I stared at the door long after the beautiful strangers had disappeared from sight. I think I started to go crosseyed. At some point, a girl — whose name was Angela — reminded me that school existed. She had Biology as well, so we headed in that direction together. She didn't fill the silence with conversation, and I appreciated it.

When we got to class, I saw everyone was split up into teams of two. Angela sat down in the back, next to her partner, and I browsed the room for mine.

Jisung Han was at the only table left.

I walked down the aisle to the teacher's desk, covertly keeping my eyes on Jisung. He was leaning on the lab table, hands clasped together. He was wearing a white long sleeved shirt, a yellowish and black flannel, and pale blue jeans. Sitting on the stool, his shoes barely touched the floor, which I found cute.

As I passed him, he suddenly flinched away from me. His eyes darted to mine — they were terrified, like he was in a panic — and down again in a fraction of a second. I looked away, startled, and tripped over another student's bag. I got to my feet pretty goddamn quickly, and slinked to the front of the room. I heard a few people giggle, and I honestly couldn't blame them.

Once I'd made it to the front of the class, Mr. Banner signed my slip. He asked if I was all right, and I nodded like, Maybe. Of course he had to send me to the only open seat.

I kept my eyes down, pretending to adjust my jacket, as I sat down next to Jisung. I set up my books and got rid of my backpack, all without looking at him, but I knew his posture had changed. He was angling himself away from me — defensive, and unmoving in an eerie way.

As class went on, I couldn't stop myself from glancing at him. He never unfroze from his position, never took his eyes off the board at the front of the room. His hand, resting on the table and still like stone, was clenched so tight that his knuckles went white with the strain. I wasn't sure if he was breathing.

Mr. Banner's lecture seemed to go on for aeons. I touched my chin, expecting to have grown a beard. I looked at Jisung, and he was still stationary with his jaw clamped solidly to his skull. What was wrong with him? Was this how he normally behaved?

It couldn't have had anything to do with me. He didn't know me from Steve.

The bell rang suddenly, and I gasped, startled. Before I'd caught my breath, Jisung was out of his seat, gliding fluidly past me and down the aisle, disappearing out the door.

I held my book up in front of me so my face could do whatever it wanted. Had I just — for reasons beyond me — induced a panic attack in someone I didn't know? I felt kind of drunk, confused and drunk, and confused, and probably overreacting.

"Are you Minho Lee?" a voice asked.

I looked up to see a boy — pointy face, blue eyes, hair smoothed back into a pallid blonde wave. He smiled at me, showing a row of alarmingly straight teeth.

"Yeah," I said, smiling back, though I'm sure it looked more like a grimace. 

"I'm Mike."

"Hi, Mike."

"Need any help getting to your next class?"

"Um, I have Gym, actually. I can find it."

"I have Gym, too."

So we walked to Gym together. Mike was a blabber; he told me about how he'd lived in California till he was ten — so he understood how I felt about the sun — and that he was in my English class, too.

Just as we got to the Gym building, he said, "What's up with you and Jisung Han? I've never seen him act like that before."

I wrinkled my nose. Whatever happened with Jisung was noticeable, apparently, and not normal — which wasn't comforting.

"Was that the guy sitting next to me in Biology?" I asked casually.

"Yeah," Mike said. "He looked petrified."

"I don't know." I pursed my lips. "I never spoke to him."

"He's a weird guy," Mike replied. "When you fell, he reached out like he wanted to catch you. Then he took his arms back and just sat there."

Mike sounded sour, but I couldn't really focus on that. Jisung had reached out to help me? Seriously, who was this guy?

Long story short, P.E. sucked. I was relatively good on my feet — as long as I wasn't distracted — but I'd never been one for sports. I couldn't find the intrigue in it. Everybody lives and dies the same, no matter whose ball ends up in whose hoop.

The final bell rang at last. I hurried out of my Gym clothes, got packed up, and sprinted out of the building. The rain had stopped, but it was colder now. I wrapped my arms around my middle.

