Gorgeous Gruesome Faces, page 19
“Are you okay, Sunday?”
“Are you all right?”
“You look tired.”
When I turn, the door is crowded with identical smiling faces. Elongated white hands stretch forward. They’re dressed in white, too—floor-length robes with wide sleeves that hang loose, hems swishing against bare feet. The girls I saw in the hallway earlier, were they all wearing white, too?
“You should lie down, Sunday,” Eugenia’s voice says. I turn back to see her standing right in front of me, that beautifully horrible face leaning in. “You look a little tired.”
“Get away from me!” I scream, lashing out, shoving and kicking at the canopy of hands until a gap is created. I dash out of Eugenia’s room and run down the hallway of doors, straight for the stairwell. My survival impulse takes over entirely, and I tear down the stairs toward the first floor, pure terror propelling me forward.
I need to get away from these people.
I need to get out of here.
I reach the bottom of the stairs and scramble onto the landing, turning left toward the front of the building. The overhead lights have been switched off, leaving only moonlight to guide my way. I race past room after empty room. Turning the corner, I end up in another dark hallway.
It looks like the same hallway we just went down.
This isn’t right.
I should be on the first floor. Where’s the lobby? Where’s the exit?
I turn on my heels and head back in the other direction, down the opposite hallway. I wind up at the same junction. An implausible loop.
This isn’t the first floor. This doesn’t look like any of the floors.
You’re losing it, Sunday.
I cradle my head in my palms. “Stop saying that; I’m not!” I shout into the empty hallways.
From somewhere behind me comes a chorus of high-pitched humming, like air blowing across the rim of a glass. The girls. They’re humming the song. That same song.
They’re coming for me.
My back hits the wall, and I slide down, sinking to the floor onto my haunches. The panic sweeps in, and I’m powerless against the onslaught, my spine curling, forehead pressing into my knees, my chest racked by wild breaths.
A gentle hand rests on my arm, the comforting weight of it so, so familiar.
My head snaps up. Candie is kneeling in front of me.
She’s backlit by the moon, but I can see that her face is still hers, those steely eyes, that determined mouth, my anchor, my protector. I reach for her, desperate fingers grabbing at her arms, her shirt collar, her hair, anything to keep from falling over the ledge.
“Breathe,” Candie says. “Breathe.”
I do as she tells me, taking in one shaky breath after another.
“Am I dreaming?” I gasp, when I can finally form words again. “What’s happening, Candie?”
Candie’s hands slip around my arms and she drags me to my feet. “Come on,” she says, pulling me forward. “Hurry.”
Sensation returns to my numb legs, and I force myself to move—left or right, I can’t tell anymore, I’ve lost all sense of space. Another hallway, another turn, and suddenly there is another staircase, the two of us flying down the steps in a dizzying spiral.
We emerge in the atrium. I recognize where I am now. The front doors are just ahead of us.
We’re almost there. We’re almost out.
We race down the front corridor to the reception area, my eyes fixed on the open sea of asphalt, the black night sky, the freedom just beyond the glass. As we get closer to the door, Candie starts to fall behind me. I turn around, grasping for her.
She pushes me forward. “Go!”
“What about you?!” I shout back.
The humming grows closer, floating up to the reception hall from the other end of the corridor. Long, distorted shadows of tall bodies stretch across the walls. There are so many of them. It sounds like they’re just around the corner.
“I said go!”
Candie’s hand shoots out, and I’m shoved backward out of the front doors.
The moist night wind hits my face as I crash into the grass of the front lawn. The building’s glass doors swing shut—and stay shut. Candie doesn’t come out.
I launch to my feet and rush back toward the building without a second thought. I stop dead when my feet pass through the threshold.
Where there was just a reception area two seconds ago is now a massive empty space. The reception desk is gone. The mural on the wall is gone. The chairs in the waiting area are gone.
There’s no Candie. There’s nothing at all.
Only the vacant lobby of an abandoned building.
Chapter 25
THEN
Two years ago
The Sweet Cadence national tour is supposed to be the highlight of our careers. It’s everything we’ve been working for. But our fight and what Candie did loom like angry shadows over this monumental accomplishment.
Candie apologizes to me over and over.
She vows to never use her power around us again.
I know she didn’t mean it. I believe her when she says it was an accident.
But I don’t have time to dissect all the conflicting feelings and the fallout of the awful things we said to each other during that argument. We leave to go on tour in two days. And so we agree to patch the gaping wounds in our relationship with as many Band-Aids as we can before heading out on the road.
The cheering on opening night is so astonishingly loud that I can barely hear my voice in the earpiece. I panic and lose my footing during the very first number. Instead of carrying on as if I hadn’t stumbled, Candie steps in close to me and takes my hand. Mina follows her lead and takes my other hand, the three of us abandoning the choreography, striding forward together into the flashing streams of multicolored stage lights.
And it feels like everything is right in the world, again.
The stadium goes wild, and the shouts of my name remind me that all these people are here for me, they support me, they love me. My voice bursts from my chest, bright and soaring and alive.
