Around ten that night appa calls. I'm on the window seat of my great ocean liner staring out at the moon over the dark ocean. The ring startles me.

He sounds so alone. He's not used to being on his own or cooking himself dinner. I remember his microwave meals, frozen on the inside, the nights Eomma had to go somewhere and he was in charge.

I also remember other things now, things that I tried to forget. The phone calls I heard, but weren't supposed to when I walked into his study without warning. The way his voice changed in a heartbeat, from low and intimate to cool and businesslike.

From wrong to right.

I block that thought from my head.

He's staying at a friend's apartment for a while. He went out for chicken and a beer or three, I'm guessing. He calls because it's his time to call. Okay, not fair, but they switch off. On even days Eomma calls. Odd days, appa. That way neither of them can blame the other for forgetting.

Appa isn't great on the phone. To him it's just a tool to give information or get it. He doesn't know how to fill up the conversation.

"So how's my girl?"

"Good."

"How's Irene treating you?"

"Good."

There's an uncomfortable pause and I try to continue.

"How's work?"

"Same old, same old."

Appa's a contractor and he spends 6 days a week fixing people's homes and, as he says, "making their dreams come true." That means remodeling big kitchens with islands and backyards with pools. I think he's happier with a hammer, nails, and tools than with people. He knows what to expect with tools. If they're treated the way they should be, there aren't too many surprises. Even if he had problems though, he wouldn't say. He'd think, what was the point? Practical.

"So what did you do today?"

I tell him about practicing swimming and how I'm getting better at it, and about volunteering at the hospital. Also about Yoongi. "He's eighty years old and eighty years smart."

"So then I have nothing to worry about," he says, a smile in his voice.

If he only knew.

° ° ° ° °

I wake closer to lunch than breakfast. The sweet scent of pancakes wafts through the air. On the kitchen stove there's a black iron cupcake tin filled with golden popovers with batter. Would Irene have baked them even if I weren't here? I decide she would. She does things like that. Baking bread and cakes, making homemade jelly, even making pickles out of cucumbers which I didn't you can make yourself. For her it's probably fun because she doesn't have to do it. No one comes home mad expecting dinner on the table.

"They're not hot anymore," Irene says. She watches me stumble to the table. "You must have been tired."

I eat three popovers with strawberry jelly and drink a glass of milk, studying the carton of milk. It's green and yellow with little cows in a field.

The kitchen is bright with sun. I notice for the first time that the green painted chairs around the table match the grass outside. I also notice a slant to the floor. It's an old house, maybe that's why. Outside, the seagulls fly above the beach. They sound excited t be alive and have the entire sky to themselves.

Everything is right about this new day. It feels like a new season, a fresh beginning. I look at the clock. He's been on duty for three hours. Is he thinking about me? Remembering? I can't get him out of my head. The feel of my arms around his waist. His warm skin against mine. His sweet smell. His nearness. I'm drunk with him and I don't want to get sober.

Even though my deep sleep, I saw his face. He was watching me. Dreams last only minutes, they say, but this lingered through the night, fading in and out as if we stayed together, entwined, stepping outside one universe and entering another where only we existed.

I washed my dishes, lost in thought. I find myself standing at the sink, staring at the dishwashing bottle. I forget what I was planning to do next as if my mind and body have separated unknowingly. Then I remember the shower. Slowly, I make my way upstairs.

Only now I don't use the soap in the bathroom. I go to my makeup bag and get the soap Sulli gave me last Christmas. It is in a glittery sack with makeup from Sephora. On the pink wrapper, gold letters spell: Intoxication.

"For special occasions only!" she'd written on the gift tag. She'd surrounded the note with red hearts. I tear open the paper and sniff the sweet, musky perfume. When I come out of the bathroom, Joy is sitting on my bed. She lifts her head and gets to her feet, coming over to sniff me, detecting something new and curious, something she needs to take note of.

I put on shorts and a T-shirt and bike into town. Before I go to the beach, I want to make a stop. The sun is warm on my face as I make my way along main street. I steal a glance at myself in store windows - casual looks, so no one knows I'm checking myself out.

I look leaner now than I was before and my arms are stronger, even though they'll never be sculpted the way his are, each muscle so distinct he could pose for an anatomy chart, the kind they put up in the gym. My hair is full and the layers are longer and it's browner from the sun. It cooperated today. It feathers around my face instead of poking out everywhere. I stand straight, not slumping, Eomma's words echoing in my head: "Stand tall, head high, shoulders back."

