Chapter Text
[m.s.] i am, basically
even now, megan’s not sure that she would describe yoonchae as angry.
she cleans the blood off her own face, leaning over the sink and watching as the water runs pink down the drain. somewhere outside the bathroom, sophia is saying something to yoonchae and megan can’t hear it.
every inhale stings, and pressing a paper towel against her nose makes her briefly see stars. in the mirror, her reflection is looking at her funny. she reminds herself of someone, but she can’t put her finger on who. she scrolls down her mental list of should-be role models—her mom, her seventh grade history teacher, Obamas Michelle and Barack and Sasha and Malia, cousin Angie, Joni Mitchell. none of them are staring back at her from the mirror.
she blinks and leans down again, cupping cool water in her palms. she’s been in here long enough now that the bleeding has mostly stopped. she could go back out into the world now looking not that much worse for wear.
out in the world is yoonchae and her aching knuckles, sophia and her bleeding heart. manon and her silent eyes.
megan doesn’t think she’s ready to face them yet, and she still wouldn’t call yoonchae angry. there are only so many epithets you can give someone who has punched you in the face, but none of the usual ones feel appropriate.
she won’t tell adéla or emily about this later. she knows what it looks like. the girl you like started hitting you and couldn’t stop. no matter how many times she explains it, they’ll probably never understand that the padding in her gloves make a world of difference, and so did the way yoonchae’s sweat-damp body felt against hers when she’d finally gone limp in megan’s arms.
even lost, caught up in those rolling tides, yoonchae had been beautiful. that’s almost the weirdest part about it all—that megan hadn’t been scared.
she sucks in a deep breath, heedless of the accompanying sting, and lets it out through her mouth. it fogs up the mirror, clouding her face, erasing it right off her body.
the bathroom door, when it swings shut behind her, is loud and unforgiving.
[S.L.] MOSTLY, I STARE AT THE CEILING
the strangest part about not talking to manon is that she’s the only one doing it. out of some kind of solidarity, megan has been trying to mean-mug manon any chance she gets, but sophia can tell it isn’t really working. manon is kind and professional above all else, and the more classes they’re scheduled to teach together, the more megan’s dedication to glaring at her seems to fizzle out.
mostly, yoonchae has been acting like nothing is different. she’s often manon’s partner during sparring and sometimes, sophia catches them both looking at her from across the mat. it takes everything she has not to scowl back, especially when manon looks away quick, blushing.
in the car on the way home from another night at geffen gym of being painfully aware that everyone knows that something has happened between sophia and manon, even if they don’t know, yoonchae finally broaches the topic.
“do you want me to stop talking to manon?”
yoonchae is mature for her age. that’s what sophia is always telling people. she reminds herself of this as she curls her fingers around the steering wheel and lets air out slowly through her nose. it’s the first time that it’s come up between them since sophia came home late one night, faced streaked with mascara, and slammed her bedroom door shut hard enough to wake her parents. her vision fuzzes from the center outwards. she imagines the car careening off the side of the road and an air bag smushing her face flat.
“she’s your friend right?” she asks.
the road in front of them solidifies. they’re driving along the train tracks that keep making the local news headlines for things sophia can’t think too hard about.
“and my teacher,” yoonchae nods.
technically, manon is also her boss. when sophia was yoonchae’s age, she wasn’t working. no one ever told her that she had to and she kept having to set deadlines on fire in order to make them, so getting herself a job was kind of out of the question. every misleadingly meticulous tri fold she’d made in high school had come together at three a.m. on her bedroom carpet the day before it was due.
she forgets every now and then that yoonchae isn’t her biological sister. there isn’t anything genetic linking them together, no scientifically coded reason for them to be at all similar in the choices they make.
“then no,” she says firmly. she has to focus to ease her foot down on the pedal carefully so that the car won’t jerk at the stoplight. “i don’t want you to stop talking to her.”
yoonchae’s nails skitter over the dash as she taps at the radio button, changing the station off the one that’s been blaring static since the train tracks.
