“You want me to help you move in, don’t you?” I sighed.
“Well if you insist, darling sister of mine.” He chuckled, handing me a cardboard box with music sheets in them.
“Where’s everything else?”
“In the trunk, just carry the lighter things. I know your ballerina ass can’t handle the heavy lifting,” he teased and I frowned.
“Hey—” I wanted to protest but he’d already left to haul his things up. I couldn’t help but mumble to myself. “Stupid Cahya and his stupid jokes, ballerinas are not frail…”
I made my way to the trunk and rifled through a few of his things, mostly pillows, clothes, and kitchen supplies. Boring. Just then I noticed a box that stood out to me, it was unlike any of the others and had jerseys and sweaters in it I didn’t recognize as belonging to my brother. I folded back one of the navy sweaters and gasped when I saw the diary fall out; it was leather bound, bursting forth with scribbled pages, and ornamented with pastel blues. My heart sank as I felt a chill cascade down my spine, no, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t possibly be…right?
Property of W.A.Kit read engraved at the very bottom, and it was then that I knew that I wasroyallyscrewed.
Looking back, it probably would’ve been in my best interest to just take the boxes that belonged to Cahya and be on my way. I should’ve just minded my own business and kept my nose out of what didn’t belong to me. I never should’ve picked up that godforsaken diary in the first place, but I knew then and therethat I had seen it before, and what was worse? Is that I knew that it was certain that this would be no normal semester.
3
Lemon Meringue And Other Sour Beginnings
Flashback: Summer 13
I never had any sisters, all my days before my thirteenth summer were spent with the boys.
That within itself is not a complaint because the boys were always amiable, always polite and always kept a keen eye on me. Cahya, Soleh, Jax and his cousin Oliver who lived on Gilmore Street a few blocks away. Sometimes the summers felt infinite and tedious, I found myself missing home, missing mom andthe earth beneath my feet in Jakarta. But I knew that I would never be alone so long as I had the boys with me, around me, just...having them there. Sometimes I’d be up in my room reading one of Jurie’s old classic novels, flipping pages all the way fromTreasure IslandtoAlice in Wonderland.
I’d warn the boys not to disturb me under any circumstances, but I’d hear a faint knock on my door and when I’d open it, there would be a little bowl of fruit, cut into cubes, not rectangles because they always remembered the little things about me. Or I’d be practising my posture in the living room mirror, making sure my muscle memory didn’t somehow develop amnesia over the summer holidays and my ballet teacher Madame Stacy wouldn’t be on my case the minute I was back in New York. The frustration of it all would get to me, and I’d watch as tears began to well in my eyes and felt my feet beginning to strain in my pointed shoes. But no amount of physical pain could ever amount to the shame and fear of never being good enough.
And so I did what my family always did whenever things got tough. I endured, so much of my childhood became lessons in composure and endurance. I recall Jax watching from the kitchen, never speaking a word about it, his sharp forest green eyes saw much more than he’d ever let on. He knew I was embarrassed to have him see me like that, so raw and so very bare. Struggling. He did not say a word as he took the fleece blanket from the sofa and threw it over the mirror to cover it so I couldn’t see myself anymore. “It’s okay to breathe, Soh. You don’t always have to hold your breath,” he said to me and those words scorched themselves into my bones like a red hot branding iron. I never forgot them.
And yet, still, I hold my breath. I never quite learned how to breathe.
I had never had a rebellious phase as many teenagers often do, never cut my hair short and dyed it, never snuck out, neverstepped out of line. We’d been watching some old coming-of-age film in the living room together and whenever the scenes of the group of friends sticking it to the man or breaking out of the social path came on, I couldn’t help but feel excluded, I was distracted all night. And Cahya and Soleh noticed. They woke me up in the middle of the night and we snuck out of Mirrorball House to go to the big beach by Rock Helena and we dived down into the deep. Our lungs were not filled with dread and anguish but water and bubbling with the kind of sheer joy experienced only through childhood spirit. We laughed and talked over frozen green grapes, we sipped sparkling water in wine glasses like we often saw the parents doing. We wanted to feel a little bit more in control, a little bit older. We talked about Phoebe Bridgers songs, dusty vinyl records and homework we had no plans of doing.
So yes, as you can understand. The boys were always with me, and yet, still… deep down I dreamed of having a sister. I had Sydney and she was everything, she was my best friend, my darling trusted companion from sunset to sundown. I couldn’t remember a life before her, it was almost as if she was always there from the very start. But I was nothing if not selfish, I wanted what I wanted and world be damned if I didn’t get it. Sydney was everything but I wanted more.
I remember the day the Kwon family moved in next door like it was yesterday—they just sort of appeared like stars in the night sky, like a ray of sunlight at midday, like a cold you can’t seem to shake off after getting caught in the pouring rain. No one in Waverly Peak ever anticipated the twin palaces, Mirrorball and March House, would ever become triplets. The house next to ours was always vacant, but we didn’t know that it would never be empty again… at least not for the next four years to come. That house would be filled to the brim with life, laughter echoingdown winding hallways, lights on past midnight, hot food always on the stove and the television set on.
Everything happened within a flash; Jax seeing the moving vans parked outside, him riding his bike up to Mirrorball House to tell me, us racing down the wooden pathway to March House to tell Sydney.
“Is it true?” Sydney asked me through braces, freckled cheeks, and pigtails.
“Depends what exactly are you referring to?” I played along.
“Oh come on, Yesoh, let me in, I can keep a secret!” she insisted, and back then Sydney St James couldn’t keep a secret to save her life—just the week prior she’d snitched about the vase Soleh broke while playing ball indoors. But that was then, now she is a vault and there is no breaking her. Not a chance. “Is someone moving in or not?”
“There’s a moving truck outside the house that was being renovated,” Jax told her. She gasped slamming her tiny hand on the kitchen counter.
“Shut up, no way!” she refused, unable to believe us. “Someone finally moved to the desert.”
“Well, technically this isn’t the desert, it’s a wealthy suburb in Cal—” I began, but Jax hinted at me to shut up.
“Let a girl dream, won’t you, Yesoh?” Jax scolded me. I raised my hands in surrender. “But yes someone is moving here.”
Sydney immediately rushed to the window, propping herself on the step stool to see the truck, and I watched as her eyes widened in surprise. “Girls!” she yelled back to us.
“Huh?” Jax wondered. “Okay now I’m lost in translation.”
I arched a teasing eyebrow. “Oh, but I thought you were fluent in Sydney?”
