I felt someone shake me awake. “Mmmm!!! Leave me alone! It’s Saturday today!”

“Bro, you’ve gotta wake up! You have a guest waiting for you downstairs!” I heard the excitement laced in Joey’s voice. Ha. Like I cared. It was barely the start of the weekend and they were expecting me to get up fairly early? No way. I wasn’t doing that for anyone.

“Tell them to come back later. They can wait. Sleep comes first.” I lazily replied.

I heard him leave, and I finally thought I was by myself. I was drifting back into a slumber, when a cold liquid was poured onto my sleeping head.

“What the hell was that for?!” I scolded.

Joey grinned sheepishly, “Revenge for yesterday. Now go shower and change into something decent. Mom and Dad are waiting downstairs.”

I picked out some clothes and headed to the bathroom. After my quick shower, I was fully awake. I headed downstairs, expecting one of the boys to be watching TV, or something. I was wrong. It was a girl. I couldn’t see her face, though. It seems that she heard me going down the stairs, since she turned her head and grinned, “Hey Mark.” She said in English, and I stopped in my tracks.

It was her. Jessica. Jessica Koh, my playmate when I was in California, and also the crush that I never got over. She was here.  How did I recognize her despite the fact that we haven’t seen each other in 9 years? We kept in contact. I made sure that we did. At first, it was e-mails and letters, but as we grew up, it became skype and facetime chats, as well as facebook messages and twitter DMs.

She went up to me and pulled me in for a hug. “I’ve missed you!” she said excitedly.

“How are you here?” I whispered, still in shock.

“Well, since we’re seniors now, Arcadia High is allowing us to do international exchange student programs. When I saw Korea on the list, I just knew that I had to sign up. So I could see you. It was a miracle that they picked me. Talk about major of luck much!” She looked at me, expecting a reply.

“That’s great! So which high school are you attending, then?” I was still partially surprised.

“Yours, of course!” she said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “What’s the point in coming all the way here from the States if we won’t be seeing each other often? That’s why I made sure that I would go to your school as an exchange student.”

“Do you even know how to speak Korean?” I raised my eyebrow at her curiously.

“No, that’s why I need you with me 24/7 to translate for me. I can see it already; us going to school together, eating lunch together, walking to class together. It will be so cool! We can make up for the time we weren’t with each other now!”

I blushed a bit at what she said. I might finally have a chance with her now that she’s with me.

“Mark! Jessica! Lunch is ready!” Mom called out from the dining room.

We sat at the table, with Jessica in the seat next to mine. In the middle of our meal, Dad asked Jessica where she planned on staying.

“Oh, I rented an apartment nearby. I’m only staying for a few months, anyway.” She smiled back at Dad. It reminded me of Jaehee, since she never forgot to do her little eye-smile when talking to someone.

“Ugh. Thank God you’re only staying for a few months, then you can leave Mark alone.” I heard Grace mutter under her breath, in Mandarin.

“Yeah. I agree. Yien, why did you pick her of all people to crush on. You could have done so much better.” Tammy added, not forgetting to address me by my Chinese name, and also not failing to use our second language, which Jessica couldn’t understand.

She whispered to me, “Hey. What are they talking about? Is it about me?”

I turned to her and smiled, “No. It’s nothing. They’re just saying that the food is delicious.”

Their Chinese conversation eventually came to an end. It was mostly about Jessica. I couldn’t understand some of it, though, since it was too deep. Nonetheless, they still got their point across: that they didn’t like Jessica, nor did they approve of her.

Even when we were kids, they never really favoured her, either. I never knew why, and when I asked them, they just said, “There’s something off about her. We don’t know what it is, but it’s there.”

After the meal, Tammy and Grace took off up the stairs, not bothering to bid Jessica farewell. She said that she still needed to settle into her apartment. I offered to help her, but she politely declined. I walked her to the door and said goodbye, she pecked me on the cheek, and said “see you on Monday!” before heading down the street.

I plopped down onto my bed, face first, and blew a raspberry.

“You’ve got it bad, man.” Joey chuckled, “You were blushing like a girl through 90% of lunch.”

“No, I wasn’t!” I denied. Wait. Was I? If I was, I hope that Jessica didn’t notice. It would make me look like a dork.

“Yeah, you were. She looked like she was sitting next to a tomato that grew a body.”

“Aw, man!” I buried my face into my pillow, annoyed at myself for being such a loser.

“It’s okay, dude. It didn’t seem like she noticed.” He consoled me.

“Really?” I looked at him, hopeful.

“Really. Now, what were Tammy and Grace talking about at lunch a while ago. My Mandarin is the worst out of the four of us, and I was only able to understand a bit. They were insulting someone, weren’t they? Do you know who it was?” he asked curiously.

“Yeah.” I felt my fists ball up in anger. I stood up and headed to the door when I heard Joey call out, “Wait! Who was it?”

“You don’t need to know.” I opened the door and headed to my sisters’ shared room, not failing to slam the door behind me.

A/N: Yay! Chapter 5 is up now, too! I really need to get started on chapter 6 :( I usually have the chapters ready a day before then I reread them before posting them the next day, but I've been slacking off lately. In other news, I got home from my grandfather's celebration, and I ate so much. It feels like I gained 5 pounds :( My friends say that I'm thin already, but that's because they haven't seen my out of my uniform. Well, that's all for today.  Thank you!

stephanielee