“but she hurt you.”
the light turns green and sophia stamps down on the acceleration a little too hard. yoonchae’s head rocks back and smacks against the headrest, but she doesn’t say anything, not even when sophia murmurs an apology. maybe she hadn’t been able to hear it over the music.
she takes a left and two rights.
“she did hurt me,” she finally agrees.
no reassuring follow-up leaps to her tongue and she lets the words hang in the air between them. she hasn’t really gotten to the removed enough to be civil stage just yet. manon is still the fourth most recent person she’s texted and they’re both like, barely in their early twenties.
they pull into the driveway silent and go into the house silent, and no one else is home, so it stays that way for a long time. yoonchae leaves sophia alone in the kitchen before she’s done reheating leftovers for dinner, and she doesn’t bother doling out two separate portions.
[m.s.] always trying to find something wrong
she prides herself, maybe more than she should, on being the one who’s introduced yoonchae to a lot of capital-c Californian things. she’d been the one to get yoonchae to adopt dude into her ever expanding lexicon early in their sophomore year. they’ve spent hours in interstate traffic, seatbelts undone and music loud. yoonchae’s first in-n-out burger was eaten in the passenger’s seat of megan’s car. she’d gotten shredded lettuce everywhere and megan hadn’t even made her clean it up. the lafortezas are yoonchae’s host family, but megan is yoonchae’s best friend.
“you have to take me to korea sometime,” she tells yoonchae earnestly over breakfast one blustery morning.
the house is empty, as it so often is. she thinks tyler might be at basketball practice and sylvia left them both for her shift at the hospital with kisses to the forehead while they were still in bed. they’ve stopped putting pillows down the center of megan’s full recently. she woke up this morning with yoonchae’s cheek pressed against her shoulder.
yoonchae gives her a strange look now, face twisted as she pushes the last few soggy bites of a toaster waffle around her plate.
“you want to go there?”
“with you,” megan clarifies. “it’s your home, right?”
“i lived there a long time,” yoonchae says carefully. “would you take me to hawaii?”
“of course i would. do you want to go?”
yoonchae’s head tilts forty five degrees and she scrunches her nose up, which does something strange to megan’s stomach and she has to look back down at her own plate. underneath the table, she nudges her socked foot against yoonchae’s, prompting her to answer.
“i would go to hawaii with you, megan,” she replies eventually, nodding slowly.
later, when megan’s loading the dishwasher and her fingers close around the rim of the blue-striped plate yoonchae always uses when she’s at the skiendiel’s, she realizes that yoonchae never really answered her question.
it’s your home, right?
she doesn’t know much about yoonchae’s life in south korea. she knows that yoonchae hardly spoke english when she’d flown across the world to move in with the lafortezas at fourteen and that her decision to enroll in mma lessons had been shocking to her parents back home because she’d always been a dancer and an artist.
never mind that dancing and fighting aren’t all that different. megan’s just confused about how she’s known yoonchae for four years now and she’s never seen her dance.
[S.L.] AND THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH I DON’T WANT TO DIE
yoonchae comes into sophia’s room with wet hair and a brush just as sophia is about to get up and lock the door so she can stick a hand down her pants or something, just so she’ll stop lying on her bed ruminating.
not that it would really help her pull her mind out of the past. she’d just end up thinking about the same thing she always thinks about. she sits up, shuffling to the edge of the bed.
yoonchae sits at sophia’s feet like a kid—like the kid that sophia will see her as even when she turns 18 next december; time moves in as well as out—and keeps quiet even as the brush catches over a tangle. downstairs, doors slam and the microwave beeps. sophia’s parents are home from work.
“remember when you and megan were in that fight a few years ago?”
under her hands, yoonchae’s head dips forward.
their sophomore year, the second semester. sophia can’t even remember what they had been upset with each other about. or, if she’s being honest with herself, what megan was upset with yoonchae about.
