I grew up in Jakarta and I was the happiest little girl; untamed curls, dance studios, and itchy tights. My family and I would have picnics, and I would pick seashells along the beach for my little brother, Soleh—he is four years younger than I, but sometimes he feels a far wiser than I despite being so young. My sibling’s hair is a few shades lighter than mine and they look more like Pat—they are her boys through and through. I am nothing in this world if not my father’s daughter; I am routine, early mornings, black coffee, passiveness, cunning, and never ever naive.
If it had been up to me, we would’ve lived in Indonesia forever, it was my favorite place on earth, my haven. But unfortunately, my father got a job on the East Coast, and my brother got into Juilliard as a piano major—Cahya had worked exceptionally hard for it and it didn’t come as a surprise to many.
I am a Yeo, we are excellence, we are determination, and we never falter.
We have a saying—Don’t wish for it, work for it—that we often live by.
We learned very early on that this world does not exist as a wish-granting factory, and people like us don’t often get to rely on shooting stars. We become the stars. We burn inside and rise above.
One cannot simply wish upon a star and have the universe collapse at their feet. If that were the case, I never would’ve turned my back on every four-leaf clover, every dandelion breeze, every eleven eleven on the clock. I became my own anchor, my own compass.
New York was new, New York was different. There were no Sunday markets with fresh fruit baskets to the brim, there was no fried rice at my aunty’s diner, no long school skirts and playing cards with friends after school hours, no crashing waves in the distance and dewy sunshine. But most of all, there was no Mom. No one to remind me to tie my shoelaces, no one to make me porridge in the mornings, no one to binge-watch Thai dramas with till sunrise on weekends, no one to braid my curly hair and make beaded bracelets with. There could be mountains, oceans, and borders between us but nothing of this earth and her land could take my Pat away from me.
She had work, she was busy—-worked long hours and had never-ending clients at her law firm. And yet still, she called every night. She did her best to make things right.
I lived a life beside the boys, and the boys gave me the best that they could. I was their Yesoh, their only sister, and they were nothing if not good. Always good, unwaveringly so. Cahya was integrity, light-hearted humour, and charisma—he is the kind of person people simply just loved to be around, the kind of shoulder you’d want to lean on. He is composure, gentle keys, and perfect pitch. But he is also late tireless nights, growing pains, and broken melodies. Soleh is his complete opposite, he is nothing if not the youngest of us siblings. He is emotionally intelligent, he cries when he’s happy, cries when he’s sad, he is loyalty, he will wait for you to tie your laces and never walk ahead, he will watch John Hugh’s films with you when you have a cold and bring you tea… He doesn’t really know how but he will try, he always does. He will never break a promise, never break his word, he will treat you like porcelain in his hands and never ever break you.
My brothers love me, I know that they do. They walk me to recitals like clockwork every day, they pack me lunches and never miss a performance. Cahya used to tuck me into bed as akid, he still makes dinner every night, and he does his best to fill the gaping void left in the house that our mother left. We all do our best, Jurie is proud, and we like to believe that Pat is too, no matter how far away. She visits sometimes, she brings gifts and cooks Zambian foods, She teaches us how to live and we never seem to learn. Not entirely.
High school went by rather quickly, it was a series of endless assignments and working hard so I could be like Cahya, so I could get into Julliard too, and I did just that. I am a Yeo, I make things happen for myself and stay on my toes. I never had friends, my brothers were my only companions for a long time, but then I met my best friend Sydney St James. She came into my life like a blackjack that clung to my socks during fall hikes—suddenly, almost painfully and she stuck around for the long haul. She exists as an archetype of the American dream, she’s daddy’s money, Cape Cod beach houses, Tiffany’s bracelets, and cable knit sweaters. But she is also kindness, rash humor, and long talks when your heart is heavy. She will carry your burdens, and make them her own; beside Sydney St James, you will never feel alone.
Sydney did not come alone, as people like her would never be alone a day in her life. Her longtime boyfriend Jax came too; he goes to NYU and is a writer, all he knows is ink-stained fingers, made-up stories, impromptu trips to Barnes and Noble, and an undying love for the picturesque. He can be pretentious, incredibly so, but we all are to some degree, such is the price of being the children of the wealthy and privileged. Some of us worked harder to get here than others though, but we’d never talk about it. And so Jax and Sydney, became Sydney and Jax and me. It has been like that for most of our lives, perhaps it will always be so.
