The rest of my training is a blur. I'm not even sure how I managed to find my way back to appa's house. All I know is by the time Park Jinyoung walks in from work, I'm armed and ready with a memorized list of calm, collected reasons as to why I can't work at the Palace . . . which quickly degenerates into me pleading him to please let me quit. But he's not having it. Not even when I promise to apply for IHOP and bring us home free pancakes every day for life. "It's just a ticket booth, Giant Maknae," he says, shocked that I could be so scared about taking money from strangers. And whenI try to justify my bitter dislike of Taehyung, one of his brows is liefted by so much rising suspicion. "The boy we almost hit on the crosswalk?"
"I know right?" He remembers the drugged-out friend. He sees the light now.
Only, he doesn't. Things are now being said about how much trouble he went through to pull strings to get this job, and how bad it would be for me to quit so early, and how living out here isn't cheap, especially on a single parent's salary - one that isn't a lawyer's salary, like Eomma's - and that he'd like me to help pay for the insurance on the scooter and my cell phone bill.
"This is good for you," he says in a soft voice, squeezing my shoulders. He's still in his CPA uniform, not in one of his geeky T-shirts, so he looks like more of responsible adult at the moment. And I don't ever remember him being this decisive and firm. It's weird, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's making me a little emotional. "I know you don't believe me now, but you will. Sometimes you have to endure painful things to realize that you're a whole lot stronger than you think."
Ugh. He's so earnest. I know he's talking about what he went through in the divorce, and that makes me uncomfortable. I blow out a deep sigh of a girl defeated and duck out of his kind fatherly grip in one smooth movement, instantly feeling relief.
Once i have time to think things over rationally, I understand where he's coming from . . . in theory. If the point of me sticking it out at the Palace is because I need to be bringing in my own paycheck and showing him that I can be responsible, I'll just ave to tough it out somehow. Figure out a way to see as little of Taehyung Kim as possible.
I might be an evader, but I suppose I'm no quitter. It's just a summer job anyway, right? That's what I tell myself.
Besides, I have other things to think about.
The next morning, I break out a map of Monetery the second Appa's car has driven off. Time to do a little detective work. The Palace didn't schedule me for my first real shift until tomorrow, so at least I have one day of rest before I'm forced to start serving my jail term. I'd already messaged V, but he doesn't answer right away. I'm wondering if that's because he's at day job. During the school year, he only works the day job after school, and every once in a while on the weekends. But now that it's summer, he said he's working there pretty much every morning, and clocking in at another job later.
My stomach goes erratic just thinking about it.
This is what I know about V's day job: I know that it's a family business, and that he knows it. I know that the business is on the beach, because he's said that he can see the waves from the window. I also know there's a counter, so obviously it's a retail business. A retail shop on the boardwalk. That narrows it to . . . I don't know, about several hundred stores? But two details that may help me pin him down are ones that seemed unimportant when he first mentioned them. First: He complains that the scent of cinnamon constantly makes him hungry because a churro cart is nearby. Second: He feeds a stray beach cat that suns itself outside the shop and answers to the name Yeontan.
Not a lot, but's smart.
After studying the map, I strap on my helmet and head down Big Hit Avenue toward the northern end of the boardwalk - opposite the Vogue Palace, a mile or so. Sunshine's burning through the morning fog, the air smells like pancakes and ocean. The beach is already crowded. Locals and tourists, freaks and geeks. They march through the boardwalk like ants on a picnic. The water's too nippy for swimming, but that doesn't stop people from lining the sand with blankets and towels. Everyone's ready to worship the sun.
I've always disliked the beach, but as I find a place to park near the north end of the boardwalk and spread my sunscreen on my legs and arms created for babies, the frail, and the elderly, I'm feeling slightly less hateful at the group of bouncy string bikinis and tropical-patterned shorts walking past me, laughing and singing as they head to the beach. There's not a soul here that I need to impress. No one to worry about accidentally bumping into. Coming out to another country is my do-over. A clean slate.
That was one reason I wanted to move out here. It wasn't just missing appa, or Eomma and Minho LLC fighting, or even the prospect of meeting V. In a strange way, the reason I don't know much about V, and vice versa, was one of my main motivations for moving.
Eomma's a divorce lawyer. (The irony.) Four years ago, when I was fifteen, Eomma took a case that ended up giving the wife custody of the couple's daughter, a girl about my age. Turned out the abandoned husband had a leak in the brain pipe. Hyungjoon Jung, out for revenge against Eomma, found our address online. This was back when my parents were still together. There was . . . an incident.
He was put in prison for a long time.
Anyway. It's a relief to have an entire ocean between me and old Hyungjoon.
So that's why our family doesn't do "public" online. No real names. No photos. No job locations. No breezy status updates with geotags or post with time stamps like, Omo, Kimberly! I'm sitting at my favorite store on Main Street, and there's a girl wearing the cutest dress! Because that's how messed-up people track you down and do bad things to you and people you care about.
I try not to be paranoid and let it ruin my life. And not everybody who wants to track somebody down is a sicko. Take, for example, what I'm doing now, looking for V. I'm no Hyungjoon Jung. The difference is intent. The difference is that Hyungjoon wanted to hurt us, and all I want to do is make sure that V is an actual human being my age, preferably of the male persuasion, and not some creep who's trying to harvest my eyeballs for weird evil science experiments. That's not stalking, it's scoping. It's protection for both of us, really - me and V. If we're meant to be, and he's the person I imagine him to be, then things will all work out fine. He'll be wonderful, and by the end of summer, we'll be crazy in love, watching Gucci: limited edition showcase at the fashion festival on the beach, and I'll have my hands all over him. Which is what I spend a lot of my free time imagining myself doing to his virtual body, the lucky boy.
