The heavy silence of the dorm room presses against my chest, and I blink back hot tears. What have I done? Why didn’t I listen to Momma and Dad, and just stay in Nashville? I kept telling myself as I packed up my things, as I boarded the airplane, that this was the right thing. If I wanted to keep any sort of relationship with my mother, we needed to be separated for a while. I still have no idea why I decided we needed an entire ocean between us or why I even chose Korea—it was just the first place that popped up on Google when I typed in “international boarding schools,” probably thanks to Jane’s search history, since I’m not the only one who considered getting out of Tennessee.
My fingers curl tighter around the quilt and press it against my face in hopes of muffling my sniffles. I’ve got to hold it together. I didn’t cry leaving the States. I didn’t even cry over the “incident,” as Dad liked to call Nathan’s downward spiral. So why am I barely holding it together now?
I scramble for the first element in the periodic table, but my sleep-deprived brain is at capacity. Out of sheer frustration, I put my earbuds in and flip on the sleep playlist on my iPod, letting the soft melodies wash away all thoughts. I spend the next hour holding back tears and the crippling loneliness that echoes inside my head, competing for dominance with the music reverberating through my ears, until I finally slip into blissful sleep and escape.
* * *
My sleep is cut short, however, when sunlight blazes through the blinds and right onto my face. I fumble for my phone and see that it’s only seven o’clock, but I’m completely awake. I lie in bed, tossing and turning, until I hear Sophie shift atop her mattress above me.
She climbs down from the top bunk, stands in the middle of the four-by-four-foot square floor space and stretches her arms above her head. Yawning, she waves at me.
“Did you sleep well?” she asks.
I murmur a yes, though my sore limbs and aching head protest.
Sophie and I throw on clothes, and once we’ve both deemed our hair and makeup good enough to be seen by the outside world, she says, “Do you want to go to breakfast with me? I told Jason I’d meet him at eight-thirty.”
“Sure.”
I stuff my feet into a pair of ankle boots and clap on a straw fedora I found at a consignment store in Nashville. After tossing my phone and Korean phrase book into my satchel, I follow her out the door.
Students pass us in the hall, and they all smile and bow their heads in greeting. Although most of the girls we see are Asian, I spot a few that look Filipino or maybe Pacific Islander and others with darker complexions and hijabs, maybe from India or somewhere in the Middle East.
When I researched the school, I was drawn to the fact that it boasted all classes taught in English and that it’s apparently more relaxed than most Korean schools, which can be intense in both academics and discipline. Because it’s targeted to foreign students who speak a myriad of native languages—mostly kids of foreign dignitaries, high-profile CEOs, or wealthy European expatriates—English serves as the common language for them all, a fact that still baffles me. I complained every day about the two years of Spanish I took—my sister, Jane, is the one with the ear for languages. But the people here have been taking English classes their entire lives. America is seriously behind the foreign language instruction curve.
But while English may be the common language, most students we pass stick with other kids who look like them and speak their own languages. A group of girls pass us, their black-haired heads bent close, giggling. One points at me, and heat climbs up my neck. But I force down the embarrassment; she probably wasn’t even talking about me.
Sophie leads me out of the dorm and onto the plaza I saw when I first arrived. More students occupy it than last night, some boys playing with a soccer ball, another group just sitting and laughing.
A greenery-lined path leads around the plaza, which is circled by a ring of classroom and administrative buildings that stare down at me with condescension, like they’re daring me to fail, like they know I can’t handle this. A sidewalk leads a little farther up the mountain to more buildings, which Sophie tells me are the boys’ dorms.
Despite the crowds of students milling around, the noise level across campus is hardly more than a hum. Coupled with the trees planted in front of and all around the buildings and the mountains towering over us, the quiet makes me feel more like I’m at one of those relaxed resorts than a school full of teenagers.
We climb the stairs up to a chrome building with red Korean characters, which Sophie tells me reads DINING HALL. The cafeteria has its own building? How big is this place? I mean, I know it’s a school for rich kids, but still.
The dining hall is easily three times the size of my high school lunchroom, and anxiety pools in my stomach as I peer around the room—I’m in way over my head. Light filters in through the sloped glass ceiling, illuminating the myriad of long tables and benches filled with students, and providing a view of the mountains surrounding the grounds. I get in line behind Sophie, listening to the languages swirling around us. They buzz in my ears like white noise, none of them distinct from the others.
As we draw closer to the serving line, I sniff at a scent unlike anything I’ve smelled before. Sophie picks out some kind of soup with green leaves floating in it, but I steer clear of anything I don’t recognize and opt instead for an omelette that I think has vegetables in it, maybe some kind of meat, I can’t tell.
When we get to our table, I realize the only utensils available are silver chopsticks. Sophie fishes out the green bits from her soup with her chopsticks like a pro. How she’s going to get the broth out of that bowl is something I’d like to see.