Read Online The Collective by Don Lee - Free Book Online Page B

could go visit Joshua. His parents’ house is near Harvard Square.”
    “Why would I want to visit Joshua? He hates me.”
    “He doesn’t hate you,” I said, although Joshua had never expressed anything but indifference or disdain for her.
    “What would be the point?” Didi asked. “It’s not like we’re friends or anything.”
    I didn’t know what the point would be, exactly. I supposed I was desperate for something to ground her, connect her, to me again. She seemed so removed from me.
    “I called twice tonight,” I said. “Didn’t your mother give you the messages?”
    “I was going to call you back tomorrow,” she said. “I’m beat.”
    “Did you go somewhere after the movie?”
    “Hey,” Didi said abruptly, “I was wondering, where were you born? I’ve never asked you. Were you born in Korea?”
    “What?” The question befuddled me. “No. I was born here, in Mission Viejo. At Sisters of St. Joseph.”
    “Do you speak Korean or English at home?” she asked.
    “English,” I said, even more flummoxed. “I don’t know Korean. I thought I told you.” I had explained to her that I was a sansei, third generation. I had assumed she understood. All this time, had she been thinking of me as a fobby, an immigrant fresh off the boat? Was that how she saw me?
    “What about your parents and sister?” Didi continued. “Do they speak to each other in Korean?”
    “Why are you asking me these things all of a sudden?”
    “No reason. I was just wondering.”
    “Did someone in your family ask?”
    “No, not really. Well, maybe the subject came up.”
    “When you told them I’m your boyfriend?”
    “I don’t know if I used the word boyfriend,” she said.
    “Why not?”
    “They’d pester me endlessly!”
    “So what? They’ve got to know what’s going on—I call you every day.”
    “You don’t know my family. They’re always in my business. They never leave me alone. Nothing’s ever private. I can’t ever get a moment’s peace around here. You have no idea what it’s like.”
    “It doesn’t seem to bother you that much. From what I can tell, you’ve been having fun, a lot of fun, being back home.”
    “I don’t know. I guess so.” She yawned. “What time is it? It’s late. That movie sucked. We should have walked out halfway.”
    “Who’d you go with?”
    “Abby and Michael.” Her younger sister and brother.
    “Just you guys?”
    “We met some people there.”
    “Yeah? Who?” I asked, noting the original omission.
    “Nina and Sean. Friends from Milton.”
    “Is Sean an old boyfriend?”
    “Sean? Sean Maguire?” She laughed. “No.”
    “He’s not the guy you lost your virginity to?”
    She laughed again. “That’s so screwy to even suggest. So to speak. Naw, Sean’s like a cousin to me. That was Kurt, at music camp in Lake Winnipesaukee. He was from Montpelier. I don’t know where the hell he is now. Oh, my God, for a moment I forgot his last name.”
    “Sean never had a thing for you?”
    “Pamplin.”
    “What?”
    “That was his last name. Kurt Pamplin. I wonder what ever became of him. He was a really hot guitarist. I bet he’s up in Burlington, in a band or something, playing at Nectar’s. That’s where Phish got their start, you know. They went to UVM. God, I could go for an order of their gravy fries right now. If you ever go to Burlington, you have to go to Nectar’s and get their gravy fries. But you have to get them from the little window outside and eat them standing on the sidewalk. And you have to be drunk, and it has to be, like, two a.m. and wicked cold out. If you eat them inside, it’s not the same thing.”
    I did not want to hear about Kurt the hot guitarist, or the band Fish, or the club Nectar’s and the culinary delights of eating their fries al fresco. “Tell me about Sean,” I said.
    “What about him?”
    “Where’s he go to school?”
    “Princeton.”
    The fucker. “Have you been hanging out with him a lot?”
    “My mom’s best friends with his mom. He’s like my brother.”
    First a cousin, now a brother. “I bet he’s always had a thing for