S1 E1: Pilot (2)
"...Is that really you, Andy?"
The voice on the other end of the line sounded dead serious. I leaned my shoulder against the wall. Mom had gone back to the kitchen, and even with the faucet running, she kept sneaking glances my way.
"I called Andy's house and asked Andy's mom to put Andy on the phone, didn't I? So naturally, it's Andy."
"That's exactly what's weird. I've never heard you talk like that before."
"I'm naturally pretty funny."
"Last time Mac made a joke about a math formula, you corrected his explanation because it was wrong. Since when were you the kind of guy who could even tell a joke?"
Okay, that one stung. When I probed my memory, something similar tried to surface. I decided not to look too closely.
"I'll keep it down from now on."
"Why? Did something happen?"
"Does something have to have happened?"
"Hold on—did you swap bodies with someone, like in Freaky Friday? Is there somebody else in there?"
My fingers, which had been winding the phone cord around themselves, went still. I hadn't expected to be handed the correct answer on day one of my possession.
"And what would you do if I had?"
"Give me back the real Andy. I've got something borrowed from him."
"Like what?"
"You'd know if you were the real Andy."
No pushover, this one. I waited a moment, and the memory of lending out a game cartridge floated up. If the memories surfaced like this every time I actually needed them, I probably wouldn't have to wrestle with any post-possession memory issues—which was a relief, honestly.
"The Gaming Boy Pikamon Red?"
"...Right."
"Shame, isn't it?"
"A little. If you've really been swapped, I wouldn't have to return it, would I."
I laughed out loud. Eileen gave a small laugh too, but she was back with a question almost immediately.
"So seriously, why are you being like this?"
"Living quiet got boring."
"You were perfectly fine until yesterday."
"And I gave it a fair run until yesterday, which is enough. Playing the docile, well-behaved Asian that American society wants me to be just isn't fun anymore."
The clatter of dishes in the kitchen cut off. I lowered my voice a little.
"A new semester's starting, so I figured I'd try changing things up a bit."
"How?"
"Saying everything I actually want to say. Cracking a few jokes."
"So that's why you called me MJ?"
"Oh, there are plenty of other redhead characters out there, sure—but for you to be Sonja the Redhead... you're a little scrawny for it."
"Wanna die?!"
"Hahaha. Kidding, kidding."
Something clattered on the other end of the line. Eileen must have fumbled the receiver; her voice drifted away, then came back.
"Then, to commemorate the new you, wanna come downtown with me? If you've got nothing going on right now."
I glanced toward the kitchen. Mom had gone back to washing dishes.
"And do what there?"
"Movies. The Sixti Censuses just came out, remember?"
I looked at the calendar hanging on the wall. August, 1999. I'd checked it any number of times already, but hearing those words out loud made it land differently. The Sixti Censuses was a brand-new release. The kind of movie where it would soon be harder to find someone who didn't know the ending than someone who did was playing in theaters right now—which meant that in this world, people were buying their tickets, walking in, and getting genuinely blindsided.
The moment I'd heard the title, my mouth had moved before my brain could catch it—all thanks to a certain cursed instinct for spoilers.
"Brood Williston's a ghost."
"Hey!"
I yanked the receiver away from my ear. Eileen's shriek was loud enough to make Mom, clear across in the kitchen, turn around. I raised my palm: nothing to see here. Mom frowned for a second, then faced the sink again.
"Uuuuuugggghhhhaaaaahh..."
When I put the receiver back to my ear, Eileen was still groaning like she was in genuine physical pain.
"Did you just spoil the ending of The Sixti Censuses?"
"Yep."
"I was the one who said we should go see it! What's the point of watching a movie after it's been spoiled?!"
I bit my lip to hold back the laughter. Over the phone came one huge, deliberate breath.
"You're lying, right?"
All I had to do was tell her yes. In life, chances to be considerate of other people show up without warning, exactly like this.
"Go see it for yourself, hahahaha."
"You are the absolute worst."
And there went the chance. Eileen muttered something more, too faint to catch. It surely wasn't kind. After grumbling on and on for a good long while, she suddenly said:
"You really do seem different."
"Different in a good way?"
"No. The Andy Park I know was not the kind of person who spoils a movie ending and then cackles about it."
"Well, you haven't seen it yet, so you can't know whether it's true or not. Go see for yourself."
"The only thing that's going to be in my head now is your voice! How am I supposed to watch it?!"
I ended up laughing outright. She was more fun to tease than I'd expected.
"Sorry. Dinner's on me today. Want pizza?"
"Obviously you're paying."
The answer came fast.
"I'm not in the mood for a movie anymore, thanks to you, so let's just go to Chuckily Cheese. At least I can play games there."
"Isn't that a place only little kids go?"
"Oh, is that so? Then who was it who swore last time they wouldn't leave until they beat the basketball game?"
There was a memory of pointlessly feeding ten dollars into that basketball machine out of sheer stubbornness. Apparently this friend had been enjoying life in her own way, too.
"I feel like I can win today."
"You said that last time too. Meet me at the entrance. I'm leaving the second I'm ready, so you'd better get here fast."
I checked the clock and we settled on a time. Just before hanging up, Eileen threw in one last thing.
"Don't spoil any other movies for me."
I went up to my room and opened the closet. Most of the T-shirts looked more or less alike, so picking something to wear didn't take long. I threw on a white T-shirt and shorts, then pulled my wallet out of the desk drawer. Counting the bills, there was enough for pizza, at least. Out of habit, my hand went for my pocket—and stopped.
