A Small Revolution Page 11

  “You’re definitely drunk. Weird thing to say.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  Hearing him admit that made it impossible for me to hold back. I hung my head in my folded arms and sobbed. He put an arm around me, and in that cold air, the warmth was welcome.

  “Where is he, Lloyd?” I wept.

  He was mumbling. “I asked Jaesung once what he saw in you. He said you had sequins. I said what kind. He said sparkly ones. Do you? Do you have sparkly sequins?”

  “You’re making no sense,” I said.

  “I told him it was lust, pure lust.” He chuckled.

  “I prefer that version,” I said.

  “Me too. Lust is better.”

  “Not sure it’s better, Lloyd.” I had to laugh. He laughed too.

  “It’s nice here. There’s been no nice place since the fire.”

  “So the car did catch on fire?”

  “No, no, no, the firemen wouldn’t be there if there weren’t a fire.”

  “Right. So there was a fire.” I felt tears well up again.

  “Only smoke. You’ve got to believe me. He needs us, Yoona.”

  I huddled closer to him. “I believe you, Lloyd. I believe you, and you know what? Jaesung said you were the smartest guy he knew.”

  “He said that about me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lloyd turned his cup of beer over, but nothing was left in it to spill out. We sat in silence for a while, and then he said, “Now I’ve got a headache. You tricked me, Yoona.”

  “I’m sorry, Lloyd.”

  “Sequins.”

  I made him get to his feet, and we went back to my room to sleep off whatever we both were filled with.

  61

  “I’ll find you.” Your words. How certain you sounded. We make such promises as if we know the future. And we count on them as if words have power.

  62

  I could think of nothing but how to find you. I proposed to Lloyd that we scour microfiche of Korean newspapers for anything that mentioned the accident in August, to research eyewitness accounts of secret service operatives in Asia. I insisted we read everything we could get our hands on, searching for any hints of what might have happened on August 21 in Seoul. The American newspapers only focused on preparations for the winter Olympics. I grilled Lloyd again and again on that night in Seoul. I drafted letters to your parents and planned what Lloyd might say to them and then what I’d say. “If we have proof, they will believe us,” I said.

  It was my idea to call the hospital in Korea where Lloyd said he’d been taken on the night of the accident. I planned to ask for his records and that of anyone else who had been involved. If your parents were told you’d died that night, there would be a report, wouldn’t there? The problem was we didn’t have any money to call Korea.

  I called my mother and asked her if she could ask my aunt to call me. I explained about you, though I called you a friend only, and how there had been an accident and now this confusion about your whereabouts.

  “Your aunt is traveling with your uncle on business,” she told me.

  “Well, when will she be back?”

  “How are your classes, Yoona?”

  “I need to talk to her. How can I talk to her?” I said.

  “I wish you’d never gone to Korea this summer.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Who was this boy to you?”

  I couldn’t tell her, not after what Willa had gone through with her boyfriend, and I could hear suspicion in her voice. I knew what she’d say: You’re just like your sister, ruining yourself over a boy. I told her to send me more money for school supplies and hung up. Just before I’d gone to Korea for the summer, my sister, Willa, had left school with her boyfriend to join a religious cult in Arizona. It’s what made my parents agree to send me to Korea. And now, six months later, Willa was back in Lakeburg. Her boyfriend had fallen in love with another woman, and my sister had realized her mistake in giving up her education for a man. Were broken hearts inevitable in our family?

  Lloyd and I had an uncanny connection during this time. Lloyd called it being on the same wavelength. He’d appear wherever I was, wandering into the same room I was in at the library or finding me in line at the bookstore. Even though he didn’t have a key to my room, we never had to plan when we’d meet—he’d just find me or I’d see him walking by on campus. We each seemed to know where the other person was. We were tuned in to each other.

