Lia

  Dinner at home is as awkward as ever.

  For the entire meal, the dining room is silent, except for the clinking of our utensils. Occasionally, Yeju chuckles whenever she digs out an ugly dumpling from the pte, but the tension in the air stifles her ughter as soon as it releases.

  My stomach clenches with guilt. I asked Yeju to come home with me so that my visit would be easier to deal with. But after screaming at her, things might have gotten worse.

  Why did I snap like that? I don’t know what got into me. Yeju getting along with my brother is a good thing, I know that, but perhaps seeing them together—two people from two very different parts of my life—messed up my mind.

  I guess I also didn’t like to see the attention I’ve always gotten from Yeju taken away. Especially by the same person who has stolen all my parents’ attention.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have come back home for Thanksgiving after all.

  After the excruciating dinner, I pull Yeju back into the living room. “Yeju, I’m… sorry for snapping at you like that just now.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it.” She gnces toward the kitchen where my parents are before lowering her voice. “You told me you didn’t have a good retionship with your parents, but I didn’t know about your brother.”

  My shoulders slump. “I don’t know, we… we actually used to be close. Something changed, I guess.”

  “What happened?”

  What happened indeed? I recall the good old times: watching cartoons with Romeo, building Lego sets together, and singing next to each other in church. And then, there is a block in my memory. The next thing I remember is my mother fussing over Romeo—Romeo and only Romeo. The help she offered my brother that was never offered to me. Her ckluster reactions to my achievements.

  The reminiscence ignites another memory in me.

  “You know, we have a photo album in the storage room,” I say. “Wanna go check it out?”

  Yeju raises her brows. “You mean my room? Are you trying to sneak into my room now, Miss Lia Choi?”

  “Oh, shush it.”

  I drag Yeju down into the storage-turned-guest room. It takes a couple of minutes for me to find the box of photo albums. Brushing the dust off the covers, I sit next to the bed and begin flipping through one of the albums.

  Yeju gasps when she sees a photo. “Lia, is that you?” she coos, leaning into me. “Oh my god, you’re adorable.”

  I giggle. “Yeah, that’s me. I think I’m six, and Romeo is three.”

  In the picture, the younger me is hugging my much smaller brother from the back. We are both grinning and showing a full set of baby teeth.

  I explore the rest of the album, expining the context to Yeju. Romeo and I are always photographed together, smiling widely, holding onto each other. We were inseparable back then.

  “This is the first and only time we went skiing. My mother—I call her Umma, by the way—she hated it, so we never went back. And this is us folding mandus again. We do this every holiday. It’s kind of a family tradition. Umma doesn’t like non-Korean food, so we never got to try any of the regur American holiday foods.”

  My expnation trails off when I turn to the st page. We’ve been growing older throughout the album, and the st photo is of me in middle school. And instead of my brother, I am now next to Eunice. Something twists in my stomach.

  Eunice and I are hugging and ughing, but all I can see when I look at the photo is her contorted expression after I confessed to her. Her awkward eyes, gncing away. Her stiff back as she darted out of the room.

  I suddenly want to puke.

  “Hey,” Yeju whispers. “Let’s look at something else, okay?”

  She closes the album for me. It is a fsh, but I see it—the photo behind that photo with Eunice. It’s another one of me with my brother, but this time, we are no longer smiling.

  A thought strikes me. This might be when things went downhill. When our retionship soured. When my memory became a blur.

  I grab another album—the one that comes after the previous one—and I flip through it frantically. The photos are so different; we are older, and Romeo and I are never together now. There are pictures of me and Eunice, Romeo and his friends, me by myself, Romeo by himself, Romeo and my parents, Romeo and my mother…

  And I’m only smiling in photos when I’m with Eunice.

  “It’s middle school,” I mutter. “That’s when I started to drift apart from Romeo.”

  Yeju frowns. “What? Did that girl cause that?”

  “You mean Eunice? No, no, it’s not her. At least, I don’t think so. It’s… Well, it’s…” Pieces of memories pelt my mind. The emotions that I repressed are now welling up inside of me. The resentment, the stress, the anger.

  The loneliness.

  “School got harder, I guess,” I say softly. “Grades mattered more in middle school and high school, and Umma probably picked up on that. Suddenly, everything became a comparison. A competition. I can’t stand being with Romeo anymore, not when everything we do is pitted against each other. Not when it’s almost impossible to please Umma.”