“i didn’t stop talking to megan,” she says. “even though you guys were having a hard time.”
yoonchae shifts, pulling her knees up under her chin. she’s wearing pants that sophia stole from manon who stole them from her friend lara. bedtime comfort, three times removed.
“megan was upset,” she murmurs into the fabric. “she was having a hard time, like—”
she waves a hand over her head. 답답해.
what sophia does remember is megan sobbing slurred words into her shoulder in the middle of the night after she picked her up from a party she wasn’t supposed to be at. she doesn’t know if yoonchae ever found out about that. about megan’s fingers curled into sophia’s shirt, clinging as she choked out broken explanations of how things felt. about sophia spending the night at the skiendiel’s and telling everyone, even manon, that she’d been at leon’s.
“manon is having a hard time too, i think.”
it comes out as a whisper, like she’s trying to keep it a secret from herself. something knocks against her knees and when she looks down, yoonchae is hugging her around the legs tightly, almost as tightly as megan had held on that night.
apologies spring to sophia’s tongue for all the wrong people. she thinks of manon crumpled on the ground in front of her after a bout, after that time they argued about the takeout order. she kept catching manon’s eyes today from across the mat and every time she’d felt a little closer to a crumbling ledge that she’s been too afraid to peer over.
she puts a hand through yoonchae’s hair instead of saying anything, messing up her own brush strokes.
her parents are doing the dishes downstairs. she can hear the plates clanking into the dishwasher, the water flipping on and off.
she didn’t think she’d still be listening to those sounds at twenty three. she’d bring manon back here sometimes, even when everyone else was home. ever polite, manon would make small talk with her parents and ask yoonchae about school, ignoring sophia’s hand tracing patterns over the small over her back.
before she had let sophia push her down onto the bed, she’d wandered around her room, examining all the trophies she’d gotten from volleyball and pretending to adjust the frames holding certificates for sophia’s academic performance.
“you finished college in three years?”
“mhm.”
“so you’ve just been—”
“waiting for you to come over here and touch me, manon.”
she’s been waiting a long time, she supposes. for what, though, she’s not entirely sure.
[m.s.] the sky is brown, all my fault
it had sort of gone like this. yoonchae flew to seoul for christmas, routine. megan stayed put in california and watched improbable snow fall. they texted.
sylvia pointed out twice that megan was blushing at her phone, tamping down a smile with her teeth.
who’s the lucky someone?
megan had responded that they are no lucky someones, only someones who work hard to get what they want, and sylvia’s eyes had slid to the sculpture on the mantle. she’s a daisy award recipient, two times in thirty three years. one sculpture had gone to rest by megan’s popo’s headstone and the other sits above the fireplace they never light.
some people can be lucky.
megan shrugged and said not yoonchae, she just works hard, missing entirely that she had just revealed to her mother exactly who the ‘lucky’ someone was.
she put in extra hours at geffen to pass the time, helping manon teach classes and wipe down equipment and hang up new motivational posters. she went to adéla’s house for new years and downed four shuddering shots of malort while playing truth or drink in the basement because grant kept asking the same question.
if you could kiss anyone in this room, who would it be?
it was out of a weird kind of loyalty, she knows now, that she kept knocking back gasoline-flavored liqueur—emily’s words—instead of answering, because she would’ve had to say a name that wasn’t yoonchae. she wasn’t being honest with herself then, not wholly, because she went home thinking it was about bravado—adéla’s word—but no one else was being honest with her either.
yoonchae returned from korea with handpicked christmas gifts for her, sophia, and manon. routine.