However, if my scoping turns up some bad intel and this relationship looks like it might have no spark? Then I'll just disappear into the shadows, and nobody gets hurt.
See? I'm looking out for the both of us.
Shoulders loose, I slip on a pair of dark sunglasses and fall a step behind a group of beach people, using them as a shield until we hit the boardwalk, where they head straight to the beach and I go left.
The boardwalk area is just under half a mile long. The center seafront spills out onto a wide pedestrian pier, which is anchored by a Ferris Wheel at its base and capped by a wire that ferries couples in aerial airlifts to the cliffs above. And all of that is surrounded in midway games, looping roller coasters, hotels, restaurants, and bars. It's half this: laid-back California vibe, skaters, sidewalk art, comic book shops, organic tea, seagulls. And half this: bad 20th century music blasting through speakers, bells ringing, kids crying, cheap T-shirt shops, overflowing trashcans.
Whatever my feelings about what this place is, I suspect it isn't going to be easy to find V. Those suspicions only grow stronger when I move away from the Midway area and hit a stretch of retail shops near the seafront (maybe here?) and realize the scent that's been driving me crazy since yesterday isn't IHOP, it's freshly fried dough. And that's because there's an official Monterey boardwalk churro cart every twenty or thirty feet down the seafront. Churros are like long Mexican doughnut sticks that have been fried and dipped in cinnamon or, as the sign tells me, strawberry sugar. They smell like heavenly. I've never had a real churro, but halfway down the seafront, I make a decision to give up on everything: finding V, finding another job, the meaning of life. Just give me that sweet fried dough.
I plunk down some cash and walked to a shady beach. It's everything I hoped for and more. Where have you been all life? It makes me feel better about my failed morning. As I'm licking the cinnamon sugar from my fingertips, I spy at a fat orange tabby cat sunning on the sidewalk near the beach.
No. Could it be?
I look across the seafront. Looks to be a vintage clothing store, a surf shop - Victor's Boards, which may or may not be named after Taehyung's stupid grandfather - a medical marijuana dispensary, and a cafe of some sort. The cat stretches. I pull down my shades. Our eyes meet. Am I looking at V's stray cat?
"Here, kitty," I call sweetly. "Yeontan? That wouldn't be your name, would it? Sweet boy."
His lifeless gaze doesn't register to my voice. For a moment, I wonder if he just died, then he rolls to one side, turning a cool shoulder to me with a snotty feline assurance.
"Was that your lunch?" a tiny voice says.
My pulse jumps. I lift my head up to find a friendly, familiar face staring down at me. Anna from work. She's dressed in shorts and a coral pink spaghetti-strap top.
"It was the most delicious thing I've ever eaten in my life," I tell her. When she tilted her head at me, I explain, "I'm from Gwangju. We only have tteoboki serving."
"I thought you were from Seoul."
I wave a hand, dismissive. "It's a long story. I only lived in Seoul for a few months. That's where my mom and her husband are. My dad went to college in California, UCLA, and moved back north a year ago. A couple of months ago, I decided to move out here with him, and, well . . . here I am."
"My dad's an electrician. He's from Vietnam," she says. "I've never been, but he left Vietnam and met my mom in Arizona. We moved here when I was ten . . . six years ago? To tell you the truth, I've never traveled outside the country."
"Eh. You aren't missing much," I joke.
She studies me for a moment, adjusting her purse higher on her shoulder. "You know, you don't really have a Gwangju accent, but you do have some sort of a Korean accent."
"Well, you don't have a California accent, but you do sort of sound of an Asian accent."
She snorted.
I smile. "Anyway, this was my first churro, but it won't be my last. I'm planning to quit he museum and become a churro cart owner. So if you don't see at ticketing tomorrow, give Mr. Lopez my regards."
"No way," she squeaks, looking genuinely panicked. "Don't leave me in ticketing alone. Promise me you'll show up. Taehyung said three people already quit. We're the only people scheduled tomorrow afternoon."
Suddenly, my churro isn't sitting so well inside my stomach. "You and Taehyung sure are buddy-buddy." I don't mean to sound grumbly about this, but I can't help it.
She shrugs. "We've ben friends for years. He's not so bad. He'll tease you a lot until you push back. He's just testing your limits. Besides, he's been through a lot, so I guess I give him some slack."
"Like what? His world-famous grandfather won too many surfing trophies? It sure must be a drag, seeing statues of you family members around the city."
Anna stares at me for a moment. "You don't know about what happened?"
I stare back. Obviously I don't. "What?"
"You don't know about their family?" She's unbelieving.
Now I'm feeling pretty stupid for not bothering to look up Taehyung's family on the Internet when I got home last night. Truth is, I was so mad at him, I didn't care. Still don't, really. "Kind of not into sports," I say apologetically, but honestly, I'm not even sure if surfing is considered a sport or a hobby or an art. People get on boards and ride waves, but is it an Olympic thing, or what? I'm clueless.
"His father was a pro surfer too," she tells me, sounding like she truly cannot believe I don't know this already. "The grandfather died, and then his father . . . It was all pretty horrible. You haven't noticed Taehyung's scars?"
I start to tell her that I did but was too busy being humiliated in front of my coworkers, but Anna is now distracted. Someone's calling her from a store down the seafront.
"Got to go," she interrupts in her tiny voice. "Just please be there tomorrow."
"I will," I promise. Don't really have any other choice.
"By the way," she says, turning around and pointing at the orange cat with a sly smile on her face. "The cat isn't answering you because he is a she."
My heart sinks. Wrong cat.
Well, it's only the beginning of summer, and I'm a patient girl. If I have to eat my way through every churro cart on the boardwalk, come hell or sunstroke, I will find V before Gucci: Limited Edition.