I started lying to Shinhye. Not about anything important, just little things. Almost like I was practicing, like I was teaching myself how to lie.

She asked about a new sweater, and I said it used to be eomma's, when actually Viviane had bought it for me the week before.

She wanted to tell me about the episode of Once Upon A Time, and I said I'd already seen it, because I was trying to get her off the phone in case Jin called. I said I'd meet her at her locker, but I went to Jin's locker instead.

I don't know if Shinhye knew I was lying. If she did, she never said anything about it. She might have just been too distracted by her own life. And her own lies.

Taejoon had started calling her constantly, pretending to be someone from school, leaving messages with her mom, sending her letters that begged her to change her mind about breaking up with him, telling her she was the only person who made him happy.

She'd had to become a hawk with the mail - if her parents found out that she was dating college guys, they'd probably ground her for life. That was why when Taejoon sent her something in a FedEx box, Shinhye stashed it in her backpack, waiting to open it at my house. Which was smart, because her mom would have heard the grasp Shinhye let out when she saw the will-you-marry-me little blue box from Tiffany's inside the FedEx package.

Yes, that's the Tiffany's: the big jewelry store that's worldwide.

Holding the box in front of her, Shinhye breathed in horror, "Omo, omo!"

I just stared.

"You don't he's crazy enough to -" she began, and then answered her own question. "No, he isn't."

She was right. Taejoon wasn't crazy enough to send a diamond engagement ring to a girl who wasn't returning his calls.

But he was crazy enough to send a diamond. Shinhye grasped again when she saw it, then gently lifted the delicate gold chain and let the diamond swing into her palm.

"He does know you're seventeen?"

She nodded, though honestly I didn't know if she'd heard me. The diamond was sparkling in the light, and she appeared to be hypotized.

"Shinhye," I said. "Put the necklace down."

She startled to attention.

"You can't keep it. You have to give it back."

Shinhye assumed a calculated expression that would have been at home on one of the boyfriend-swapping, backstabbing the girls she used to hang out with.

"How?" she said in an I-don't-have-time-for-how-much-you-don't-understand-about-relationships tone. "Mail it to him? Give it back to him in person? Or return it to the store?" She laughed. "For, like, a credit?"

"Oh, come on," I said. "You know what I mean."

"If I return it, he'll just write me another letter telling me he can see I'm still angry and try again."

"He needs to get the message that you're done," I said. But Shinhye wasn't nodding. "You do want to him that message, right?"

"Sure," Shinhye answered, meaning, I could tell, no.

Later that night, I was sprawled on the carpet in my room, doing homework. I barely registered the sound of eomma rolling trash cans down the driveway to the curb. I barely registered the sudden absence of that sound.

But then there she was, standing in my doorway, her ankles looking especially exposed. The hair was like a bird's nest, like she haven't had the time to comb it and haven't look into the mirror. She was holding the crumpled Tiffany's wrapping paper and while silk ribbon in her hands.

"What, she began in a tone I didn't quite recognize. She sounded like a mom on TV. "What, may I ask, is Tiffany's wrapping paper doing in our trash?"

And honestly, I didn't know what to say. I was so used to telling eomma the truth that my first instinct was to confess to her about Taejoon and Shinhye. But if I did, she might feel obliged to tell Shinhye's parents. Which was out of the question.

So I did what people do when they aren't used to lying. I lied badly.

"It's nothing," I said.

Lying badly is never smart. Because now eomma was not just freaked out by the Tiffany's wrapping paper, but also aware that I was lying to her.

"Nothing?" she repeated. "This is wrapping paper from Tiffany's. I know I didn't put it there. No one's given me a gift from Tiffany's in quite some time."

I forged ahead with my lie. "Shinhye had it at her house. It was something one of her aunts sent her."

"Suzy, you don't lie to me," eomma said. This was a statement of fact more than a command.

And she was right. I didn't lie to her. Expect I just had.

"Did Jin give you something from Tiffany's?"

"Jin?" I was laughing even as I said his name.

Laughing from shock.

Jin had bought me grilled sandwiches. An ice cream. He'd paid for a strip of photos in an arcade. "I don't think Jin even knows what Tiffany's is."

