Eomma always says that she fell in love with appa's intensity, but in the end, it's what drove them apart. As I've gotten older, she's explained more. If he was frustrated at work, he couldn't speak to her, she told me. At home, he'd be stone silent in the evening, eating like a robot, then marching upstairs and lying on the bed until his brain had worked out a new theory or potential solution. Otherwise, he wouldn't move or speak until morning.

He hasn't changed. When I visit him every summer, he doesn't stop working. My choices are to hang out in his house, watching TV and read, or to join him at the hospital, putting on a white coat and following him on rounds, where I'm introduced as a student - probably not in line with hospital regulations, but doctors like appa tend to do whatever they want. Mostly residents, nurses, interns, students, orderlies, and even the patients go about their business without seeming to notice me, but some ask me questions like I'm I'm an adult. When I tell him I'm planning to be a lawyer one day, they make jokes about how I can sue appa. The hospital is pretty cool, actually, once you get past the whole everyone-here-has aspect of his job.

But there's only so much hospital observation I can take, and one morning a couple of years ago, I set my alarm for 3:45 and waited for appa in the little rock garden he had instead of a lawn because he doesn't want to take care of anything. When he came outside and saw me shivering in the chilly darkness in my shorts and high tops, he figured out pretty quickly what I had in mind. Without speaking, we ran together, appa slowing his pace to match mine. I remember there were still stars in the sky. We ran on the beach and through the streets of his little town, and though appa is not the kind of guy who will admit he likes company, that afternoon he came home from work with a pair of real running shoes in my size.

Now when I run, I channel appa, his way of thinking. My thoughts organize themselves into a rhythm that actually helps me to keep running. And the morning after the Fall Ball, a little rational analysis was definitely called for. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, threw on a light fleece and leggings, and headed out while eomma was still pushing buttons on the coffeemaker.

but my thoughts kept stopping me. I'd remember something Jin had said the night before, or the way I felt when he was talking, and it was like someone had just tied sandbags to my ankles. I actually walked part of my route, feeling stiff and short of breath.

Back home, eomma told me that both Jin and Shinhye had called. I didn't called either one back. I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, hopped on my bike, and took off.

When I'm in the library, I feel the way I imagine Jin does in the MEPS - like the physical space holds the secrets of my future. The books tell me what has happened in the world, what might happen to me, what I can become.

I love our public library in particular. I love the way it smells of clean carpet and furniture polish and the books. I love the librarians' low voices, the muted thumping of the wood chairs against the tables, the water fountain gurgling politely just inside the door.

That morning, I headed straight for the card catalog, where I identified Library of Blue House subjects that led me to other cards in other drawers and eventually to a new computer system that used keywords to find articles in the Gwaecheon Times and the Seoul Post as well as books. I searched "war + Iraq + snipers." I searched "head injury + hallucinations" and learned that the proper term for what Jin thought was happening was "delusion." I saw medical terms I'd learned from appa combined with concepts like "recovered memories," things I'd read about in the news.

When I prep for debate, I take all the research points I've organized on index cards and arrange them in patterns, grouping them around facts, assertions, logical conclusions, and links. I make them into a web, a well-thumbed dictionary, a map where lines of inferences lead me from facts to facts.

I did that now, only without index cards, the points of evidence organizing themselves in my brain alone. They were too complex to write down. There were too many lines. I knew they all led somewhere, but I wasn't yet sure where.

I looked up stuff I've heard physicists on Nova try to describe - about the way the universe bends backward and things happen to space and time. I paged through magazines the librarians pulled from boxes in the back. I gathered research points on ghosts and memory and time travel. I Xeroxed stuff. I underlined. I jotted down facts in a notebook. I read. And read and read and read. I left my research only when I was so starving I had to go outside to wolf down my sandwich.

it was already dark, and when I checked my watch, I saw that it was after four in the afternoon. I shivered, hugging myself in my too-light jacket. Snow had started to fall. This wasn't the first of the season, and the leaves had been off the trees already for weeks, but this time, it felt like winter.

When I got home, eomma informed me that Jin had called again. I didn't call him. Instead, I got back on my bike. I wore my ski goggles under my helmet and a scarf.

