내 곁에 있어줘

Laying in bed, I stared up at the ceiling of my room. There were no ceiling panels to hide the wooden beams crossing the room and holding up the first floor. Electrical wires snaked across the naked beams, white tails streaking obnoxiously through the darkness. I sometimes imagined that I could hear the buzz of electricity traveling along them, but it was too loud upstairs to hear anything.

My mom was fighting with my step-father. The topic was the same as it usually was: me. I honestly don't know why they fought. It always ended with both of them angry and silent, continuing to exist only in their own worlds until they decided that sufficient time had passed to make the other agree. I wanted to run away, but I'd tried it before and realized that I'd end up right back here with twice the problems in my lap. Sometimes, I had dreams that my father would sneak into my room and take me away in his semi-truck. We would drive from state to state, seeing all kinds of wildlife and climates, breathing the fresh mountain air of Colorado and the smog-filled air of New York City.

The dreams always slipped away or were filed into the part of my consciousness that I knew was essentially just to keep me from going insane.

"How could you say that?" I heard my mom demanding. I pushed the blankets off of me, not wanting to be warm while they screamed about me like I wasn't there.

"Leaving would be good for her," Richard yelled. Part of me wanted to laugh. Since when had he ever thought about what would be good for me? The other part wanted to pull me apart.

"You mean, it would be good for you." It was the first time I'd ever heard my mom really stand up for me, instead of trying to compromise. I wondered why it took so long. "All you ever care about is you. I cook for you, clean for you, make money that you spend, and what do I get?" I closed my eyes, feeling hot tears pouring out. People could be so strange sometimes. People were a contradiction.

I didn't want to hear any more. I sat up on the bed and stared into the darkness. My stuffed toys sat on shelves far away from me, their glassy eyes watching me emotionlessly. I took one. My favorite one. I sat the teddy bear on my right leg and searched along the dark shelf for the pocketknife I'd borrowed from Richard's toolbox. It was new and stiff when I flipped it open. My teddy bear watched the knife with empty eyes. I rubbed his nose against my face, remembering the feeling I felt as a child. It was soothing. My tears went into his fur as I pressed the knife into the inside of my thigh.

Pain flashed hotly in the cold room. My legs and arms were covered in goosebumps. I shivered with sobs and the cold, and warm blood trickled down my leg. I held the teddy bear with my left hand, pressing his soft fur against my cheek, and I cut again. And again.

Every time I brought the knife against my flesh, I was trimming something unwanted away. One cut and my fears fell away. A second cut, and my doubts disappeared. A third, and I erased the whispers of my friends, the taunts of Landon's friends, Vincent's silence. There was no room for shame.

My heart did not stutter as I looked at what I'd done. It wasn't the first time. Lines of blood criss-crossed my thighs. I should feel pain, I realized, but all I felt was clarity. I grabbed the gauze from under my bed and wrapped the wounds. I wiped the knife on some gauze and hid it under the rest of the garbage in the trash can. I returned the knife to the back of my shelf, behind some Emilie Autumn and Distillers CDs.

I lay back on my bed with my teddy bear, listening to the silence. It was kinder than words.

***

"I heard something strange today," Jinyoung told me, sliding his books into his locker. School had been out for almost an hour, but we had stayed in the library to practice for the ACT test. He had surprised me by his punctuality and his dedication. He had memorized and recited a lot of the vocabulary already. The test was still a month away.

I shifted, staring down the hall. For some reason, it felt like there was someone watching us. "What did you hear?"

"A rumor... about you."

"There are a lot of rumors about me," I said, trying to brush it off though it stung. He glanced at me as he closed his locker and turned away.

"Well, this one was different," he said, sounding solemn. "This one was about your purity."

I closed my eyes and wished that I could have misheard him. This was one thing I didn't want to talk about with anyone, but most especially Jinyoung. In fact, I wasn't even sure that I could tell him everything, had I wanted to. He began walking toward the back doors. When I didn't follow, he stopped and turned back toward me, waiting. I was tempted to stay where I was, but I sighed and began to trail along behind him.

