As I untacked Snickers in the little barn behind our house, I got rational about the encounter with Junhyung. He was in some advanced classes, like Seungie and me, which meant he probably had some smarts, not that I’d seen too much evidence of it. And I’d heard he was cutting classes already. More not good.

     On the up side, he wasn’t bad looking.

     Okay, so maybe that was an understatement. Maybe he was startlingly, breathtakingly, mind-bogglingly good looking. Plus, he kissed my horse.

     I buried my face in the smooth warmth of Snickers’ mane. Not much to go on. A kiss, and not even my kiss. Not even and intraspecies kiss.

     Still, something had happened out there on the highway. The kind of something that felt remarkably like early stages of the flu. Churning insides, liquid knees, that sort of thing.

     It could be the flu. I conceded. Or it could be that I was actually, finally, me of all people, falling in love.

     I was certain what falling in love would be like. Love arrived with bells and whistles and flashing lights, sort of like when the fire alarm at school goes off during a math quiz. I mean, you know it’s happened. And you want it to happen, bad. And I’d always known that when I fall in love, it would be just that- a fall, a drop off the Namsan Tower, a bungee-cord swan dive off the cliff.

     I’d never actually bungeed, mind you, but the way my stomach was pin balling around, I was pretty sure this was how it would feel.

     But I was having some tiny second thoughts. I’d always assumed that when I did fall in love, it would be (a) be with Yoon Doojoon, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, and (b) not be with a guy who smoked, crashed bikes.

     I was, as the school counsellors like to say, conflicted.

     I needed somebody to unconflict me.

     I needed Seungie.

     Stars and music were what had brought Seungie and me together. We’d met at an overlooking spot in the middle way of our houses. I used to go there to stargaze and reflect or I should say daydream. One time, I saw him holding a telescope. I was too jealous because I love stars but I don’t have one. And he saw me staring at it. Voila. Instant best friends.

      At that moment my younger brother appeared in the doorway. “Why are you smiling?”

     “Did Seungie call?” I asked. There was no point responding to him. Bae was going through an obnoxious phase.

     “What am I, your social secretary?” Bae Snickers’ chin.

     “He’s probably still at the eye doctor,” I said. I passed him Snickers’ saddle. Bae scowled, but he took the saddle into the large storage room that doubled as a tack room.

     “Hyung getting glasses?” Bae called.

     “Not at this rate,” I said. “He has these headaches, and he’s gone to, like, three eye doctors, but Seungie refuses to believe them when they say he needs glasses.”

      Bae returned and straddled a bench. “Can I take Snickers out for awhile?”

      “I just cooled him down, Bae.” I led Snickers into his stall. “And you know the deal. You help with feeding and grooming him and mucking out his stall, you can ride him all you want. You don’t, no deal.”

      He sat there practicing his laser-guided hate looks. I went to the tack room and settled on a trunk, breathing in a rich, sweet smell of leather and saddle soap. I pushed four, Seungie’s speed dial number on the portable phone. Auntie, Seungie’s mom, answered. Seungie was at the library, she told me. Her voice was subdued, soft around the edges. I could hear sobbing in the background.

     “Is that Auntie Eun?” I asked, a flutter of worry in my stomach. Auntie Eun was Seungie’s aunt.

     “Yes, dear.”

     Auntie never called me “dear”. It wasn’t her style. “Is everything all right?”

“I have to go now. Hyunseung’s at the library. You can talk to him there.” A fresh wail in the background. “Really, now, I have to go.”

I listened to the dial tone. Someone must have died, was all I could figure. One of Eun’s relatives, maybe. I grabbed the keys of my car and promised my mom I’d be back in time for dinner.

The public library was empty; it was almost dinnertime. I found Seungie at his usual spot.

“Seung” I said. “what’s the most bizarre thing I could tell you?”

He looked up from a book. His eyes were bloodshot. Drops at the ophthalmologist’s probably, but there was something else that made me uneasy. “You’ve got a star.”

“You okay, Seung? Is something going on, I mean? I called your house and I could sworn I hear Auntie Eun’s crying.”

“She was always crying. She cries over those crappy commercials.”

“That’s what I figured.” I nodded at the books. “What are you reading? Are you preparing for the lesson tomorrow? Please don’t. I’m telling you, you’re making us slugs.”

“Just a little light reading.” His voice was not his. It was like an answering machine. I scanned the titles. Principles and Practice of Clinical Oncology. The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. Radiation and Chemotherapy.

Something began to coil inside me, tightening, twisting, hurting. “Seung?” I said. “What did the eye doctor said?”

Seungie closed his book. “What’s the most bizarre thing I could possibly tell you?” he said, and the he began to cry.

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