I needed Shinhye, I'd decided. I would tell her everything. Finally. She was my best friend. I should trust her, not Jin. I should be honest with her.

And I would be honest. I would explain how Jin could read Arabic. About his crying in his sleep. I would tell her how he remembered the dress before he saw the dress. I'd tell her how he said his parents were going to separate. About the watch. About the fire at Felix Lee's house. I would tell her about the dreams. The buildings with flat roofs in a city the color of sand. The war. Everything I'd learned in the library. I would tell her how Jin struggled not to tell me. How he tried to run. How I hadn't let him go.

She would read over my notes. She would give me an A+ for research. She would know what they meant. She always knew; she was always sure. She would decide whether Jin was crazy. And then she would tell me how to save him.

Shinhye lived at the top of what everyone called Mansion in a white house with columns. The rooms in the front had high ceilings, dark rugs, white couches, heavy drapes at the windows. These rooms were for guests and Shinhye's rich grandparents, the ones who spent their winters in tropical islands.

In the back of the house, it was all tennis and dogs. Tangled leashes and worn collars, chew-ed tennis shoes, tennis balls rolling around under cabinets, dogs rolling under chairs, sleeping with tennis balls grasped gently in their mouths. Tennis balls crowned the mail pile, held up a broken table leg, mixed with the apples and oranges in the fruit bowl, and even, oddly, took pride of place in the door of the fridge where the ketchup and salad dressings are supposed to go.

The tennis court itself - of course the Parks have one - was in the yard behind the pool and flower beds, and when I got there, Shinhye had just finished playing a game with her dad, who was now taking on her little brother under the lights. One weekends, he would do that, play one kids after another. The snow meant nothing. The Parks played tennis all year round - in the winter, Dr. Park put a plow attachment on the riding lawn mower and cleared the court. Shinhye and her siblings got enlisted to follow behind, pushing off the remaining puddles with a broom.

I met up with Shinhye under the pergola next to the court. She wiped her neck and face with a gym towel and shrugged into a warm-up jacket.

"We need to talk," I said, all business.

"No kidding," she said. "I've been calling you all day." She poured us each a hot cider from a samovar on the same table where ice water was served in the summer, then gestured to a pair of lounges. I sat, my legs wrapped in a wool blanket, and watched Shinhye's little brother, Hyejeong, failing to hold his serve. Being at Shinhye's house - being with Shinhye period - was like stepping into another world.

"So?" she said.

And in spite of the fact that I'd been rehearsing this conversation in my mind for the last hour, I found I didn't know what to say. I looked down into the steaming mug between my hands, watching the tiny bubbles trapped int he foam burst one by one.

"Suzy?" Shinhye prodded.

Flushed from tennis, she sat sideways on the lounge chair with her legs spread apart, her elbows resting on her knees, the towel still in her hands. There was snow falling behind her, caught in the lights shining down on the court, and as I looked at her - registered her athletic sureness, the solidity of her world - I realized she was going to think I'm crazy.

"So what happened last night? Did you and Jin break up?"

"No," I said, but had we? With Shinhye asking so directly, I wasn't sure of even this basic fact. Last night, I hadn't told him whether I believed him. He'd stood away from me outside his car in the church parking lot, and when he could have pulled me toward him, he hadn't. He'd waited for me to make a move. He'd left the decision up to me. And I hadn't made one.

But maybe this was me making one now: "He's mad at me about the marines." For a second, I was so surprised at the lie that had come out of my mouth that I just sat there, letting the words settle. Then I continued. "I keep trying to get him to understand that he's throwing his life away, and he told me I had to stop or we would have to break up."

Did Shinhye know I was lying? She looked at me straight and even, shaking her head. "Don't let him blackmail you," she said. "You get to have opinions."

She knew I was lying. I'm sure of it. But I think she also knew that there are times to confront your friends and times to give them some room. She changed the subject. "Did I tell you?" she said. "Jaehwan is a huge dork. Listen to this. Last night, we got to the supposed party at N's and nothing was going on. Jaehwan had gotten bad information. We ended up at 7-Eleven for ICEE at one in the morning. He bought me Snickers bars and then he ate it."

"That's kind of . . . sweet?"

"Yep," Shinhye answered, meaning no.