“i accidentally bought two,” she said after she’d already given megan her wrapped gift, pulling a bottle of facewash out of her suitcase with hangul in a neat line across the label. “do you want one?”
megan had known it was just so she wouldn’t feel like yoonchae was commenting on the acne, and besides, she’d technically asked for it. bring me back whatever makes your skin look like that, okloveyoubye!
yoonchae handed out gifts and then went near-silent for a week when school started back up after break was over. she missed three days of school to a sickness that sophia had assured megan she didn’t need to worry about catching, which made it sound fake, and returned wearing tighter t-shirts than she’d worn before, standing with her hands down straight at her sides instead of tucked casually in her pockets. not routine.
i have to study. i have orchestra practice. manon wants me to clean the storage room.
megan stopped believing the excuses after that one, because manon would never ask yoonchae to clean instead of helping out with classes at geffen. she’s always going on about yoonchae and her potential.
for a while, megan told herself those things just happened sometimes. people got close and then less close and it was no one’s fault unless it was, but in that case it wasn’t, because neither of them had done anything wrong. except it felt personal, because yoonchae still was still letting karlee hug her and she moved at lunch to sit with her instead of megan, and it felt like she was the one who’d done something wrong.
megan had gotten mad, then, and no one had been mad at her for being mad that time, which was the only way she’d known it wasn’t her fault that yoonchae was acting that way.
going home was hard for her this year. sophia did them both the kindness of filling megan in on some of the gaps. i think it’s hitting her that she’s going to have to make some big choices soon.
what megan had wanted to say was don’t we all?
instead she’d asked about college, fiddling with the straw of her melting iced coffee.
what happened to ucla? i thought she was applying to schools here.
sophia pushed her half-full matcha into the center of the table.
she could take a gap year and spend it in korea. she’d be the same age as everyone else when she started college that way. or she could go to school there.
megan tried to imagine yoonchae packing up her things after three-four-fiveish years of living in the states with sophia’s family year-round, even through most of the summer. she knew she’d asked yoonchae before why she came to california and stayed, and never got a straight answer.
so she’d leave us, she’d said to the matcha cup, trying not to crumple under the weight of sophia’s warm eyes on her.
she’d be gone for a while.
she told her mom tearily that yoonchae might leave for good at the end of next summer. sylvia said give it time.
three days later, yoonchae showed up to the skiendiel’s with a handful of tulips and an apology. megan pressed one of the flowers into a book between two sheets of plastic and she still takes it out to look at when she remembers yoonchae is jeong yoonchae from seoul, south korea and not yoonchae jeung from california.
[S.L.] I HAVE A HEAD
yoonchae isn’t crying anymore, not really, but sophia keeps having to reach out and dab at the lingering wetness on her cheeks with her sleeves because yoonchae won’t do it herself.
“why the hell would you do something like that?” she asks the question twice more in different ways before she gives up on getting an answer.
how do you think megan feels right now?
what’s gotten into you?
she can hear manon’s voice echoing through the gym, all false bravado as she leads the rest of the class through defensive drills. they’re huddled against the wall by the bathrooms because missy had tried to lead a blood-soaked megan into her office and sophia wouldn’t trust geffen’s general manager as far as she could throw her.
probably, she should ask yoonchae what’s the matter; are you okay?
she doesn’t know why she isn’t being gentler, but yoonchae doesn’t flinch away from her hands, even when they’re too rough over her cheeks.
there’s still red drying brown on megan’s shirt collar when she exits the bathroom, but her face is clean, the skin tinged pink from scrubbing.
“how’s—"
“is she—”
“no, you go,” sophia tries, but megan is shaking her head, mouth clamped firmly shut. “how’s your nose?”
megan crouches between them, shoulders angled towards yoonchae.
“it’s fine. did you check for a concussion?”
not for the first time, sophia realizes that somewhere between meeting megan at a scrawny, eager thirteen and watching her eighteen-year-old self cradle yoonchae’s cheeks between her palms, she must have lost track of how quickly megan has grown up.
yoonchae jerks her chin, trying to turn away, but megan holds her face steady, peering into her eyes. her thumb is moving under yoonchae’s eye, soothing, completely subconscious.
