*** This story is not meant to offend anyone in any way. Also this story is first person, which means Hwayoung is telling the story. Enjoy!~~***

Three Years Ago-- Spring, Eighth Grade, Seoul

I never should have worn my jean skirt. I wasn't fat, but I was definitely pushing my chubby border. I wanted to wear the skirt because I thought it looked good. but I quickly regretted it. It was too warm for tights.

"What's the matter with you?" Jiyeon asked. "Stop moving around."

"I'm hot."

"I know I am,but what are you?" she said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

"Ha. Park Jiyeon, stand-up comic extraordinaire."

Jiyeon took a bow. It was good to see her joking around again, even if it was a lame joke. The idea of starting high school seemed to freak her out more than me. For the past few weeks she'd been in a rotten mood, and everything set her off. That week alone we'd has at least four fights, one where she didn't speak to me for a full day because she thought I was making fun of what he had bought for lunch. Jiyeon was a huge fan of the silent treatment when she was ticked at you. I would end up begging her to forgive me, even when I was pretty sure I hadn't done anything wrong. It has been established years ago that Jiyeon was the drama queen and I was the diplomat. I had pleaded with her to stop being mad about the lunch fight. I even declared I was sincerely sorry if her Pockys had suffered any emotional distress on my account. I didn't care about sacrificing my pride. Keeping my best friend happy was worth it.

"Do you see that guy over there?" Jiyeon yanked her head to the left. I leaned forward to look, but she rammed her bony elbow into my side.

"Don't look at him."

"How am I supposed to see him if I don't look at him?"

"I mean look, but don't look like you're looking. Omo."

I leaned forward casually and then let my eyes drift over the crowd. The gym was packed. Tiara High was huge, with at least even hundred students in ever grade. Students came from different middle schools all across the city. Each spring the school did a welcome event for the incoming freshmen so that we could bond as a class. We had already been given a tour of the school, taken to an extracurricular "fair" so we could see all the clubs and teams we had to choose from, and went to eat lunch from the cafe. Now we were rounding out the day with a school spirit rally. All of this was supposed to help keep us from freaking out next fall, as if not knowing how to find out the way to out lockers. If schools really wanted to reduce the anxiety level, they would distribute student handbooks with useful information like how the sink in the biology lab always sprays water, and how under no circumstances should you order lunch on the day they serve extremely hot kimchi. They never tell you the useful stuff that you have to figure out on your own.

Jiyeon was taking the whole thing very seriously. She scribbled down notes during the fair, grabbed handouts from each table, and ranked activities in preference from best to worse. Is suspected that later her mom would help her turn it into a spread sheet complete with social acceptability ratings.

My eyes scanned the rows of people. At first I couldn't figure out who had caught Jiyeon's eye, but then I saw him. Jiyeon usually went for the Mr. All-Foreigner type, blond, fresh off the country club look. This guy was different. He was leaning back, his elbows on the bleacher seat behind him. He was wearing what looked like a vintage T-Shirt. Not some shirt from the subway station that was meant to look like a cool vintage shirt, but really wasn't-- his was the real thing, pale and soft from years of washing. He had red hair that was cut short in the back, but a little longer in the front. I was staring at him when he looked over and met my eyes. He gave a smile and then a small salute in my direction.

"Aigo," he saw me." I yanked my head back and Jiyeon leaned forward to see the situation for herself.

"He's waving," she whispered. She looked at me and we burst out laughing. "Is he looking at me?" Jiyeon asked.

"I'm not looking again. You look." 

"No way you look."

I leaned forward again ad risked a quick glance. He was staring over. He gave another wave. I found myself smiling and then figured, I should wave back, so I did. Jiyeon grabbed my arm, practically snapping it off at the elbow, and yanked it back down. I leaned back so fast I nearly fell off the bench, my legs kicking out.

"What are you doing?" Jiyeon asked. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed that she was stuck sitting next to me, the dork.

"Well, it's not like he doesn't know we were checking him out. We can't act casual now."