  I pause at a page, staring at the two photos side-by-side. On the left are me and Eunice, and on the right are my brother and his friends. Both taken during prom night. Same event but separate photos, as though we do not want to be associated with each other.

  We drifted apart and, to repce each other, we found ourselves a new group of friends—and I tched onto Eunice.

  “That’s fucked up,” Yeju blurts. “You know, I have been thinking this since the moment I stepped into your house, but I’m going to say it out loud now: I do not like how your mother treats you and your brother. It’s like she’s constantly disappointed or something. What gives?”

  I flinch at her candidness. “She has high expectations for us, I guess…”

  “There’s a difference between high expectations and unreasonable expectations,” she retorts. Then, she sucks in a breath and lowers her voice. “Sorry, I know she’s your mother, so I shouldn’t be so disrespectful about it. But I am pissed off, dammit. You don’t deserve this treatment. No one does.”

  I try to smile, but I can’t bring myself to. Yeju’s words are harsh but validating. My mother does have unreasonably high expectations. I’m a good student at a good college, I’m working hard in csses and gaining extra research experience, and yet, I can’t get a single word of praise from her. What else can I do? Go on to medical school or something? Do I want to do that? Would that even work?

  “And with that attitude, it’s no wonder your brother is such a sullen boy too,” Yeju grumbles.

  The shift in topic sps me in the face. I blink. “Romeo? He gets all the attention. Why would he be sullen?”

  Yeju shrugs. “Getting all the attention from your mother sounds like hell.”

  My brows twitch. She’s siding with my brother again. Why is it that whenever I step into this home, I disappear next to Romeo? I am used to being invisible to my family, but to Yeju too? She used to care so much about my existence that she made it a life goal to chase me out of the apartment. And now, it’s all about Romeo yet again.

  I sm the photo album shut. “I’m gonna go sleep now.”

  “Wait, Lia—” Yeju pces a hand on my leg. “Lia, I’m right here. I’m not at all ignoring you, you know that, right?”

  “I know,” I mumbled half-heartedly, blinking the wetness in my eyes away. “I’m just tired.”

  “Okay, it’s just…” She takes in a sharp breath before letting her thoughts spill. “You seem so easily triggered by me giving Romeo any sembnce of attention. And I realize why that is: it’s the way your mother treats the both of you, pitting you two against each other, giving you the bare minimum of care and concern a mother should give. And I’m angry, Lia, but… You are fighting the wrong fight here. You’re mad at Romeo when you shouldn’t be. You two need to be on the same team. I think…” She takes another shaky breath. Her voice is now a soft plea. “I think you should talk to Romeo. Make amends with him if you can. Get back the lovely sibling retionship you used to have but was taken away.”

  Yeju’s words pierce into me. My ears ring, and the world spins around me. I don’t know what to think, I don’t know why I’m feeling this way. All I know is that I hate this feeling.

  And I hate that she’s talking about Romeo.

  “I don’t want to, okay?” I yell. “I’m sick and tired of him. Of Umma making it all about him.”

  Of Yeju making it about him.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Why are you assuming?”

  “Because I know you, Lia. You are strong, awesome, and kind. But you’re trying way too hard to prove yourself here, to win whatever game your mother puts you in for no reason. And it’s breaking you.“

  “I’m not trying too hard—“

  “Yes, you are. You’ve been trying so hard talking to your mom when you can just turn around and talk to Romeo instead!”

  My hands tremble, and my vision blurs. “He doesn’t talk to me,” I snap, jolting to my feet. The photo album drops to the ground with a thump. “Why should I?”

  “He doesn’t talk to you because you aren’t talking to him.”

  “Well, I’m not going to talk to him. It won’t solve anything.”

  “Lia, come on, stop hiding from your problems.”

  The exasperation in Yeju’s voice makes my gut coil even more. My fists clench.

  “You’re the one to talk,” I bark, “as if you’re so good at dealing with your problems.”

  She flinches. “Look, I understand I have issues…”

  “Yes, you do. So don’t tell me what to do about mine!”

  I spin around and bolt upstairs. For the first time, I am gd my parents are making us sleep in separate rooms, because I cannot deal with Yeju right now.

  I cannot deal with the world right now.