In Phoenix, an eight-year-old fan’s encouraging words to me at the meet and greet backstage reduce me to tears. In Mina’s hometown of Boston, we celebrate her birthday during the show, showering the audience with balloons and confetti as thousands of people sing happy birthday in unison. Each night, we step onstage to outstretched hands and thunderous screams. There are no more mishaps after the first night; we nail the harmonies and fly through the tricky choreography, closing out each show to standing ovations.
Onstage, our bond looks stronger than ever.
But once we’re back on the tour bus, we don’t speak to one another, each of us scrolling separately on our phones, or staring out the window as the highway markers go by.
I check my messages whenever I can. Jin-hwan hasn’t texted me since the beginning of the tour. I send him lonely selfies in front of state landmarks complete with lame postcard captions like Really wish you were here with me.
The day after we get back from being on the road for two months, Jin-hwan answers me.
When Ms. Tao calls my mother and me to her office for a meeting, and I notice that Candie and Mina have not been invited, I know.
I prepare myself to come clean about Jin-hwan—it was only a matter of time. Turns out, she didn’t call us in for an emergency PR meeting.
It’s much, much worse.
She tells us with a grave expression that there’s been a large-scale leak of a private celebrity group chat consisting of several prominent male K-pop stars and boy banders. The group was sharing photos with one another—intimate photos—of the girls they have been involved with.
The pictures I took for him, the ones of me in poses that I copied from cam girls, are among those leaked.
Ms. Tao assures us that the situation is under control, that those involved are cooperating fully with authorities. She promises that all the leaked photos have been removed from the internet and that there will be harsh disciplinary action from the boys’ management companies.
My mother doesn’t accept this. She is hysterical. She yells at Ms. Tao, gets right up in her face and threatens to fire her on the spot, declares that she will be suing every person involved in this grave violation of my privacy. But I can’t seem to summon up any sort of response, and I sit there in silence as my mother rages on my behalf.
“Someone has to be held responsible!” my mother shouts.
She doesn’t know. I am the one responsible for all this. I fell for Jin-hwan’s lovely lies. And now I’ve been carved empty. I have nothing left to give to anyone.
Jin-hwan’s camp has already released a statement asking for privacy. He declines to comment on the nature of his relationship with me.
Over the next week, the headlines declare that Jin-hwan, Brailey, and I are this summer’s most dramatic love triangle, pouring oil onto the flames of the photo-leak scandal. Fans dredge up candid shots and videos of all our past interactions, constructing time lines, analyzing our body language—it’s all anyone can talk about—and suddenly I’m not Sunday Lee from Sweet Cadence anymore, I’m—
The other girl.
The boyfriend stealer.
The dirty skank who sent nudes of herself to Jin-hwan in an attempt to seduce him away from poor, unsuspecting Brailey.
The backlash against me is so intense that our agency cancels all our upcoming appearances and the studio goes into crisis management mode.
I hide away in my bedroom for days. I don’t answer my phone, don’t answer my mother as she pleads for me to speak to the PR coach she’s hired.
Throughout the onslaught of this media storm, Brailey stands by Jin-hwan. She doesn’t release any statements, only a cryptic post saying You always receive what you put out into the universe before unfollowing me. The Brailey Brigade takes that as a signal to declare war, and soon, every single one of our social media pages is flooded with hate.
Your career is OVER!!
Those nudes are so ugly lol
You’ve set such a bad example for all the little Asian American girls who looked up to you
Cancel the show already it’s trash
Justice4Brailey!
I don’t know how many days pass before I hear Mina and Candie outside my bedroom door, knocking gently, asking to be let in.
The fire-and-brimstone judgment I expected doesn’t come. There is no “You should’ve known” or “I told you so.” Candie and Mina hold me tightly in a protective embrace. Something in me thaws, and I finally, finally let it out.
I cry so hard and for so long that my entire face hurts and a migraine starts hammering on my skull. Mina and Candie hold me until the heavy sobs die down into quiet sniffles and fitful hiccups.
“The news cycle will move on; it always does. This’ll all be over soon.” Mina hands me tissues, drawing from her boundless well of optimism.
I doubt it.
“Stay off the internet. Don’t look at anything.” Candie rubs my back.
Impossible. I haven’t.
I can’t even look at Candie. She knew this would happen. She tried to warn me. I’m sure what she really wants to do right now is yell at me, tell me just how badly I fucked up, how selfish, how stupid, how pathetic—
“I deserve this, don’t I?” I ask. My eyes are so swollen it’s painful to blink.
“No.” Candie reaches out and cups my face, forcing me to look up at her. “You’ve made mistakes, but this is not your fault. You don’t deserve any of this.”
“It’s his fault,” Mina grits out. She takes my hand in hers, squeezing it tight. “I need to admit something to you, Sunny.”
“What is it?” I blink up at Mina, rubbing my sore eyes.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been honest. But you deserve to know. Jin-hwan … was the boy that I told you about,” Mina confesses. She turns to Candie, who looks confused about the admission. Mina adds, “I … hooked up with Jin-hwan before he debuted. When we were both trainees in Korea.”
Her voice is small and weighed down with heavy guilt. She looks so ashamed. Candie’s eyes widen, but she elects to stay silent.
