The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,13
be a grandparent herself.
He opened the fridge and pulled out a Hite beer that he’d just gotten from the Korean supermarket. With his other hand, he pinched his forehead. “Kim Jung-ho is my father. Kim Jung-hee is mother.” The slam of the refrigerator door and the loud crack of the can opening punctuated the end of his sentence.
Lucy paused. “Wait, Appa. You said is. Twice. Are they still alive?” She’d heard the same thing I did. But I didn’t dare violate the Kim family rule by questioning his word choice.
Dad abruptly left the room and didn’t give her an answer. Lucy puppy-dog-eyed me. Were our grandparents alive? Mom and Dad had come into my bedroom one night when I was Lucy’s age to tell me our grandparents on Dad’s side had died in a car accident and that going to Korea for the funeral was too expensive. I cried and cried that night, devastated that I’d never have grandparents to visit, and that no one would visit me. That no grandparents would call me to wish me a happy birthday. No Christmas presents either. Not that they ever did any of that anyway when they were alive. I’d never questioned anything my parents told me about our family. We both turned to Mom for answers, hoping she would explain what was going on.
Mom spoke, finally, crushing my hope. “He mean to say was, not is.”
He’d made a grammatical blunder.
I’d never seen my mom book it out of the kitchen so fast. We heard muffled shouting behind my parents’ bedroom door, but the Kim family rule prevented me from barging in there to ask why they were yelling at each other.
Lucy put a smiley face on the top of her paper. “All done! You can make fart noises now.”
I watched Lucy slide off her chair, cramming her homework into her open backpack by my feet. Even with my excitement about seeing Kate at work, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my parents were hiding something.
Chapter Five
Kate
Could hair glands sweat? I had to assume yes, because it happened when I wore too heavy of a sweater, or when I got the flu, or when my anxiety took over both my immune and nervous systems, especially before theater performances. Or, in this case, when I knew I’d be seeing Nate again.
My head itched so much that I needed a full dousing in cortizone cream. That’s what I got for buying a cheap replacement zombie wig from a nonreviewed third party on Amazon.
In the escape room parking lot, I scratched the hell out of my head using all ten fingernails, from my hairline, to above my ears, to the back of my neck. Note to self: google “scalp eczema relief.”
“Fluffing out your zombie hair?”
I halted, fingers midscratch.
Nate propped the door to the building open with his foot, waving me in with a huge grin. Not only had he come early, but he’d been inside the whole time. Had he seen me progressively erupt into a sweat fountain? He definitely witnessed me scratching like a mangy dog. Yet here he was, smiling at me. Making my head sweat even more.
I hurried inside, and he closed the door behind us. “I came through the back. If I had known you were here in front the whole time, I’d have opened the door sooner. I was checking for a package.”
Okay, it’s your turn to say something, Kate.
“I’m wearing camo. I’m surprised you saw me.”
Kate. Really?
He raised an eyebrow. A single laugh burst out. “You’re such a clown. I brought your wig back. It’s inside.”
He’d found it.
Of course he had found it. Seven whole days had passed for him to discover the giant hair mass on his passenger seat. It wasn’t invisible.
He led me to his locker and fished around in his backpack. His Clyde Hill cross-country shirt fell out, and he quickly stuffed it back in. Damn, he went to the only school my dad’s hefty donations couldn’t get me into. Standardized tests were among the highest on my list of things that ruined my life, ranked just above my eczema.