“sophia, can you—your phone flashlight—”
she obeys like she isn’t the oldest one here; like she isn’t the one tasked with looking after yoonchae when her parents aren’t around. her phone is in her bag, which is in the other room, and when she gets back, megan is saying something to yoonchae that she can’t make out. as she gets closer, she realizes it’s because megan is murmuring in clumsy high school french.
yoonchae is watching her silently, face impassive, but her fingers are curled around one of megan’s wrists.
sophia flips her flashlight on, startling them both. she kind of wants to get manon, who would know how to check for a concussion better than any of them, but manon is busy and sophia doesn’t know how she would ask her to come.
yoonchae’s pupils dilate normally, but there’s something barely restrained in them that almost makes sophia recoil. she decides to call it anger because it’s familiar and she sees it all over these days.
she sees it on manon especially, hidden poorly behind her instructor-smile when she sees sophia walk into the building or that one time they ran into each other at the qwik-mart. sophia was buying coconut water. manon had a pack of cigarettes in one hand and a nesquik strawberry milk in the other, and sophia had never missed her more than she did sitting in the car on the way home after that.
megan asks yoonchae for the date, for the names of her parents and the city that her sister lives in. she turns yoonchae’s head back and forth very gently, checking for a neck injury that sophia never would’ve thought to assess for.
sometimes sophia came home after nights spent at manon’s with smoke on her skin, and her mom would sniff her and say nothing.
[m.s.] sorry, very sorry
the first time she gets yoonchae drunk, they’re at emily’s birthday party. the invitation had been extended in form oh, and.
oh, and bring yoonchae too, if you want.
she does, because she does want, and even though yoonchae looks like she’s trying to swallow a golf ball as megan hunts for a parking spot on the street in front of emily’s house, she doesn’t say that she doesn’t want.
they end up having to leave the car one street over. megan feels tall tonight, balancing carefully in four-inch heels, clicking up emily’s driveway evenly. yoonchae lags half a step behind her, wearing the beat-up adidas sneakers she wears everywhere.
“i don’t think i know anyone here,” she voices just as megan lays a hand on the doorknob.
megan has been looking forward to emily’s party for three days straight, ever since emily found out about her dad’s conveniently timed work trip. it’s been a while since she’s been able to dress up like this. she can already hear the music through the door, can feel it thrumming underneath her palm.
“you know me,” she says breezily, pushing the door open before yoonchae can say anything else.
if there’s anything emily knows how to do, it's to convince people to come to an impromptu party on a thursday. megan recognizes a handful of people from her phys ed class as they wade into the house. she’s already placing bets in her head about how many of them will show up tomorrow morning. she turns to tell yoonchae, but the girl behind her is short and redheaded and megan blinks twice, wondering how she could possibly be feeling this floaty before a sip of alcohol. emily has gone in hard on the decor. cheap plastic disco balls are taped precariously to any ceiling she could’ve reached on a stepladder. they scatter the lighting, blurring megan’s view.
the heels help some, but not enough. megan scans the tops of girls’ heads and decides none of them are yoonchae. a few people call her name as she pushes her way into the kitchen, but she pretends the music is too loud and keeps going.
“megan!”
adéla is leaning on the counter, dumping four shooters into a solo cup at once. behind her, some googly-eyed lacrosse player is trying to mouth at her bare shoulder.
“where’s yoonchae?”
the kitchen is more empty than the other rooms she’s been through so far, but it’s full of trash and in the corner, someone is straddling someone else on one of emily’s mom’s upholstered mahogany chairs.
adéla snorts, palming at the lacrosse boy’s forehead to push him away.
“how should i know? where have you been, anyway?”
“we just got here.”
she reaches for adéla’s cup absently, wincing when she gets a look at what’s inside.
“did you mix that with carrot juice?”