  Late at night, Lloyd and I went over the possibilities. Late into the night, huddled together in my bed, under the covers, reassuring ourselves, planning what could have happened to you. We fit on my narrow twin bed. There were no misunderstandings about what we meant to each other. We were pals, cohorts. I insisted on my being in love with you. He said he knew. When he asked me about a boy I was talking to on campus, outside a class, I explained we were assigned a project together, and he said you might be jealous. I understood he was protective of me for your sake. This was what best friends did for each other. We had a mission to find you, and he was my partner in it. He didn’t appear to be uncomfortable in the least. I teased him about Daiyu when he mentioned her name. We were the same, Lloyd and I.

  “It could be amnesia—that’s what he has. He might be alive in Korea right now, living in some small town. Someone could have taken his wallet, or he could have given it to someone, and then that person was in an accident and the police thought it was him—and they reached his parents. He was always giving money and stuff away. You know he was,” I began.

  “And it could have been a fire. These cars catch fire all the time,” Lloyd said.

  “Or he could be sick in a hospital somewhere, not able to tell anyone. Maybe he’s in a coma.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Or the KCIA is torturing him somewhere.”

  “No.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to imagine that.

  “He was with those student organizers. They don’t know he’s American, that’s it, and—because those cars looked pretty official, Yoona. That’s the part that makes me nervous. They didn’t look like regular students. I warned Jaesung about them.”

  “Maybe it’s North Korea—there were those kidnappings, remember? Remember the guys at the other table in the mandu shop? They said they kidnapped fishermen, remember?”

  “But how could they move around so easily in South Korea? These were official vehicles, Yoona. The fire trucks came as if they knew what was going to happen before it did.”

  “But you said there wasn’t a fire?”

  “No, but the fire trucks came as if there had been one. I saw them. You said you believed me. No one believes me, but I’m telling you, they were there, which I thought was weird. And then I woke up in the hospital, and no one would tell me what had happened. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “I do, I do believe you, shh . . .” I held him close to me. “You’re the only one who can help him now.”

  “Me and you,” Lloyd said.

  “Yes.” And I stroked his hair and listened to his breathing quiet as he fell asleep. I didn’t tell him what was nagging at me, the tiny thought that circled around and around in my head. Had you found a way to set yourself on fire and jump with those students after all? Is that why you and Lloyd were in separate cars? Is that why your parents were so certain you were gone? I pushed it out of my head. You’d promised me you’d find me. You’d find me in the States. You didn’t talk about martyrs by the end of the tour. You’d changed. I knew you’d changed your mind about it.

  “Where’ve you been?” Serena said the next time I saw her walking to class, the day after Lloyd showed up.

  “So much has happened,” I said.

  “Daiyu said you were with some boy,” she said. “Cute boy.”

  “He was the last to see Jaesung.”

  I could tell Serena wanted to tell me about her night, but I knew I was running out of time.

  “How do you talk to your dad in Korea?”
I asked.

  “He calls me, why?”

  “I need to get some information.”

  “About Jaesung?”

  “We need to confirm the body was actually his. Hospital records, to start.”

  “You said his parents identified the body.”

  “I have to be sure.”

  “Do you hear yourself?”

  “I have to call people in Korea who can look into it. Like Tongsu Cho. He’s a friend of Jaesung’s. He set up the meeting that night of the accident.”

  “Look, if I have to reach my dad, if it’s an emergency, I go to Dean Olin’s office and use his phone. His phone can make international calls.”

  “What about the time difference?”

  “Doesn’t matter. If it’s an emergency, I wake my dad up.”

  “Olin is in the finance building?”

  “Underwood, yeah. Second floor. Name is on the door.”

  Serena didn’t think much of my friends Heather, Daiyu, and Faye. But she didn’t like groups either, so I didn’t think much of it. I’d see her in the dining hall, and she’d walk away as if we’d never met. I told her she had to work on being more social if she wanted the whole college experience she claimed she did. Heather, Daiyu, and Faye stayed away from Serena, but Lloyd walked right up to her and didn’t understand when she walked away as if she hadn’t heard him announce to her who he was.