At first, I think I misheard her. Mina and Jin-hwan hooked up?
That can’t be what she said.
But then it hits me.
The sad, slightly tortured looks she gave when I was recounting my exploits.
The way she was trying to warn me.
Mina continues on, her voice growing quieter. “My pictures were in the leaks, too. You can’t see my face in them, but … it’s me.”
It takes me several shocked seconds to process the information.
“What?” Candie’s clipped tone breaks the silence.
“Mina … why didn’t you say anything?” I ask finally. “This whole time…”
“I should have. I’m so, so sorry, Sunny.” Mina’s voice breaks. “I should have told you the truth. But I was afraid. I knew how much you liked him, I-I didn’t want to upset you. I didn’t want something like that … someone like him, to affect our friendship. I didn’t want you to hate me.”
I am upset.
But not at Mina.
I’m furious at myself. For not seeing through all his lies sooner. For going on and on about my affair when Mina had already been hurt by him. For expecting Mina to comfort me while she was suffering through the exact same betrayal of trust.
I feel like the worst friend in the world.
“… I could never hate you. Ever,” I tell Mina, pulling her into another crushing hug.
Mina turns to Candie. For the first time, the perpetual warm glow that lights Mina up from the inside has been snuffed out and replaced with a vengeful fire. “We have to do something,” Mina says to Candie. “We can’t just let him walk away from this. We have to make him pay for what he did.”
The unspoken implication is clear. She wants Candie to make him pay.
Candie remains quiet as she considers what’s being asked of her. She turns to me. “What do you want, Sunny? What do you want me to do?”
“I want him to hurt.” My voice is a strange rasp in my own ears, bitter and ugly. “I want him to hurt like I did.”
A menacing darkness surfaces in Candie’s eyes. “Then he will.”
* * *
Candie finds out that Jin-hwan is lying low in a luxury condo in the Hollywood Hills. I don’t know if she got this information through normal networking means or through coercion. I don’t really care how.
All I care about is revenge.
When Candie, Mina, and I show up at his building, Candie tells the door attendant to let us in. He steps aside right away, welcoming us inside as if we’re actual residents arriving home.
All three of us are dressed in mourner’s black—black coats, black jeans, black heels. The end of this relationship does feel like a death. The once-cherished memories of Jin-hwan now cover my body like vicious, malignant growths.
Tonight, we’re exorcising those tumors.
We take the elevator up to his floor, and we march, shoulder to shoulder, down the hall, like we’re about to take to the stage, but this time to deliver a very different kind of show.
Candie rings the doorbell.
The unpleasant surprise on Jin-hwan’s face when he opens the door brings a rush of spiteful glee. He glances warily at Candie, and Mina, then finally me, and pulls off the gaming headset he’s wearing.
“How did you get up here?” he demands.
“Let us in, Jin-hwan,” Candie says.
Jin-hwan steps aside, out of the doorway, blinking in shock at having done something he clearly had no intention of doing.
Candie strides into the suite like she owns not only the unit but the entire building. Mina and I follow her, through the entryway, past the wet bar, and straight into the living room. Jin-hwan trails behind us, unable to wipe the utter confusion from his face.
Candie sits herself down on the massive leather sectional. I fold my arms across my chest and take a stance to Jin-hwan’s right, while Mina glares at him from the left, the two of us boxing him in. Candie scans the marble coffee table in front of us—stubbed-out cigarettes in a large stone ashtray, open bags of snack foods, weed vape pen, and a bottle of alcohol.
“We just wanted to have a little chat,” Candie says. “Sunny told me you’ve been hard to get ahold of, so we thought we’d come to you.”
“Look, Sunday.” Jin-hwan puts up his hands. “I’ve already said everything I had to say.”
“I’m not here to try to get back together with you,” I snap. “I just have one question.”
“What is it?” he says impatiently.
“Are you sorry for what you did?” I ask him. “To me? To Mina? You do realize that spreading illicit pictures of a minor is a federal offense, right?”
He doesn’t seem surprised that I included Mina in his rap sheet. Maybe he assumed I knew about them all along. He eyes me like I’m some shrieking banshee trying to drum up drama over nothing.
“You’re acting like I’m some crazy sex predator. It was my privacy that was invaded.” He turns to Mina then. “We were both minors, and we agreed we couldn’t date seriously. You both offered to take those pictures for me. I didn’t force you to do anything.”
It’s shocking how easily he clears himself of all responsibility. I can’t reconcile this jarring dissonance. The Jin-hwan I knew—sweet, charming, who spoke to me about the tropical vacations he wanted to take me on, who mused about introducing me to his family over Christmas—has vanished, and in his place stands a cruel and dismissive usurper.
Or maybe, this is who he really is. I’m so, so stupid. How did I not see it? Tears leap into my eyes, but I clench my hands into fists and fight with everything I have to keep them from falling.
“I basically did you a favor, okay?” he tells me. “Hyun-bin from JunkLand asked me if he could shoot his shot, and Alex Zhao from H-I-T asked for your number, too. You’ll be on someone else’s arm walking down a red carpet next week. Plus, my company’s already docked my pay and suspended a bunch of my appearances, so I think we’re even.”
