SUGAR KISS [YEONBIN] ✓

one

There is a very particular art to the making of grilled cheese. To making the perfect grilled cheese, at least. It’s so much more than just slapping a slice of Velveeta between some white bread and letting the thing languish in a skillet. A grilled cheese, when done right, with melty strings of provolone and buttered French bread crisped to golden brown, is a culinary wonder.

My essay written to perfection on grilled cheese is going to get me into the Seoul Institute of Culinary Arts. Or at least, into their scholarship competition.

I reread it before I touch the envelope staring up at me on my bed. It’s good. It’s simple, so no one will have thought to write about it twelve weeks ago, and I can just about taste the butter and cheese wafting out of my computer screen. Or I could when I wrote it. Right now, the only flavor I detect is the very distinct old acetone on my fingernails and who knows what under them. Possibly some sweat drifting down from my upper lip. Anxiety is about to eat me alive.

Open it. Open the thing. It is a prewritten piece of paper; it cannot hurt you.

Sticks and stones, man. But words of rejection from the only school in the world that matters can ALWAYS hurt me.

I slam my hands down onto my ratty mattress and the envelope doesn’t move. Because it is heavy—heavy with secrets.

I read the address typed in a neat sans serif in the top left-hand corner again and again, and then my own name in the middle. I have to look. If I’m in, I have to be ready to go to Seoul, in three weeks.

I have to look because I need to know if it’s time to drain half a semester’s worth of after-school shifts waiting tables at BBQ restaurant. Plus, it’ll take me the full three weeks to re-memorize every cookbook in the pantry and binge the last few seasons of Masterchef and do laundry. Clothes are important.

I grab my phone.

SOOBIN
HELPPPPPPPPP MEEEEEEEEE

HUENING KAI:
what do you need

SOOBIN:
MAKE ME DO THE THING.

HUENING KAI:
do the damn thing

SOOBIN:
I CAN’T DO THE THING

HUENING KAI:
good lord. do it. i am too tired for this.

I raise my eyes to the sky and grab the envelope with shaking fingers. This is it. In or out.

And I rip.

It takes me a good thirty seconds to pull the paper out of the envelope, and another thirty to unfold it, but I do. And I force myself to look.

Dear Mr. Choi,

We are pleased to extend to you an invitation to attend—

My happy scream shakes the house.

🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂

“Are you dead?”

“Yes,” I say. “And it’s exactly how I would have chosen to die.”

Huening Kai raises his eyebrows and leans back against my wall. “Thought you always said your ideal was being kissed to death by Tom Hiddleston in a Loki outfit.”

The corner of my mouth turns up. “Okay. This is the second way I would have chosen to die.”

Huening Kai laughs. He has kind of a dolphin’s laugh. Huening Kai says, “So you’re abandoning me for all summer then.”