“emily didn’t plan too well with the mixers,” adéla sighs. she waves a hand at the kitchen table, which is cluttered with mostly-empty bottles of cheap spirits. it’s mostly vodka, but adéla’s cup smells like whiskey and carotene, and megan puts it down without taking a sip. “here, i stashed these earlier.”
she reaches under the kitchen sink and pulls out a six-pack of canned mixed drinks, pushing it across the counter towards megan.
“it looks like you need these more than me.”
in the other room, the song changes and people cheer. megan scrubs a hand over her face, forgetting her makeup. she wants to be crushed between emily and adéla in emily’s overly fancy living room, cheering every time the song changes too abruptly because their school’s best dj has a nine pm curfew. instead she’s in the kitchen, staring at a warm six-pack and wondering where the hell yoonchae got off to.
“i shouldn’t have brought her,” she mutters, mostly to herself.
adéla hears her anyway and squints, sipping straightfaced on her concoction.
“you shouldn’t have lost her,” she corrects.
something flares up hotly in megan’s chest and she grabs the box off the counter, digging her nails into the cardboard.
“fuck off, adéla. i’m not her babysitter. it’s not my job to watch her.”
this time, the music really is too loud for her to hear what adéla calls after her as she storms away. the drink pack digs sharply into her side as she shoves through the crowd. she goes through each room downstairs, banging on the bathroom door until it falls open and a guy with his fly unzipped stumbles out.
she checks upstairs when she’s done and it isn’t lost on her as she forces her way into emily’s room that she hasn’t seen the girl she’s supposed to be celebrating tonight once. she yells at the couple making out on emily’s bed until they leave the room leaning on each other and slams the door shut as she leaves.
yoonchae isn’t upstairs either, not even in emily’s parents’ room, which megan picks the lock to with one of the bobby pins keeping her hair in place and immediately feels embarrassed for doing so. it’s not like yoonchae would’ve broken into an obviously locked room and megan knows that.
she ends up outside, slightly breathless from the heat inside and the panic that has been slowly building ever since she realized yoonchae wasn’t behind her.
emily’s parents splurged on a new patio two summers ago, complete with a veranda and a set of outdoor couches arranged in a u-shape around a firepit. the whole thing is neatly lit by circular bulbs strung up around the edges of the veranda and there, in the glow, is yoonchae, sitting alone on one of the couches. the top button of her shirt has come undone and her bangs are slipping out of her ponytail and megan feels furious.
“hey, fuck you, dude,” she snaps, clicking over and dropping adéla’s six-pack onto a little side-table. it rattles the glass top and yoonchae’s brow furrows.
“this is nice furniture, megan—”
“oh my god. just—jesus, yoonchae, you can’t just disappear like that.”
she rips into the box and pulls out two cans. she tosses one of them into yoonchae’s lap.
“drink it.”
yoonchae’s jaw twitches, but she works her fingernails under the tab and pops the can open. liquid spurts out, a consequence of the carbonation built up from megan’s frantic journey around the house, and wets the front of her shirt.
megan opens her own drink and downs half in one gulp. it’s something fruity and it doesn’t burn going down. she’s beginning to realize why adéla had been so quick to pawn them off.
“i haven’t even seen emily yet,” she says. something smacks against the glass door separating them and the party. yoonchae brings her can to her lips. “it would be nice to wish her a happy birthday. and she invited you, you know. you could probably stand to thank her.”
she finishes the drink and crushes the can between her fingers. yoonchae stays quiet and watches as she fumbles for another.
“what, yoonchae?”
yoonchae’s fingers tighten around her can and she takes another sip before speaking, lips wet. her shirt is clinging to her stomach in spots. megan looks away, up at the stars that are hard to make out through the slats in the veranda.
“i was trying to find you.”
“yeah, and coming outside was a really great way to do that,” megan bites out. “we’re going back in. finish that.”