"Omo, he's coming over here. Do I look okay?" Jiyeon have her teeth a quick wipe from a finger in case there was any lunch caught in there. I looked her up and down. She looked the way she always looked to me.

"Hey." The good-looking waver guy stood at the end of our row, his hands in his pockets. He smiled and I felt my stomach turn over slowly, but in a good way, not in a lunch-gone-bad kind of way. Jiyeon giggled but I didn't say anything.

"Hey." I answered back as it seemed one of us should say something.

"I'm Kiseop."

"Hwayoung, and this is my best friend, Jiyeon," I said, and Jiyeon gave another giggle. She was doing this thing with her eyes like she had something in them; they were fluttering up and down. It must have had a hypnotizing effect because Kiseop was staring at her with a sort of smile on his face. With everyone identified we seemed to have run out of things to talk about. I looked at his T-shirt and felt myself break into a smile. It was the logo for the Sundance Film Festival.

"American movie fan?" I asked.

"Yeah, you?" he asked, breaking eye contact with Jiyeon.

"Uh-huh. I love old movies best, all the Bring Up Baby or Philadelphia Story stuff."

"I'm into more current stuff. Sort of edgy. The Coen brothers......... stuff like that.

"Curtiz was better," I countered.

"Who?" he asked.

This guy thought he was into film and didn't know Curtiz? Puh-leese.

"Director of Casablanca," I answered.

"Casablanca? Could you pick something more out of date?", Jiyeon interrupted. We both look over at her. She gave her hair a toss.

Kiseop laughed as if she had said something profoundly amusing.

"So what movies do you like then?" Kiseop asked Jiyeon.

"Romances," she said, doing the fluttery eye thing again.

"How can you say your a film nut if you don't like Casablanca? That's like saying you like bimbap but you don't like the rice in it"

Both of them looked at me, but neither spoke. It seemed like everyone had agreed to act like I hadn't said anything at all.

"Nice to meet you, Jiyeon." Kiseop smiled at her and then looked at me blankly.

"Hwayoung," I reminded him. "Nice to meet you too." I felt my face flush. Someone at the front of the gym was testing the microphone, calling out for people to take their seats.

"I should go." Kiseop leaned forward and took my pencil from my hand. "Here's my number. Why don't you guys give me a call if you want to catch a movie sometime." He scribbled his number on top of my sheet. I looked at it like I had never seen a phone number before. I certainly had never seen one that a boy had given me. I might have to frame it.

"Yeah, okay," I mumbled, my face turning bright red.

"We'll see you around," Jiyeon added, and he gave her a nod before heading back to his friends. I watched him walk away. I turned around to see if Jiyeon noticed how nicely his jeans fit, and she was staring at me with her lips tight and thin. Uh-oh.

"Aish, Hwayoung, why don't you trow yourself at him?"

"What?"

"You knew I liked him, but you practically attacked him when he came over."

"You like him?"

Jiyeon cocked her head to the side and then looked away. "Whatever."

"I was just talking to him."

"You like movies? Why I love movies. Let me bore you with all the stuff I know about stupid old movies," Jiyeon said in a high squeaky voice.

"Sorry." I tried to think of where I went wrong. I could tell Jiyeon was annoyed with me, but it wasn't like I brought up movies out of nowhere.

"Just forget it." Jiyeon crossed her arms and stared out at the gym floor. "You have to cut that out."

"Cut what out?"

"Acting like a total dork all the time. we're going to be in high school, so it wouldn't kill you to act normal once in a while. I mean, it's one thing to like all that weird stuff, but you don't have to brag about it anytime we meet someone."

"Old movies aren't weird. Its not like I like lighting random thing on fire or something."

Jiyeon sighed. "Talking about lighting stuff on fire is weird too. It's like you don't even know what normal is." We sat there not talking until the band began playing the Tiara school song the assembly officially started. I risked a glance over at Kiseop once more time. He was staring in our direction, but the only person he saw was Jiyeon. People always liked Jiyeon. I was the bonus item, what people got for free when they hung out with her.