I made it to the front office, where it was warm, but my teeth didn't stop clacking together. I looked down to get my paperwork in order — and when I looked up again, I rocked back on my heels.

Jisung stood at the counter, his back to me, talking to the front desk lady. It embarrassed me momentarily that I knew it was him as soon as I saw his flannel shirt and shiny black hair. My mind was suddenly running a mile a minute. I stepped back against the wall to wait for the receptionist to be free.

He was speaking in a low voice, and his tone was serious despite the sweet lilt that pulled at the end of his sentences. I could understand the basics of the their conversation pretty quickly. He was asking to be transferred from sixth-hour Biology to another time — any other time. 

And then I was mad. I felt my eyebrows knit together. I was a rather unobtrusive person, not too loud or talkative. Any opinion-worthy traits I had, I made sure to keep inside. How could someone develop such intense emotions toward me so quickly? And what were those emotions, anyway? He acted as if I was a creature straight from his nightmares.

We hadn't even spoken...

The door behind me opened, and a gust of cold wind blew into the building. It ruffled my hair. The person who'd entered walked by me and left a document in a little wire basket, then left again.

Jisung's posture tensed, and he quickly glanced at me with the same enigmatic dread behind his black eyes. His breath audibly hitched, and his hands started shaking.

He turned back to the receptionist. "You know, never mind," he said, and his voice was like honey, though there was a tension to it. "I guess it's not, um, necessary. Thanks for your help." He spun around — keeping a large gap between us — and left the building.

I stumbled forward to the counter and handed the receptionist the signed slip.

"How did your first day go, Minho?" she asked.

"Great." My voice cracked.

When I made it to my truck, the parking lot was nearly empty, and the sky was taking on a sort of greyish light. I climbed into the cab and let my mind scream at me for a few minutes. My teeth started to chatter again, so I turned the key in the ignition. My truck exploded to consciousness, and I drove back to Charlie's house, distracted the whole way there. 

~ * ~

The next day was better... and worse.

It was better because I knew what to expect of my day: Mike came to sit next to me in English, and then he walked with me to my next class. The kids at school didn't stare as much as they had the day before (or maybe I was just less concerned with it). At lunch, I sat with Jessica and a group of her friends, including Mike, Angela and several other people whose names and faces I now remembered.

It was worse because I was goddamn tired. I couldn't sleep; the wind rattling the window and the rain pitter-pattering on the roof was constant. It was worse because Mr. Varner called on me in Trig when my hand wasn't raised and I had a laughably wrong answer. It was terrible because I had to play tennis, and the one time I didn't duck out of the way of the ball, my racket flew out of my hand and almost decapitated Coach Clapp.

It was worse because Jisung Han didn't show up to school at all.

All morning I was anticipating lunch, expecting the worst. A voice in the back of my head told me I should confront him about it. Go up to him, stare him in his weird, pretty eyes and demand to know what his problem was. He looked like he was shorter than me, so I'd be the intimidating one in the interaction. I'd even imagined the confrontation in my mind as I'd lain awake the night before. I'd only gotten as far as, "Hey, buddy."

But another voice in my head was not hesitant to point out how I would not be doing that. As long as people left me alone, I was happy. Why would I try to create conflict with this one random person?

I walked into the cafeteria with Jessica, trying to keep myself from looking for him — instead scanning the room like a submarine's sonar. His five siblings were sitting together at the same table, and he was not with them.

Mike intercepted Jessica and me and herded us toward the table. Jessica seemed to love the attention, and her friends quickly joined the group. My foot tapped anxiously on the floor. Jisung shied away from me like I was an affront to him — I wanted to know why... not that I wouldn't rather he ignore me entirely. Then maybe my hyperactive imagination could slow to the usual overactive.

But he didn't come, and as the minutes dragged by, I only grew more tense. 

