'm wondering how we can say your grandad owns this island. Not legally but actually."

          "Please don't get started on the evils of the Pilgrims," moaned Minho.

          "No. I'm asking, how can we say land belongs to anyone?"

          Taeyeon waved at the sand, the ocean, the sky.

          Tiffany shrugged. "People buy and sell land all the time."

          "Can't we talk about or murder?" asked Minho.

          Taeyeon ignored him. "Maybe land shouldn't belong to people at all. Or maybe there should be limits on what they can own."

          She leaned forward. "When I went to India this winter, on that volunteer trip, we were building toilets. Building them because people there, in this one village, didn't have them.

          "We all know you went to India," said Minho. "You told us like forty-seven times."

          Here is something I love about Taeyeon: she is so enthusiastic, so relentlessly interested in the world, that she has trouble imagining the possibility that other people will be bored of what she's saying. Even when they tell her outright. But also, she doesn't like to let us off easy. She wants to make us think---even when we don't feel like thinking.

          This her.

          Her mind.

          Her heart.

          Beautiful.

          She poked a stick into the embers, "I'm saying we should talk about it. Not everyone has private islands. Some people work on them. Some work in factories. Some don't have work. Some don't have food."

          "Stop talking now," said Tiffany.

          "Stop talking, forever," said Minho.

          "We have warped view of humanity on Beechwood," Taeyeon said. "I don't think you see that."

          "Shut up," I said. "I'll give you more chocolate if you shut up."

          And Taeyeon did shut up, but her face contorted. She stood abruptly, picked up a rock from the sand, and threw it with all her force. She pulled off her sweatshirt, leaving just her sports bra and kicked off her shoes. Then she walked into the sea in her jeans.

          Angry.

          I watched the fragility of her in the moonlight, the spray kicking up as she splashed in. She dove and I thought: If I don't folow her now, that guy Jace's got her. If I don't follow her now, she'll go away. From the Liars, from the island, from our family, from me.

          I threw off my sweater and followed Taeyeon into the sea in my dress. I crashed into the water, swimming out to where she lay on her back. Her wet hair was slicked off her face, showing the thin scar through one eyebrow.

          I reached for her arm. "Taeyeon."

          She startled. Stood in the waist-high sea.

          "Sorry," I whispered.

          "I don't tell you to shut up, Sica," she said.

          Sica. 

          "I don't ever say that to you."

          "I know."

          She was silent.

          "Please don't shut up," I said.

          I felt her eyes go over my body in my wet dress. "I talk too much," she said. "I politicize everything."

          "I like it when you talk," I said, because it was true. When I stopped to listen, I did like it.

          "It's that everything makes me....." She paused. "Things are messed up in this world, that's all."

          "Yeah."

          "Maybe I should"---Taeyeon took my hands, turned them over to look at the words written on the backs---"I should live in today and not be agitating all the time."

          My hand was in her wet ones.

          I shivered. Her arms were bare and wet. We used to hold hands all the time, but she hadn't touched me all summer.

          "It's good that you look at the world the way you do," I told her.

          Taeyeon let go of me and leaned back into the water. "Minho wants me to shut up. I'm boring you and Tiffany."

          I looked at her profile. She wasn't just Taeyeon. She was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. All that was there, in the lids of her brown eyes, her smooth skin, her lower lip pushed out. There was coiled energy inside.

          "I'll tell you a secret," I whispered.

          "What?"

          I reached out and touched her arm again. She didn't pull away. "When we say Shut up, Taeyeon, that isn't what we mean at all."

          "No?"

          "What we mean is, we love you. You remind us that we're selfish bastards. You're not one of us, that way."

          She dropped her eyes. Smiled. "Is that what you mean, Sica?"

          "Yes," I told her. I let my fingers trail down her floating outstretched arm.

          "I can't believe you are in that water!" Minho was standing ankle-deep in the ocean, his jeans rolled up. "It's the Arctic. My toes are freezing off."

          "It's nice once you get in," Taeyeon called back.

          "Seriously?"

          "Don't be weak!" yelled Taeyeon. "Be manly and get in the stupid water."

          Minho laughed and charged in. Tiffany followed.

          And it was---exquisite.

          The night looming above us. The hum of the ocean. The bark of gulls. 

          That night, we were the Liars.