The first day of the school was only a half-day and it was devoted to finding classes, getting books and a locker to put them in and that sort of thing. Mom droved me to school that morning.

“Nervous?” she asked as we neared my new school.

“A little,” I admitted.

“At least you already know a few people. There’s Dongwoon and Doojoon and that boy-what was his name?”

“Junhyung.”

“So it’s not as if you don’t have any friends.”

I frowned. “If I have to depend on Junhyung for friendship, I think I’ll become a dropout!”

“What’s wrong with him?” Mom asked.

“It’s hard to explain. I guess you’d have to meet him to understand.”

“I wish I could have been there when he came to the house, but Dongwoon’s parents needed your father and me to come over and sign some papers. Oh, look! There it is.”

Mom sighed, growing sentimental at the sight of the school she attended 20 years ago. “It hasn’t changed a bit,” she marvelled.

I had to admit that this school looked impressive. It was a kind of school people don’t build anymore. Fortunately, Woonie had been watching for me and he ran to meet me as soon as he spotted Mom’s car.

“Oh, Hyung, this is going to be great!” He said as Mom drove away. “I’ve already gotten us a locker. Come on! I’ll show you where it is.”

Woonie half led, half dragged me into the old brick building, stopping frequently to introduced me to people we passed in the hall. He seemed to know everybody.

“Here we are,” He said at last. He pointed the toe of his shoe to a locker on the bottom row. “Number one-fifty-two.”

“Couldn’t you get a locker on the top row?” I asked.

“There weren’t too many of those left. Besides, this is the only way I could have a locker near Doojoon. He’s got one-fifty-one, right over us.”

“If Doojoon was a gentleman,” I pointed out. “He would take the bottom and let you have the top.”

“Well, he did try, but I figured it would be easier for you to reach the bottom than it would be for Doojoon and Jun-, er, than it would be for Doojoon,” he finished lamely. That slip gave me a pretty good idea of who would be sharing a locker with Doojoon. Good old Junhyung, of course.

“Where is Doojoon, anyway?” I asked.

“He’s gone to get his parking sticker,” Dongwoon replied. “You’ll need one, too, since you’ll be driving to school. You have to have one to park in the student lot. It’ll cost you $2.”

A little knot formed in my stomach as I considered Woonie’s words. Tomorrow I would have to drive to school and I hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car since the accident. Of course the accident had only been a little fender bender, but it had still been frightening. I would never forget Junhyung’s face as he stormed out of his car-

“Yoo-hoo!” Dongwoon’s voice brought me back to the present. “Are you still there?”

“I’m sorry, Woonie,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

“You don’t have to think until tomorrow,” he said. “Enjoy the time off while you can.”

Dongwoon and I had homeroom together. After that I was on my own, drowning in a sea of unfamiliar faces. My first class was Korean history, and after the teacher took attendance and distributed books, I took my history book to my locker. My earlier suspicions were confirmed: Junhyung was there, putting his books into his locker directly above mine.

“Well, well,” he said without even looking at me. “If it isn’t Demolition Yoseob.”

I ignored him and knelt in front of my locker.

“Are you on your knees to beg my forgiveness for what you did to my car?” he continued.

“Dream on!” I replied with as much dignity as I could, considering I was kneeling at my enemy’s feet. After that, neither of us said another word. He took off to his next class and I headed for my second period algebra class.

The teacher was assigning textbooks, and as soon I got mine I dug a pen out of my bag to write my name on the inside front cover. I opened the book. The name of the person who used it last year leaped at me from the page. It was Yong Junhyung. Good grief, I thought. I can’t get away from that idiot!