“how much—”
“you can barely taste it, yoonchae, you’ll be fine.”
there’s a part of her floating somewhere outside her own head that isn’t sure why she’s doing this. yoonchae doesn’t deserve to be goaded and glared at.
but mostly she’s just upset. somewhere inside, her friends are celebrating emily’s eighteenth birthday without her because she had to play hide-and-seek with the international student that spent megan’s eighteen birthday in korea. she’s not sure where yoonchae will be when she turns eighteen. her can crinkles under her fingers and she lifts it again, furious.
when yoonchae finishes her drink, megan puts another one in her hands just to keep anyone else from handing her anything while they’re inside and drags her through the sliding door by her wrist. she leaves their three empty cans outside by the firepit and sticks another in yoonchae’s back pocket.
“don’t drink that one,” she orders over the noise, and hands the sixth can off to the first person she sees with empty hands. “c’mon.”
she stops looking over her shoulder when they find emily. for a while, she loses herself in the feeling she’s been chasing the whole night. the music is loud and adéla keeps grabbing at her hips. emily’s laughter arcs high over the bassline and megan’s still a little too sober, but the dim lighting helps, and so does the cloying sweat-smell.
it starts to feel like the night might not have been completely ruined the longer she dances, but just as soon as the thought has occurred to her, emily’s joyous expression clouds and she reaches around megan for someone else.
“hey, are you ok?”
megan likes to think of herself as a girl's girl, which makes it easy to turn around with furrowed brows, but she doesn’t think the same rush of concern would’ve welled up inside her for anyone else. emily has her hand on yoonchae’s shoulder, which she has to reach up to do, but yoonchae is looking at megan. she looks a little dazed, cheeks flushed, and the can megan had put in her hands is gone. she’s being jostled by the movement of everyone around them, but it’s fluid, more like she’s just given up on staying sturdy than she is genuinely unsteady on her feet.
and she’s looking at megan. it makes her feel guilty, to be pinned down beneath yoonchae’s gaze like that, and she forgets about her anger from earlier as she moves forward.
“what’s wrong?”
she knocks emily’s hand off yoonchae’s shoulder without really thinking about it, replacing it with her own. she smooths her thumb back and forth over the ridge of yoonchae’s collarbone.
“nothing,” yoonchae manages after a beat. “nothing is wrong. keep—”
she jerks her chin over at the others. her eyes are a little too bright, too many blinks per minute.
megan remembers the can in yoonchae’s back pocket and shoves at someone’s sweaty spine to push them away from her so she can fumble it out without moving. it’s dark and she has to squint to read the lettering on the can. it’s hard without her glasses and she already has trouble with small print, but adéla seems to catch on and she says loudly into megan’s ear.
“it’s two shots, at least. maybe more in some of them.”
it occurs to her that she hadn’t asked yoonchae if she’d had anything to drink before megan found her outside. even so, four shots is a lot for someone who’s really only sipped on soju before.
“ah, jeez, yoonchae,” she murmurs, not loud enough to be heard over the music, because she’s remembering too that it’s not a fault of any kind of conservatism that yoonchae’s never finished the bottles of flavored soju sophia lets them have sometimes when her parents are out. i just don’t like how it feels. she remembers yoonchae’s hands flexing over her knees, bruises rippling over her knuckles. i don’t like not having control.
she’s not scared, not really, but she decides they’re going to leave for both of their sakes. emily doesn’t even make a fuss about it, and adéla just watches with her mouth pressed into a thin line as megan takes yoonchae by the waist and pulls her towards the door, keeping her close enough not to lose again. she tugs yoonchae’s mostly empty drink out of her hand and drops it on the floor as they go, apologizing internally to emily’s parents about the trash on their back patio.
they get all the way back to her car before she realizes her getting behind the wheel might only make things worse for both of them. she makes yoonchae sit down on the curb even though she looks far less flushed now and extracts her phone from her bra, wiping the screen down on the front of her shirt.