I'm in the zone. I can handle shopping for a new bikini; nevermind that it'll blow my budget. I take a deep breath and enter H2O, a bathing suit universe with floor-to-ceiling racks as if bathing suits were the only things in the world anyone needed.

The girl behind the counter is busy with another customer. Good. I don't want help. The right suit will speak to me.

I find my size and push past the one-piece suits, the tankinis and bikinis in the all-black section. Too severe. No push-up bras either because you look desperate or like you just got implants. Hawaiian prints, but I'm not the floral type.

Zebra? No, I'm not the jungle girl. Deep coral? There's a possibility with a solid blue top and bottom, but I keep going. Whites, tans, crazy geometrics.

And then I see it.

A soft pink bikini, perfect against milky white skin. Definitely glad appa's not here because he'd cross his arms over his chest and vote it out in a heartbeat. Low bottom, low top. Both pieces are outlined with tiny bands of ruffles. I take it off the rack and hold it against me in front of the full-length mirror.

I lock the dressing room door and drop my clothes on the floor. I slip it on, studying myself in the three-way mirror.

Perfect.

I take that as another good omen. Revealing, not ty. I used to wish I wasn't 5'6''. I was always taller than the boys in school. I don't wish that anymore.

° ° ° ° °

I open the door and check myself out in the bigger mirror outside. the girl behind the counter passes me on her way to hang up an armful of suits in the dressing room next to mine and smiles. "Ohhh," she says. "You look hot."

I smile and shrug. What do you say to that?

As I'm waiting to pay, I see a necklace on the counter - a chunk of pale-pink sea glass on a silver chain. It's the same color as the suit. I slip it over my head and it falls just above the ruffled band of the top. The glass is pointed, like a arrowhead directing the eye to my cleavage.

I leave the store wearing the new suit and necklace. I take my time, walking to the beach, savoring the anticipation. It's hard to imagine that the reality could feel better than this. I almost laugh, practically tasting my euphoria. My heart flutters in my chest, the nervous student on the first day of school. Almost instinctively, I start to dial Sulli's number, and then stop. I'm crazy. She's a million miles away with no cell service. What was I thinking?

I walk along the sand, passing a family with a cooler so large it could hold not only their entire dinner, but also a TV. I keep walking, passing teenage girls who look like they've tanned too much. Finally I spread out the blanket and then, super casual, I turn my head in the direction of his chair, my north star.

Only now in a second everything is different.

The world has fallen off its axis.

To the side of the lifeguard chair there's a blanket - with a girl on top of it.

The girl with the short hair that reaches her shoulders - the maybe-actress who jumped on the back of his motorcycle and locked her arms around his waist, holding him tight, just like I did. Jealousy spreads through me like poison and within seconds, I feel nauseous. I fight that, standing taller, resolute. I don't feel anything - my face works hard to show the world. I stare at her, trying to understand the enemy. 

Snow-white bikini. I doubt it's a sign of her purity. Not too many girls can get away with a suit like that. If her nearness isn't enough, she's wearing his black cap that says lifeguard. He's kneeling next to her, smiling. She whispers something. her jokes are obviously funny because now he's laughing. I've never seen him look so happy for relaxed.

I don't know this person. It isn't him. I discover he has teeth. I learn that he can smile. I think he's in love.

And I feel deathly sick.

Body blow.

Did I do something to deserve this?

If I had one wish right now, I'd wished that Sulli was here with me instead of being off at the stupid camp at the other side of the world, so she could hold me together so I don't totaly self-destruct. She's the one person in the world who would understand this. She'd listen, then scrunch her nose and come up with a plan. Sulli doesn't wallow in self-pity. She takes action and thinks on her feet like a commander.

"Life is short," she always says. Translation: get up and get moving.

Only I can't make her parachute out of the sky right now and land next to me for hand-holding and strategizing, so I do the next best thing: I pretend real hard she is here, my crazy imaginary friend, and dream that while I stare out at the water and thinking of drowning, she'd be turning around and reporting back to me on what she's doing and what he's doing, sizing up how bad the whole mess looks. She wouldn't let me march off and go home, she'd grab me by the arm, make me sit down, and lecture me.

"Bae Sooji," she'd say, "you're not going to roll over and play dead. Go walk past him and say hello and act totally cool. Stake your claim, even hang out with him and talk."

She'd tell me to ignore the girl and act like I belong there.

"Just go pretend that everything is just the way it should be," she'd say.

The way it isn't.