Right... no cell phone.
I'd already gone hunting for it when I woke up this morning, and here I was searching again. I would have to get used to it not existing. I tucked the house key in beside the wallet and headed downstairs, where Mom was wiping down the table.
"I'm going downtown to hang out with Eileen."
"Just the two of you?"
"Yes, ma'am. We're going to Chuckily Cheese."
Mom looked at me and smiled a little.
"You were out of it earlier."
"Felt better after I ate."
"Well then, eat a good breakfast and school will take care of itself."
I shouldn't have bothered saying that. I shoved my feet into my shoes. Behind me, Mom asked if I'd taken my wallet; when I said I had, she told me to be home before dinner.
"Call if you're running late. And wear your helmet properly."
"Okay."
In the garage, a bicycle leaned against the wall. I took the helmet hanging from the handlebars, put it on, and cinched the chin strap. With a water bottle tucked in as well, I stepped outside—and hot air pressed against my face. Through the window the day had looked pleasant; opening the door revised that opinion considerably. Texas summers were brutal in a way no summer in Korea could touch.
"Whew. Hot."
I wheeled the bike to the end of the driveway and swung onto the seat. The moment I pushed down on the pedals, the hot wind poured in under my T-shirt. As I passed the house next door, the man watering his lawn raised a hand.
"Hey there, Andy."
"Hello, sir."
Only after waving back did it come to me that the neighbor's name was John Hamston. I rode on through the unfamiliar neighborhood, and with every corner I turned, the next road was already waiting in my head. Instead of taking the main road, I cut across the residential streets—fewer cars that way. The memory left in this body knew the route cold, but I couldn't stop myself from looking around all the same.
...So this really is America.
A man was fixing something in front of his open garage. At a house with the sprinklers running, little kids shrieked and darted through the arcs of water. Under a basketball hoop set up in a driveway, boys my age were tossing a ball around, and when one of them blew a shot, the rest jeered all at once. I slowed to dodge a ball that bounced loose, then pushed the pedals again. The light was changing just as I reached the main road. I planted one foot on the ground to wait, and my hand drifted toward my pocket. I nearly went looking for the phone that wasn't there—again. I gripped the handlebars instead.
Was waiting at a single stoplight always this long? Across the street, a woman was peering down into a stroller. The boy next to her chewed his drink straw to death, then looked up at a sign across the road. At the bus stop, a man sat with his newspaper folded on his knee, fanning himself with it. It was unmistakably 1999, the era before smartphones. And yet, precisely because I had no phone, my hand kept feeling empty, as if I alone were missing out on something. There was no group chat to check, no newly uploaded video to watch, and Eileen wouldn't be messaging to ask how far away I was, either. We'd agreed on a place and a time, so all I had to do was show up and find her... but what if we missed each other? I pictured the two of us waiting on opposite sides of Chuckily Cheese. If I stood at the side entrance while she waited at the front, things could get genuinely annoying.
Why didn't we pin down exactly which entrance?
The light changed while I was still thinking about it. Turning onto the street lined with shops, I caught music drifting from a car idling at the curb—the music of a legendary pop singer, one who had died when I was a kid, the man Korean web novels had jokingly enthroned as the Heavenly Demon of Pop. In the car with the windows down, the driver drummed the steering wheel and sang along. Outside a shop that had set chairs out on the sidewalk, someone who looked like an employee was chatting with the person from the store next door, and a passing woman joined the conversation as if they were all old acquaintances. I slowed my bike. It wasn't that scenes like this hadn't existed in my past life. Back then, too, people met up and gabbed, and kids played outside. It was just that the smartphones wedged into every one of those gaps were gone. Nobody glanced down at their palm mid-conversation; nobody stopped dead mid-stride to scroll with their thumb. The man sitting alone at the café window was reading a book.
"...Turns out the era before smartphones had more romance to it than I gave it credit for."
Far ahead, the Chuckily Cheese sign came into view. Beside the bike rack, I spotted a head of red hair. Eileen had beaten me there. She stood with one knee bent, heel propped against the wall, fanning her cheek with the corner of the paper in her hand—up close, I could see it was a discount coupon. When she spotted me, the fanning stopped. I squeezed the brakes and dismounted.
I knew her face. I'd seen photos. But standing in front of her now, words failed me for a moment. Deep red hair spilled down past her shoulders, and a dusting of freckles lay across her nose and cheeks. The thick black horn-rims claimed a fair amount of real estate on her face, but the eyes behind them were sharp and clear. Her T-shirt, a little stretched at the collar, was printed with an old monster-movie graphic. Beneath her baggy shorts, a small scab clung to one knee, and one of her sneaker laces was conspicuously longer than its partner. It was the look of someone who, while getting ready to go out, had consulted the clothes heaped on the floor before ever bothering with the mirror. Tame her hair, pick a pair of glasses that actually suited her face, and she'd probably look like a different person—but she clearly had next to no interest in any of that.
I slid the bike into the rack. Eileen came toward me, folding the coupon as she walked, then took a long, level look at my face and narrowed her eyes.
"The way you talk changed so much I was starting to wonder, but your face is exactly the same."
I undid the chin strap on my helmet.
"Even better-looking in person?"
Eileen's mouth fell open slightly. A beat later, she smacked my arm with the corner of the coupon.
"Who are you? Hand over the real Andy."