There’s nothing to start off a Monday like finding drugs in your gym locker.

I think I would have gone all year without knowing that they were there if I hadn’t thrown my Physics textbook into it the way I did. The textbooks weigh more than wrecking balls and the lockers are about twenty years past replacement, so the combination of the two meant the bottom would cave in. It just fell off, and left a 16”x16” space where the bottom of my locker used to be.

And there it was, chilling with some gum wrappers and a sweaty sock.

To get things straight, it wasn’t anything too scandalous. I knew that it wasn’t or crack right away. Not that I’d ever seen pot or crack in real life before, but I learned enough from health class in ninth grade to know that looked something like dried grass and crack was… well crack was crack. These were neat little white pills in a professional orange tube, like the type you get prescribed from the doctor. Heck, it could have even passed for Tylenol, if it weren’t for the label on the side: anabolic steroids.

Sports drugs, used to enhance your performance and add muscle when regular practice wouldn’t cut it. A football captain a few years back got kicked off the team for getting caught with them. I knew that only the most desperate players, the players where a sports scholarship would be their only ticket to college, used them, but no one else. And never girls.

So what was a tube of them doing in my locker in the girl’s locker room?

I came back to Earth with a jolt as someone shouldered me from the side. “Watch it,” I heard someone growl. I decided to keep my curses to myself—making a scene in a packed hallway would make traffic, and I wanted to get into a less claustrophobic space as soon as I could. I breathed in a breath of fresh, sweat-free air as soon as I turned into the 500’s, and looked out the big glass windows, trying to clear my mind as much as I could before I took next period’s test.

I slowed to a stop. There he was, out on the school’s tennis courts, readying for a serve. Yunho Jung. He was always out there during the free block that the juniors and seniors had. Even from here, I could see the glistening sheen of sweat over his arms, the concentrated furrow of his brow as he smashed an ace over the net. On the tennis team, he had a nickname—Djungkovic, after the world tennis champion Novak Djokovic. His serve, strength and technique was what made him ranked #2 on the team and co-captain with Siwon Choi, who was the current #1 of Westwood. He definitely had been invited to Friday’s party then, I thought.

But I knew that Yunho would never go. Maybe that’s why I’d liked him for so much and for so long. He was witty, gentle, sweet, polite, and smart. Too smart to ever spend his weekends at a party getting drunk and high. I knew that some of the guys made fun of him, calling him a prude for turning down all the tickets that the captain label gave him. Even Yoona and Tiffany would call him crazy, but to me he was perfect.

With those gentle eyes, that sweet smile and a real, genuine sense of humor, how could I not fall in love with him?

I sighed, and turned away from the window as he readied his next serve. Watching him on the courts from behind the windows felt like looking up into the stars on a cloudless night. Not because he was dreamy or awe-inspiring or anything, which he kind of was. But because of the sheer distance. You can make fancy telescopes and build as many expensive rockets as you want just to hold the stars in your hands—but at the end of the day, you’re just a girl squinting at the sky, no closer to them than when you started. They’re cosmic, divine beings that will never know that you are there, yet you still lie beneath them and admire them for all you can.

He doesn’t know I exist. I admire him all the same. And like the girl building countless telescopes and wearing her hands away on useless rockets, I’ve always been a billion miles away, no matter what I did.

The harsh wail of the bell pierced my eardrums and I nearly peed my pants. “!” I muttered, under my breath, starting away from the window. Mr. Swanson, the honors biology teacher, would never excuse a tardy even if you dragged yourself in with a broken leg. And he would probably mark me absent instead of tardy if I waited another minute.

“How was school?” Suho, my nineteen year old brother, asked, as soon I dragged my weary, beaten body into the kitchen.

“Terrible,” I said, deciding to be honest. It wasn’t like I was talking to Mom or Dad, who’d actually feel sympathy if I was having a bad day.

Suho grunted noncommittally, and went back to reading the Westwood Tribune’s sports section. “You’ll be just fine. High school will be over soon.”

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