I wrote this chapter listening to

Ella Mae Bowen's Holding Out For A Hero 

Listen to it on repeat as you read this chapter.

if you wish.

The day Sandara turned seventeen…

Jiyong’s family moved next door when I was eight. It was that same day Daddy told me about the sunshowers. This was probably the reason why I could never forget his theory about the weather and the angels in heaven. That day was still so fresh in my memory that if I had the power to play the past in the present, I would be able to do it to the very minuscule detail, like the temperature of the sun, the direction of the wind and the fragrance of the air.

I remembered sitting on a stool by the kitchen island, anxiously waiting for Daddy to finish making his infamous banana split, when I heard a car driving against the gravel stones at our front yard. My head snapped towards the window, and immediately, I jumped off the stool. My small feet rapidly brought me to the foyer and my even tinier hand opened the door.

I was excited to see who was visiting us that day. Daddy’s friends from the town stopped by a lot when he was home and I had always loved getting guests. Visitors meant either ordering in Vermes’ homemade pizza or going out to eat at The Tavern. Given that my diet when I was eight consisted mostly of pizzas and macaroni and cheese, I would always pray for visitors.

However, as I stepped into our front porch without any footwear, hearing Daddy yelling at me to be careful, I saw an unfamiliar car going towards the empty house on our left instead. I walked that way and knelt on the porch swing and hid, peeking out only enough of my head to see what was going on.

A man wearing a suit got out of the parking lot. I tilted my head to the side wondering why someone would wear a suit in the beach. Then, the passenger side opened and a very pretty lady got out. She looked over the house and I saw her smile. It was as appealing as her. Though, it was gone so quickly when a loud scream from the inside of the car got louder as soon the suit man opened the back door.

Immediately after he opened it, a small girl, probably about my age, with very long dark hair in two pigtails escaped the car and ran for her life. She was crying, well actually, more like bawling, as she kept on yelling “No!” I noticed that she was fast even though she was running on a graveled ground. I suddenly got scared that she was going to trip and fall, which happened to me a lot throughout the years growing up in this house.

I was about to yell at her to stop running when I saw a boy running after her. He’s older, how much older, I wasn’t sure. Maybe a few years added to mine. “Bommie, get your over here!” I heard him yell as they continued to play cat and mouse in our yard.

“No, no, no! I don’t want to move here. I want to go back home!” She screamed so loud I was scared the old Macintosh couple would hear her and Mr. and Mrs. Macintosh lived two houses down; that was how loud this little girl was.

I looked back at the car and saw that the suit man and the pretty lady were standing next to each other in the stairs leading up their porch. Her arms were around his waist as they watched the two kids with small smiles in their faces. I turned my eyes to watch where the pigtail girl was running off to when I saw a figure standing by the car. My gaze snapped back at the form and when my brain had grasped what the image was, I gasped.

It was another boy. His body was leaned back against the car and both of his hands were tucked in his pant’s front pockets with his feet crossed. He was older than me as well but not as old as the other boy running after the little girl. His hair was in between a darker shade of blonde and a very light brown, a tad bit wavy and long, but not long enough for it to curl behind his ears. Despite its length, he was able to pull it off. My gaze moved down his face and I saw clear bright blue eyes staring right at me.

My first thought was how blue his eyes must have been for me to see its hue from this distance. I had bet it was as blue as the sky on a clear day in the beach. I wanted to move closer just to prove my theory correct when my second thought alarmed me.

The boy was looking at me, intently.

My instinct was to go on a fight and flight mode, however, all it did was to move unconsciously, pushing my head down behind the porch swing; hiding. How embarrassing. He must have seen me staring right back at him. After a few seconds, I decided to take another peak to see if he was still there.

I slowly pushed up and when my eyes passed the swing and were able to give me a scoop of the surrounding, the sky blues were still watching me back. I wanted to hide away but the gaze held my juvenile soul captive.

Studying his face, I noticed the edge of his lips turning up into a smile. I felt my young heart skipped a beat for one second before it launched onto a rapid race that almost made me go faint.

I felt my body moving up the swing, fully exposing me and as I gawked at him, his smile turned wider. I saw a movement below that pulled my sight from his face. He took his right hand off his pocket and lifted it up, pointing a finger towards something. I followed it, facing what was behind me, unfortunately removing his vision from my eyes and replacing it with the pigtail girl running towards me.

“Help! Help me, little girl!” she screamed as she pranced my way. I quickly hopped off the swing and stood steady, waiting for her body to collide with mine. However, it didn’t happen for her head was yanked back so hard she fell on her . She cried some more, even louder. I finally saw what stopped her from crashing into me.

The older boy was holding onto her pigtails. That probably hurt a lot. Feeling the little girl’s pain, I remembered my eight-year-old voice yelling at the older boy, “Take your hands off her pigtails!”

When he had quickly followed, I knelt down beside the girl and patted her head, “Hi.” She looked up to me and I saw tears rolling down her cheeks, “Why are you crying?”

Her shoulders went up and down as she tried to even out her breathing, “I don’t want to move here.” She said, hiccupping between every other word.

“Why not? It’s nice here.” I answered as I sat beside her.

“I don’t have any friends here. They’re all back home.”

I frowned with her. I wouldn’t want to be away from my friends as well. I looked up and I saw my daddy talking to the suit man and the pretty lady. I didn’t even notice that they had walked up our front porch already. The older boy was still standing next to us; however, I didn’t see any sky blues anywhere close by.

