I am losing. Ravina, she-

I need to get some leverage back. I need to keep myself at some kind of a distance from her, and remember that this is a game. And I’m fucking good at those.

“Theo I have to get back to class,” she says, trying to turn around.

I throw my arm over her small shoulder and steer her toward the parking lot instead. Ravina wriggles away and glares at me, but I see some sort of childish curiosity in her eyes.

“What are you doing?” She asks.

“Come with me,”

She narrows her eyes. “Why, where are we going?”

“I just want to talk to you. Isn’t that enough?”

“We can talk after school,”

I smile at her. “Ravina please just trust me,” I say.

She pauses, thinking about it for a second.

“If you say no I’ll just kidnap you so choose wisely,” I add.

She smiles, pushing me away playfully…

Ravina’s eyes meet mine in surprise when I tug her closer until she falls into my arms.

I love this. Ahem, I mean I like this. I just like how tiny she is, how she has to physically tilt her head up to look at me.

“Okay,” she whispers suddenly, detaching herself from me and putting a few steps between us. Yes, let’s go…

We drive in comfortable silence for about fifteen minutes, and when we finally arrive and Ravina sees where we were, she looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“Theo, do you really expect me to go in there?” She asks, nodding at the trees.

“It’s the shortest route to the train tracks. Would you rather go twenty minutes around the forest or take five to cut straight through?”

“Train tracks?” Ravina blinks innocently.

“I like to think there,” I answer, turning the car off and stepping outside.

I’d parked along the side of the road by the forest where, between the two, the ground had been paved over with gravel. Just enough room for a car.

Ravina follows me nervously, looking around and squinting up at the sun.

“What?” I ask her with a smile. “You don’t like nature?”

Ravina smirks at me in contemptment.

“It would be more accurate to say that nature doesn’t like me…” she mutters, following me into the forest.

“How can that be?” I grin, turning around and reaching for her hand.

Ravina stumbles over a fallen tree and has to grab onto the back of my jacket to keep from tripping.

“Do I look like one of those girls who wears flower crowns and sparkly shit?” She frowns.

She steps carefully over the log like she’s walking on broken glass…

I feel the Ravina-smile forming. Damn she’s cute. Ravina did look out of place here, but it’s the kind of out of place that is more charming than confusing.

“Here,” I say, bending down on one knee. “Get on.”

Ravina laughs in surprise. “Get out. Seriously?” She says.

I shrug, “Yeah why not?”

Ravina is silent for a few seconds, then I feel her wrap her arms around my neck from behind. I stand up with her on my back. She weighed nothing.

“Are you sure about this?” She says, holding on tightly as I grab the back of her knees.

I continue walking.

“Do you ever eat? You have like no substance…”

“I can still kick your ass.”

I laugh, “Easy there.”

Ravina goes silent and leans her head against me as I keep walking. It was nice, how quiet it was out here, and yet I could hear birds chirping, leaves rustling in the wind. I think that was one of my favorite sounds. Combined with Ravina’s soft breathing on the back of my neck, I don’t think I’d felt calmer in, wow maybe years. This is all I really want, just to be alone with her like this.

The trees start thinning after a few minutes, and when the ground beneath us turns back to gravel Ravina taps me on the shoulder to let me know she is jumping down.

Ahead of us are two parallel train tracks. Only one train car, and it was always here. It had been for years as far as I could tell. The grass that grew around it grew up the sides of the metal doors too.

“Okay this is pretty cool,” Ravina grins. “It’s like a tetanus playground.”

It was warmer out today. Well, warm for September. Every few seconds the wind would blow past, sending a chill down my spine.

Ravina reached out and grabbed my hand like it was an afterthought, then started pulling me toward the train. She sat down on the grass that surrounded it, staring up at the new and old graffiti as she dragged me down with her.

“Are we here to play truth or dare?” She asks.

I start to say no, but she interrupts-

“If you dared me to climb up this thing, you do realize I’d object right?” She gestures at the train.

I smile at her. “Don't interrupt me,”

Ravina’s eyes shine like I just challenged her to a duel. She narrows them at me…

“Truth,” she says. “I don’t respond well to a controlling personality like yours.”

“Truth,” I tease her. “I wouldn’t have to be that way if you didn’t interrupt me.”

Ravina glares at me, her lips pressed into a thin line.

I smile. “It was a joke Ravina,”

“I know, I’m just trying to decide if this is worth picking a fight over when we both know I’d win.”

“Oh would you?”

She shrugs immodestly, like it was just a fact of life.

“Ravina, I hope you realize how absolutely adorable you are when you’re mad at me.”

She pouts, “I’m not supposed to be adorable when I’m mad at you, I’m supposed to strike terror into your heart with my fiery gaze.”

I laugh. “You do, trust me.”

Ravina shakes her head and then leans back on her hands to look up at the sky.

I spend a few guilty seconds staring at the curve of her neck, and the black choker she’s wearing, when eventually she speaks.

“So, are you gonna tell me why we’re here?” She asks.

“I told you, I wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

I shrug. “Anything,”

Ravina closes her eyes…

“Are you and Julie coming to James’ party on Friday?” I ask her.

She blinks and tilts her head down to me.

“Um, we’re never invited to those kinds of things. Besides,” she smiles shyly. “I’m too edgy to go to a lame high school kegger.”

