She turned to Tori. “I think Tori you have good eye for clothes. You make even Krista look nice.”
“Thanks, Grandma.” Tori smiled and I saw her eyes dart sideways toward me. Did she believe me now?
“Thanks, Grandma.” I fake smiled. Her compliments to me were always backhanded. I threw Tori an I-told-you-so stare.
CHAPTER 7
After we got back from school on Monday, my mom had made us pierogies. Tori took her plate and went to the living room to eat and talk on her phone with her friend, but I always liked to sit with my mom at the kitchen table. I loved it when she chopped up bacon and sprinkled it on top with sour cream and thinly sliced green onions.
As I settled in, she said, “I just got an email from Madison’s mom about her birthday party on Saturday. She said Madison had already invited you, but this was more for me to know the time and date.”
I stopped eating.
“She says you haven’t confirmed yet. Why not?” my mom asked.
“Yeah, I got the email a few days ago, but I replied ‘maybe,’” I said. “I guess I forgot about it.”
“It sounds like fun. Getting all dressed up, right?” She looked at me hopefully. But even I could tell she was faking her enthusiasm. My mom was not one of those chipper, overly happy moms whose voices go an octave higher when talking to kids. Maybe she lost all her enthusiasm when she was a vice-principal.
“No, actually, it sounds horrible,” I grumbled as I shoved a pierogi in my mouth.
“You haven’t been to a party in a while, so I thought it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”
“Mom, yes it would! You of all people know I don’t like wearing dresses. And you know that I don’t like people staring at me. I’m not Tori! Grandma and Tori think I can wear the hanbok, but I don't think it's appropriate. I can't go!" I sulked. The bacon didn’t even taste good anymore.
"Why not?" she asked indignantly.
“Because it’s not really something you’d wear on a Red Carpet—it’s too Korean-looking,” I tried to explain.
“Just because it’s Korean-looking doesn’t mean it’s not appropriate for Madison’s party. Sounds like the whole point of the party is to dress up in something out of the ordinary. Believe me, the dress Tori made is out of the ordinary.”
I stared at my plate of pierogies. I chewed slowly, thinking hard. The party was in a few days and I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended to forget about it.
Jason and I hadn’t planned to meet up today after school, but I gave him a call at home to see what he was up to. I needed to think about other things.
“You want to do something?” I asked him when I got him on the phone.
“Sure. We’re not doing much here in the nut house,” he replied. I could hear dogs barking in the background. “But I am supposed to walk the dogs.”
“Keep them on a short leash!” I said. I didn’t like his dogs very much. One of them was super hyper. He was like a dog version of a child on too much sugar.
“Okay, okay,” he said. I could tell he was smiling. “Meet me at the park behind school?”
“Okay, fifteen minutes,” I said.
We hung up and I told my mom I was leaving. “Come back for dinner!” was all she said. I’m glad she finally started letting me out of the house by myself without fretting and worrying like she used to.
As I walked, I wondered what to do about the party. My mom was right, I hadn’t been to too many parties lately. I wasn’t sure if it was because we were all getting older and some of us (namely me) thought parties were kind of babyish, or maybe I just wasn’t very popular. Jason was really the only person at school I spent a lot of time with. Once in a while we joined other kids in games, but not that often. Maybe nobody else liked me. Maybe I didn’t like anybody else? Maybe it was time to take a chance. I could wear the dress Tori had made for me. It was pretty cool looking…
I was shaken out of my thoughts when I saw Jason being dragged behind the leashes of his dogs and I waved at him. He gestured to the field to tell me where he was going. He was carrying the drool-stick and the ball that his dogs loved chasing.
“Hi!” he yelled from across the field.
I jogged up to him. “Hi!” I said.
He took his dogs off leash and hurled the ball into the field.
I’m pretty sure some drool flung off the ball and hit me in the face.
“Gross, Jason! My face is wet with dog drool!” I
said as I wiped.
“Oh, come on. That was my first throw. There’s no drool yet,” he said.
“Oh great, it’s stale dog drool,” I said as I wiped my face harder.
We both laughed and spent the rest of the time playing with the dogs.
CHAPTER 8
I had tried not to think about it or mention it, but somehow, Grandma remembered the day of the party. She kept her promise and she picked me and Tori up early Saturday morning and dragged me (Tori went quite willingly) to a Korean beauty salon downtown where they proceeded to roll my hair, spray it into a helmet, and do my makeup.
It was my first time at a nice salon. For my usual haircuts, my mom still took me to the kids’ salon where I sat in a chair that looked like a throne. She said it was “cheap and reliable” and I would just have to go there until I didn’t fit the throne anymore.
This placed smelled like ammonia, hairspray, and there was a whiff of kimchi in the air. Somebody had eaten it for breakfast. There were a lot of young Korean ladies, all speaking Korean, and it could