And then Shinhye lay back on the lounge, looked out at the lights shining down on the court, and held her hands out in front of her as if she was asking the universe a question.

"It looks like fun, what you and Jin have. I guess I just wanted that too."

I stared. Shinhye and I have never been the kind of friends who becomes clones, who go for that let's-be-twins double-dating thing. She was talking about something deeper.

"Okay," I said. "But Jaehwan?"

"Like I said, it looks like fun," she went on. "But me, with Jaehwan? It wasn't fun. Big surprise, right? You have to feel it for real."

"At least Jaehwan isn't a stalker like Taejoon," I tried.

"Actually, I should tell you . . ," Shinhye said, her voice trailing off. "I talked to him this morning."

"Who? Taejoon?"

"I don't know what came over me. He always calls on Sundays because I once told him that I don't go to church with my parents. I knew it was him and I picked up the phone anyway."

"Shinhye!"

She pulled her long, ponytail over her shoulder and began to inspect her hair for splitends. "I was bored! You abandoned me to high-school hell. And Taejoon's not that bad. The necklace was romantic."

"You've got to kidding me," I said, and she dropped her ponytail. "Shinhye, he's crazy."

"I know, I know. It was a mistake. Suzy, he was so gross," she went on. "Soooo desperate. And you know what I noticed? All he does is tell me how much he misses me, but when I open my mouth to say something, he doesn't even listen. He just starts in on how much pain he's in. Him, him, him."

She laughed. And then her sigh, which was sad, opened a window. A window for me to speak through. Or maybe jump out of. 

"I told Jin I loved him last night," I said as fast as I could. And wished immediately I'd spoken even faster. I wished I'd said it so fast that I could get credit for telling her without having her actually be able to understand. "I told him I loved him, and I meant it. Which I thought would be scary, but wasn't. What is scary is that I realized last night that I couldn't handle it if we broke up. If something happened. If I lost him."

I was expecting her to be horrified. But instead, all she said was, "I've never felt that way."

"Then maybe you're lucky," I said. "Because I feel like I've somehow lost control. I have no power over whether or not I'm happy."

Shinhye sat up again and lifted her cider to her lips. Blowing on its hot surface, she said without looking at me, "I hear you."

"You do?"

"I'm sort of jealous." She raised her brows in a gesture that acknowledged the persistent irony of life. "But at the same time, I can see what you've gotten yourself into, and it's not good, Suzy. I've been worried about this for a while. You should break up with him."

"Break up with him?" I honestly was wondering if I'd misheard her.

"Isn't that why you came over? To get me to tell you that?"

"No!"

"Come on."

"Breaking up with him wasn't even remotely on my radar."

"But, Suzy," she said. "How can you not break up with him?"

I didn't say anything then. I was trying not to get mad at Shinhye, but here's the thing: I was getting mad at Shinhye. I'd thought she could save Jin, not get rid of him."

And what if she was right?

I thought about the pages and pages of notes I'd taken that day. I'd been so thorough, keeping my handwriting legible and even, my bullet points logically ordered into headings, quotes, subpoints. I'd kept careful track of the sources I was citing. I'd felt all day that I was making sense of what was happening. But maybe I was just using all that paper and ink to avoid the cold, hard truth: Jin was crazy. And I was crazy too for not walking away as soon as I knew.

Shinhye put her mug back down on the bricks. She was staring at me like she'd just figured something out and wished she hadn't.

"What?" I asked.

"It's nothing."

"Come on."

"Okay," she said, and sighed. "I'll tell you because it's plain as day to me and has been for some time. This guy is going to break your heart."

˭̡̞(◞⁎˃ᆺ˂)◞*✰

Eomma was already in her bathrobe, drinking hot chocolate and eating vanilla ice cream when I came in the back door. As it always did after I'd been at Shinhye's, my own house felt small.

Eomma looked positively lost inside her fleecy white robe. And for the first time in maybe a whole life, I thought to ask: What in world happened to eomma after appa left? How had she let her world get so predictable and safe? Didn't she want . . . well . . . more?

There must have been something in the way I was looking at her that she could read, because she squinted at me hard and then she said, as if she were joking, and also as if she were picking up a conversation where we had left off, "It would be fine with me, you know, if you just never grew up at all. No one here needs to you to move on."