“i can drive,” yoonchae says from below her, which is how megan knows things are really upside down, because yoonchae doesn’t have her license yet, and her fingers find sophia’s number before her mind does.
she doesn’t even have to explain herself. sophia doesn’t ask a single question before megan hears keys jingling over the line.
“you have yoonchae.”
it’s not a question, even though megan knows sophia thinks it is. she nods, remembers sophia can’t see her.
says, “she’s here. i can put her on. it’s—we’re both fine, soph.”
“i’ll be there in ten.”
her phone beeps at her and she pulls it away from her ear. she can still hear the music from emily’s house and wonders, vaguely, how they haven’t gotten a noise complaint from the neighbors yet.
she drops down to sit beside yoonchae, shoulders brushing, and tries not to take it too personally when yoonchae shifts away. she tells herself it’s the overwhelm.
sophia takes eight minutes to arrive and she leaves the car on when she gets out, rounding the hood to crouch in front of yoonchae. her eyes slide over to megan only briefly.
“what happened, mahal?”
megan knows she can read yoonchae well, but sophia might always be able to do it better. she’s got so many years on them. sometimes the gap feels impossible to bridge, because sophia apparently sleeps in linen and megan still has cartoon-printed pajama pants.
when yoonchae doesn’t answer right away, sophia wheels on megan.
“what the hell did you do?”
so she’s read the situation right, apparently, but just knowing that isn’t enough to stop the defensiveness that rockets up megan’s spine, tightening her shoulders.
“i didn’t do anything! we got separated. emily invited too many people.”
“and then what?”
yoonchae drops her head down against her knees and sophia’s eyes flash. megan wants to reach over and shake her friend, hiss against her ear to stop making things worse for her.
“adéla gave me some drinks,” she says haltingly, too guilty.
“let’s go.” sophia stands up and sticks a hand out.
megan puts her hand in it, but sophia shakes her head. it puts a pit in her stomach. she can’t figure out what sophia wants from her for a long moment before sophia’s passenger seat door opens, and megan realizes for the first time that sophia hasn’t shown up alone.
“i’ll take you and your car home, megan,” marquise says gently, crouching to be eye level with her.
“but—”
“it’s okay, honey.” she’s offering the kindness that megan wants from sophia.
megan gives her keys to marquise in hopes that it will make the crease between sophia’s brows go away, but it doesn’t, and she has to stand up from the curb on her own.
“sophia, i—”
“i trusted you, megan,” sophia says coolly. “you’re both teenagers, i don’t care what you get up to as long as it’s reasonable, but i thought you’d at least try a little harder to make sure she was having fun.”
no one is letting her finish her sentences. megan remembers sophia curling around her back, holding her through the tears she spilled over her own stupid choices after a party kind of like this one. she’d had more to drink then. sopha is supposed to be yoonchae’s, but she had been there for megan, even when megan was being a bitch for no reason. her own words. she remembers more about that night than sophia probably thinks she does.
“it’s not my fucking job to take care of her,” she retorts, partly just to see how it sounds.
sophia starts to step towards her, held back only by marquise making a sound of warning from her place beside megan.
“yes, it—”
“shut up.” yoonchae’s voice is gravelly, thick with anger. “both of you just—stop talking.”
it’s been long enough now for her to have sobered up some, but megan still feels herself try to reach out to steady her when yoonchae stands up from the curb on her own, batting sophia’s hands away.
“go, megan,” yoonchae orders without looking.
she dodges sophia’s persistent hands a little clumsily and climbs into the backseat of sophia’s car, slamming the door shut behind her.
for the first time that night, they’re all on even ground, and megan feels about as incredulous as sophia looks, even though she knows it’s for different reasons. she wants to be angrier than she is. there’s nowhere else she can pin the blame now. she’s been passing it back and forth between herself and yoonchae since the kitchen, but now she isn’t sure where it goes, and she lets it fall to the ground between her feet.
marquise tells her softly to get in the car, so she does.