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.”