On Friday night, when Jin picked me up, eomma was home, so he came inside and shook her hand. He was wearing a clean sweatshirt and jeans. His sneakers are tied. All of a sudden I got nervous.

I hadn't been expecting this to feel so datelike.

Eomma craned her neck to look past Jin out to the curb. "Is that your car?" she said.

"Yes, ma'am," Jin answered. "A Mustang."

Ma'am?

"How old is it?"

"It's an '90."

"Omo," eomma said. "That's almost twenty years old!"

"The engine's solid," he said. "or at least, that's what the guy who sold it to me said. You only have to hit it a couple of times with a wrench to get it going." It took Eomma a minute to realize Jin was joking."

She looked like she was warming up to lecture him about how the car wasn't safe, so I took Jin by the arm and pushed him out the door before she could speak. But when we were on the sidewalk, she came running down. "Do me a favor?" she said, putting my forgotten phone into my palm. "Check in around nine, when the movie's over, just so I won't be too worried." I slipped my phone into my pocket, and eomma jogged back inside.

In the car, Jin gave me a choice of three movies, all playing at the theater. I was surprised that he wanted to see any of them - I would have pegged him as a special effects and car-chase kind of guy. Was this what he thought I liked?

"Are you hungry?" he said. "I was thinking we could get pizza after the movie?"

"That's fine," I agreed, and from his list, I picked Dead Flowers, because it was the only one that was not based on a novel. Of all the foreign movies eomma and Shinhye take me to, I know those tend to be the slowest.

But Dead Flowers, which was in Thai with subtitles, turned out to be a quasi-terrifying story about a little girl trapped in a mountain cabin. There were lots of long, boring shots of her arranging dead flowers around a family of dolls. At the end, she ran through the woods while a crazed maniac with an ax followed her.

Jin paid for my ticket. He sat straight up in his seat next to me. He didn't reach over and hold my hand. He didn't look at me. He didn't laugh at the funny parts - not that there were any.

Afterward, on the way back to the car, when I asked him what he thought of the movie, he said, "It was great." But he didn't sound like he thought it was great. He sounded like someone trying to be brave before he gets a shot.

"Well, I hated it," I said, because someone needed to. "It was boring and stupid, and pretentious."

"Wow," Jin said, really looking at me for the first time all night.

"I don't only like art movies," I said. "And I'm not freaked out by your dreams or your memories or whatever. Maybe you're a psychic. Or maybe you have a concussion. Or maybe you're -"

"Crazy?" he offered.

"Whatever," I said. "I'd rather talk to you about all that than have you take me to movies that you think I'm going to like but are actually really stupid."

"I -" Jin started. I saw something pass across his eyes, almost like I was seeing a shark swimming in the back of an aquarium.

"Just tell me," I said. "I can handle it."

But he didn't tell me. We were standing in the parking lot next to his car. It was not quite raining, but a fog was leaving a mist on our skin and clothes. Jin took me by my wrists and backed me up against the car door, then moved his hands to my jawline, looking at all the different parts of my face.

"I'm so glad you hated that movie," he said, and then he kissed me, hard, and I felt like I was finally addressing the sensation I'd had all week, the feeling of floating, like I couldn't feel the connection between my feet and the ground. All that time I'd just wanted this, to be pressed up against him, kissing in the dark parking lot, my hair dampening in the mist, Jin's hand moving down my back and coming to rest around my waist.

˭̡̞(◞⁎˃ᆺ˂)◞*✰

When I remembered to call eomma, it was almost 9:30. She was cool, though - and she told me Shinhye had called her, sounding upset. 5 missed called from her.

"He just left me here, the bloody douche-bag!" This was Shinhye screaming into the phone when I called her back. She had picked up on the first ring.

"How did you know it was going to be me?"

She started using language that I can't write down here.

"Where are you?" I said.

"I don't know. Taejoon's parents' country place, but I don't even know what town it's in. He drives. I don't pay attention. It's in the middle of the woods somewhere, next to a random lake. I'm going to have to call my mom or dad to come get me. I am going to be so screwed."

She was talking loud enough that Jin could hear everything she was saying through the phone. I looked at him. He smiled. I shrugged.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece to ask him a question, but I didn't even need to. He nodded, knowing right away what I had been about to say.

"I'm with Jin," I said to Shinhye. "We'll come get you. Just calm down and figure out where you are."

But Shinhye wasn't ready for that. "I thought I was being respectful," she was saying, "breaking up with him in person. I knew he was really into me, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but you know what? Screw his feelings. He started screaming at me."

