XOXO (An XOXO Novel)

The sticker picture is a series of four small photographs printed vertically in the order they were taken. In the top picture, I’m frowning at the camera while Jaewoo, his back against the corner of the booth, has his eyes closed, in the middle of a blink. In the second picture, they’re open and he has a small smile on his face. I’m still frowning.

The third picture came out well. We’re both smiling and looking at the camera. I remember how I’d held my expression in place, determined to keep my smile from wavering and my eyes open. I’m relieved to find I managed to do both—I look normal. Pretty, even.

As for Jaewoo, he’s no longer leaning against the back of the wall, but sitting slightly forward. His head is tilted, and his eyes aren’t on the camera anymore. He’s looking at me, his expression caught between a smile and a laugh.

I feel my heart give a literal flutter in my chest.

Pulling out my phone, I snap a photo of the photo, then take it again when it appears washed out against my kitchen table.

When I’m satisfied, I open up the number Jaewoo saved in my phone.

Here’s the photograph from tonight. I text. Btw, this is Jenny. I hit send.

There. That’s straightforward. Casual.

Immediately my texts are marked “read” and three dots appear. He’s typing! Was he waiting for my text? Also why does he have his read receipts on?

A message appears. Jumping on a plane. Text you when I land.

He’s flying out tonight? I knew he was from Seoul, but I didn’t think he was leaving so soon.

Okay. Have a safe flight!

My message is marked “read,” then . . .

Thanks 😀.

Oh my god, he sent an emoji. How cute!

Footsteps approach the front door of the apartment, keys jingling for the lock. I quickly pocket the photo as my mom walks through the door.

She glances at me sitting at the kitchen table before sliding off her shoes, “You’re still awake?” She hangs her coat in the closet, slipping on a pair of house slippers—mine, in fact. It’s an easy mistake; we’re the same size. Same shoe size, same height, same oval-shaped face. People always comment on how much we look alike.

“I thought you were working on a case tonight,” I say. Usually on the weekends she takes extra cases and sleeps overnight at the office. As an immigration lawyer in LA, she’s busy a lot.

“Change of plans.” She starts across the kitchen, then stops, doing a double take. I realize I’m still in the clothes I wore to school this morning. “Did you just get home?”

For a moment I blank, unsure whether or not to tell her how I spent my night.

“Bomi had a project due,” I say finally, “so I stayed late to help out Uncle Jay. He gave me a ride home.” The last part is true, if not the first.

I feel a bit guilty. I hardly ever lie to my mother; there’s no reason to. We literally have the same goal: for me to go to music school in New York City. And for the past five years, it’s just been us, and Uncle Jay.

But if I tell her, I know she’ll worry that I’m not focused enough or that I’ll be distracted; we haven’t had the “dating” talk, but it’s heavily implied that I should wait until college.

She heads over to the rice cooker and pops it open, sighing when she finds it empty.

“You didn’t eat at the office?” I ask.

“No time.”

I point to the counter where I left the H Mart grocery bag. “Mrs. Kim gave us some banchan, if you want to eat that. There’s jangjorim.” It’s her favorite.

Mom clicks her tongue. “Mrs. Kim should mind her own business. She can be so nosy.”

“Well, I think it’s nice of her.”

“Don’t tell me she didn’t slide in a snide comment about my parenting.”

I try to think back to what she said, but honestly can’t remember. “There’s also japchae.”

“Fine. Can you make rice? I’m going to take a shower. And, actually, since you’re awake, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

When someone announces they want to talk to me, I always get nervous. Like, just say it. I don’t like the anticipation of thinking it could be something bad. But Mom knows not to spring anything serious on me, not after Dad.

“Sure,” I say, and she heads off in the direction of her bedroom. Our rooms are at opposite ends of the apartment, which is to say, they’re almost right next to each other.

I pour two cups of rice into a bowl and wash out the grains in water, then dump the whole thing into the cooker.

Afterward, I grab a melon bar from the fridge and sit at the table, googling how long it takes to fly from LAX to Seoul.

Fourteen hours.

Then I google what the time difference is between Korea and California.

Korea is sixteen hours ahead.

Mom walks into the kitchen in a bathrobe twenty minutes later, her hair wrapped neatly in a towel.

When the rice cooker pings, she scoops up rice into a bowl and sits across from me at the table.

She doesn’t comment on the low levels of banchan in the containers, so I refrain from enlightening her.

“I got a call from Seoul this morning,” she begins, “about . . . my mother.”

I sit up in my seat. “She’s okay, isn’t she?” Just tonight I mentioned my grandmother in Korea to Jaewoo. I might have never met her, but she’s still family and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.

“She’s fine,” Mom assures me. “As fine as someone with colon cancer can be. It was her doctor who called. He thinks she might be healthy enough to get surgery in a few months, but she’s refusing. It won’t be for a while yet, and she still needs careful monitoring, but I thought I could go to Seoul for a few months, spend time with her and convince her to get the surgery.”

