The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories

in the middle, older kids in the back. I sat with Cathy, who was a year younger. The Shins sat in two rows behind the driver, parents in front of the children. I was curious about them and only paid half-attention to Cathy, who was telling me about a boy she liked and an anonymous note she had received. It was a puzzle. But all the while, I kept trying to figure out what my mother didn’t like about Mrs. Shin. It was her tight dress or the way she had hung on her husband’s arm or both. My mother had no patience with weakness, especially in women. She was always trying to toughen me up. “Speak up! Stand straight! Make the best of things!” she’d call out to me like a drill sergeant. So far, I’d tried to be a good soldier.

When we arrived at the park, Father Kwak handed cameras to Cathy and me and asked us to be the official photographers. That made us shy, though we were pleased with the request. We took off immediately for the beach.

My mother called me back. She hung several plastic bags of food on my arms.

“What did Father Kwak talk to you about?” she asked.

“He wanted us to take pictures for the church,” I said.

“Take pictures of people,” she said. It was the only piece of advice she ever had for photography and she gave it to me each time.

“Okay, okay,” I said, walking away.

“And don’t lose anything!” she said. “And have fun!”

I caught up with Cathy at the picnic tables. After dumping the bags with the others, we headed down a path to the water. The beach turned out to be a narrow strip of hard, rough sand that didn’t stretch very far, scattered with strands and clumps of dried seaweed. They pinched when we stepped on them. Though it was sunny back home, it was cloudy here and the brown water that lapped at our feet felt icy.

“So much for swimming,” I said.

“Smile!” Cathy said, snapping a picture of me kicking the water.

And that’s what we did all day: tell people to smile. We took pictures of boys showing off in the water, pushing each other and doing handstands. We took pictures of the volleyball game and Mr. Paik, who got knocked hard on the head with the ball and had to sit down. All through lunch, we snapped people eating, their mouths greasy with barbecue, my father with a piece of rice on his chin.

We were a noisy bunch, and the other families that had set up camp nearby gave us dirty or amused looks. Some of them stared openly, complaining within earshot about how crowded the beach seemed that day. I wondered what Luke would think if he saw us here, so loud and foreign-seeming. I thought of how out of place he would feel, maybe as lonely as I felt at school sometimes. I was glad then that we weren’t friends, glad that we’d gone all the way to New Hampshire, where he couldn’t possibly see me.

At one point, coming out of the brick restroom, I saw Father Kwak and Mrs. Shin talking by the line of trees leading to the woods. Automatically, I raised the camera and took a picture. They turned to look at me in the wake of the click, for a second like dolls who could only move their heads. Mrs. Shin slowly dropped her arm. I felt uneasy, so I turned away from them and said, “Thanks for the picture.” But as I walked away, I saw in my mind what the camera captured—it floated there already developed: Mrs. Shin’s white hand reaching toward Father Kwak’s white collar and he flushing with pleasure.

I forgot about it until later, when it was time to go home. Then we couldn’t find the Shins. Their three little girls sat forlornly under a tree, waiting, while the sun sparkled down behind them. Father Kwak was talking idly with my mother and some other women at one of the picnic tables. None of the adults seemed concerned; they all looked sleepy and full, as though waiting for someone else to give the word. But Cathy and I and some of the other kids wanted to get going. We had other lives besides church, lives quicker and more confusing that we were eager to return to.

“What’s he look like again?” asked Hank.

Cathy and I were sitting with two boys our age, Hank and John, at a dirty, bird-dropped picnic table. Hank was the taller one and played football for Concord High.

“Forget the guy. Didja see her?” John asked. He whistled through the space between his front teeth.

“Hot?”

“Is the sun hot?” He looked over at Cathy and me. “I just love her dress,” he said in a high falsetto. Then he raised an eyebrow at Hank.

“Oh, her,” Hank said. Then, more loudly, “Yeah, buddy!” They high-fived each other.

“Whatever,” Cathy said. “As if she’d let you near her.” I took a picture of her getting up. “Pure fantasy. Are you going to help us find them or not?”

“But we like fantasy,” John said, running a palm back and forth over his close-cropped hair.

Hank and John weren’t the only ones who thought Mrs. Shin was hot. I’d seen the look in Mr. Lim’s eyes as he ate with his fingers across from the Shins, a wide-eyed, taking-in-everything-for-later look. She was telling him about her hobby, copying reproductions of masters’ works—Raphael and Michelangelo. I’d overheard her say Goya was her favorite, that his elongated forms and dark colors was the way she sometimes saw people too. Mr. Shin looked embarrassed when she said that, but Mr. Lim was rapt.

“See you later,” I said to the boys. But as Cathy and I, cameras swinging, headed toward the restrooms, we could hear the boys behind us. We checked the women’s room: busy, but without Mrs. Shin. The boys checked the men’s room, no Mr. Shin. The section of the park we were