"Mail," Jin whispered. "Tell her to look for a piece of mail. A magazine label or something with an address on it."

"He threw a book across the room. He started asking me if there was someone else. I was like, 'Yeah, how about anyone else? That would be better than you.' Jesus, Suzy, how am I going to get home?"

"Shinhye?" I said. "Are you aware that Jin can hear every word you're saying.

Shinhye found a piece of mail.

˭̡̞(◞⁎˃ᆺ˂)◞*✰

It took nearly 45 minutes to get to the town where Taejoon's country house was, and then we still made a few wrong turns. We eventually had to stop at a gas station for directions.

Finally, a mile down a side road, we found the house. Shinhye had every light and was standing in the doorway. As soon as she saw our headlights, she started running, the lights blazing behind her. "Shouldn't you shut the front door?" I said. "Is it okay to leave the lights on like that?"

"he's lucky I didn't trash the place," Shinhye said. "Do you realize that I could never explained to my dad what I was doing out here?"

"We can TP the house if you want," Jin suggested.

"No," Shinhye tossed her hair and sniffed meaningfully. "I'm better than that."

"Nice," said Jin. "'Cause I'm starving." He looked at me, than Shinhye. "You guys want to eat?"

˭̡̞(◞⁎˃ᆺ˂)◞*✰

Over pizza, Shinhye asked about the movie. "It was awesome," Jin said. "There was this little girl, right? With big eyes." He looked at me. "Huge, right?"

"Saucers."

"And a doll."

"A creepy doll."

"Like Chucky. Like, 'I'm baaaaaccck." Shinhye was laughing too hard to get nay Coke up through her straw.

"And Chucky and Big-Saucer-Eyes Girl only spoke Thai."

"You noticed that?" I said.

"Yeah, like, what the heck? The whole movie was in Thai."

Shinhye was laughing harder. We all were.

Then Jin asked Shinhye about Taejoon. "So who is this clown?"

"I thought it was cool at first," she said. "How he tookme to restaurants and knew about all the food and liked to drink wine." She spoke with an air of pity, as if she were describing someone with a terminal illness. "But he's not cool. He's pathetic. He's in college. He should be going to frat parties and drinking beer. He should have friends. I swear, he would rather spend weekends antiquing with his parents."

"Yeah, that's just sad," said Jin, kind of snorting.  We were all laughing again.

After we were done eating, Shinhye went to the bathroom, and Jin took her place on my side of the booth. He slid his arm around my waist and looked down at me, half joking, half serious, his eyes narrowed to slits. "I hope I never hear you talking about me like that," he said. "If I don't go away nicely when you break up with me, just keep it to yourself, okay?"

I couldn't help it - I giggled. Having him so close to me, pretending to warn me, feeling his face next to mine . . . The whole time I'd been listening to Shinhye, laughing with her, I'd been wondering when I'd be able to kiss Jin again, how long would I have to wait, if it would be tonight or some other time.

"I won't," I said, shaking my head. I was laughing still, almost like I was being tickled, but I was also serious. I wanted him to know the truth. "It's not the same."

Jin started to say something, but then he stopped. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'd registered a bell ringing as someone entered the restaurant, and now that I was following Jin's eyes, I saw it was a soldier wear fatigues, his tony-boned wife at his side. The soldier was carrying a toddler, and the wife had a diaper bag. They were beaming.

"Hey!" shouted a voice behind the counter. A man who worked there came running out to give the soldier a slap on the back, and then kissed the wife's cheek. "You're back!" the man said. "She was in here last week and told me you were coming home. You just got in now?"

"Today." The soldier put the baby down so she could toddle, and he rubbed a hand across the top of his buzz cut.

"That's going to be you, right?" I said quietly to Jin, pulling my gaze away from the soldier. I was teasing, but when I saw the look on Jin's eyes, I could feel my smile fade. His description of his dream came back to me in a flash - everything the color of sand. Bedsheets on a clothes-line. The heavy feeling in his body, his knees, what he thought was an older body.

Was Jin thinking about the dream now? He squinted like he was concentrating.

"Yeah," he said. He put his hand on his own head, touching his head full of hair, imitating without even realizing it, the way the soldier had rubbed his head.

And then my brain started to go overdrive, as it sometime does when I'm in debate round.

"Omo," I said. "Of course! Jin, I just figured all this out."

Jin pulled back his head like a turtle retreating into its shell. "Figured out what?" he said.

