Summer Nightmares

Three

Kai Young

In every breath I sinked in this feeling of hurt as I walked fast through the trees blinking through my tears. What in the hell of a world was dumping your only kid in a frickin' summer camp on his frickin' seventeenth birthday? Definitely not an I-care-for-you sign. And definitely no regrets of losing me to my mother after the divorce and getting me only for what, a month?

Sometimes I hated my father and other times I'd feel like he was everything I could've asked for. The other times faded away with the pressures of getting into Stanford, forcing me into learning Korean for the sake of my grandparents and cousins, and ignoring me half the day.

It was around when my mother had left that I felt the other times start to fade, and till my father learned what he had lost, my mother had moved back to Seoul, back to her hometown to live with her parents and work in their own little cafe.

"Areum, I don't understand. He can't live in Seoul with you-he can barely speak Korean and what about Stanford? He's gonna be in a university dorm in two years anyway," I had heard Dad arguing with mom, two weeks after she'd moved.

She wanted me to live with her in Seoul even though I couldn't speak Korean and I couldn't live in a city that barely felt like mine.

"I-look he's my son too. I won't mind if you come live here with him! No-this is stupid. You're being stupid, Areum!"

The first time I had seen mom hung up on him felt stupid. She was losing her mind and my father was losing her. I was frickin' losing them both.

I lived without my mother for a year. She'd call me every night asking me about the school, the so-called friends and Darth Vader, our cat and Dad would stand next to me listening to her voice as she'd laugh at my stupid Korean sentences. I had been learning because Dad insisted. The whole making-me-learn-Korean thing was his way of apologizing to my mom. Too late for stupid apologies but he'd try. A lot.

Then, sometimes, I'd hate him for what he did to my mother. I'd scream and cry and throw up and sleep mumbling how much I wanted him to leave me alone.

I screamed a lot and then one winter I moved into an apartment in New York City with mom. That was when I realized how much I missed him. I'd miss screaming and fighting and sleeping on the couch while he sat there caressing my hair, telling me how sorry he felt for what he did. For everything he ever did to my mother. I missed how he'd try to make Korean food with me in the kitchen and make a mess. I missed looking at his bright face when he'd hear mom laugh on the other side of the phone.

I missed everything and yet I resented him at the moment for listening to my mother and making me go to Camp Lakesville. She said if Stanford gets to see me as a good kid with good grades and a good interest in the good things around me, and not who I really was, they'd accept me, and he listened.

He frickin' listened.

If I had a penny for everytime I annoyed Miles and made him run after me, I'd have enough money to leave my father and mother and move all the way to Los Angeles and live for once. Stupid wishes. I smiled at my own thoughts sitting by the lake.

When the evening fell, I was already in my bed. I had skipped dinner because there was no way I was looking forward to eating eggplants.

The only time I ever had to eat eggplants was when I was ten and had argued with my grandmother on the dinner table when she told me to stop watching Star Wars because it was a 'cruel' show with all the killing and dying.

"This isn't the way you should talk to halmoni, Kai!"

I flinched because that was the first time my mother shouted at me and looked at me with no affection in her dark eyes.

So, I didn't say a word and quietly blinked my tears away as I bit down the inside of my cheek. The other times that lived rent free in my mind, flashed before my eyes. The other times when my father would tell me it was okay to make mistakes and it was okay to stand up for the things that I loved, for the things that were wrong but still made me feel like myself, for the things I lived.

Maybe he was wrong. It was definitely not 'okay'.

Regina burst into the cabin with a grin on her face and I snapped, "What the hell? Knock!"

So she did.

I rolled my eyes at her and she got to the foot of my bed staring at the book in my hands.

"What're you reading?"

I glanced at her and held up the book so she could read the name.

"The Great Gatsby?" She looked at me confused. "What's it about?"

"Self made billionaire who ends up in a tragic 'accident'," I said softly remembering the line, 'You can't repeat the past.' and how wrong Gatsby was when he cried, 'Why of course you can!"

But then again, I think we're all wrong at some point in our lives.

Appa was wrong when he never showed up at umma's birthday and I watched her eyes trying to hold back the tears as she blew the candle.

Umma was wrong when she never understood me and didn't even try. Like ever.

And I was wrong when I stopped calling them Appa and Umma and broke their hearts. I was wrong when I dropped my father's hand and rushed to the camp, never listening to what he had to say.

We were all so very wrong.

"I'm not sneaking out with you guys!" I whisper-shouted.

"Kai, stop being a kid!" Miles chuckled.

"If anything happens, run. Okay?" Sydney said and I rolled my eyes at her. She grinned and walked outside the cabin.

"Awww, you're so cute when you're scared!" Regina laughed.

"Shut up!" I hissed and stepped outside with a flashlight. "If I get in trouble-"

"But, we're not in trouble yet!" Miles looked at me.

Yet.