"He didn't give you a piece of jewelry from Tiffany that he got God only knows how - maybe from the money he's supposed to be saving for college?"

"Jin isn't going to college," I reminded her.

She twisted into a frown.

And I felt a sudden sadness that I was making eomma into the person she was right then - frail, angry, wrong, alone. I wondered what would happen if i just tossed my books aside and ran over and gave her a big hug.

But I didn't get up and give her a hug. I clicked my retractable pen closed and open and then closed again with my thumb, something I've seen appa do when he brings me along to the hospital and I watch him take his residents on rounds.

"I just want to make sure you're not getting swept away by his . . . energy," eomma said. "I mean, Jin is a sweet kid. But, Suzy, you're so smart. And -" she stopped. "It's natural to feel things that are physical. But I just want you to recognize them as that. Not to confuse those feelings with deeper ones."

"What can you possible mean by that?" Again, I felt like appa on his rounds, scaring his residents with his condescending tone.

"Do you have anything in common with Jin? Are you letting his emotions dictate yours? This are mistakes everyone makes. Women makes. I have made. At your age - at any age, really - you can get hurt. Way more easily than you would think."

Eomma's eyes were actually welling up with tears. I thought I knew why - and it wasn't because of me. Was this why she never dated? Had never met anyone after the divorce? She was afraid to make another mistake?

"He's my boyfriend, okay?" I said. "I have a boyfriend. And yet the earth continues to spin. The sun rises in the mornings. Night follows day. Here I am, sitting on the floor, doing homework like I always do."

"I know."

"Are my grades slipping? Has school called?"

She shook her head, her brows pinched together. I'd closed a door and she was knocking on it, rattling the doorknob from the other side, but I wouldn't let her in.

Shinhye told me later that what eomma meant was "Don't have ."

And I could have told eomma that we hadn't. But I didn't want to. Shinhye discussed casually, as if it were just one more activity - tennis, soccer - that she was really good at and got the chance to do it a lot. But there was nothing casual about the way I felt about Jin. About touching him. Kissing him. I felt like if I said out loud what the feeling was, I would jinx it. It would desert me. Sung too often, even your favorite song becomes just a series of random notes.

Besides, eomma was done. We'd had a fight and I'd won. Or at least, that was what I believed.

˭̡̞(◞⁎˃ᆺ˂)◞*✰

When my phone rang on a Wednesday afternoon and it was appa, I nearly had an heart attack. "Appa?" I said. "Are you okay?" Like everything in appa's life, the timing of phone conversations is regimented and precise. We speak every Sunday at 5:00 p.m., and there's not a lot of room for variation.

"Your mom asked me to call." He was using the extra-nasal accent he slips into when he's uncomfortable giving a patient bad news. "She says you have a special friend and it's time I knew."

Special friend? Could anyone use that phrase and not sound like they were programmed for vocabulary by a punch card?

Another kid might have moaned, "Oh, gosh, Appa, this is the 21st century!" But there's something about appa that always kept me from acting that way with him. I'd always known - since I was really little, probably - that there's a certain way you have to be with appa or you'll scare him away.

So I kept my cringing invisible to him, even as he read out loud - and I am not making this up - the correlation some pathetic social scientist had made between the age of which girls start having and the educational degree they eventually go on to obtain. The gist was that if I had before my 18th birthday, I could pretty much kiss law school goodbye.

At dinner that night - sushi again - I pointed at eomma with my chopsticks and aligned my gaze along them, as if I were sighting her down the barrel of a gun.

"Appa called me today," I said. "And if your strategy to keep me from having with Jin is that I'll hear Appa calling him my 'special friend' every time I think about him, that will definitely do the trick. Thank you for that. And for your information, Jin and I are not having . I have no plans to have with him at the present time. If at some date in the future I reverse that opinion, I will be procuring appropriate contraception and engaging in practices guaranteed not to result in pregnancy or the contraction of STDs."

She took a sip of her soju. "You father called?" Her eyes - big, brown, framed with her trademark mascara - made her appear the very soul of innocence. She didn't bring up the subject again.