Daddy glanced our way and smiled at me. His smile always made me feel better. Whenever, I received a wound from falling down or when I have a headache or when I was sick. Daddy’s smile was the remedy to anything painful.

They said I looked like my Mommy but I was always so proud to know I had Daddy’s smile. Therefore, when I faced the little girl again, I gave her my smile before I said, “I’ll be your friend here.”

Knowing that Daddy’s smile worked like magic, her tears stopped and slowly, I saw her face lighten and finally, she replied to me with a smile of her own. Her smile was nice as well, however it was the gap in between her front two teeth that made it appear comical.

Not able to keep the hilarity inside my young form, I laughed out loud, for a long time. Later on, I heard the little girl laughing with me before she screamed once again. This time, it was with humor.

“Mama, Papa! I have a new friend! Her name is…”

My laughter lowered down a bit but seeing her gap didn’t completely take the laugh away. I held out my hand and introduced myself, “I’m Park Sandara. You can call me Dara, if you want.”

She shook my hand, excitedly, “You can call me Bommie. My full name is Kwon Bom, but my brothers and friends call me Bommie and since you’re my friend now, you’ll call me Bommie, okay?”

I laughed at her quirky personality. I couldn’t imagine the crying girl from just a few minutes ago, “Okay.”

“Mama, Papa! Her name is Sandara but I get to call her Dara since she’s my friend now, isn’t that amazing?”

“That’s great, Bom.” Her mother smiled at us. Truly, she was beautiful. I noticed that she had the same sky blue eyes like the other boy.

Remembering him, I quickly stood up to look at their car and saw that he was still standing there, with the same posture as before. However this time, his head was tilted back, facing the sky. I wasn’t sure why but I wished for him to look back at me. And as if there was a genie granting my wish, he did.

Before I was able to become engrossed in his stare, my hand was tugged by another small pair of hands, “Dara, come on, show me your room!”

With no other choice, I let Bom pull me. As we passed Daddy, I mentioned, “I’m going to show Bommie my room, Daddy.”

“Go ahead, princess.”

Bom paused and looked at me, shocked, “You’re called a princess?!”

“Only by my daddy,” I smiled.

“Wow. This is the best day ever. I have a new friend and she’s a royalty!”

Bom and I spent the next half an hour or so in my room. When she got tired of playing with my toys, I decided to show her the Naperoo.

We were going down the stairs when I heard Daddy’s guitar. It was a song I had not heard from before which got me excited. I loved hearing his new songs. I ran towards the Naperoo and I could hear Bom running behind me. As I reached the threshold to the room, I ceased, causing Bom to hit my back.

“What happened?” I heard her from behind. However, the sight in front of me had me frozen like a statue, unable to answer back. She peaked through my shoulder and I heard her squeal, “Yippie, Jiyong is playing!”

I quickly looked at her and asked, “Jiyong?”

“Yeah. He’s my brother. Isn’t he so good?”

He wasn’t good.

He was amazing.

I wasn’t sure if it was him playing my Daddy’s guitar or if it was the song he was playing, or if it was his low humming or if it was seeing him inside my favorite room in the house or if it was because he played like my Daddy, with his eyes closed and a hint of a smile in his face. But once again, my heart paused for a second, as if getting ready for a marathon, waiting for the starter’s pistol to crack, and a millisecond later, it raced, like Hermes with his winged sandals.

“That’s my favorite song. He composed it himself, you know?” Bom whispered beside me.

This shocked me, “He did? How old is he?!”

“Oh, he’s only thirteen but my papa said he’s a musical genius.”

I remembered watching him silently, from the doorsill, afraid that if I made a move and he heard it, he would stop his playing.

He was thirteen.

I was eight.

Five years in between us.

As I continued to listen to his own version of magic through the song he played, I started my countdown to when I reach eighteen. I was a smart kid and I knew eight and thirteen wasn’t allowed.

Or was nine and fourteen.

Or was thirteen and eighteen.

Or was sixteen and twenty-one.

Eighteen and twenty-three was my only chance.

Therefore, I had ten more years to go.

This was what I remembered every year as I walked down memory lane. It had been a tradition of mine to think back of that day I met Kwon Jiyong. For nine years, I stood in front of my wall and counted.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Eight guitar picks taped on the sky blue wall amongst my other memorabilia from the years passed. I put the tape behind the ninth white guitar pick in between my thumb and finger and as I placed it next to the rest, I whispered, “One more year. One. More.”

I grabbed my guitar and checked my room once more; making sure everything was set. When I was satisfied with its cleanliness, I held onto the doorknob and left my room. As I made my way down the stairs, I heard mixed voices of Happy Birthday’s with Bommie’s voice as the loudest.

However, amongst the sea of greetings, I could hear him from my favorite room, playing me a happy birthday song. And once more, I hoped for another year.

Just when you were about to blow your birthday candles, or if you ever caught an 11:11 on the clock, did you ever wish you had powers? I bet you did. Everyone had done it. Like being able to fly or hear other people’s thoughts or freeze time? 

Well, in my situation, I always wished to either fast forward time or at least have a premonition of the future.

The need to see what it would look to stand next to him with our hands intertwined and the want to feel his touch on my skin or his lips against mine consumed my body and soul for years.

If only there really was a higher power that granted us magical powers and had given me the sight to see the future, I would have known that the tenth white guitar pick would never make it up the sky blue wall for the only sky blues that mattered more than life to me would fade into a realm out of my reach.

~holding out for a hero... he's gotta be strong... and fast... and larger than life~