OUR HEARTBEAT [BEOMJUN] ✅

thirteen

I sat cross-legged on my bed, my Math textbook on one side of me, my History book on the other. In my ears, the Movie Mashup podcast was playing. My attempt at multitasking wasn’t going well.

Jaehyun, the podcast host, was saying, “The problem: They made the monster talk. They turned him from a horrific monster à la Alien to the relatable, sympathetic monster of E.T. who just needed to be sent back to his motherland. It wasn’t scary. I found myself rooting for the misunderstood monster. And when they blow his head off in the end, I was angry. Listeners? Agree or disagree?”

Jaegyun hosted the show by himself. He occasionally took a caller. He played sound bites of movies, did reviews, and rarely had anything good to say about them. I wondered why he watched them at all, when he hadn’t liked a single one so far. Half the time he made me question whether I had really liked a movie I had seen, but he was funny, so I could forgive him.

My mom appeared in my doorway.

“Hey,” she said with a smile. “Listening to a new podcast?”

I tugged my earbuds out and nodded. “I know it doesn’t technically count as homework,” I said. But Wednesday was nearly here again, and I didn’t feel like anything would be different than the week before without some extra preparing.

“It’s okay,” Mom said. “You seem to be having a good time in that class.”

It had been more stressful than fun, but that wouldn’t prove the point that I wanted to eventually make to my parents: that I could love something else and still choose the lake.

“Yeah, it’s … different,” I said.

Mom smiled. “I listened to your second podcast yesterday. It was good.”

“I still have some work to do.”

“I just hope you’re not getting graded on the amount of words you say per episode.” Mom winked at me, as if it was a joke, but it felt like her passive-aggressive way of telling me I needed to talk more. I didn’t need her to tell me; I already knew.

“Well, I better get back to this.” I held up an earbud.

“Good luck.”

—————

As I walked through the parking lot the next morning, I saw a guy holding a poster next to a car filled with balloons. Had someone driven that thing with all those balloons in it? That didn’t seem safe. The poster read: It took a lot of hot air to ask you to the Fall Festival. Please don’t deflate me with a no. A girl read the poster with both hands over her mouth. Then she squealed and threw her arms around the boy’s neck.

“Isn’t that sweet?” Arin said, coming up beside me with her bookbag on one shoulder.

“Nothing says sweet like using ‘hot air’ in a sentence.”

“How did Taehyun ask you last year? I forgot.”

“He walked up to me while I was getting my Math book out of my locker and said, ‘So … Fall Festival?’ ”

Arin snorted. “And you said yes to that?”

“We had this discussion a year ago.”

“And was I outraged then, too? Please tell me I was.”

“You were.”

“Good, because that’s ridiculous. But Sieun was right. Apparently you’re not the type of boy who needs an elaborate ask.”

“A sincere one would’ve been nice, though,” I said, repeating what I’d said on the podcast.

“What?” Arin said. “A negative review of something Taehyun did? It’s a miracle!”