I knew I wouldn't sleep well, but I was still salty about it. Literally, since I was crying for most of the night.

Breakfast with Charlie was quiet. Just listening to each other chew and shift in the rickety kitchen chairs. He wished me good luck with my day, and I smiled and said thanks — though that wasn't going to happen.

I didn't want to be early to school, but I didn't want to stay in the house, either. I flung on my coat and stalked out into the rain. My truck started with one try — which almost made my mouth do a thing resembling a smile — but the volume surprised me. It was like continuous gunfire. Oh well. What was I expecting?

Once I'd parked in the school lot, I walked toward a little building with a sign that read 'front office.' I shook my hair out like a dog before I turned a corner and saw a person seated behind a counter.

She looked up. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, I'm Minho Lee."

Recognition flashed across her face. "Of course." She ducked down and rummaged around under the counter. "I have your schedule right here, and a map of the school." She slid some papers toward me and pointed out a few details, highlighting the best routes to each class. She gave me a slip for all my teachers sign, which I was supposed to bring back at the end of the day. I thanked her, and she welcomed me to Forks, saying I'd like it here. I smiled, but it disappeared as soon as I'd turned my back.

Other students were starting to arrive. I drove around the school, following the current of traffic. I was relieved to see that my truck fit in pretty thoroughly — save for the noise. A lot of the cars were older, nothing flashy, except for one distractingly bright silver Volvo. I cut the engine and pretended to get some documents in order while I calmed myself. I can get through this without going crazy or crying or both, I repeated in my head, knowing it was a lie. It wasn't like someone was going to bite me...

I finally got out of the truck.

I slowly made my way down the sidewalk, trying to memorize the map. I didn't want to have it hovering in front of my face all day, but everything was looking turned-around already. I was sure my trademarked Confused Face was making an appearance.

The classroom was tiny in comparison to my old school. The people in front of me stopped to hang up their jackets, and I copied them.

I took the slip to the teacher at the front of the room. I saw his name was Mr. Mason. When he read my name, he looked up at me, looked back down, looked up again — a literal, actual double-take — and tried to cover it up with a nod and a smile. He told me I'd be seated in the back row, and I thanked him, whirling around and cringing into my chair. It was good I was in the back. Harder for classmates to stare when they had to spin their head 180 degrees, owl-style.

When the bell rang, a boy leaned across the aisle to talk to me.

"You're Minho Lee, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yup."

"Where's your next class?"

"Um, Government, Jefferson, in building six."

"I'm on my way to building four, but I could show you the way."

I smiled politely. "Thanks."

We got our jackets and left class, out into the rain. I thought there might be a few kids who were sneaking up on us, trying to eavesdrop. I may have been paranoid. I swore I saw a poltergeist wandering Charlie's halls when I got up to pee at one in the morning. In hindsight, it just as easily could have been a human-shaped coat rack or my own reflection.

"Different than Phoenix, right?" the boy — who told me his name was Eric — said.

"Uh-huh," I replied. An understatement.

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?"

"Three, four times a year."

"Wow, what that must be like?"

I let him guess.

We walked around the cafeteria, to the south buildings by the gym. Eric walked me right to the door, though it was clearly marked.

"Good luck," he said. "See you around."

"Yup. Thank you." I smiled again, and retreated into Building 6.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur. My Trigonometry teacher, Mr. Varner — whom I would have hated anyway because of his beady little rat eyes — was the only one who made me stand in front of the class and present myself. I stuttered, got my own name wrong, and brooded for the rest of the lecture.

After some classes, I started to recognize a couple of people. There were always a few, more outgoing than the others, who came up to me and introduced themselves and asked how I was liking Forks. I lied more in the span of a few hours than I had in the entirety of my previous life. They seemed to believe it, and I didn't need the map.

One girl — named Jessica — sat next to me in Trig and Spanish, and she walked with me to the cafeteria. We were the same height, but her curly brown hair gave her a few inches on me. She blabbed about students and dances and classes, and I followed along as well as I could.