Our story starts and ends with the summer house near Monterey, California, in a small town called Waverly Peak. Juriehad bought the house in an attempt to make summers special as they once were back home; he wanted us to be close to sea, even if it was only during the holidays. We lived for the summers in the little house on Clementine Street, Mirrorball House we’d called it, after my favorite song by Taylor Swift. Because it glittered at the center of it all, it did its best and we built it from the ground up. Sydney’s family owned the house beside ours, March House, after Louisa May Alcott’sLittle Women.For a long time, the house to the left was always empty. Vacant windows, potential buyers in and out every other month. We often called it a ’lost cause’ because we never thought anyone would ever move in.
But everything changed the summer of thirteen, when the renovations started happening; the windows got replaced with Victorian ones, the balconies were built, and a plaster of coral blue paint covered it. It was brand new. We often cycled by the property on our way to the bay, sometimes we’d sit on the sidewalk with a bag of salted chips and make guesses about the kind of people planning to move in. Perhaps it would be a newlywed couple, Jax assumed, maybe two brothers looking for a vacation home away from the city, Sydney pondered. I always knew that a house like that was built for sisters, I knew this in my bones.
I will never forget the first day I saw the Kwon girls; it was from my bedroom window, glancing down at the moving vans that pulled up out of nowhere. They were bustling around their father in cashmere sweaters and long dark braided hair, making various speculations and helping him carry the little things inside. They were all pale porcelain skin, that would inevitably tan to a warmer honey under the Waverly sun. Freckles, fairy-like footsteps, generosity and skunk stripes in their hair. They stood out, and demanded your attention whether you liked it or not.
It made me happy, Sydney too. We never had sisters, we yearned for them so deeply. We wanted new friends, and they had this mystique and allure to them that I couldn’t quite describe.
That day, the first day. We spent all morning baking a lemon meringue pie in the kitchen with Sydney’s mother, Elodie, we were covered in flour and sour lemon juice, making jokes about the sitcom playing on the television set and fantasizing about what the girls would be like.
Looking back, it was nothing we could’ve ever possibly imagined. The parents sent us forth to deliver the pie to their doorstep. We were nervous but we never showed it. We never let things like that bleed through. I knocked on the door and waited for one of the girls to answer, we heard scrambles of footsteps and yet when the door swung open.
It was not a girl, no not at all, it was a boy. It was the boy. And he would be the match that lit the fire to where we are now, burning alive.
2
Welcome To Julliard
It was moving day.
The first day back since the summer holidays and I gazed outside the plane window, tracing patterns on the cool glass in anticipation for my arrival. California to New York City, also known as fun and sun to ballet slippers and sore ankles. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I was dreading it, but I most certainly was not looking forward to going back. My entire life has been a series of long drives, late-night flights, and constant uprooting. I wondered if there would ever come a day when I would stay still, and allow my feet to anchor to the ground,letting the vines of the earth wrap around me. I wondered if I would ever feel at home again.
However, I quickly wiped those transient thoughts from my brain, because I knew more than anything, the stagnant truth, the prevailing truth that had loomed over me like a dark cloud, all the days of my life. Which was that my home was in Indonesia; my home would always be Jakarta. I knew that I would never truly feel at home here in the big city, amidst the flashing lights and rushing subways. My place was by the sea, my place was toes sinking into white sand beaches, ice lemonade on Sunday mornings, and never-ending green forests. But I had to put all of that behind me, I knew better.
Soleh sat beside me with his headphones on, and Cahya was next to him studying some sheet music. Cahya was always automatically in work mode, his brain was always running at a thousand miles per hour, I envied him for that, as I admire him for many of his other attributes as well. I often believed that everything I lacked, my brothers made up for in one way or another.
One would easily be able to insinuate that they have to make up for a lot.
“Soh,” Soleh whispered to me, taking off his headphones on one side to properly speak to me, “how many are there this time?”
“What?” I wondered as he stared at me with this knowing look on his face, his big brown eyes gleaming at me.
“The stars, you always count them on flights, don’t you?” he pointed out, and I shook my head in utter disbelief.
I reached out and pinched his nose playfully. “You have a keen eye, don’t you?” His candour warmed my heart even with the promise of a chilly fall outside. "Who says I counted them this time huh?"
