The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,44
and used the bottom of it as a towel to wipe his face. Dad’s face, neck, and arms were golden brown from being outdoors so much, freckled with sun spots. He never seemed to burn, despite his refusal to wear sunscreen. Underneath his shirt, pants, and socks was pasty white, translucent skin. Like a jellyfish, but a little grosser.
“No problem,” I hollered, jogging to the back door.
It was locked.
I jiggled the knob and tried again. I’d just come through that same door and deliberately left it unlocked.
A small pair of hands pulled back the curtains in the adjacent window.
“Lucy! Open the door. It’s hot out today.” It was an unseasonable eighty degrees outside, blistering by Seattle autumn standards.
“No, not till you ’pologize!” The curtain fell straight, and Lucy’s hands disappeared.
“For what?!” I banged on the door. “Open it. I mean it!”
“You called me a crybaby again! Say sorry!” True, I called her that a lot, but that’s because she was. Seriously, who cried when their toast was too hot? Blow on the stupid thing.
“I’m sorry.” I sighed. Sorry that you’re a crybaby.
“And say you won’t call me crybaby again.”
Damn it, she was so smart. “I won’t call you crybaby again.”
“Ever.”
Sigh. “EVER. Now let me in, I’m serious. Dad is gonna be mad.”
A huge wave of relief hit when the lock clicked.
She scampered away. Good, she’d be out of my hair for a while. I swear, that kid had to be adopted. Or maybe I was adopted. How could two people so different be related? And I wasn’t talking just about her crybaby-ness. For Koreans, on the first birthday there’s a whole ritual around predicting the future of the one-year-old. Parents typically laid out a stethoscope, ruler, calculator, things like that, and in front of a whole crowd of people, the kid would walk or crawl to the item he wanted, and that would determine what the kid would be when he grew up. Unsurprisingly, I beelined to the hundred-dollar bill, and all of my parents’ friends roared with laughter, saying I’d be showered in riches.
My sister? She picked up a paintbrush and chewed on the brush end. My parents and partygoers gaped when Lucy grinned and revealed two front teeth covered in green Crayola watercolor.
Back then, it was hilarious how different she was from me. She was so unpredictable, stubborn, and full of emotion.
Now, not so much.
“JAE-WOO! Ppali! Ppali!” Dad screamed. HURRY!
In the fridge, we had kimchi. Pickles. Tubs of tuna and potato salad from Costco. So many apples. Everything but bottles of water.
No bottles of water anywhere, not in the pantry or in the garage. Not wanting to be screamed at again, I put some ice into a large thermos and added some tap water. That would have to do.
Outside, a heavy breeze came through and lifted the tarp from the roof, causing it to flap like a fish out of water before Dad could anchor it.
He cursed in Korean as I approached.
As I rattled the bottle, the ice clinked around. “Appa, here’s your water!”
Dad crouched and peered over the side. “I can’t come down. You need to bring it up.”
“I can’t.” He knew that. Me, on the rickety ladder, shaking with every footstep, falling to my death. Nope, no thank you.
“JAE.” Pause. “WOO.” The head shake. The disappointed tone. Him working his jaw back and forth. Translation: how could my only son, my oldest, be so damn scared of heights?
Blinking hard, I tried to push away all the memories that still haunted my dreams. My shoulder muscles clenched thinking about the time when I got stuck up a tree in my neighbor’s yard that was too tall to scale. In the pouring rain, it took hours for a firefighter to climb a ladder and coax me down. The time I pissed all over myself standing on the high diving board for the first time (and the last time). Two years ago, when our history class took a field trip to the Space Needle, and