TWO:
Square One

The hardest part of coming back home for Jisoo was realizing how little the town had changed in the five years that she was gone. It made her feel like she, too, hadn’t changed either. 

She felt like she was cursed. In many ways, waking up in her childhood bedroom each morning felt like the beginning of an episode of the Twilight Zone. Like she was a twenty-two-year-old woman waking up and finding herself stuck in the life and body of her seventeen-year-old self. Like a character in a video game, forced to live and die and relive as many rounds as it took to make it to the next level. A soul doomed to never reach nirvana.

It was surreal, and it only made her even more aware of her failure to move on.

It took her the better part of a week and a half to fully adjust to the time zone again. Once she was no longer eating breakfast at 5 pm, Jisoo’s mother recruited her to be her assistant director for the village children’s summer program, which was to be a musical stage production of “The Wizard of Oz.”

In other circumstances, Jisoo might have been excited about the project. Her own love for acting and theater started when she participated in her class’ summer program years ago. But she was still too bummed out about being forced back to square one to show any real enthusiasm. 

So while her mother was yelling at children in the hall and trying to get them through a painful rehearsal of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” Jisoo was hiding in the adjacent office with Jennie Kim, a former classmate, and the school district’s new alumni relations coordinator.

“You sure you never kept in touch with any of these people?” Jennie asked. 

She was wearing a black tank top that showed off both her tattoo sleeves. Jisoo had asked her if that was a sound wardrobe choice, knowing that Jennie’s boss was an old-fashioned woman who would have two in a row if she saw Jennie baring her inked up arms this close to children. Jennie said she stopped caring after the temperature climbed past 80 degrees Fahrenheit. 

“No,” Jisoo said, fanning herself with the “Wizard of Oz” script. “Why, what’s this for?”

“Didn’t I tell you that I’m putting together our first high school reunion?” Jennie said. “It’s been five years. I sent out flyers and invitations to everyone in our graduating class, but I’m having trouble reaching a couple of people. For example, Kang Subin.”

“You mean, Kang with the Bangs?” Jisoo said, remembering the skinny girl who refused to cut her bangs even when they were starting to fall into her eyes. Jennie crossed her legs.

“Yeah, her,” Jennie said, staring at her laptop screen and typing furiously. “Some of these people fell off the face of the earth for all I know. Literally vanished. Some of them might even be dead.”

“Knock on wood,” Jisoo said, reaching for the desk and giving a quick tap with her knuckles. “You don’t sound too enthusiastic about meeting up with everyone.”

Jennie wasn’t exactly Jisoo’s friend back in high school. They knew each other, were in the same class, and occasionally sat at the same lunch table. But Jennie was more of a lone wolf, spent a lot of time ditching P.E. and reading dark poetry books under the bleachers, pretending to read people’s auras, and preaching the evils of the meat industry. Jisoo thought she was kind of a badass. She was the last person Jisoo thought would wind up staying behind and becoming the school’s alumni relations coordinator. 

Jennie shrugged. “I don’t know, they were cool, I guess,” Jennie said. “I’m just not exactly all that curious about what everyone is up to. It’s only been five years, after all.”

Jisoo wanted to say that a lot could happen in five years. She could build a whole career and tear it all down in the span of five years. Some people married and divorced all in five years. Fortunes could be made and squandered in years. People that she used to see and talk to every single day for four years could turn into complete strangers in five years. But Jennie spoke up again before she could get a word in.

“Are you still friends with Park Jinyoung?” she asked without looking up from her Excel spreadsheet. Jisoo tensed.

“Um, no,” she said. Jennie looked up.

“You aren’t?” she asked. “Aren’t you guys, like, best friends or something? Weren’t you two in diapers together?”

“No,” Jisoo said. “Not unless one of us was still wearing diapers at ten-years-old.”

Truthfully, Jisoo was surprised that it had taken a week of being home for someone to bring up Jinyoung. At the same time, she was hoping it would take a little bit longer. 

Jinyoung’s father owned one of the three banks in town. In the residential area at the edge of town, there was a row of townhouses all newly constructed and glittering white, and the Parks lived in one of them with their two daughters and their young son. 

They met when they were ten when Mrs. Park decided to sign her son up for piano lessons. She dropped Jinyoung off at the Kims’ twice a week for an hour and a half, and Jisoo’s mother, a piano virtuoso, tutored him. The rest is history.

“What happened?” Jennie asked, tilting her head.

The question conjured up images of a mauve sky, the taste of cheap beer, the smell of salt water, and the feel of stiff lips. Jisoo cringed. 

“Well… we sort of just lost touch while I was away,” Jisoo said. “And I’m sure he was busy, too, doing his music thing. We just kind of drifted, that’s all.”

Of course, that wasn’t the whole truth.

Not a day went by that she didn’t think about that moment and think about everything that she could have done differently.

It was just so awkward. She literally felt him, brick by brick, building his wall back up and leaving her out. She was embarrassed and scared. So she did what she always did when she got scared: she ran away. Ran off to Los Angeles the next day and did it without saying goodbye to him. He called and texted a few times, trying to act like everything was okay, but Jisoo just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Everything changed that day. She couldn’t just move on and act like everything was normal. 

“Why?” Jisoo asked, suddenly curious about why Jennie even asked. The tattooed girl shrugged.

“He’s one of the people who never got back to me with a RSVP,” Jennie said. “Just double checking. I am losing my ing mind planning this stupid thing, so I want as many people as possible to attend.”

“Jisoo?” her mother stuck her head into the door and had an angry expression on her face. “What are you doing in here? You’re the assistant director, you’re supposed to be out here with me.”

“I’m helping Jennie,” Jisoo said, grabbing a legal pad and pretending to scribble something on it. Her mother narrowed her eyes at her, not amused.

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe your acting career tanked because you ?” she said, crossing her arms. “Honey, if you’re going to spending a lot of time here, you need a job. I pulled a lot of strings to get you this gig, so you’ve gotta perform.”

“Fine,” Jisoo said, getting up from the swivel chair to follow her mother out to the hall. A group of fifteen or so ten-year-old kids was lined up on the stage, holding onto scripts and wearing aprons with their characters’ names written haphazardly on the front. “What seems to be the problem, Madam Director?”

“This play is boring!” one of the boys shouted.

“Where’s the wizard? I thought this going to be about Harry Potter,” said another.

“Instead of red shoes, can I wear my pink ones?” asked a girl.

“I don’t really like scarecrows,” said the boy who was playing the scarecrow. “Can’t I be Iron Man, instead?”

“The character’s name is Tin Man, idiot!”

“Hey, Jinho!” Jisoo’s mother snapped. “We don’t call each other idiots here, you hear me? Alright, our assistant director is here, so let’s start from the top.”

Jisoo still wasn’t exactly sure what her job as assistant director was supposed to be, so she stood there with her arms crossed in front of the electric fan that was blasting air in from outside and watched the third graders moan and groan as they took their spots on stage. In spite of everything, she grinned. She remembered being up on that stage. Her class had done “Cinderella.” Jinyoung played Prince Charming in that program. It was fitting for him. Everyone already though