Lisa
I hadn't wanted to go to the sleepover.
It had all been Jennie's idea, and really - when I think about it - everything that happened afterwards was her fault. The idea of sitting around in sleeping bags, gossiping with her shallow new college friends was totally unbearable to me. But Jennie's my best friend. How could I refuse?
We hadn't seen much of each other since we left to different colleges after graduation. I went off to a state school and Jennie, ever the over-achiever, went off to private school in Seoul. You'd think those schools only let in really smart people, but her new friends were all morons with wealthy, well-connected parents. This fact seemed to elude Jennie, laughed at all their jokes, suddenly held all of the same interests, and even began dressing just like them.
Me, I hadn't changed much since high school. Still the loner with her nose buried in a book most days. No real clue what I was going to do after college; I was still undeclared going into the spring semester. That didn't bother me much. I was sure some soul-sucking job would present itself shortly enough, and I was in no rush to meet it. I was - still am - fairly average looking, with no real distinguishing features. I sort of disappeared in a crowd, and I guess that's how I like it.
Spring break meant returning home, and home was a seaside town in the Gulf. If you're wondering why I'm being vague about everything, take a look what website you're on and take a wild guess as to why I'd keep the clues to my identity as vague as possible. I'm not ashamed or anything, but I'll be damned if this confession makes its way into inner circle.
Jennie had convinced her friends to come down with her for spring break, much to my dismay. There were already enough sex-starved college students on the prowl in our hometown during the break, why did she have to invite more? The truth was, I was a little jealous. I hadn't made many new friends in college, and I had been hoping to spend a quiet week with my family and Jennie. Like how things were in high school.
But Jennie banished any of thought of that the moment I saw her. We had bonded in high school over our mutual shyness, disguised as a cynical distrust of society. I had kept my side of that partnership. But the Jennie I had once known had since evaporated.
"Lili!" she screamed when I answered the door, in a high voice that I didn't recognize. She hugged me while jumping up and down in excitement - I was too bewildered to return it.Were those highlights in her hair? Since when did she was such tiny, tight shorts and colorful revealing tops? When did she get over her hatred of her own body? Why the fuck was she screaming?
If she had noticed my complete lack of enthusiasm, she seemed intent on ignoring it. In my dining room, she mostly rambled on about how beautiful Seoul was compared to our grimy seaside town, how lovely the school was, her new romantic flings ("But nothing too serious, you know? I'm keeping my mind on my studies.") and on and on. I mostly stared at her and wondered where my best friend had gone.
As she got up to leave, she sprung the sleepover idea on me. I almost immediately said no, as a reflex and on general principle, but there was something in her eyes as she asked me that made me pause.
It was fear.
Not like, life or death fear, this isn't that kind of story. It was more like pleading, I guess. It occurred to me that despite her self-described love for her new friends, she seemed terrified of making a bad impression. She wanted someone familiar there.
Like I said, how could I say no?
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Of course, I'd been to Jennie's house before, and of course I'd met her older sister Jisoo before, (yeah, she has those kind of parents, the kind that needs all their kids' names to start with the same letter. Their mother's name? Jihyun.) but I had never really talked to Jisoo in all the years that I'd known her. She was a little older than us, 23 to our 19, and she seemed... well, aloof. She was lean and athletic, with hard eyes that made her seem really butch, except for her really long black hair that I always thought was beautiful and feminine. She was always excelled in sports and attended a Seoul school on a track scholarship. For all the time she spent outside, her skin was remarkably pale.