We sat with her group of friends, whom she introduced me to. They seemed impressed with her boldness in speaking to me. After a few minutes of Awkward Teenage Eye Contact, everybody split up into individual conversations. I let my eyes wander the room...

That's when I saw them.

They were sitting in the far corner of the cafeteria. They weren't talking, they weren't eating — though each of them had their own tray of food in front of them. It looked like they were focussed on something I wasn't seeing — and not on me, unlike most of the other students, which allowed me to stare.

They didn't look anything alike. One was noticeably taller than the others, with pink lips and blondish hair parted in the middle. The next was smaller, with an intense facial expression and a bit of an undercut showing beneath his brown hair. Another was shorter, with hair black as pitch, round cheeks and gorgeous skin. Another was statuesque, billows of brown hair framing his high cheek bones and suave almond shaped eyes. There was a lanky one, pixie-like, with pink-orange hair in a crown of deliberate waves. The last one was obviously the youngest — long, innocent eyes and puffy black hair flopping over his forehead.

And yet, they looked exactly alike. As if they were from the same batch. They all had dark eyes, and shadows under those eyes — blueish, bruise-like hollows. Like they had all been kept up for the last week by the same nightmare.

They were all staring into space, away from other students, away from each other now. As I watched, one rose from his chair — the one with orange-pink hair — glided in a lithe, effortless canter to the trash bin, and dumped his tray. He danced to the door and disappeared out into the rain. The rest of them stayed where they were, unchanged. 

"Who are they?" I asked the girl from Spanish — Jessica. It was sort of absentminded, but I felt as if I had to know in the moment.

She followed my gaze, and suddenly he looked up — the one with black hair and round cheeks. He glanced at my neighbour for a second, and then his dark eyes flickered to mine.

I looked away at once, but he had already snatched his eyes back much faster than me. In the fraction of a second our eyes held, he'd seemed unwitting, like he'd heard his name called and looked up automatically.

The girl next to me — whose name I now remembered was Jessica — laughed, looking down at the table like I was.

"Those are Hyunjin Hwang, Changbin Seo, Jisung Han, Seungmin Kim and Jeongin Yang," she listed under her breath. "The one who left was Felix Lee. They all live with Dr. Bang and his husband, Mr. Bak."

I glanced at the beautiful one again. His skin was a rich, warm brown, and smooth-looking except for some darker patches on his cheeks. He had almond shaped eyes, clear despite their deep black colour. His lips were thin, and two slight dimples appeared at the corners...

I forgot to breathe for a second.

"They're really, um, beautiful," I said. The second understatement of the day.

"Don't be jealous, Minho," she replied, giggling. "They are. But they're together... like, together-together. Hyunjin and Jeongin, Felix and Changbin. And they live together." Her voice held some kind of salacious shock, and maybe a little judgement, and I found myself wanting to defend them.

"They don't look related," I said.

"No, they're foster children, because the doctor and his... you know." She widened her eyes and sucked her lips into her mouth. I didn't quite know what to do with that, so I looked over at the table again. From Jessica's tone, it seemed like they were outsiders. I wondered why, and my overactive imagination took me some weird places.

As I examined them, the gorgeous one looked up again. He was curious; his head ticked to the side like the second hand of a clock. I didn't look away this time — I smiled politely, and he returned it. I dropped my eyes when I got embarrassed.

"Who's the one with black hair?" I asked Jessica. I glanced at the other table again from the corner of my eye. He was staring at me, his eyebrows pulled down in what seemed like confusion, maybe, like I posed him a question. "Um, the one in the flannel?"

"That's Jisung," she answered. "He never speaks to anyone — except his brothers. Never dates, either, so too bad for the girls here, I guess."

I peeked at him again, and his eyes weren't on me anymore. He was looking down at his tray, and his lips were tugging up into a smile. It was a more beautiful scene than it had any right to be.

It was a few more minutes of poorly-hidden staring before the five of them got up and walked to the door — all amazingly graceful, even the tall one.

I couldn't help but watch after them.