“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. Yoona? 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.