He stopped only when we reached the flowerbeds outside the school, their blooms just beginning to open toward the sunlight. The temperature was still mild, though it would only stay this way for maybe another week at most. Jinyoung sat down cross-legged on the grass, looking up at me as if expecting me to do the same. I only half-willingly sat down beside him, my legs stretched out in front of me. He would ask me until I told him something. The spring wind, cool, refreshing, and full of possibilities, blew over us and tousled our hair and clothes, giving us a wild and young edge.

"It's not true," he said, though he seemed uncertain. His small black eyes stared into the sky as if waiting for the answer to fall upon him at any moment.

"Parts of it are," I amended, laying back to look at the clouds drifting overhead. He looked down at me, but I avoided his gaze. I didn't want to see whatever emotion was swimming in it. "It's true that Landon and I dated, and it's true that we broke up. The things that people invented lie between those two points. Anything you've heard regarding our relationship is probably false."

Suddenly, I found myself pouring out more than I had intended. "Landon was a quiet boy and he seemed studious. He had high marks and his teachers liked him. I liked him, too, I guess, as much as someone can like a stranger.

"Landon contacted me through friends. He asked me to meet up to hang out. It started out innocently enough. We went to concerts together, ate lunch together, played music together, that kind of thing. He was always so dramatic, but I thought he was just being funny. He had a kind of coy attitude. It was mysterious, and so I kind of liked that. I didn't realize until later that it was something else entirely." I closed my eyes, forcing myself to remember his face, rather than his actions and words. It was difficult, and his face was probably distorted by the sorrow and pain I preserved in memory. "He hurt me, Jinyoung. I can't say anything else."

"I'm sorry I asked," he said sincerely, though I knew that he would have asked regardless of my reaction.

I smiled. "You sound so innocent."

"I'm not," he said, looking up at the sky, too. I turned to watch his face. His mouth formed the English words with some difficulty. "I don't tell anyone where I was born because they always think of me differently. But I will tell you. I was born in North Korea. People always assume I'm from South Korea, so I let them think that. It's better to mislead people and let them like you, than to tell them the truth and be hated by everyone." He said it with almost what sounded like fear. After hearing of his birthplace, the mentality made sense. "I moved here despite that no one from North Korea is supposed to leave that place." He turned to face me then, his eyes intense. "Why do you think I left?"

It was hard to speak with that kind of pressure, but I forced myself to try. "There are a lot of reasons, I guess."

"It's true," he said, leaning back again as if the answer satisfied him. "But there was one reason more than everything that I left. I was a bad person. I hurt people and damaged my family's honor. I lost face. I caused others to lose face." He paused as if realizing his fragmented statements and collecting himself. "I stole people's money, I fought with others, and I ran away from home. I stole a motorcycle. My parents were summoned to court to answer the charges against me. That's why we came here."

Staring at him, I found it almost impossible to believe. The boy in front of me was quiet, studious, and hardworking. He wanted to forge a new and brighter future for himself in a country so foreign to him. He seemed courageous and dedicated. I couldn't imagine him stealing anything or hurting anyone, at least not intentionally. But Landon had also appeared quiet and studious.

"I don't believe it," I said at last, meeting his eyes. "You wouldn't do that."

He smiled a little. "I want to believe that sometimes, too."

"People aren't perfect, Jinyoung. We were never supposed to be." I leaned back against the grass again. "If we were, we would be gods, wouldn't we?"

He seemed to ponder it in silence.

"Your attitude now speaks for your changes. It's hard for me to believe that you stole some things, but I trust your word, too. I think it's okay because you have changed your behaviors. You don't steal things anymore, and you don't hurt people. You focus on schoolwork and your future. This doesn't hurt anyone, right?"

He looked at his phone and flipped it open, answering in Korean. I tried to listen, but I didn't know any of the language, so I gave up after a few minutes. Suddenly, he sat up straight, his eyes wide with surprise. After a few more quick sentences, he slapped the phone closed and stood up.

"I have to go," he said quickly, throwing his backpack across his shoulders. "I'm sorry."

"What's wrong?" I asked, standing up, too. "Did something happen?"

"My mom has been waiting for me. I'm sorry. Goodbye."

Before I could say anything else, he ran down the hill and disappeared around the corner. I stood alone in the grass, wondering what could illicit such a response from waiting.