She hadn’t meant to stay. In fact, she hadn’t even wanted to go.

But by her teachers’ persuasion, the top student in the school was sent to the United States for a summer abroad program and there she met the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen.

He was tall, dark, and handsome. But most importantly, he cared to learn her language while she learned his.

The summer abroad, thus, became a whole year abroad and when she returned, the boy followed, now an exchange student too. He stayed a year, with his own exchange family. But by the year’s end, they were both graduated, legal, adults with plans to marry.

It was easier for their parents to accept, knowing they had each traveled so extensively for each other and studied. It was a romantic partnership that proved great for educational success. They would just have to wait until after college. Well, that was easy, my mom had told me while recounting the story. As long as they lived near each other, she didn’t mind waiting.

Shortly after marriage, I would be a little bean in her womb.

They named me Winona after the actress, Winona Ryder. Not because they were particular big fans, just because they liked the name.

Mom would regret it later in life, after finally watching Ryder’s movies and saying she cursed me with this temperament. ‘Had I known she played an 80s brat… Of course, you turned out this way.’

For as much as I up, I’m lucky this is the least pleasant comment she makes about me. Otherwise it’s just typical disapproving silence.

I think she goes easy on me to apologize for dad leaving.

I don’t know what I expected.

Maybe because the rest of the house seems the same.

It’s silly to think Jae’s room would be the same too. 

His bed is bigger. His bookshelf has actual books on it, unlike last time, when it had mostly junk knick knack toys. There’s a desk with school work. A summer breeze blows in from his open window, reminding me of the breezes from riding our bikes.

“Did you come over just to inspect my room or...” he asks, head tilted and stepping backwards to give me room.

I inch closer to the bookshelf, my socks sliding slightly on the wooden floor.

“Maybe.” 

There’s no time to find an answer, make up one. Would he understand if I said I’m not sure why I’m here either? Does he remember the parts of me that don’t make sense? Does he notice it enough at school, to not forget? Do I care beyond this moment to know? Do I want the answers for some future continuation?

He’s behind me when my fingers lightly hold onto a shelf and my eyes skim over past birthday and greeting cards, a Tokyo snow globe, some rock band albums, until finally landing on a small star, nearly hidden. As if I knew it would be there.

I pick up the iridescent plastic star, no bigger than my pinky nail, and hold it between my thumb and pointer finger. Looking through it like a crystal ball.

“Maybe I came for this,” I say in wonderment, hoping it doesn’t sound mockingly rude. Because it’s true, maybe I did.

Jae stares at me blankly. So expressionless, there’s nothing there but proof of an existence between boy and man. He is just a person; six feet tall, with black hair and dark eyes. I can’t tell which emotion is in him to color anything more than these facts that stand before me. He’s a name, a person I knew or know, in a house I’ve visited and he is seizing my star.

“You can’t have it,” he says, placing it on a higher shelf, one I can’t reach even on my tiptoes.

“But it’s mine.” I can’t help but narrow my eyes at him.

“It was yours. But then you dropped it and forgot about it. So… consider it lost and found by me.”

“Just because you find something that’s lost doesn’t mean it’s yours.”

“What are you really here for. Winona.”

He says my name as if to prove he hasn’t forgotten it. Even though there’s no way for him to. When it’s said every day at school.

But at school, he doesn’t use it. Even to get my attention, if he really wants to, he waits for me to look or maybe softly grunts, wordless noise inquiries. Thrown randomly.

An awkwardness not discussed. 

“If I died, would you go to my funeral?”

Sometimes I’m so tired of not knowing what I’m doing until it’s done.

My eyes shift, mouth dropped at my own words, and I turn away before he can get a good look at my face. Looking out the window to watch the leaves of trees ride the waves of wind.

Jae laughs.

It’s light and odd, but not mean or uncomfortable. It almost makes me feel better.

“What?” I can’t help but turn back around.

“It’s just…” he bites back a smile and faraway look. “Funny because it’s not… It’s weird.”

“Okay…” I say like I have the right in finding him “weird” in this moment.

“You’re the only person that says these kinds of things.”

And that’s when I can’t help but laugh, knowingly.

And somehow this observation brings an ease. Like there’s no need to have a reason to be here. We both accept it’s happening. We’re just a part of the story of never-ending universal evolution. It’s nature. Why question it anymore than the wind?

“Would you want me to?” Jae asks, sitting down on his bed, sinking in the plaid comforter.

Clever boy to give me a question in turn. I wasn’t expecting it.

“Yes.” It comes out just as abrupt as my other actions, but truthfully.

“Why?”

“For a good turn out.”

“Seriously?” his right eyebrow raises and I notice there’s a shadow around his jaw. He’ll have to shave tomorrow.

“Partially.”

“What about the other parts?”

I think about it for a minute, hands moving back to lean on his desk, feeling the dryness of papers beneath my palms.

“Because it’d mean something.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure.”

Jae purses his lips. I watch his eyes shift around my face.

“People don’t go to funerals just because. There’s usually a meaning, right?” I explain.

He nods in agreement.

“You wouldn’t know the meaning, but you know there’d be one,” he fleshes the reasoning out for me.

“Exactly.”

It’s a short conversation but something about it makes a slimy thing inside climb up, an epiphany in my throat that can’t be shared with Minki or my mom or Ms. Jones or anyone else that’s willing to listen to me because some current relation or because they’re paid to or whatever.

But I don’t share it. I swallow it before it appears, like so much of my spontaneity, to ruin what feels good, though incomplete.

Just the feeling of being understood.

I want to live with the feeling for a little longer, before it ends like it always does.