The girls were not very good cat burglars, April thought. They giggled as they wandered through the apartment bumping into things and knocking them over.

     Jeeze are they drunk? Though Zhou Mi.  

     There's only one thing worse than a saesang and that'd a drunk saesang.

     CRASH. Goddamit I liked that lamp. Zhou Mi and April could hear the girls opening drawers and cabinets, rummaging every inch of the apartment. "Hey guys, I found a used piece of chewing gum in the garbage," announced one girl. "I bet it's Minnie's chewing gum," another one swooned.  Zhou Mi jumped up and put his hands over April's ears, but she had already heard.

     Who the hell am I living with? She wondered.

     Zhou Mi gently covered April's ears while he listened to the girls invade their privacy, break, steal and otherwise make him feel violated. Then they started trying door handles. They heard the door open to Sungmin and Kyuhyun's room. They were in there for a while giggling before he heard then come out.  For a moment they were standing right next to him only the door separating them. He held his breath and April feeling strangely connected for once held hers too. There was tapping at the door handle, the sound of fingertips dancing on it as the girls decided which room to raid next.  Zhou Mi pressed his back into the door. The door was locked but that didn't mean much, the front door had been locked too. But in a moment of luck, the girls laid eyes on Donghae and Eunhyuk's room. They turned their attention to that door and without hesitation violated the dorm once again.  

     There was a time when the members had second locks for their bedrooms, deadbolts within the dorm. This was at a time when there were many break-ins. They'd learned from their friends in TVXQ that idoldom has a price and sometimes it was dangerously high.  While these things still happened once and while the aging of the group meant the aging (and maturing) of the fans and far less saesangs than there used to be.  No one liked feeling as if they were living in a high security lab so the hardcore locks had become a thing of the past.  Zhou Mi was thinking it was time to bring back the deadbolts. Actually he was thinking fingerprint, retina scanning, secret passcodes and a security system with barriers that drop down to cage intruders like in the movies. -Or maybe just a mote. Either way Zhou Mi was so stressed right now that he thought he was simultaneously going to have a heart attack and pee his pants.

     After ransacking D&E's room the girls turned their attention to the one in which April and Zhou Mi were hiding. Upon finding it locked girl #1 took out her handy dandy lock picking kit again (just $19.99 saesangs never leave home without it) and started fiddling with the lock. Zhou Mi was sweating bullets and April was nervous not knowing what was going on.

     The locked finally clicked and he could feel pressure coming against it.  His mind was a barren wasteland his hands were clammy and all he knew is that he could not let that door open. 

     “It’s stuck,” a girl’s frustrated voice said.  “Give me a hand with it.”   

     Zhou Mi was definitely not one of the strongest or heaviest guys in the group but at that moment he mustered all the weight and strength he had against the door.  He couldn’t hold out for long and prayed for a miracle. 

     “Hey you girls!  What do you think you’re doing?!”  Zhou Mi’s prayers were answered.  Security had finally showed up.  Zhou Mi didn’t know how they knew to come up but he was so relieved.  “This is breaking and entering and vandalism.  I’ll have you know the building owner will be pressing charges.  Now everyone OUT!” 

     Zhou Mi had never felt so relieved in his life.  He slumped against April’s bed all energy drained of him.  His fringe was soaked in sweat as he leaned his head against his elbow.  April was still staring at him through the darkness; her concerned eyes seemed to say something to him, something soothing or maybe grateful.

     April still couldn’t say anything to anyone, mostly because the impulse wasn’t really there.  Sometimes there were fleeting moments when the words would form in her head but they couldn’t make it from mind to mouth.  She was an observer of her own life, a passive third person, not even a narrator but an onlooker watching from outside a foggy window.  She was disconnected.  Her body and mind had both been shattered in the accident, separated from one another, isolating her first from herself and then from those around her. 

     She was disconnected, but for a fleeting moment she had been connected, the moment that her breathing had locked in time with his.  Her heart wanted to reach out and wipe his sticky fringe from his forehead, she wanted to say thank you.  A battle was brewing inside her as tried her might to reach out to him.  You would have never known it from just watching her still and placid and expression, except for one little twitch of the hand. 

     It was all she could muster before the fragments of thought retreated once again. 

21 Years Ago

     “On this evenings nightly news we’d like to begin with a story out of Manhattan.  A family is dead on the Upper East Side.  James (33) and Susan (31) Wainwright and their two children Sarah (3) and James Jr. (2) died in a car crash resulting in an explosion.  The car collided with a fuel truck at E 80^th and Lexington, the family is said to have been on their way to see a Broadway show.  The funeral will take place at Saint Thomas More’s Church on Friday for family and friends.”

19 Years Ago

            A barefoot five year old girl stumbles up the stone steps on an old church in Bed-Stuy.  The little girls clothes are tattered and dirty rags, she’s bruised and her lip is bloody.  She’s been a wanderer, an orphan for a long time but she’s not old enough to understand time.  She only understands cold, and hunger. 

            Some punk kid yells out profanity from behind her, she doesn’t turn around, she doesn’t hear him.  She only lies down on the steps too tired to go on. 

            She wakes up to a thud, and then another, a kick to her side.  “Get up you little b****!  Get out of here!  A group of young boys were tormenting her.  It was a sad but normal occurrence in a city in troubling times.  They’re faces were laughing…sneering.  The priest swiftly came out of the church, yelling at the boys and chasing them away with a baseball bat.  The little girl didn’t hear any of this though; she hadn’t heard anything in two years.