DAY 1

Byun Solbi eggs my house the first night I’m back in Noonchi Lake, and that’s how I know everyone still remembers everything.

“That’s quite the welcome,” my mother says, coming outside to stand on the lawn beside me and survey the runny yellow damage to her Hyundai Sonata. There are yolks smeared down all the windows. There are eggshells in the shrubs. Just past ten in the morning, and it’s already starting to smell off, sulphurous and baking in the early summer sun. “They must have gone to 7-Eleven to get all those eggs.”

“Can you not?” My heart is pounding. I’d forgotten this, or tried to, what it was like before I ran away from here a year ago: Solbi’s reign of holy terror, designed with ruthless precision to bring me to justice for all my various capital crimes.

The bottoms of my feet are clammy inside my shoes. I glance over my shoulder at the sleepy street beyond the long, windy driveway, half expecting to see her cruising by in her family’s ancient Chevrolet, admiring her handiwork. “Where’s the hose?” I ask miserably.

“Just leave it.” My mother, of course, is completely unbothered, the toss of her curled raven head designed to let me know I’m overreacting. Nothing is a big deal when it comes to my mother: The President Of South Korea could egg her house, her house itself could burn down, and it would turn into not a big deal. It’s a good story, she used to say whenever I’d come to her with some little-kid unfairness to report, no recess or getting picked last for basketball. Remember this for later, Hyerin. It’ll make a good story someday. It never occurred to me to ask which one of us would be doing the telling. “I’ll call someone to come clean it up this afternoon.”

“Are you kidding?” I say shrilly. My face feels red and blotchy, and all I want to do is make myself as small as humanly possible — the size of a dust mote, the size of a speck — but there’s no way