"It makes perfect sense," I said. "Your remembering thing? You're not remembering. You're scared." He gave me a "Huh?" look, but I plowed on anyway, sure he'd understand soon. "You're afraid to join the marines. But you don't want to admit it, so your brain is resorting to these dreams. It's your subconscious trying to tell you something."

Jin twisted his mouth in an expression of skepticism but I kept going. "Don't you see? Your dream isn't a memory, it's a projection of the future." I was inventing the theory as I described it. "you're so sure this is what it will be like you can't imagine it any other way."

"Suzy -" Jin began, trying to stop me.

"No," I said. "It's fantastic, because this is so easy to fix. Jin, you know you don't have to go. No one's forcing you to enlist. There are colleges for everyone -"

"Suzy -" Jin tried again.

But I still wasn't done. "Sometimes a plan seems great when you're a freshman or something, but as get closer to the time, it looks like less of a good idea. You can wait -"

Jin cut me off. "This isn't about talking to a guidance counselor and picking a career path," he said, his tone sharp. 

"Then what is it?" In the cloud of self-congratulation at the brilliance of my own theory, I couldn't imagine that he wouldn't see it just like I did.

Jin took a breath and shook his head. And then he smiled, slow-moving smile. "it's because that guy's army, you bonehead." Like it was a joke.

Passing the soldier and his family, Shinhye came to the end of our booth. She nodded at the seat that Jin had vacated to sit next to me. "I'm not disturbing you two, am I?" she said.

"Not at all," said Jin, standing quickly, like he was happy to move on.

˭̡̞(◞⁎˃ᆺ˂)◞*✰

He dropped Shinhye and me at my house without kissing me goodnight.

Was something wrong? I didn't have a chance to ask him and didn't really want to anyway. As soon as Jin had stood up from the table, I'd seen how intrusive I had been. I wished I'd kept quiet. I just wanted to go back to the part of the evening when we were kissing by the car. Or laughing with Shinhye over pizza.

Inside, we found eomma reading on her cozy white couch in the living room basket at her feet and the TV muted, turned to the news.

Viviane was with her, working on a crossword, drinking soju - her de-stressing routine.

"Shinhye?" eomma said, her eyes narrowing as she tried to figure out what was going on - I'd left with Jin and was returning with Shinhye, a good hour later than I'd said I'd be home.

"We met up after the movie," I explained. When eomma didn't answer immediately with "Oh, sure," it occurred to me that she was deciding whether she believed me.

"So how was the movie?" Viviane asked. "And more to the point, what kind of self-respecting dancer takes you to a foreign film?" Viviane hadn't met Jin yet, but she'd grown up with brothers and loved the idea of him. I think she was envisioning Sunday afternoons on the sofa, with Jin her surrogate nephew, watching football.

"Dead Flowers? Wasn't particularly well reviewed," eomma said, yawning.

I laughed, remembering Chucky and I'm baaaccck. "It shouldn't haven been."

Eomma was looking at me, a question in her prettily furrowed brow. For a second, I considered telling her what was going on, if only just to get it off my chest. I could sit down on the couch between Eomma and Viviane and let them fold me into their easy, protective arms, making like I was still ten, and we'd talk and talk, them hooting at everything I said like I was the most brilliant child ever born.

What would eomma make of Jin's dream/memory weridness? Would lawerly, practical Viviane have a theory? They would believe my subconscious-fear theory, I was sure. They wouldn't be able to tell if a soldier was army or marines.

Before we went to sleep, Shinhye and I lay silently for a while, and I thought, This is when you tell your best friend what's been happening. But I didn't. And then I thought, Now. Still, I couldn't start.

And when Shinhye finally said, "I should have seen this thing with Taejoon coming," I was grateful. "The boring ones are always the angriest," she went on. "They don't know they're boring. They just think everyone else is blind to their charms." She yawned and arched her back like a kitten. I knew she'd be asleep in 5 minutes. "Sad, really."

"That he's boring?"

"That he's so cute. Such a waste."

"Maybe there has to be something a little bit wrong with anyone in college who would date someone in high school."

"You mean I'm supposed to date high school guys?" Shinhye scoffed, than caught herself. "Oh, Jin. I forgot. Sorry."

"It's okay," I said.

"It's better than okay," Shinhye yawned again. "I could tell tonight. He's crazy about you." She was two breaths away from losing consciousness. "And he should be."

I could have said something about his memories to her then. But just at that moment, her breathing grew even. Shinhye was asleep.