"What is with you?" Shinhye said that afternoon. We were driving to Hongjoo's Samgoyseopsal after her acting and my debate. She was new enough to driving that she didn't turn her head to look at me as she asked the question, her ponytail pushing straight into the back of the leather headrest.

The car used to belong to her mom and still said MOMS LIMO on the vanity plate. We were pulled up at a red light, and a guy in a black car to our left rolled down his window to shout, "You're pretty hot for a mom!"

Shinhye didn't even turn her head. "Pabo," she muttered.

Something that's important to know about Shinhye is that she's beautiful. She has milk-like skin and even features, and she moves in a way that's strong and catlike at the same time. Also: she looks older than she is. When she worked for her dad last summer redoing the filing system in his dental practice, no one could believe she wasn't an adult.

Life with Shinhye follows a predictable pattern. She'll ask, "Do you think that guy who works in the jewelry store, who was talking to me while we waited for your mom to pick us up after the movie, who came to do the school assembly about not taking drugs - likes me?" Or: "Was trying to get my number?" Or: "Will call?" Or: "Is going to cry when I break up with him?" The answer is always yes. At school, where she does almost zero to be nice to guys, she always gets told where the party is going to be, so if we wanted to go, we could.

But we almost never do. Instead, we study. I force Shinhye to watch Doctor Crush, and she calls five minutes before. We go shopping and try on business suits and ball gowns we will never buy. We talk on the phone about her love life and my lack of one. I watch Shinhye act on stage. She watches me debate. When we do go to parties, we mostly stand by as other people pretend to be drunk, which is fun. And then after, we talk and talk and talk. About the future. About where we'll be going after high school is over.

Shinhye had been in the middle of telling me about her new boyfriend, Taejoon, a college student she met on her family vacation in Japan. She had a picture of him - clean-cut with dark hair and shadows under his eyes that made me wonder if he was worried about something or a little depressed. He'd already written her two letters. He wanted to come see her on weekends. His parents had a second home, not too far from us.

I guess I'd spaced out, though, and Shinhye had stopped midsentence. She's so even-keeled she's hard to offend, but it was understood between us that when she asked what was wrong with me, I had to tell her. Shinhye used to hang with the popular girls - the SM girls, Im Yoona, and Bae Joohyun - but she doesn't anymore. She says their dishonest, compliment-fishing, boyfriend swapping ways were a waste of her time on this planet. (Have I mentioned that I love the way Shinhye talks?) What makes us friends, she once told me, is a shared antistupidity policy. You say what's on your mind. No secrets. No evasions.

"Kim Seokjin," I admitted. Saying his name was like diving into very cold water. "He's in my physics class."

"Kim Seokjin?" If it had been anyone but Shinhye, the way she'd said his name would have me clam up.

Shinhye's always talking about high school guys as if they were barely out of diapers, pointing out in the cafeteria when they make disgusting jokes, or talk with food in their mouths, or smell funky, or get stupid the minute she turns her eyes on them.

"He keeps staring at me. He said hi to me in lunch line. I don't know."

"So you think he's into you?" she said.

"Maybe he's just friendly."

"All I know about him is that he's kind of . . . I don't know -" Shinhye was trying to gauge whether she needed to be tactful.

"Oh, just say it."

"Doesn't he live up with the Valley?" The Valley is a hamlet attached to our city. Kids from there go to our school, but they're not like the rest of us. They have different vibes. They have different hairstyles. If not for the Valley kids, the rate of college-bound graduates would be higher.

"You think he's dumb?"

Shinhye lifted her hands from the wheel in a gesture of "You said it, not me."

"He's in a dance group called BTS."

"Do you like him?"

That stopped me short. "No!" I said. Because the fact was, I definitely didn't. I just wished I understood why he was acting so strange.

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I knew girls the world over are supposed to want nothing more than to have some popular guy fall in love with them and give them his high school letter jacket or whatever, but that was not me. And not Shinhye.

I'd always imagined that the kind of boyfriend I'd have would be someone I'd meet in college. Someone who didn't shout out rude comments during assemblies, like all the guys in our school did. Someone who was good that the things I was good at. Someone who respected me. Someone who knew a lot about music, maybe. Or played piano. Who have really great hair.

Definitely not a dancer.

Dancers are a little too confident in their movements. Always add a little dance movements in their daily lives. And they sweat a lot.

So I didn't like Jin. At all. But when I got to physics lab the next day, there Jin was, looking toward the door, as if he were waiting for me to walk in. He broke into a smile when he saw me, and what I thought then was how nice his smile was. I wasn't thinking about dance, or the strange way my stomach had turned over when Shinhye asked if I liked him. I was wondering if I would hurt his feelings if I didn't smile back.

"Hey," he said when I sat down. He leaned forward across his desk. He raised his eyebrows and jiggled that same pen. He was chewing gum.

"Hey," I say back. Everything about him was moving like the parts in an antique clock, gears winding and rolling to produce a chime.

"You look nice."

Jung Hoseok half turned to stare, then turned back around in his seat.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm probably not supposed to say that, but you do."

"Um . . . thanks," I said. Was he teasing me?

And then, out of the blue, like this statement would come as no surprise, he added, "I want to take you somewhere."

I didn't answer him. I think I was in shock. Was he asking me out?

"Suzy?" he said.

"Yes?" I hadn't realized he knew my name.

"Yes what?"

But I didn't know what. And Mr. Hwang was starting class, deliberating staring at Jin, so I turned to face the front of the room.

Mr. Hwang was a new teacher that year. He'd quit his old job three years before so he could sail around the world, but had instead spent the time and money he'd alloted for the adventure making repairs to his boat. All you had to do now to get him off the subject of physics was ask the smallest question about sailing. The boat and the trip he never got to take were the great unrequited loves of his life, and he could not leave them alone.

When the bell finally rang, Jin was standing at my side. "I'll meet you at your locker after 7th period," he said. I didn't have a chance to reply before he was gone. What was he doing? What did he want? What would I tell Shinhye? Did he even know where my locker was?