I walked to Biology with a bit more courage when, by the end of lunch, he hadn't shown up. I held my breath at the door, but Jisung wasn't there, either. I exhaled, letting my shoulders drop, and took my seat. Mike talked at me for a little while longer — blah blah test blah blah beach — till the bell rang and he skittered to his chair.

I liked having the whole desk to myself. I could stretch my arms, if I wanted to, and I wouldn't hit anybody in the face. It was good that Jisung wasn't here.

That's what I told myself repeatedly, but I couldn't get him off my mind. I didn't have to face him and his agitation toward me today, but the cause of that agitation was still a mystery. If only he was here so I could tell him off...

Last night I'd had the realization that neither I nor Charlie had eaten anything besides eggs and bacon since I'd come to Forks. I'd demanded that I be assigned kitchen duty after that, and Charlie didn't put up much of a fight. Not that I was great at cooking, but I was better than Charlie and my mom combined, and I wasn't as bitter and flighty (respectively) as they were, either.

I'd also realized Charlie had no food in the house, so I had my shopping list ready and the cash from the food money jar, and once Gym was over, I was on my way to the grocery store.

I saw the five siblings as I loudly backed out of my parking space. They looked at my noisy truck as I passed them, just like everyone else, but I kept my eyes trained straight forward. I was relieved when I was finally free of the school grounds, rolling southward.

The grocery store was the highlight of my day. The place was big enough that I could forget where I was. I thoroughly enjoyed thinking simple thoughts about the different brands of seasonings and which of these two steaks looked less off.

Finally home, I unloaded the groceries wherever I could fit them, which turned into a bout of reorganization. I knew Charlie wouldn't care. I stabbed the potatoes with more fervour than necessary, wrapped them in foil and stuck them in the oven. I covered the steak in a marinade and left it in the fridge.

When I was finished prepping dinner, I ran upstairs. I figured I'd do my homework, but it suddenly dawned on me that my mom might have e-mailed me. 

So I turned on the sluggish 1998 computer, and found that she had written me three messages since I'd arrived. I cringed more and more as I read each of them. I wrote back with excessive enthusiasm, throwing in a lot of exclamation points and dramatic dot-dot-dots. I made good use of the caps lock button.

I decided to cheer myself up with cat videos, and I ended up losing track of time. I heard the front door slam closed on the first floor. I flew down the stairs and started shuffling around the kitchen.

"Minho?" my dad called.

Who the hell else? I grumbled in my head.

"Hi, Dad," I said aloud. "How are you?"

"Fine." He took off his boots in the corner of the room. "What's for dinner?"

"Steak and potatoes," I said. He looked relieved that it wasn't something weird like my mom used to make. He wouldn't have had to down stuff like "whole egg sandwiches" if he just learned to cook like a goddamn functioning human being.

Charlie hovered by the fridge awkwardly. After a minute, he lumbered toward the living room. I made a salad and set the table, humming to myself.

I called him back when dinner was ready, and he sniffed reverently as he took a seat.

"Smells great, son."

"Thanks."

We ate in silence. It wasn't uncomfortable; we both preferred it. In some ways, we were perfect for living together.

"So, how did you like school?" he asked at one point. "Made any friends yet?"

"I have a few classes with someone named Jessica, so I sit with her and her friends at lunch. And this boy named Mike hangs around a lot, too. Everybody is pretty friendly."

"That must be Jessica Stanley. Nice kid, good family."

I swallowed a bite of steak tentatively. "Do you know Dr. Bang's family?" I asked.

"Sure, sure. Dr. Bang is a great man."

"They... the kids... are something. Different." I had no idea how to describe it. "They seemed nice. They're all, um, very attractive."

"You should see the doctor," Charlie laughed. "It's a good thing he's happily married. I bet a lot of the nurses would have a hard time getting anything done if he was on the market."

I could have questioned further, but I let the conversation die there. When we were done, Charlie cleared the table, and I started on the dishes. He retreated into the living room a little while later, and I let my mind wander.

The night was finally quiet. I fell asleep pretty quickly, exhausted from the... everything.