This is a story about how hope can vanish and return.

In 1994, on a rainy evening, in a Korean-American suburb in Chicago, a wet hungry baby was born. Barely wiped down from a red film, and hardly with a conscious, she felt her way up a squishy belly to find her mom's chest, and she drank. The faces in the room projected a loud sound—laughter, it turned out—which sent a jolt of something in her. It was too much too handle. She felt her throat close up, and then the loud sounds came from her—it seemed, and something wet on her face. Attention wasn't her cup of tea, but food was, and she continued to drink through these odd bodily reactions.

Her appetite didn't diminish as her family moved from Garden Grove, to Lake Elsinore, to Fullerton over the next twelve years. Being chubby wasn't a problem as a child, though she hated the pinching of her cheeks, and without a second thought to her appearance she entered middle school. One day, she walked up to a ruddy haired tall girl, Megan, her friend, and a blonde girl with a blonde accent, Jenna. She doesn't remember why. The whole day would have been erased from her memory, as if it had never happened, if a seven by five inch note hadn't been passed to her. In it were no words, just a few lines and circles intentionally placed in pencil. It was a stick figure, but instead of a stick for the spine and the waist, there was a satisfying oblong circle. That was her, they said.

Another day, she walked up to a tetherball. It is a 1-1 two player game where opponents stand opposite a pole, and a tethered ball on a string swings around. There were four tetherballs, and all of them had kids playing on them. When she came to play, the courts suddenly cleared up, until the only sound on the playground seemed to be her own ball getting whacked by her tiny balled up fists and whirling through a lonely circumference back to her own body. From then on, she spent more time in the library or in the bathroom with her feet up against the small stalls.