Before I hit the ground running, take out my mirrored compact and like a bad spy, I try to see behind me to get a look of what's happening, which is humiliating and infantile and doesn't work anyway because the mirror is the size of an Oreo. Only I can't help peeping. After a few seconds, the mirror catches the sunlight and the heat is about to burn a hole into my skin. It occurs to me to leave it there so I go up in flames, which is one way to deal.

Then I snap to, and do what Sulli would tell me to do:

Play the game.

I reach for ammo - the sparkly pink lip gloss in my bag that tastes like strawberries, then some cherry perfume down the front of the suit. I push my sunglasses back on my head and pull the top of the suit down so it shows more. I stand tall, defiant.

This is totally no big deal. You can do this, my head tells.

My heart thumps crazily.

Code Blue.

If I were in the ICU now, they'd call for the crash cart and the priest.

Stop being a jerk, a small voice in my head says.

I walk in his direction because if this turns out to be the very last time all summer that appear on the beach, I'm making dead sure he sees me in this bikini because I've blown my entire savings on it and it looks good, it does, it does, it does. My head keeps replaying the voice of the salegirl to buck up my crumbling ego:

You look hot, you look hot, you look . . .

I don't think I've ever looked better, at least that's what I tell myself now, or at least I thought it back in the store when I still had a functioning brain and a clear, working mind. I walk toward him and then slow down. It's a new day, everything's in a clearer - or maybe a blinding - new light. Have I been making this all up when it's crazy wrong? There's only way to find out and the answer is about thirty, now twenty, now fifteen, now ten yards in front of me and looking more astonishing than I've ever seen him, his hair longer, more messy, all the better to set off the perfect planes of his angular face and his sleepy, deep-set, brown eyes.

I get closer and closer, and as if he senses the vibrations of my footsteps in the sand, or picks up my scent on some primeval frequency, he turns slowly and stares hard in my direction. The easy smile grows fainter and fainter. His face turns more serious.

He's never looked this beautiful.

It almost hurts to look at him.

I'm interrupting though, I can tell. Getting in the way of whatever put the smile there before.

He's not at ease anymore. Or happy.

What have I done?

He shifts from one foot to the other. I stop in front of him. For the first time I make out the slightest stubble of blond hair on his chin. His face first thing in the morning. He forgot to shave. Or didn't want to. Was he late for work? Why? My insides twist at the implications.

The air feels thinner. There's not enough of it, otherwise my lungs are failing. His eyes hold mine and I'm powerless. I feel arm-wrestled, pinned down, helpless. One hand goes up to the back of his neck, flexing his bicep to best advantage. There's a fine muscle pulsing in his jaw. I want to turn and run suddenly, but where? The girl at his feet on the blanket seems unconscious. His cap shields her face from the sun.

"Hey," I breathe, so softly I'm not sure I said it or thought it.

And I wait.

"Suzy," he says, finally, nodding his head so slightly it's barely an acknowledgement. He his lips. He's uncomfortable, no hiding it. He doesn't want me around. I wait for a "How are you?" Even some pathetic attempt at a joke about whether I learned my lesson about swimming out too far.

But nothing.

Silence.

He looks away finally and reaches for his binoculars, behind him on the step of his chair. He steps back, at least I think he does, hiding his eyes from me and staring out at the expanse of the beach, taking in everyone and everything.

Except me.

I DO NOT EXIST.

I've been ignored.

Neglected.

Only I don't drop down, which is unfortunate because if I did, maybe then I'd get some shred of attention. Mouth to mouth resuscitation to get me breathing. He'd try to save me because it's his job, nothing more.

Or maybe he wouldn't bother. Been there, done that. Ignore her, she didn't learn her lesson.

Seconds go by, each one long, painful, agonizing. I can't let my face show what I feel. I can't. I can't, I can't. I try to look blank, emotionless. Cool. Does he see through it?

The sun, meanwhile, is so intensely hot that I'm about to faint, my mouth dry, my legs about to buckle under me. I have to get away from him, I have to.

I wait just an extra second.

After he's checked the beach and made sure that no one is drowning will he finally turn back to me and say something - anything to acknowledge that I exist? Even a pathetic "How are you?" Unlike the girl, I can't come up with clever, teasing remarks to make him laugh, let alone smile. I can't come up with anything at all. I'm struck wordless.

But time out.

That's not an issue he doesn't bother to even look back at me. He stares out, cold, self-involved, totally not interested. The wall is up, his message received. I turn away and make my way down to the water, throwing my sunglasses on my blanket and running into the waves, swimming out deeper and deeper and deeper.

Over my head. Beyond saving.