A hundred thoughts pass through my mind. My grandmother has cancer, a different kind than my father, but she’s sick. And my mom is going to Seoul to take care of her. Without me.

“I already called Jay,” Mom continues, “and he said you could stay with him for the rest of the school year. I should be back by July.”

“You’re going to leave me until July?” I can hear my voice rising. “It’s November now.”

“No,” she says calmly. “I wouldn’t fly out until after the new year. Likely end of February. There’s still some work things I need to take care of.”

I’m still trying to process what’s happening. My mother’s leaving me in the middle of my junior year. “What about the end of the year performance. It’s in May.”

“There will be more performances. Jenny, my mother needs me.”

I need you. I almost say it, aloud, but I don’t. If I tell her I need her she’ll only ask me why, and I can’t explain it beyond the simple fact that I’ll miss her.

“I wouldn’t have decided on this if I didn’t believe you would be all right.”

“But, Mom—”

“If something happens to her and I’m not there, I’ll never forgive myself.”

Game. Set. Match. Because I can’t argue with that. I would feel the same; I have felt the same.

“So you’ll be in Korea,” I say, and I sound exhausted even to my own ears, “That’s a sixteen hour time difference.”

“I—wait, how do you know that?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I stand up. I have some more choice words I could say to my mother, but as I study her, the anger inside me deflates. She looks as tired as I feel, dark circles beneath her eyes, and she’s not even eating anymore, which is the greatest indicator that she’s not her usual self.

I offer an olive branch. “Well, at least you’ll be here through the holidays. And then, wow, Seoul, huh? You haven’t been there for, what, six years?” And even then, only the one time since she first came to the US on a student visa. She stayed after marrying my dad.

“Seven,” Mom sighs. She must feel a little better because she reaches for a slice of mung bean pancake. “I’ve been putting it off for long enough. It’s about time I go back.”

I’m almost late for my nine o’clock cello lesson the next morning, having not gone to bed until well after two. When I get there, I fumble over so many notes that Eunbi, my teacher, stops me in the middle of my solo piece for school.

“I can tell something’s bothering you,” she says. “Is it the results from the competition?”

It’s wild to think that less than twenty-four hours ago, the answer would have been yes. I’m still upset about what the judges said, but also the judges aren’t my mother, and they’re not abandoning me for months on end.

“Here, let me get you some tea, then we’ll talk.” I leave the piano bench to sit on one of the wingback chairs in her living room. We don’t do this often, but sometimes we’ll skip a lesson to catch up on things outside cello. The first time, she sat me down, pointed to my head, my heart, and my hands, and said, “They’re all connected.” I don’t think I quite understood then—I was eleven—but I think I do now. No practice and talent can overcome a troubled mind and heart.

She returns and hands me a mug of barley tea, taking the seat opposite. “I’m all ears.”

I tell her everything, starting with my mom’s call with the doctor and her decision to leave me behind.

Eunbi listens carefully, as she does when I play for her, with her whole attention. And maybe it’s because of that, but I sort of dump all my feelings onto her.

“She just told me what her plans are. She didn’t even ask me what I thought about it. She’s literally abandoning me in the middle of my junior year.”

Eunbi takes a sip of her tea. “Did you ask if you could go with her?”

I blink, taken aback. “I didn’t think it was an option. I have school . . . and she’s going to be there for five months.”

“There are performing arts schools in Seoul,” she says, not unreasonably, and I’m reminded that she went to one herself before graduating from Ewha Womans University with a degree in classical cello. “It’s only a matter of forwarding your materials to one that takes international students.”

I’m still trying to process the possibility of this. It hadn’t even occurred to me, that I might go with my mother, that I might finish my junior year in another country.

I’ve never been outside California, let alone traveled to South Korea. I don’t even know anyone who lives there, besides my grandmother.

Well, that’s not true.

I know one other person.

“A friend of mine is the director of a music school in Seoul,” Eunbi says. “If you send over your audition materials, I can email her a recommendation. The academic year in Korea starts in March, so you wouldn’t be arriving in the middle of their school year.”

“I should ask my mom, shouldn’t I?” By now, she would have left the apartment for work.

“Maybe bring it up to her after you’ve done a little more research? For now, you can get the ball rolling. You’ll need a passport, if you haven’t one already.”

I do, in fact. Last year, I was supposed to travel to Paris with my French class but had to cancel when I got the flu.

“You look overwhelmed.” Eunbi takes back the mug of tea, which I’ve barely touched. “Why don’t you sight-read Mozart, then we’ll call it a day. You’ve a lot to think about.”

That’s an understatement. But also—do I have more to think about?

My heart is racing. My palms are sweating.

If anyone were to ask me now: Do you want to go with your mom to Korea? Do you want to see the grandmother you’ve never met? Do you want to spend a season in Seoul, a city you’ve never been to, where both sides of your family originally immigrated from, with endless possibilities for new adventures and experiences?

The answer would be a resounding yes.