  “That’s Lloyd, the one Daiyu told you about—he’s a friend of Jaesung,” I said when I saw her at the student union as we watched Lloyd study a bulletin board of announcements.

  “Something’s weird about him,” she said, wrinkling her nose as if she smelled something unpleasant.

  “Because he talked to you?”

  “What is he to you exactly?”

  “He’s the only person I know who knew Jaesung as well as I did.”

  “He doesn’t act like he’s your friend.”

  “So now you’re an expert on friendships? After what—three weeks of having friends?”

  “I saw him carrying you out of the Tap Room, Yoona. You were drunk.”

  “So what? I was drunk, and he was carrying me back to my room. What are you saying?”

  “Yeah, you were drunk.” She made a face and left me.

  The thing was I remembered drinking sometimes with him when we had one of our sessions, brainstorming what could have happened to you. We’d be walking, and suddenly he’d pull me into a doorway and say he had to tell me a breakthrough idea. Sometimes he’d pull me into the Tap Room, and we’d sit in the corner drinking so we could come up with a plan. I could never handle drinking much without feeling dizzy. I’d wake hours later in bed with him, my shoes still on my feet.

  Lloyd and I were running out of ideas.

  One night the crowd in the dining hall was thinning out. Lloyd came to dinner late and threw a flyer on the table. “Korea Society meetings start tonight,” he said, looking around at us for a response.

  “Do you think they’ll have food?” Heather said. “I hear the Chinese Student Association has great food.”

  “Oh my god, you think?” Daiyu giggled. “So much better than this junk.” She pushed her plate of salad away.

  “CSA is meeting tonight at the same time. Bummer,” Faye said.

  “Let’s go to both. Chinese Student Association and Korea Society. My father is Korean and my mother is Chinese,” Daiyu said. “Technically, I could go to both. Are you going?” she said to Lloyd.

  Lloyd didn’t seem to hear her and snatched the flyer. “Yoona, let’s go. I don’t care what the rest of you do.” Then he left the dining hall.

  We looked at each other in surprise. “Whoa,” Heather said.

  “I better find out what’s going on,” I said.

  “When he yells at us like that? How long is he going to be around?” Faye asked. “Isn’t he at Harvard or something?”

  “Columbia,” Daiyu corrected.

  I felt my face redden as they turned to me as if I’d be able to explain Lloyd’s behavior. They had the look my sister and I gave my mother at these moments. I knew it well.

  Just then I saw Serena heading toward the door. “I’ve got to go,” I said and picked up my tray and backpack. It had been a few days since I’d seen her.

  I asked her if she was going to the Korea Society meeting. She shook her head. “I’d never go to those things. They’re exclusive.”

  “What happened to your experiencing-everything-about-life project?”

  “Whatever. Anyway, I can meet you tomorrow for coffee again. It’s been a nightmare these three days. My father insists I go to New York to have some dumb radio interview with a Korean radio station. I told him I’m a student here, and I can’t miss my classes. He’s promised I can do it over fall break, but only because I talked to him every single day and made him understand it was absolutely impossible for me to leave campus right now.”

  “A radio station in Korea?”

  “For when I go to Korea. They’ve got a partnership with the BBC, so they’re using their station, but the interviewer is from the Korean station—I don’t know. Plus a New York Times reporter wants to talk to me.”

  “Radio would be perfect. They’re from Korea?”

  “Why are you so interested in radio? Aren’t you a comp lit major?”

  “Do you think the Korean person from the radio station would talk to me? If you can get a number? I could call and get more information about Jaesung.”

  She nodded. “Right, okay, but speak to them yourself. I’ll tell my dad three first-class tickets.”

  “Why three? Is he coming here to fly over with us?”

  “For Aloe Moon. He flies right next to me. He’s never seen the inside of a baggage compartment. Horrors!” she said. She’d told me already that her cello was named Aloe Moon.