The assembly went on forever. If one more person got up to tell us how many opportunities awaited us during the next four years I was going to stick a sharpened pencil in my ear.

"I have to go to the bathroom," I whispered to Jiyeon.

"Thanks for the update."

"Seriously, I have to go aigo. Come with me."

"Not now." Jiyeon pointed towards the stage. Tiara's cheerleading squad was doing a routine."We should tryout in the fall." She rummaged through the stack of handouts for one that gave the details on the cheerleading squad.

I looked at Jiyeon as if she had announce that she wanted to take up cattle roping. We weren't exactly cheerleader material. Cheerleaders are not on their chubby side of the border, and Jiyeon, suffered from near terminal clumsiness. She couldn't do a cartwheel without falling over.

"Are you kidding?"

"What? We could be cheerleading."

"Have you ever noticed that the cheerleaders are the most popular girls in school?"

"Yeah."

"We're not the most popular girls" I hate to be the one to point this out to her, but you'd think she would have noticed by now.

"My mom says high school is completely different. Its like a fresh start."

I rolled my eyes. Fresh start, maybe. Complete life do-over? I don't think so.

Jiyeon went back to watching then intently, as if her life depended on memorizing the dance routine. I slipped past her, leaving her to her cheerleading daydreams.

The bathrooms were under the bleachers. The room smelled like a mix of chlorine, mildewed towels, and deodorant. I pushed a stall door open and sat down. As soon as I was seated the stall door started to creep back open. I kicked it shut and it flew right pass the latch and swung out into the bathroom. Great, one broken latch and now I was on display for the entire locker room. This was exactly the kind of thing schools should give you a warning on but don't.

Suddenly I heard someone laugh. I finished as fast as I could and yanked my skirt back down trying to look casual. I waited there for a moment but no one came into the bathroom. I took a few steps towards the sink  and the voices and laughter got louder. There was a door leading to the pool, bolted from the locker room side. I pressed my ear against the door. The voices were coming from there for a certain.

I slipped the bolt open , and the click sounding very loud in the empty bathroom, but voices on the other side didn't change. They hadn't heard anything. I pulled the door open slowly and peered through the cracks.

"Omo."

There were soap bubbles everywhere; bubbles spreading like a foamy blob across the title floor. The swimming pool was covered in a frothy concoction, like a giant latte. At the back of the room near the diving board a group of seniors stood pouring bottles of lemon dish soap into the water. They were laughing, and Yonghwa, who I knew from the local paper as the school's star athlete, was standing standing back trying to capture the whole thing on his camera phone. He was the only one who saw me. He winked at me then pressed his finger to his mouth, in the universal symbol for shhh, and I knew I should pretend I never saw a thing. I shut the door quietly and slid the bolt closed.

"What are you doing?"

I jumped and whirled around to see the face of Jiyeon.

"There are a bunch of seniors dumping soap into the pool."

"Get out!" Jiyeon walked past me and slid the bolt back on the door.

"I don't think we're supposed to know about it."

"Duh." Jiyeon pulled the door open and peered through the crack. She gave a tiny squeal and shut the door. "It must be the senior prank."

Every year each class would try to come up with a prank to outdo the other classes before.

"We should go. The assembly is almost over, and we don't want to be caught down here."Jiyeon took off. Once we were in the hall I looked behind me. There was a wall of bubbles pressing against the frosted glass window in the door that led directly to the pool. I jogged after Jiyeon.

I thought the whole thing seemed funny. The school administration took a dimmer view of the situation. Apparently dish soap and pool filters are bad combination. Then there was the fact that one of the school janitors slipped on the soapy pool deck and fell, pulling his knee all out of whack. Rumor had it he was suing the school in some kind of worker's compensation case for millions of dollars, but that part might have not been true. the school was on a mission to find out who was behind it.

The day after my birthday an article appeared in the Sunday paper saying the seniors were caught. He was forbidding those four students from attending prom or graduation.

**Thanks for reading**