All morning I’ve been googling things about Korea, and Seoul specifically. Apparently it has a population of almost ten million people, which is more than New York City.

When I look up my grandmother’s address, I find out she lives in the Jongno District of Seoul, where a lot of historical sites are located, like Gyeongbokgung Palace and Bukchon Hanok Village. She also lives right around the block from a Paris Baguette. I’m exploring the area through satellite imaging when Eunbi texts me a link. I click on it and the website for Seoul Arts Academy pops up on my computer.

The campus is absolutely breathtaking, with state-of-the-art facilities, practice rooms, a two-story library, and dormitories across from a newly renovated student center, plus a world-renowned concert hall.

After an hour of browsing I doze off, only to be woken up by my alarm. I set it this morning when I calculated that a fourteen-hour flight would arrive at around three p.m. my time. Which means it’s around eight a.m. in Seoul.

I open up the chat with Jaewoo and type. Did you arrive safely? When the message isn’t marked “read,” I assume either I miscalculated the arrival time or he doesn’t have service for some reason.

“Jenny?” The front door shuts with a bang in the hall. “I’m home.”

I drop my phone on the bed and follow my mom from the hall to the kitchen.

Surprisingly, she doesn’t immediately reject the idea of my tagging along with her on her trip to Seoul.

“There are dorms at the school. I can stay there during the week and visit you and Halmeoni on the weekends.”

“What about tuition?” She’s asking logical questions. This is a good sign.

“Waived, if I can get a scholarship, and Eunbi says I have a good chance as a classical cellist.”

She sighs. “You’ve really worked this all out, haven’t you?”

“I don’t see why I have to stay if I’ll get as strong an education there as I do here. Maybe even stronger. It is Asia.” I laugh and she shakes her head. And I’ll be with you. This last thought I don’t say aloud. My mother was never the lovey-dovey parent.

I say instead, “I want to see Halmeoni.”

Mom doesn’t speak for a whole minute, but then she nods, “She’ll want to see you too.”

I can’t believe that within twenty-four hours, my life has changed so drastically. I’m going to live in Seoul for five months.

Back in my room, I check my phone. The text is now marked “read” but there’s no response.

This is why I don’t like read receipts. It’s like psychological warfare. He knows I know that he read my message and chose not to respond.

Of course, maybe I’m just reading too much into it. He could be texting back someone more important than me, like his mom.

Don’t tell me you were stopped at customs due to gang-related activity. I quickly type, then send, and immediately regret it. This is why people think before they act! That’s not even a good joke!

The message goes from “sent” to “read.”

I stare at my phone. A minute passes. Then another. I feel a strange sinking in my stomach.

I think of all the possible reasons that might keep him from responding. He has a bad connection (highly unlikely as South Korea has the fastest internet on the planet, according to Google). He is going through customs (but then why didn’t he just send a text? It only takes a few seconds). Or there’s another reason that I can’t think of, but what could it possibly be?

I google why a boy might read your texts but not respond. All of the articles say the same thing: He’s just not that into you.

Wow, thanks internet.

Even so, it’s not like one text is a commitment. I throw my phone across the bed and head over to my cello to practice. If I can’t get a boy to answer me back, at least I can get a school to.

The following Monday, I talk to my guidance counselor about transferring for half the year and he gives me a list of required classes I need for graduation, most of which Seoul Arts Academy fulfills. The few that I won’t be able to take at the school I can take online from LACHSA. It’s almost as if I’ll be attending two schools at the same time, taking classes like AP Lit and AP History through Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, and my performing arts classes through Seoul Arts Academy.

Of course, I first have to get in, but I think, for once, nepotism will pull through for me. And I have the grades and awards to prove myself a strong candidate.

Luckily, my premonition turns out true because by December, I’m not only accepted into Seoul Arts Academy, but given full room and board. They also offer me a scholarship that covers half my tuition.

The only disappointment throughout this whole thing is that Jaewoo never responded to my texts. I feel like I spend more time wondering about the reasons why than planning my trip to Seoul.

I just need to accept what the internet was kind enough to tell me, he just wasn’t feeling it.

It’s true that I was the one who approached him in the karaoke bar. I was the one who got us into the scuffle that forced us to jump off the bus.

Still, it would have been nice to have a friend.

I don’t even know what school he goes to.

I decide to text him one last time, the day that I leave. Hey, so, I’m actually going to be in Korea for a couple of months to visit my grandmother. If you’re around, I’d love to see you. There. Straightforward. The truth is, I don’t like playing games. Life is too short. It’s better to speak your mind, otherwise you’ll only feel regret later.

He doesn’t respond, and honestly, I don’t expect him to.

Uncle Jay drives my mom and me to the airport. He’ll be looking after our apartment while we’re away.

Outside security, he hugs my mom and then turns to me, ruffling my hair. “Have fun, kiddo.”

“Thanks, Uncle Jay.”

Just a few months ago he said that I needed to try new things, live a little.

Well, I’m taking your advice, Uncle Jay. I’m about to live my very best life.