  We parted ways at the fork in the walkway. I was walking in the direction I’d seen Lloyd go, toward the student union where the Korea Society meeting would be held, when Lloyd jumped out at me and grabbed my arm. He began walking rapidly back the way we’d come, pulling me along. I pulled back. “What’re you doing? We—the meeting is the other way,” I said. He pulled me closer and whispered, “That girl you were talking to, I know her from somewhere.”

  “You met her before. That’s Serena Im.”

  “Was she on the tour with us? I swear she might have been. I know I know her from somewhere.” Lloyd was sweating even though it wasn’t hot outside. His forehead glistened with perspiration.

  “You’re mixing her up with someone else. I do that too. Come on, we’re going to be late for the meeting. You okay?”

  He nodded and released me. He seemed deflated. “Just tired. Yeah, let’s go. Of course, come on.”

  I rubbed his shoulders, patted his back. “Hey, I’ve got good news. Serena’s dad has ties to the Times and NPR and Korean media too. I’m going to ask her to help us.”

  “Don’t.” He stopped short as he spoke, and tension returned to his face.

  “We need to talk to the right people, Lloyd. Someone who might know about the fire trucks going out to the site of the accident, someone who has access. Journalists could have that access.”

  “Not through her.”

  “Why?” His response was frustrating me.

  “She’s not telling you everything. Don’t trust her.”

  “What? Serena’s a little odd, and she didn’t talk to you, I get that, but she’s the only one who can help us.”

  “It’s not because she didn’t talk to me. Come on, I have a feeling about these things.”

  “A feeling?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Come on, Lloyd.” I put my bag on the ground and made him look at me, my hands on his arms in front of him. “Look, it’s not her we have to trust. We need a journalist who has access in Korea, in Seoul.”

  “I think this Korea Society meeting will be safer.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. Yoon
a? Come on, let’s see what they say at this meeting. You’re blinded by Serena. I don’t know why, but she has a hold on you.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Daiyu is your real friend. Serena isn’t who you think she is.”

  I didn’t understand, but I picked up my bag and tried to put the whole conversation out of my mind. I put my arm through his. “Okay, I’ll go with you. Come on, we’re going to be late. Let’s go.”

  The meeting was on the second floor of the student union. Someone was speaking. We walked between clumps of people standing around and saw Faye and Daiyu waving to us.

  “A lot of exciting new events this year,” a stocky boy in a polo shirt was saying into a microphone in the back of the room. “My name is Thomas Bang, and you elected me president last year. Welcome. I’m happy to see new faces here. Be sure to sign your name on the sheet where you came in so we know how to reach you to let you know about upcoming events. One of them next month is the barbecue on the south lawn, so if you have a good time here tonight, we hope you’ll join us on October fifteenth. There’s a calendar up front too—and you can ask me or John Koh. Where are you, John?”

  I joined everyone in clapping for him. Then John Koh, a boy up front, waved the sign-in sheet and said something about how great Thomas Bang was, and Thomas Bang waved in acknowledgment, and we all clapped again. “I’ve seen him before,” Lloyd said. I looked around the room. “He was on the tour,” Lloyd whispered to me. I had to admit this time Lloyd was right. John had been on our bus. Our eyes met, John’s and mine, and he raised a hand in our direction. I raised a hand back in greeting.

  “Small world,” I said.

  “Too small,” Lloyd answered.

  “But this could be a good thing,” I said. “Maybe he knows something.”

  “Doubt it,” Lloyd replied.

  “Why are you so negative all of a sudden?”

  “I’m just tired. I should go back to the city. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “But you can’t give up now. Lloyd, you were there. You saw him in the other car. Someone here, maybe John, can help us.”

  Lloyd turned away from me as Thomas began speaking again about events they hoped to hold during the year. He talked about more sign-up sheets, babysitting that grad students with families needed, and field trips to local wineries. They needed tutors too, to help the Korean grad students. “You could learn Korean, some of you could improve your Korean, and you could help them with English,” he said. And then he talked about ways to raise money for the Olympic athletes.