Read Online Fox Girl by Nora Okja Keller - Free Book Online Page B

shoving the eggs into one of the side pockets, and followed her.
    â€œHo Sook, wait!” I commanded, my neck prickling at the echo of my dream as I ran to catch up.
    Just like in my dream, Sookie waited without turning to look at me. But unlike in the dream, the real Sookie spoke. “The colors are so bright today, aren’t they?” she said. Her voice sounded far away, as if we were living her dream, not mine. She spread her arms, embracing the sky. “That blue fills me,” she said, squinting at the clouds. “It hurts my eyes.” She started to cry.
    â€œSookie,” I said. I touched her shoulder.
    Wrapping her arms around herself, she said: “The colors are tearing me apart.” She lay down on her back, her chest arching upward over the hump of her book bag. Her head lolled back, the top of it touching the ground, her chin angled toward the sky.
    â€œDon’t look anymore.” My voice sounded harsh because I was so worried.
    â€œYes, we’re not supposed to look at the sky, at the sun. It’s too bright. It’s too full of color. But look around, Hyun Jin—at the dust we kick up as we walk. Look how it sparkles as it floats through the air, like little diamonds. Like tiny suns full of light and color. That’s me now, Hyun Jin. I’m a tiny dust sun, exploding with colors, and soon I will be blown away. Breathe a part of me in, okay?”
    â€œPlease, Sookie, get up.” I pulled her arms. She was limp as a doll. “School’s starting. I hate to be late.” I tried a threat: “If I leave you lying here, Lobetto and his gang will find you, and then what? They’d probably stomp on you; he still has to pay me back for the time I cut his eye. It scarred, you know,” I said, fingering my own face. “He probably hates us more now.”
    She allowed me to pull her up and together we hobbled to school. Sookie didn’t say anything else, but her head swiveled all the way there as she tried to watch each speck of dust smote by a shaft of light.
    I got her into her seat before the teacher arrived, but when we were asked to stand for our lesson, Sookie fell back down. She crashed into two desks on her right, knocking them onto their sides. Her head smacked the corner of one of the desks, so that as she lay on the floor a bump the size of a baby’s fist rose from her forehead. One of the girls whose desk was overturned screamed, “Sookie’s dying!”
    The teacher rushed to Sookie’s side and poked at the bump with his long fingers. “Nothing seems cracked,” he murmured. He pushed harder. “Does feel squishy, though.”
    â€œOw,” Sookie croaked.
    The teacher looked into her eyes. “Do. You. Know. Who. I. Am?” he asked.
    â€œOw,” Sookie said again. “Your voice is very loud.” She closed her eyes for a breath and when she opened them, told the teacher, “You are a sun,” and closed her eyes again.
    The teacher looked up and frowned. At me. “Kong Hyun Jin, come forward!”
    I panicked when he used his reprimand voice. The only thought in my mind was a defensive refrain: I didn’t do it I didn’t do it. “Yes, Respected Teacher,” I answered.
    â€œTake Cho Ho Sook home. Stay with her. Make sure she doesn’t sleep. If she becomes sick, or if she falls asleep and you cannot wake her, run to the doctor.”
    On the walk home, Sookie explained her fall this way: “The colors rushed into my head, like the rockets Americans shoot into the sky the night before their new year. I had no choice but to fall down and enjoy the show.”
    â€œI think we better keep walking,” I told her. Instead of heading straight to her apartment, I turned to follow the inside wall that surrounded America Town. I figured by the time we walked around the perimeter of America Town, it would be all right to let Sookie sleep. Teacher didn’t tell me