Our project was going to be due soon, and that was pretty much all we had been working on at school, except for our Celebration of Dance preparations. I was very eager to get both of them over with. We spent the afternoon at the library again, and it seemed that everybody else was busy working away. I was still formulating my final ideas, but I had a general idea what I was going to do and I just wanted to do it at home.
I was sitting at a table looking out the window at nothing when Madison came and sat next to me. “You’re really getting the moves down for our dance! And by the way, that is a great shirt,” she said to me. Madison had a nose for expensive things. It didn’t have the company logo splashed across the front of it, but it was an expensive brand-name shirt. I wondered how she knew these things.
“Oh thanks,” I said, a little bit embarrassed. “It’s Tori’s old shirt.” As usual, I gave my sister the credit. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
“You’re so lucky to have a cool sister,” Madison said. “She made the dress you wore to my party, right?”
“Tori? Yes, she made the dress,” I answered slowly. She knew the answer to that question, so why was she asking it?
“I was wondering…” She looked down to gather her thoughts. “Do you think she’d be into making me something? I mean, I’d totally pay her. My cousin is getting married in a few weeks and I’d love a killer dress like yours, but using traditional Chinese fabric.”
I felt a little bit shocked. Didn’t that seem like a pretty big request? I had only been hanging around with them for a very short time. It seemed too much, especially because it wasn’t going to affect me, but it was going to affect my moody teenage sister. How could I say no?
“I can ask her, but she’s really busy, you know, doing high school stuff,” I replied, hoping to give myself an escape.
“Okay, thanks,” Madison said. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d ask her. Now, come on with me, sit at my table.”
She dragged me and all my stuff with her. I was so confused. I mean friends help each other, don’t they? But how much help is too much help? Would I have felt shocked if Jason had asked me for something similar? Probably not, but then, I don’t think Jason would have asked me in the first place. The whole thing just felt weird and uncomfortable.
I looked around and I saw that Jason was sitting with Marcus who was making farting noises with his perpetually clammy hands. Really, Jason? Why Marcus again? I tried to catch his eye, but he wasn’t looking at me. It felt like he was purposely not looking at me. I wasn’t in the mood to whisper to the girls while trying to pretend to be busy working on my project, so I decided to actually work on my project and tried my best to ignore everything.
CHAPTER 16
My grandmother came over the next day, as planned. My mother refuses to make my grandmother Korean food, so we had lasagna and Caesar salad for dinner. Grandma had a pinched faced throughout the meal.
I finally got enough nerve to ask her for her help near the end of dinner, when plates were starting to be put away.
“Grandma?” I started to ask.
She looked at me and said nothing.
“You know how you’ve been helping me learn to cook some Korean food?”
She still said nothing.
“Well, my project at school is almost due, and I was wondering if you could help me again?” Silence. But I marched on.
“Could you come to school with me next Tuesday and prepare some Korean dishes with my classmates? There’s no kitchen in the classroom, and I’m not really sure how to do it, but I want to get everybody involved somehow.”
My grandmother had not moved since I started talking, but suddenly she tilted her head to the right, ever so slightly.
“Grandma know what to do. Tuesday. I will prepare.” She stood up. “I go home now.”
Before she left, she turned to me and said, “You wear hanbok that Tori make and I wear traditional one, okay?”
“So what do you think you’re going to do for the presentation?” I asked her.
“Krista!” she said, annoyed. “Grandma know what to do. I take care of everything!”
“Okay Grandma, thank you.”
Maybe I was a teensy bit of a control freak, but the thought of not knowing what Grandma was going to do for my biggest project of the term was completely scary.
After dinner I sat at my desk with my computer on trying to think of the best way to describe why Korean food was so important to my life.
I remembered what my mom said about liking kimchi being in the blood. What if I put pictures of Korean food in a booklet and described the dish and what memories I had of it or what it meant to me? I thought that might work.
But what was Grandma going to serve my classmates? I thought we’d better keep it simple. I didn’t think my classmates were ready for kimchi. I knew some of my classmates ate the same thing every day. Evan ate a cheese sandwich on white bread every single day. Cassie ate pasta and an apple every single day. Arden ate rice and chicken every single day. Boring right? But this was my class. Not everybody was like Jason.
Luckily, my dad was one of those people who took pictures of food at restaurants. I was sure he had a whole bunch of pictures of Korean food for me to