“You should come to this one. It’s not a big deal, but I want to go with you.”

Ravina bites her lip. “Sure,” she shrugs.

I smile. Good.

“To be completely honest,” Ravina looks up at me with a cautious smile. “You don’t really seem like the party type either.”

“I’m not, but they’re my friends. Which means I get to suffer their idiocy.”

Ravina gets quiet again.

I smirk at her. “What, what is it?”

“You don’t have to tell me, but why are you friends with them? I mean, how did that happen?”

I nod, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. I think about this often.

“Well, when I started high school they were the most important students. And so was I because of my family. It just sort of happened, we all just fit the profile.”

Ravina raises her eyebrows. “Would you have still been friends with them if there were no expectations though?”

“I don’t know, it’s complicated.”

Ravina pauses. “Julie’s my friend because we’re both complete nobody’s except when we’re with each other. And she kinda saves me on a daily basis from myself.” She smiles.

Ravina is really pretty. And I like listening to her voice. I could sit here and listen to her talk for hours…

“I never asked about your journal,” I decide to say, my face getting warm as I remembered the drawing that she’d made of me. And then the aftermath.

Ravina blushed too.

“You mean my sketchbook?” She shrugged. “Yeah, what about it?”

I grinned at her attempt to be nonchalant.

“I believe I’ve already said, but you’re very talented.”

“I know.”

I laugh, “Is that what you’re going to do with your life, art? You totally could.”

Ravina just smiles again. “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe something to do with music.”

“You like music?”

“It runs in my family. My mom’s a singer,” she says.

“Are you?” I ask, surprised.

Ravina’s eyes widen. “Heck no! I sound like a frog, I just like listening to music.”

There’s a pause for a second as I listen to the wind…

“What kind of music do you like?” She asks suddenly.

Frowning, I try to come up with an answer, but Ravina gasps after I stay silent.

“Don’t tell me you don’t like music!” She exclaims.

“It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that I don’t like the words.” I tell her.

“You don’t like lyrics, how is that even possible? Lyrics are like the beating heart of music!”

“Words distract me, I like instrumental.”

Ravina nods. “I suppose that’s fair, but really?”

Shrugging, I start playing with the grass near my feet. “It just isn’t my thing.”

“Okay, it can be mine. Well, what is your thing?”

“I don’t know.”

She smiles, “You’re not sure what you’re gonna do?”

“Not really. I mean, it’s realistic to assume that I’ll be working with my family in some capacity. They all run a hotel chain back home.”

“Home?” Ravina asks.

Have I really never told her where I’m from?

“Seoul.”

She nods but gets quiet. “Oh… ”

“What?”

She breaks into a smile. “Nothing. It’s just, I guess I didn’t realize you didn’t feel like this was your home.”

I start pulling blades of grass out one by one…

“Well it is, I just never expected to be here this long. We were only supposed to move for a short time back when I was six, but then it became more long term.”

“Why did you move?”

Well this isn’t a conversation I ever thought I’d have with Ravina Dobs.

“There’s a hospital in Portland that specialises in childhood illnesses. Better than anything in South Korea. It was an act of necessity to come here.”

Ravina blinks. “Childhood illnesses? Like what?”

“Like lung cancer-”

“You had cancer?!”

I look up to see her horrified expression.

“No,” I smile shyly. “But everyone thought I did. Took them months to figure out it was just pneumonia, and by then my parents had already decided to settle down on the West Coast and work from here.”

Ravina exhales. “Wow. That’s… intense. But you want to go home? Back to Korea?”

Well, yeah. I was so bored here. Oregon’s pretty, I mean I like the trees and the mountains and the air. But it isn’t where I belong. It isn’t home.

“More than anything,” I admit.

I’ve never told that to anyone-

“I think you’ll get home eventually,” Ravina says. “I can tell you don’t give up.”

Her words make me smile again. I have a handful of grass now, but I reach out and take her hand anyway.

“Ennhh!” She whines. “You got nature on me!”

She tries to pull her hand away but I don’t let her. “Thank you,” I say.

Ravina meets my eyes, frowning. “For what?”

I can’t stop my smile and I don’t want to. She made me feel peaceful enough that I wasn’t even bothered that I’d let my guard down and told her about my wish to go home.

“For telling me I won’t give up. I don’t hear that a lot.”

Ravina smiles and then lowers her eyes like she’s attempting to show me how much it doesn’t matter.

“I don’t really know you, but I’m sure you’re capable of figuring out your shit.” She shrugs.

“You make it sound so classy,” I laugh.

“Classy is boring. Be crazy.”

It feels like she knows exactly what to say. Like she’s had a glance inside my mind and knows all the answers I’ve been looking for.

“You constantly surprise me Ravina,” I say.

“What did I do?”

“Nothing.”

She blinks, “You surprise me too.”

“Yeah?”

She nods. “Yeah you aren’t what I thought you’d be.”

“What’s that?”

Ravina pauses. She knows what, but she doesn’t want to say. I can see in her eyes that the answer would do more damage than a lie. She puts on a fake smile.

“You’re popular, I guess I figured you’d be a spoiled little shit as well.”

I can’t help but laugh again. “Hopefully I’m a bit better than that,”

Ravina smiles, “I’m still deciding.”