I was grabbing books out of my locker after homeroom Monday when I heard two kids talking as they passed me on their to first period. "- a freshman?"

"Yeah. He goes here."

"That kid whose house burned down?"

Jung Hoseok was a few steps behind them. "Hey!" I called to him. "What's going on?"

"You didn't hear?" He was talking fast, the way he does when he's nervous before a test or working on a story for the paper. "That little freshman who wanted to write a hip-hop column," he said. "Felix Lee. Suzy - his house. Last night, it burned down. In two hours, the fire was that hot. Everything they own is gone. They're lucky they got out alive."

"Felix Lee's house burned down." With each word, I was trying to grab a hold of something, to gain some control over what I was hearing.

"Didn't you notice the smell this morning?" Hoseok continued. "He lives right near here. Go out on the field - you can still smell the smoke. That's my lead. I'll write the story. We can move some stuff around to make space for it on the front page."

I shook my head. I felt myself falling back against my locker, then scooting down into a squat, right there in the hall, my back pressed up against the cool metal. The bell for first period rang. "Hey," Hoseok asked. "Are you okay?"

I wasn't, but I nodded.

Felix. I barely knew him, but suddenly, he'd become hyperreal to me. What would it feel like to be standing in the street in front of your burning house, shivering in PJs, knowing that life you knew it was over?

What would it be like to be Jin, stumbling over memories of a future no one else could see?

And then it was no longer Felix Lee in my imagination, shivering in his PJs. It was Jin locked out in the cold.

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Jin wasn't in physics. He wasn't at lunch. After school, Mr. Mang asked me to stay late to go through some back issues of Foreign Affairs, but when he saw the look of abject panic on my face, he took his question back without making me come up with an excuse.

Shinhye gave me a ride home, and I sat for a minute in the car before I got out.

"You know, Suzy," she said, staring ahead and trying to sound netural, like she was preparing a general observation on the nature of life. "Guys can be . You can't stop that. But what you can do" - she paused here for dramatic effect - "is not make yourself vulnerable to their dickish-ness. Don't open yourself up to the pain."

There might have been a time pre-Jin when her comment would've made sense to me. Or a time when it would've made me mad. Even the day before, I probably could have summoned the energy to respond with sarcasm, saying something along the lines of "Maybe you should give that advice to Jaehwan."

But in the mood I was in now, I just nodded, thinking that she was probably right but it was too late for me. I was beyond help. I was already in too deep.

Once inside, I proceeded through my afternoon as if on autopilot. I brought my usual snack - fruits and a Diet Coke - upstairs. I sat on my usual spot on the floor, my back against the bed, my books spread our around me. I opened my notebook. I was supposed to be writing a paper on The Scarlet Letter, but I couldn't think of a single word past "In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, images of New England as a wilderness . . ." What? I wondered. Images abound? Images tell the story? Images gives us the impression that the place is still wild? I didn't know. I didn't care.

When the doorbell rang, I ran downstairs so fast one of my feet nearly slipped off a step. Breathless, I yanked open the door. It slammed into the wall. I think something broke. Like, the wall. Then there Jin was. He looked exhausted. Pale. Was he sick? His eyes were red and his lips looked strangely swollen.

He leaned forward like he was trying to home in on a distant radio signal, then put a foot up onto the threshold but didn't put his weight on it. "Come in," I said, and took a step back to give him room to enter. There was a stiffness to his gait as he swung his body inside.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"Sore from practice."

"You're lying."

"Okay," he conceded.

"You skipped school."

"My head hurts. It's been hurting all day."

"Felix?"

"I know." Jin leaned against the wall right under the stairs, as if he didn't have the strength to make it into the kitchen.

"Jin -" I started, but he cut me off.

"If you want to take it all back, I can try," he said. "I don't know if I can pull it off, but I could maybe keep the weirdness away from you." His hands were pushed into the front pockets of his jeans, his arms akimbo. "And if you want to just break up with me, that's okay. I'll make it easy on you. I was thinking I should just disappear. Leave town."

He finished this speech and looked down at the fake brick linoleum that eomma always hated and was waiting to get the money to replace.

"I don't want you to go away," I said. I reached a hand out to hold his. "I -"

He wasn't to blame for Felix, I wanted to tell him, but just then I heard the distinctive churn of Eomma's car turning into the driveway. We didn't have time. "Will you stay?" I said. "For dinner?"

"I don't know," Jin said. "I don't know if that's a good idea."

"Is it your headache?"

"It's not that," he said. "It's - Suzy, do you want me to stay? Aren't you too freaked out? Don't you think I'm crazy?"

The engine of eomma's car was off now. I could hear her shoes clicking on the path from the driveway. Now she was opening the back door, its rubber weather strip on the floor. "I want you to stay."

He was still looking at me as eomma said, "Hello, Jin!" She had a tendency to speak loudly to him, as if he were deaf. "Are you staying dinner?"

"Can he?" I asked.

Did eomma see the look of relief on Jin's face when I asked that question? Did she notice our trembling hands as we helped her chop peppers and onions for a stir-fry? That we laughed a little too hard at jokes and were shy with each other in a way we hadn't been in a long time?

If she did, she didn't say a word.

˭̡̞(◞⁎˃ᆺ˂)◞*✰

After dinner, Jin went home, and I managed to finished that sentence about The Scarlet Letter. Then I wrote an another one, and another, until the paper was complete, typed, proofread, stapled, ready to go. I copied some debate notes onto index cards, perfecting my super-neat, tiny writing - part of winning was be able to read your own quotes on the fly. I brushed my teeth. I used eomma's nighttime face cream. I cut my fingernails and laid my clothes for the next day out on a chair.

Then, pulling back the covers, I found a letter under my pillow. Jin's chicken scratch filled only the first few lines of the notebook paper he'd written on.

Dear Suzy, 

     I guess the thing about all this, what I was trying to tell you the other night, is that I am not the same guy I was before. I am me, but there's more. Seeing the future, seeing my future, I'm learning a lot. I won't do things the same way again. I love you.
     If some guy shows up and treats you the way I treated you before, I'm going to break his jaw.

     But . . . no pressure.
     And to set the record straight, by the time I wrote that breakup letter, you were long gone. Ou had a good life. You had all the things you want. You didn't need me.

Love,

Jin

Okay.

I wept.

Heavy, hiccuping, graceless tears.

I buried my face in my pillow and nearly suffoacted myself with sobs. Shinhye was right. My heart was going to be broken. But I didn't care. I wanted it this way.